Emergency funds, car funds etc tend to have to be accessible quickly (which tends to rule out CDs unless you have the patience to work something like a monthly CD ladder, an I don't) and you'll want your principal protected. The latter pretty much rules out any proper investment (ETFs, mutual funds, stock market directly, Elbonian dirt futures etc). It's basically a risk-vs-return calculation. Not much risk, not much return but at least you're not losing from a nominal standpoint). Another consideration is that you normally aren't able to decide freely if and when you want to pull money out of an emergency fund. If it is an emergency, waiting three weeks to see if the stock market goes up a little further isn't an option so you might end up having to take a hit that would be irrelevant if you were investing long term but might hurt badly because you're left with no choice. I'd stick that sort of money into a money market account and either add to it if necessary to keep up with inflation or make sure that my non-retirement investments over and above these funds are performing well, as those will and should become a far bigger part of your wealth in the longer run.


The DLOM maybe different if the bond is more or less marketable than the equity. However, the ratio itself would be the same. So while this might affect the interest at which you are willing to lend, it would not affect the intrinsic value of the firm.


If so, are there ways to reduce the amount of taxes owed? Given that it's currently December, I suppose I could sell half of what I want now, and the other half in January and it would split the tax burden over 2 years instead, but beyond that, are there any strategies for tax reduction in this scenario? One possibility is to also sell stocks that have gone down since you bought them.  Of course, you would only do this if you have changed your mind about the stock's prospects since you bought it -- that is, it has gone down and you no longer think it will go up enough to be worth holding it.  When you sell stocks, any losses you take can offset any gains, so if you sell one stock for a gain of $10,000 and another for a loss of $5,000, you will only be taxed on your net gain of $5,000. Even if you think your down stock could go back up, you could sell it to realize the loss, and then buy it back later at the lower price (as long as you're not worried it will go up in the meantime).  However, you need to wait at least 30 days before rebuying the stock to avoid wash sale rules.  This practice is known as tax loss harvesting.


"Do you need the capital? If you not, are you considering taking it to help you grow faster? To lower your downside risk?   In terms of deal structure start with your financial model  and evaluate  your payback period and IRR... Think if you were investor how much of a split would you need to compensate the risk you are taking.  Generally the investor will want to get 100% of their original investment paid back plus a annual  8%  ""preferred"", return and after they are made whole 80% of proceeds, but I've seen restaurant deals at 50/50 splits and no preferred return.   I'd try to ensure you get a salary and/or management fee.   Make sure you retain control and rights!  Don't sign anything without legal review."


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/a-new-way-to-learn-economics) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot) ***** > A group of economists from both sides of the Atlantic, part of a project called CORE Econ, has put together a new introductory economics curriculum, one that is modern, comprehensive, and freely available online.  > In many countries, groups of students demanded an overhaul in how economics was taught, with less emphasis on free-market doctrines and more emphasis on real-world problems.  > In his highly popular &quot;Principles of Economics,&quot; Harvard&#039;s N. Gregory Mankiw begins by listing a set of ten basic principles, which include &quot;Rational people think at the margin,&quot; &quot;Trade can make everybody better off,&quot; and &quot;Markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity.""   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6zkgmk/a_new_way_to_learn_economics/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~208302 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*: **economic**^#1 **students**^#2 **CORE**^#3 **more**^#4 **curriculum**^#5"


But virtually all Americans pay some form of tax, whether it's sales, payroll, state income, or property tax.  I'm glad you mentioned this.  When you say something like Romney only paid 14% taxes, I will point you to this as well.


"You obviously pay your taxes in Switzerland and are employed (judging from your comments on your maximum possible contribution to the 3. Säule). Under these circumstances, your best best may well be to pay into the occupational pension system (""Einkauf in die 2. Säule""). Essentially, you can add funds to your pension plan to match non-existent employer contributions from times you spent studying etc. The 2. Säule is usually defensively invested in bonds, so it's not a completely secure investment. In addition, it's a pretty fixed investment, since you can only get your money out if you buy a house or leave Switzerland for good. However, your entire payment into the 2. Säule is tax deductible, so the tax effect in itself should be a very attractive bit of ""interest"". Your pension plan can inform you about the maximum possible Einkauf."


Making the company isn't what the fuss is about. Charging yourself 'fees' through that company so that you don't how to pay out the director whose contract is on the *net* of profits is what the fuss is about.  I'm surprised that with millions of dollars on the line they don't sue, setting a precedent for these sham fees for all studios.


I would suggest talking to your parents about potentially co-signing on the loan with you. Just make sure that you are the primary holder of the loan. Sure, there is some risk for your parents, but they know you better than anyone so let them make the decision if they want to help you or not.  If for some reason they can't help you, such as they've declared bankruptcy, then following the other answers' advice is the way to go.


This is the chart going back to the first full year of this fund.  To answer your question - yes, a low cost ETF or Mutual fund is fine. Why not go right to an S&P index? VOO has a .05% expense. Why attracted you to a choice that lagged the S&P by $18,000 over this 21 year period?  (And yes, past performance, yada, yada, but that warning is appropriate for the opposite example. When you show a fund that beat the S&P short term, say 5 years, its run may be over. But this fund lagged the S&P by a significant margin over 2 decades, what makes you think this will change?


Yeah it's called the Fed buying shit mortgages that the banks invented to make money, then got bailed out on 100 cents on the dollar for, and with an underhanded deal that the banks will then buy Treasury bills with the magically prestidigitated money the Fed creates out of nothing that the banks receive in order to prop up federal debt prices, and thus keep interest rates down, so the dollar can limp along a little while longer until the bottom drops out because they are out of ways to keep the money cheap because at some point government debt will become massively discounted no matter what they do.  Only, how does this bizarre circlejerk process end?  It ends with consumption ramped up consuming things for a large war, is how it ends.  Edit: I'm wasted.  Fuck you.


If you hold stock in a traditional IRA and sell a covered call against that stock, the premium received for writing that call belongs to the IRA just as would any other gain, dividend, or interest.  It is not a contribution but simply adds to the balance in the IRA.  The nature of the gain (capital or ordinary) is not relevant since all parts of the IRA balance are treated the same when funds are (eventually) withdrawn.


Use your line of credit (LOC) to purchase more investments (non RRSP). That way, all of your LOC interest use to purchase those investments becomes tax deductible. Then use the money from your tax return to pay down the LOC.


"You are not the only one with this problem. When Intuit changed their pricing and services structure in 2015 a lot of people got angry, facing larger fees and having to go through an annoying upgrade just to get the same functionality (such as Schedule D, capital gains). You have several options: (1) Forget Turbo Tax and just use paper forms. That is what I do. Paper is reliable. (2) Use forms mode in Turbo Tax. Of course, that may be even more complicated than simply filing out paper forms. (3) Use a different service. If your income is below $64,000 the IRS has a free electronic filing service. Other online vendors have full taxes services for less than Turbo Tax. (4) Add the amount to ordinary income. Technically, as long as you report the income, you cannot be penalized, so if you add the capital gain to your ordinary income, then you have paid taxes on the income. Even if they send you a letter, you can send an answer that you added it to ordinary income and that will satisfy them. Of course you pay a higher rate on your $26 if you do that. (5) If you are in the 15% or below income bracket you are exempt from capital gains, and you can omit it. Don't believe the nervous Nellies who say the IRS will burn your house down if you don't report $26 in capital gains. Penalties are assessed on the percentage of TAXES you did not pay (0.5% penalty per month). Since 0.5% of $0 is $0 your penalty is $0. The IRS knows this. The IRS does not send out assessment letters for $0. (6) Even if you are above the 15% bracket, there is likelihood it is still a no-tax situation (see 5 above). (7) Worst case scenario: you are making a million dollars per year and you omit your $26 capital gains from your return. The IRS will send you an assessment letter for about $10. You can then send them a separate check or money order to pay it. In all honesty I have omitted documented tax items, like taxable interest, that the IRS knows about many times and never gotten an assessment letter. Once I made a serious math error on my return and they sent me an assessment letter, which I just paid, end of story. And that was for a lot more than $26. The technical verbiage for something like this in IRS lingo is CP-2000, underreported income. As you can see from this official IRS web page, basically what they do is guess how much they think you owe and send you a bill. Then you pay it. If you do so in time, you don't even get a 0.5% interest penalty on your $6.75 owed or whatever it is. (8) Go hog wild. As long as you are risking an assessment on your $26, why not go hog wild and just let the IRS compute all your taxes for you? Make a copy of your income statements, then mail them to the IRS with a letter that says, ""Hi, I am Mr. Odinson, my SSN is XXX-XX-XXXX. My address is XYZ. I am unable to compute my taxes due to a confused state of mind. I am hereby requesting a tax assessment for the 2016 tax year."" Make sure you sign and date the letter. In all probability they will compute the full assessment and send you a bill (or refund)."


"You gave your own answer - the 80% is positions, not contracts. Most actors on the option market have no interest in the underlying asset. They want ""just"" exposure to its price movement. It makes more sense to close your position than to be handed over bushels of wheat or whatever."


"There are a few other items that you should be aware of when getting options: The strike price is usually determined by an independent valuation of the common shares (called a 409a valuation). This should give you a sense on what the options are worth. Obviously you are hoping that the value becomes many multiple of that. There are two kinds in the US: Non-quals (NQO) and Incentive Stock Options (ISOs).  The big difference is that when you exercise Non-quals, you have to pay the tax on the difference between the ""fair"" market value on the shares and what you paid for them (the strike price).  This is important because if the company is private, you likely can not sell any shares until it is public. With ISOs, you don't pay any tax (except AMT tax) on the gain until you actually sell the shares.  You should know what kind your getting. Some plans allow for early exercise, essentially allowing you to buy the shares early (and given back if you leave before they vest) which helps you establish capital gains treatment earlier as well as avoid AMT if you have ISOs. This is really complicated direction and you would want to talk to a tax professional.  And always a good idea to know how many total shares outstanding in the Company. Very few people ask this question but it is helpful for you to understand the overall value of the options."


Your capital gain is about $40K, which (assuming your total income is under $250K) is taxed at 15% long term capital gains rate. Additional depreciation recapture of approximately $5K is taxed at 25%. So this gives us rough estimate of $7250 tax. This is Federal tax, AZ rates are somewhere between 2% and 4%, so you'll be looking at some $1.6K additional tax to AZ. If you have accumulated rental losses or other expenses, it will lower the total amount of your gain (and, accordingly, the taxes). This is all very rough estimates, and you shouldn't rely on this but verify on your own or with a professional. I suggest using professional services because while being costly, they will probably save you more in taxes than you'll have to pay them because of the knowledge of what exactly of your expenses can be deducted and how to calculate the cost basis correctly. (edit from JoeT - the home exclusion requires occupancy for 2 of prior 5 years. For the OP, the prorated $125k exclusion 'might' cover the gain, it depends when the increase in value occurred, if the gain was during the time rented, it's taxable, I believe.)


Get answers from your equivalent of the IRS, or a local lawyer or accountant who specializes in taxes.  Any other answer you get here would be anectdotal at best.  Never good to rely on legal or medical advice from internet strangers.


I'm going to have to take you to task for this post. If someone is incapable of determining the implied current P/E in the IPO price then they should not be buying stocks. You cannot blame Wall Street for the greed and stupidity of the public.


I have been careful here to cover both shares in companies and in ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). Some information such as around corporate actions and AGMs is only applicable for company shares and not ETFs. The shares that you own are registered to you through the broker that you bought them via but are verified by independent fund administrators and brokerage reconciliation processes. This means that there is independent verification that the broker has those shares and that they are ring fenced as being yours. The important point in this is that the broker cannot sell them for their own profit or otherwise use them for their own benefit, such as for collateral against margin etc..  1) Since the broker is keeping the shares for you they are still acting as an intermediary. In order to prove that you own the shares and have the right to sell them you need to transfer the registration to another broker in order to sell them through that broker. This typically, but not always, involves some kind of fee and the broker that you transfer to will need to be able to hold and deal in those shares. Not all brokers have access to all markets. 2) You can sell your shares through a different broker to the one you bought them through but you will need to transfer your ownership to the other broker and that broker will need to have access to that market. 3) You will normally, depending on your broker, get an email or other message on settlement which can be around two days after your purchase. You should also be able to see them in your online account UI before settlement. You usually don't get any messages from the issuing entity for the instrument until AGM time when you may get invited to the AGM if you hold enough stock. All other corporate actions should be handled for you by your broker. It is rare that settlement does not go through on well regulated markets, such as European, Hong Kong, Japanese, and US markets but this is more common on other markets. In particular I have seen quite a lot of trades reversed on the Istanbul market (XIST) recently. That is not to say that XIST is unsafe its just that I happen to have seen a few trades reversed recently.


"There are several brokerages which have lower minimum deposits (often $500) and allow purchase of index ETFs. I won't name them to avoid advertising. The best way to find out is to go to your bank, and ask to see a financial advisor. Then explain your difficulty to the advisor (who should caution you about the issues with investing such a small amount) and ask for advice on where to find a suitable broker. Also, sometimes banks offer services where you can buy shares of a fund through your bank account. This is probably not ""as good"" as the brokerage (performance may be not as good, fees may come out higher), but especially for small amounts and for convenience, this may be easier. Again, you should inquire at your institution."


Would you borrow money at 3% just to leave it in a savings account?  That's effectively what you're doing by not paying of your student loans.  I would pay of all of the student loans, and consider putting a little toward the car loan.  If you do run into an emergency you still have your $2K/month to help build your savings back up.


Pay the 401(k) loan back as soon as possible.  To be clear, the money from your 401(k) loan is no longer invested and working for you. It doesn't make sense to pull money out of your 401(k) investments and then invest it in something else. If you want to invest for retirement, pay back the loan and invest that money inside your 401(k).  If you leave your job, the 401(k) loan needs to be paid back in full, or else taxes and penalties will apply. If you have put the funds in an IRA, they won't be available to you should you need to pay back the loan early.  Instead of making a monthly payment to the 401(k) loan, pay off the loan and then make a monthly investment to an IRA.


"I'm assuming the question is about how to compare two ETFs that track the same index. I'd look at (for ETFs -- ignoring index funds): So, for example you might compare SPY vs IVV: SPY has about 100x the volume. Sure, IVV has 2M shares trading, so it is liquid ""enough"". But the bigger volume on SPY might matter to you if you use options: open interest is as much as 1000x more on SPY. Even if you have no interest in options, the spreads on SPY are probably going to be slightly smaller. They both have 0.09% expense ratios. When I looked on 2010-9-6, SPY was trading at a slight discount, IVV was at a slight premium. Looking for any sort of trend is left as an exercise to the reader... Grab the prospectus for each to examine the rules they set for fund makeup. Both come from well-known issuers and have a decent history. (Rather than crazy Uncle Ed's pawn shop, or the Central Bank of Stilumunistan.) So unless you find something in the SPY prospectus that makes you queasy, the higher volume and equal expense ratios would seem to suggest it over IVV. The fact that it is at a (tiny) discount right now is a (tiny) bonus."


This question is indeed rather complicated. Let's simplify it a little bit. Paying down your mortgage makes sense if your expected return in the rest of your portfolio is less than the cost of the mortgage. In many cases, people may also decide to pay down their mortgage because they are risk-averse and do not like carrying debt. There's no tax benefit to doing so, though; Canada doesn't generally allow you to write off mortgage interest, unlike the U.S. As to keeping money in the corporation or not, I'm not going to address that. I don't have a firm enough understanding of corporate taxation. Canadian Couch Potato advises treating all of your investment assets as one large portfolio. That is what you are trying to do here. However, let's consider a different approach. If you do not have enough money to max out your RRSP or TFSA, you may choose to keep your TFSA for an emergency fund, where the money is kept highly liquid. Keep your cash in an interest-bearing TFSA, or perhaps invest it in the money market, inside your TFSA. Then, use your RRSP for the rest of your investment money, split according to your investment goals. This is not the most tax-efficient approach, but it is nice and simple. But you are looking for the most tax-efficient approach. So, let's assume you have enough to more than max out your TFSA and RRSP contributions, and all of your investments are going toward your retirement, which is at least a decade away. Because you are not taxed on your investment income from RRSPs (until you withdraw the money) or TFSA, it makes sense to hold the least tax-efficient investments there. Tax-advantaged investments such as Canadian equities should be held in your investment accounts outside of TFSA and RRSPs. Again, the Canadian Couch Potato has a great article on where to put your investment assets. That article covers interest, dividends, foreign dividends, and capital gains, as well as RRSPs, RESPs, and TFSAs. That article recommends holding Canadian equities in a taxable account, REITs in a tax-sheltered account (TFSA or RRSP), bonds, GICs, and money-market funds in a tax-sheltered account (as these count as interest). The article goes into rather more detail than this, and is worth checking out. It mentions the 15% withholding tax on US-listed ETFs, for example. In addition to that website, I recommend the following three books: The above three resources strongly advocate passive indexed investments, which I like but not everyone agrees with. All three specifically discuss tax implications, which is why I include them here.


You're creating more liabilities for yourself in the future, although yes this could definitely be a profitable move for you. However, some small mistakes you made, from what I can see using the tools at Hargreaves Lansdown. The first, is that the government relief would only be 20%, not 60%. The second is that the tax relief goes directly into the SIPP, it's not something you get given back to you in cash. In order for this to be worthwhile, you need to be sure that you can make a post-tax gain of more than 3.4% on this money per year - which should be very feasible. It sounds like you have enough security that you could afford to take this risk.


If you have been putting savings away for the longer term and have some extra funds which you would like to take some extra risk on - then I say work yourself out a strategy/plan, get yourself educated and go for it. If it is individual shares you are interested then work out if you prefer to use fundamental analysis, technical analysis or some of both. You can use fundamental analysis to help determine which shares to buy, and then use technical analysis to help determine when to get into and out of a position. You say you are prepared to lose $10,000 in order to try to get higher returns. I don't know what percentage this $10,000 is of the capital you intend to use in this kind of investments/trading, but lets assume it is 10% - so your total starting capital would be $100,000. The idea now would be to learn about money management, position sizing and risk management. There are plenty of good books on these subjects. If you set a maximum loss for each position you open of 1% of your capital - i.e $1,000, then you would have to get 10 straight losses in a row to get to your 10% total loss. You do this by setting stop losses on your positions. I'll use an example to explain: Say you are looking at a stock priced at $20 and you get a signal to buy it at that price. You now need to determine a stop price which if the stock goes down to, you can say well I may have been wrong on this occasion, the stock price has gone against me so I need to get out now (I put automatic stop loss conditional orders with my broker). You may determine the stop price based on previous support levels, using a percentage of your buy price or another indicator or method. I tend to use the percentage of buy price - lets say you use 10% - so your stop price would be at $18 (10% below your buy price of $20). So now you can work out your position size (the number of shares to buy). Your maximum loss on the position is $2 per share or 10% of your position in this stock, but it should also be only 1% of your total capital - being 1% of $100,000 = $1,000. You simply divide $1,000 by $2 to get 500 shares to buy.  You then do this with the rest of your positions - with a $100,000 starting capital using a 1% maximum loss per position and a stop loss of 10% you will end up with a maximum of 10 positions. If you use a larger maximum loss per position your position sizes would increase and you would have less positions to open (I would not go higher than 2% maximum loss per position). If you use a larger stop loss percentage then your position sizes would decrease and you would have more positions to open. The larger the stop loss the longer you will potentially be in a position and the smaller the stop loss generally the less time you will be in a position. Also as your total capital increases so will your 1% of total capital, just as it would decrease if your total capital decreases. Using this method you can aim for higher risk/ higher return investments and reduce and manage your risk to a desired level. One other thing to consider, don't let tax determine when you sell an investment. If you are keeping a stock just so you will pay less tax if kept for over 12 months - then you are in real danger of increasing your risk considerably. I would rather pay 50% tax on a 30% return than 25% tax on a 15% return.


didn't pay the extra underpayment penalty on the grounds that it was   an honest mistake. You seem to think a penalty applies only when the IRS thinks you were trying to cheat the system.  That's not the case. A mistake (honest or otherwise) still can imply a penalty. While you can appeal just about anything, on any grounds you like, it's unlikely you will prevail.


Do you know how SoFi's business model works? They're usually pretty conservative with their loans and refinancing. But I guess if they were looking to expand into riskier loans then it sounds like they've got some red tape that'd hold them back. Thank you for the explanation, much appreciated.


"You should absolutely have a contract between you and your client stipulating the quid-pro-quos of the arrangement. They get the product, you get the money. First off, this contract should specify what you must do, and what they must do, for the contract to be ""satisfied"". This isn't necessarily just product for money; your client may be under deadlines to approve the product in various stages of work in process. Depending on the product, the client may be required to provide starting materials (like existing logos/slogans for advertising/marketing graphics), information on or access to computer systems (for software or infrastructure consulting, or accounting auditing), etc. Second, if you provide a tangible product like graphics or software, the contract should clearly state that ""intellectual property transfers on satisfaction of contract""; they don't own what you have made until they have accepted it and paid you accordingly. If they try to stiff you by taking what you made them and using it before you've been paid, you can take them to the cleaner's for copyright violations. Third, you should structure a payment schedule; don't do too much for free. You can get the money in thirds, for instance; a third up front, a third at some defined halfway point and a third on final delivery and acceptance. Lastly, you should stipulate that the client is responsible for all expenses incurred by you as a result of their failure to pay as stipulated, up to and including attorney's fees. Definitely have a lawyer draft these agreements; contract law is a many-layered area of law with hundreds of years of case law and slightly different nuances in every state. A competent lawyer will know things that can and can't be stipulated in a contract, and if you try to do it alone you'll wish you hadn't when the contract's tossed out by a judge because of some technicality. If they refuse to pay, get the lawyer on the phone and file suit. A well-written contract drafted by a competent lawyer, which you have lived up to on your end, will give your client no loopholes to slip through. As far as recovering damages, it shouldn't matter whether he's in the U.S. or not; if he does business in the U.S. then he very probably has money in banks that have to listen to U.S. courts (or at least court orders)."


He didn't lock in a growth rate of 4%. He locked in a yield of 4%. That's the amount the bond pays in interest on his original investment each year. If he just spends that money the bond will continue to pay 4% each year, but there's no growth. In order to get growth he has to reinvest the interest as it comes in; if he puts it into bonds, the return on that new money, and hence the growth, depends on the prevailing interest rate at the time that the interest is paid. That interest rate can be higher or lower than the original 4%; there's no connection between the two.


Here's my view, as a 38yr old NZer who grew up in Auckland: When you purchase a residential property, whether or not you intend to live in it, you're essentially counting on the possibility that one of the following will occur: This report by the NZ Royal Society (going by memory from a presentation I attended) predicts ongoing population growth in NZ, mainly driven by immigration, and mostly in Auckland. Building of new housing isn't keeping up with population growth, so my bet would be that the property values, especially in Auckland, are going to continue to climb.  Other factors that might influence your decision are things only you can know, such as where you might be likely to settle down, how much risk you're willing to take, how much capability you have to look after a rental property, and how much knowledge you have about the property market. Bear in mind that government schemes and world events may change the outlook for number of houses being built and immigration levels, both of which heavily affect property values. My personal view is that the government isn't doing nearly enough to provide affordable housing for our young adults in NZ. Not only that; the govt is essentially responsible for the problem in the first place, as zoning rules for local authorities artificially inflate land prices which prevent the building of affordable houses. Furthermore, foreign investment in rental properties is unregulated and unmeasured. Both these problems could be resolved with appropriate legislation, though central city prices are unlikely to be relieved as much as other areas simply because prices are also inflated due to the desirability to live centrally. The problem is a severe one, and high housing prices for even the smallest dwellings are going to make inequality, and the social problems that go with it, far worse. I'd like to see new cities or towns being planned and built from scratch, such as Pegasus and Canberra.


It depends on the bank - In some cases(mine included :) ) the bank allowed for this but Emma had to sign on a document waiving the rights for the house in case the bank needs to liquidate assets in to recover their mortgage in case of delays or non-payment of dues in time. This had to be signed after taking independent legal advice from a legal adviser.


Is the business an S-Corp, LLC or Sole Prop? I am going to guess based on the question that it is an LLC that you never closed with the state and you live in a state (NY) that charges a fee for having an LLC in the state in which case you owe those fees to the state. I am not aware of any taxes on the mere existence of a business by the IRS. I think you are going to find out that the are no taxes owed to the IRS for this nonexistent activity.


"Depends on your account. If you have a margin account, then you can ""withdraw"" the margin, and it will get paid off/settled on T+3. However if it's a cash account then you will most likely need to wait. Call your broker and ask, each broker has different rules."


"You're supposed to be filling form 433-A. Vehicles are on line 18. You will fill there the current fair value of the car and the current balance on the loans. The last column is ""equity"", which in your case will indeed be a negative number. The ""value"" is what the car is worth. The ""equity"" is what the car is worth to you. IRS uses the ""equity"" value to calculate your solvency. Any time you fill a form to the IRS - read the instructions carefully, for each line and line. If in doubt - talk to a professional licensed in your state. I'm not a professional, and this is not a tax advice."


The price of a share of a mutual fund is its Net Asset Value (nav). Before the payout of dividends and capital gain distribution, the fund was holding both stock shares and cash that resulted from dividends and capital gains. After the payout, a share only holds the stock. Therefore once the cash is paid out the NAV must drop by the same amount as was paid out per share. Thus of course assumes no other activity or valuation changes of the underlying assets. Regular market activity will obscure what the payout does to the NAV.


Sounds you need to read up on S corp structures. I think this would benefit you if you generate income even after you physically stopped working which is incomes from membership fees, royalties % of customer revenue, middle man etc...  Under the Scorp, you as the sole member must earn a wage that fair and at current market value. You pay social security and Medicare on this wage. The interesting thing here is that an Scorp can pay out earning dividends  without having to pay payroll taxes but the catch is that you, as the sole employee must earn a fair wage.   As for paying the other member you may want to look into 1099 contract work plus a finders fee. The 1099 hourly wage does not require you to pay Medicare and SS.   The common fee I'm used to is 5% of gross invoice. Then you would pay her an hourly wage. The company then bills these hours multiplied by 2 or 3 (or whatever you think is fair) to the client. Deduct expenses from this and that's your profit.   Example. Contractor brings Client A which is estimated as a  100 hour project with $100 cost in supplies and requires 2 hours of your time @ $40/hr.   You quote 100 hours @ $50 to client, client agrees and gives you down payment.   You then present the contract work to your contractor, they complete the work in 100 hours and bill you at $25.   You pay your contractor 2500 plus the 5% ($250)  and your company earns $2070 (5000 - 2500 - 100-80)  And you'll earn $80 minus the payroll tax.   Then at the end of the quarter or year or however you want to do earning payouts your LLC- Scorp will write you a check for $2070 or whatever earning % you want to take. This is then taxed at your income tax bracket.   One thing to keep in mind is what is preventing this other person from becoming your competition? A partnership would be great motivation to try and bring in as much work under the LLC. But if you start shafting people then they'll just keep the work and cut you out.


A cautionary tale:  About 25 years ago I decided that I should try my hand at investing in some technology companies.   I was in the computer biz but decided that I might suffer from myopia there, so I researched some medical startups.  And I did some reasonably good research, given the available resources (the Internet was quite primitive).  I narrowed things down to 4-5 companies, studying their technology plans, then researched their business plans and their personnel. In the end I picked a drug company.  Not only did it have a promising business plan, but it had as it's CEO a hotshot from some other company, and the BOD was populated buy big names from tech companies and the like.  AND the company had like $2 of cash for every $1 of outstanding share value, following their recent IPO. So I sold a bit of stock I had in my employer and bought like $3000 worth of this company. Then, taking the advice I'd seen several places, I forgot about it for about 6 months. When I went back to look their stock value had dropped a little, and the cash reserves were down about 20%.  I wasn't too worried.  6 months later the cash was down 50%.  Worrying a little.  After I'd had the stock for about 2 years the stock price was about 10% of what I'd paid.  Hardly worth selling, so I hung on for awhile longer. The company was eventually sold to some other company and I got maybe $50 in stock in the new company.


First I'd like to echo msemack's answer. Start by maxing out your 401K and IRA contributions. Not a lot of people just starting their career have the luxury of doing much more outside of that. Here are some additional tips that I learned when I was just getting started:


Here's some advice: Never go into business with a friend. Thats a rule that's as old as time. It already seems to me that you're encountering some disparity issues financially. This is a bad idea, man. Stop now, while you still can!


"That works for something like consulting where you are advising the client on specific things but for accounting jobs like Tax and Audit work which have been very commoditized  it's expected to only bill the client for ""productive hours"" because the project only has a set budget and we need to get the work done. My work hours is seen as a cost to my team because my project needs to make money which the partner/manager/senior are all responsible for keeping man hours down. (Again that's hours chargeable to the client wasted hours in the day don't count).  And then on top of that we need to hit a certain number of chargeable client hours per week.    It's an annoying balance"


Yes, provided you're not over the IRA deductibility limit as well. –  JoeTaxpayer♦ Aug 4 at 18:02 Note that if you get refunded for excess contributions, it usually happens in the following year, in which case it doesn't affect the year where these contributions occured -- rather, the refund counts as taxable income in the year you received the refund. –  user102008 Aug 11 at 8:11


In my experience, you don't need to endorse a check with a signature to deposit it into your account.  You do if you are exchanging the check for cash.  Businesses usually have a stamp with their account number on them.  Once stamped, those checks are only able to be deposited into that account.  Individuals can do the same.   I have had issues depositing insurance and government checks in the past that had both my and my wife's name on them.  Both of us had to endorse the check to be able to deposit them.  I think this was some kind of fraud prevention scheme, so that later one of us couldn't claim they didn't know anything about the check.


NO Even worse, most BTL(buy to let) lenders will not lend if you are going to be living in the property.    There are very few lenders that will touch something like this.    It is likely you will also need to use bridging for the time the building work takes at something like 1.5% per month! Try posting the question to http://www.propertytribes.com/ as there are a few UK mortgage experts on that site.


"Say we are in 'normal times.' Passbook rates are 5% or so. Longer rates, 6-7%. I offer you a product with these terms, for $10,000 I will return a ""Guaranteed"" $10,000 in 6 years and based on the stock market, 1% for every 2% the S&P is up beyond 10% at maturity. As the seller of this product, I take $6666, and buy a fixed investment, 6 years at 7% in treasuries will return the $10000. Really. I then take the $3334 and buy out of the money calls on the S&P each year to capture the gains, if any, and to deliver on my promise.  This is one example of a structured deposit offering. They can have nearly any terms one can imagine. Tied to any product. S&P, Crude Oil, Gold. Whatever."


These are plans similar to 401k plans. 457(b) plans available for certain government and non-profit organizations, 403(b) available for certain educational, hospital, religious and non-profit organizations. Your school apparently fits into both classes, so it has both. These plans don't have to allow ROTH contributions, but they may, so you have to check if there's an option. The main (but not only) difference from IRA is the limit: for 401(k), 403(b) and 457(b) plans the contribution limit is $17500, while for IRA its $5500 (for 2013). Additional benefit of 457(b) plan is that there's no 10% penalty on early withdrawal, just taxes (at ordinal rates).


"The answer posted by Kirill Fuchs is incorrect according to my series 65 text book and practice question answers. The everyday investor buys at the ask and sells at the bid but the market maker does the opposite. THE MARKET MAKER ""BUYS AT THE BID AND SELLS AT THE ASK"", he makes a profit form the spread. I have posted a quiz question and the answer created by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). To fill a customer buy order for 800 WXYZ shares, your firm requests a quote from a market maker. The response is ""bid 15, ask 15.25."" If the order is placed, the market maker must sell: A)   800 shares at $15.25 per share. B)   800 shares at $15 per share. C)   100 shares at $15.25 per share. D)   800 shares at no more than $15 per share. Your answer, sell 800 shares at $15.25 per share., was correct!. A market maker is responsible for honoring a firm quote. If no size is requested by the inquiring trader, a quote is firm for 100 shares. In this example, the trader requested an 800-share quote, so the market maker is responsible for selling 8 round lots of 100 shares at the ask price of $15.25 per share."


HMRC may or may not find out about it; the risks and penalties involved if they do find out make it unwise not to just declare it and pay the tax on it. Based on the fact you asked the question, I am assuming that you currently pay all your tax through PAYE and don't do a tax return. You would need to register for Self Assessment and complete a return; this is not at all difficult if your tax situation is straightforward, which it sounds like yours is. Then you would owe the tax on the additional money, at whatever applicable rate (which depends on how much you earn in your main job, the rate tables are here: https://www.gov.uk/income-tax-rates/current-rates-and-allowances ). If it truly is a one off you could simply declare it on your return as other income, but if it is more than that then you would need to look at setting up as Self Employed - there is some good advice on the differences here: http://www.brighton-accountants.com/blog/tax-self-employment-still-employed/ :  Broadly, you are likely to be running a business if you have a regular, organised activity with a profit motive, which continues for at least a few months. If the work is one-off, or very occasional (say, a few times per year), or not very organised, or of very low value (say, under £2,000 per year), then it might qualify as casual income. If you think it is beyond the definition of casual income then you would also need to pay National Insurance, as described in the previous link, but otherwise the tax treatment would be the same.


I would use student loans and avoid credit card debt if debt is your only option.   Here are the advantages I see:   Disadvantages:


"The answer is simple -- your new job pays more than your old one.  As such, you're in a higher tax withholding bracket, even with the same number of deductions as before. Your withholding is computed based on how much you make each pay period, and the number of pay periods in the year.  So, if you were being paid weekly before then it was based on the assumption you made the same amount for every pay period in the calendar year.  This is why tax varies from week to week for hourly employees and people being paid overtime.  In your new job, you're being paid ""semi-monthly"", which makes for 24 pay periods rather than the 52 pay periods when you were paid weekly, so the amount of withholding (in dollar terms) is going to be much greater than when you were being paid weekly.  Add in the fact you're making $2,000 more (a month, I presume?), so that's $24,000 a year more.  It's definitely going to bump you into a different earning bracket for taxes, so even with the same number of deductions, you're going to pay more now. This isn't to say you won't be able to recoup some of that at the end of the year when you file your taxes, since your current withholding rate may have you over-paying.  As such, you'll see a nice refund. One final note -- You always have the option of changing your withholding if you like.  Many people will do that, claiming minimal deductions for the first few months of the year to let the maximum withholding take place, then they'll adjust their withholding deductions in the second half of the year to capture more in each paycheck.  If done right, it makes no difference in the total amount withheld, but it does allow the checks at the latter part of the year to be bigger than if withholding deductions were kept the same throughout."


tl;dr: The CNN Money and Yahoo Finance charts are wildly inaccurate. The TD Ameritrade chart appears to be accurate and shows returns with reinvested dividends. Ignoring buggy data, CNN most likely shows reinvested dividends for quoted securities but not for the S&P 500 index. Yahoo most likely shows all returns without reinvested dividends. Thanks to a tip from Grade Eh Bacon, I was able to determine that TD Ameritrade reports returns with reinvested dividends (as it claims to do). Eyeballing the chart, it appears that S&P 500 grew by ~90% over the five year period the chart covers. Meanwhile, according to this S&P 500 return estimator, the five year return of S&P 500, with reinvested dividends, was 97.1% between July 2012 to July 2017 (vs. 78.4% raw returns). I have no idea what numbers CNN Money is working from, because it claims S&P 500 only grew about 35% over the last five years, which is less than half of the raw return. Ditto for Yahoo, which claims 45% growth. Even stranger still, the CNN chart for VFINX (an S&P 500 index fund) clearly shows the correct market growth (without reinvesting dividends from the S&P 500 index), so whatever problem exists is inconsistent:  Yahoo also agrees with itself for VFINX, but comes in a bit low even if your assume no reinvestment of dividends (68% vs. 78% expected); I'm not sure if it's ever right.  By way of comparison, TD's chart for VFINX seems to be consistent with its ABALX chart and with reality:  As a final sanity check, I pulled historical ^GSPC prices from Yahoo Finance. It closed at $1406.58 on 27 Aug 2012 and $2477.55 on 28 Aug 2017, or 76.1% growth overall. That agrees with TD and the return calculator above, and disagrees with CNN Money (on ABALX). Worse, Yahoo's own charts (both ABALX and VFINX) disagree with Yahoo's own historical data.


Sure thing -  Treasuries Bonds/Bills are what the US Gov uses to borrow. However it's slightly different than taking out a loan. It's basically an agreement to give (repay) a set sum of money at a certain time in the future in exchange for a sum of funding that's determined by market forces (supply & demand). The difference between today's price and the payment in the future is the interest.   For example (completely made up numbers):  - Today is 08/05/2017 - The government issues a bond that say it will pay who ever owns this bond $105 on 08/05/**2018** - The market decides that $105 from the US government paid a year from now is worth $100 today.   In other words the US Government is borrowing for one year at a rate of 5%       (105 - 100) / 100 = .05 = 5%  Now consider Saudi Arabia's petroleum company, Aramco.  Because petroleum is traded in dollars, when Aramco makes a sale, its paid in USD. Some of that is going to be reinvested into the company, some paid out in dividends to share holders but inevitably some of that will be saved someplace where it can make interest. Because treasuries are traded/issued in dollars and because Aramco's businesses deals primarily in dollars, treasuries are the natural place to store that savings, especially because the market considers them extremely safe.   If they exchange the USD into the Saudi currency to store the money in Saudi assets, Aramco is subject to  *exchange rate risk*. If the riyal depreciates relative to the dollar, Aramco will lose wealth on the exchange back to dollars when they go to move those funds back into their business. It's in their interest to deal with assets denominated in USD (i.e. T-Bonds) in order to avoid this.  So now because the Saudis want T-Bonds as well, the additional demand pushes the market price of our bond from $100 to $102. And the effective one year borrowing rate for the Government goes from 5% to 2.9%.      (105 - 102)/102 = .029411 = 2.9%  And there you have it, cheaper borrowing. It's also worth noting how this encourages business around the world to deal in dollars which are directly controlled by the federal reserve. This makes the US's position extremely powerful.


Yes you are right. The cannibalisation comment was for opening up every pricing point.  The article is quite specific to app pricing published by an individual. It doesn't apply to say a food product or a durable being brought to the market.  A thing on the last comment. Wondows may sell three versions but the distinction is there and clear. A light version, a regular version and an enterprise version. They are labelled pretty much the same as Home, Professional and Enterprise. Good marketing or names to distinguish between the products. Different needs for different products. An app is priced much less and uses can be trivial (yet invovled).


none of which give a good return if the underlying economy is shit. the underlying economy will be shit if there hasn't been sufficient investment in more productive endeavors. if the underlying economy hasn't been sufficiently capitalized, that will present juicy returns to investors.   it's a complete substance-less threat that if we fail to continue to coddle the rentiers, the economy will collapse because they'll do X with their money (X being something other than maximizing return)


Ok well in that case here are my thoughts.  Its been a while since I've done this type of school work so hope it's right/helpful.  AR Oustanding = Avg AR / (credit sales/Operating Cycle*) = 35   *I'm guessing they didn't give you sales for the year or else I would divide by 365 but since you mentioned operating cycle I'm assuming thats the sales number you were given.  So you want to divide the sales by 50 and then times it by the 35.  Should give you the average AR.  Inventory - I really don't remember having to calculate this so I'm just thinking logically here.  You should be able to take COGS divide by the days in the period then times it by In Invetory.  So = (COGS/Operating Cycle)* In Inventory = (COGS/50)*15  Accounts Payable....man, I'm afraid to drive you in the wrong direction on this one.  Avg Accounts Payable/(COGS/Operating Cycle) = 40  Plug in COGS, divide by the operating cycle, 50 then times by 40, the days vendor credit.


Marketing strategy by far was and continues to be the biggest problem.  Choosing and setting up things like corporate entity, billing, data backup, calendars were a distant second problem.  Labor law is too confusing for me to hire anyone but independent contractors.


"You may be thinking about this the wrong way. The yield (Return) on your investment is effectively the market price paid to the investor for the amount of risk assumed for participating. Looking at the last few years, many including myself would have given their left arm for a so-called ""meager return"" instead of the devastation visited on our portfolios.  In essence, higher return almost always (arguably always) comes at the cost of increased risk.  You just have to decide your risk profile and investment goals.  For example, which of the following scenarios would you prefer? Investment Option A  Treasuries, CD's Worst Case: 1% gain Best Case 5% gain   Investment option B  Equities/Commodities Worst Case: 25% loss Best Case: 40% gain"


"An Xbox currently sells for $200 but you don't have the money right now to buy it.  You think the price of the xbox is going up to $250 next month. Your friend works at BestBuy and says he has a ""raincheck"" that allows you to buy the Xbox for $200 but the raincheck expires next month.  He offers to sell you the ""raincheck"" for $5. When you buy his raincheck for $5 you are locking in the right to buy the Xbox for $200. It is like an option because it locks in the purchase price, it has an expiration date, it locks in a purchase price, and it is not mandatory that you redeem it. That's an explanation for a call option in kids terms.  For more easy answers to the question what is a call option click now.  A put can be answered in a similar way.  Suppose you bought the Xbox for $250 and then the price drops back to $200.  If you keep your receipt, you have the right to return (sell the Xbox back) for $250 even though the current price is only $200.  Bestbuy has a 30 day return policy so your receipt is like a put option in that you can sell the Xbox back for a price higher than the current market price.   That's a simple example of a put option in kids terms.  For more easy answers to the question what is a put click now."


One of the things I would suggest looking into is peer-to-peer lending.  I do lendingclub.com, but with a lot less money, and have only done it a short period of time.  Still my return is about 13%. In your case you would probably have to commit to about 3.5 years to invest your money.  Buy 3 year notes, and as they are paid off pull the money out and put into a CD or money market..     They sell notes that are 3 or 5 year and you may not want to tie your money up that long.


Sales are useless. Profit determines value.  Others made good suggestions, but make sure you don't personally guarantee anthing.  Understand your requirements to continue having the investor involved. Understand who has approval authority and decision making authority, ie are you a hired gun or the managing owner?  Finally, probability of success is low, so do your homework, bust your ass, and understand when you will wall away (ie if you aren't profitable in 3 years, or below $500k in rev, etc)


One reason why some merchants in the US don't accept Discover is that the fee the store is charged is higher than the average. Generally a portion of transaction fee for the network and the issuing bank goes to the rewards program. In some cases a portion of the interest can also be used to fund these programs. Some cards will give you more points when you carry a balance from one month to the next. Therefore encouraging consumers to have interest charges. This portion of the program will be funded from the interest charges. Profits: Rewards: Some rewards are almost always redeemed: cash once the amount of charges gets above a minimum threshold. Some are almost never redeemed: miles with high requirements and tough blackout periods.  Credit cards that don't understand how their customers will use their cards can run into problems. If they offer a great rewards program that encourages use, but pays too high a percentage of points earned can lead to problems. This is especially true when a great percentage of users pay in full each month. This hurt Citibank in the 1990's. They had a card with no annual fee forever, and a very high percentage never had to pay interest. People flocked to the card, and kept it as an emergency card, because they knew it would never have a annual fee.


Ultimately the bank will have first call on the house and you will be the only one on the hook directly to the bank if you don't make the mortgage payments. There's nothing you can do to avoid that if you can't get a joint mortgage. What you could do is make a side agreement that your girlfriend would be entitled to half the equity in the house, and would be required to make half the payments (via you). You could perhaps also add that she would be part responsible for helping you clear any arrears. But in the end it'd just be a deal between you and her. She wouldn't have any direct rights over the house and she wouldn't be at risk of the bank pursuing her if you don't pay the mortgage. You'd probably also need legal advice to make it watertight, but you could also not worry about that too much and just write it all down as formally as possible. It really depends if you're just trying to improve your feelings about the process or whether you really want something that you could both rely on in the event of a later split. I don't think getting married would make any make any real difference day-to-day. In law, with rare exceptions, the finances of spouses are independent from each other. However in the longer term, being married would mean your now-wife would have a stronger legal claim on half the equity in the house in the event of you splitting up.


TL;DR: The difference is $230. Just for fun, and to illustrate how brackets work, let's look at the differences you could see from changing when you're paid based on the tax bracket information that Ben Miller provided. If you're paid $87,780 each year, then each year you'll pay $17,716 for a total of $35,432: $5,183 + $12,532 (25% of $50,130 (the amount over $37,650)) If you were paid nothing one year and then double salary ($175,560) the next, you'd pay $0 the first year and $42,193 the next: $18,558 + $23,634 (28% of $84,410 (the amount over $91,150)) So the maximum difference you'd see from shifting when you're paid is $6,761 total, $3,380 per year, or about 4% of your average annual salary. In your particular case, you'd either be paying $35,432 total, or $14,948 followed by $20,714 for $35,662 total, a difference of $230 total, $115 per year, less than 1% of average annual salary: $5,183 + $9,765 (25% of $39,060 (the amount $87,780 - $11,070  is over $37,650)) $18,558 + $2,156 (28% of $7,700 (the amount $87,780 + $11,070 is over $91,150))


Your logic is not wrong.  But the risk is more significant than you seem to assume.  Essentially you are proposing taking a 2.6% loan to buy stocks. Is that a good strategy?  On average, probably.  But if your stocks crash you might have significant liabilities. In 1929, the Dow Jones dropped 89%.  In 1989, >30%.  In 2008-9, 54%.  This is a huge risk if this is money that you owe in taxes.  If you operate the same system year after year the chance of it going horribly wrong increases.


I've found you can give the money to charity.  If you text REDCROSS to 90999 for example you can give $10 to the redcross


I think the definition of overcollateralization on investopedia will answer this question for you.  Namely this part: For example, in the case of a mortgage backed security, the principal amount of an issue may be $100 million while the principal value of the mortgages underlying the issue may be equal to $120 million. The bond is packed with more mortgages than the face value indicates.  It's effectively sold at a discount to underlying value.


Option A - you sell the house and then use the money to pay off a portion of your second mortgage. The return on that investment is 5.5% a year, or $1925 net. Option B - you rent it out, that will bring  you $5220 (435 x 12), more than 2.5 times option A. That's not counting any money going towards the principal of the loan. Given that you'll be using a property management company, you can be fairly certain that there won't be any unexpected expenses (credit check, security deposit should take care of that) Option C - you invest the money somewhere else. You'll have to get 15% return in order to beat option B. I don't think that's sustainable.  You should talk to a CPA about the tax implications, but I'm fairly certain that you'll do better tax wise to rent it out, since you can use depreciation to lower your tax bill.  Finally, where do you think real estate prices will be in 4 years? If you think they'll increase that's another reason to hold onto the property and rent it.  Finally finally, if you plan to rent it out long term (over 4 years), it will be a good idea to refinance and lock the current interest rate.


What is the average daily volume traded? It looks like this stock may have a liquidity problem. If that is the case I would not buy this stock at all as you may have the same problem when you try to sell it. Generally try to stay away from illiquid stocks, if your order size is more than 10% of the average daily volume traded, then don't buy it.  I usually stay away from stocks with an average daily volume of less than 100,000.


I believe the answer is that to protect yourself it is good to get credit protection so you will be notified when new credit is taken in your name.   Also, you can use http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ to look at your credit report. HINT:  While you do that, and while you are in the TransUnion report, you will have the option to DISPUTE adverse items.   I always suggest that people dispute everything adverse.  That puts the onus on the other parties to produce evidence to TransUnion within 30 days attesting to the validity of the adverse item.   You would be surprised how many will simply drop off your report after doing that.  Everybody should do this Here is a direct address for TransUnion: https://dispute.transunion.com/dp/dispute/landingPage.jsp ==>  Once the disputes are finalized, the results get communicated to the other two bureaus. It is amazing how well it works.  It can raise your credit score significantly. It really helps to watch your credit report yourself, and also to get whatever protection is offered that may help protect you against others opening new accounts in your name.


"I think you may have a significant misunderstanding here.  You have been renting your property out for two years, now.  There is no special ""roommate"" clause in the tax code; roommates are renters, and the rent they pay is rental income.  (If they were roommates in a property you both rented from a third party, that would be different.) See publication 527, chapter 4 for more details on the subject (search on ""Renting Part of Property"").  You should be: You may also consider ""Not renting for profit"" section, which may be closer to what you're actually thinking - of changing from ""Renting not for profit"" to ""Renting for profit"".  Not rented for profit means you can report on your 1040 as opposed to filing Schedule E, but it does mean you have to actually not make a profit (and remember, some of the money that goes to paying the mortgage is not deductible on this side of things since it's your property and you'll get that money back, presumably, when you sell it). If that is what you're asking about, it sounds like it's just a matter of money.  Are you going to start making money?  Or, are you going to start making enough significant upgrades/etc. to justify the tax deduction?  You should consider the actual, specific numbers carefully, probably with the help of a CPA who is familiar with this sort of situation, and then make the decision that gives you the best outcome (keeping in mind that there may be long-term impacts of switching from not-for-profit to for-profit rental treatment)."


You should never take advice from someone else in relation to a question like this. Who would you blame if things go wrong and you lose money or make less than your savings account. For this reason I will give you the same answer I gave to one of your previous similar questions: If you want higher returns you may have to take on more risk. From lowest returns (and usually lower risk) to higher returns (and usually higher risk), Bank savings accounts, term deposits, on-line savings accounts, offset accounts (if you have a mortgage), fixed interest eg. Bonds, property and stock markets.  If you want potentially higher returns then you can go for derivatives like options or CFDs, FX or Futures. These usually have higher risks again but as with any investments some risks can be partly managed. What ever you decide to do, get yourself educated first. Don't put any money down unless you know what your potential risks are and have a risk management strategy in place, especially if it is from advice provided by someone else. The first rule before starting any new investment is to understand what your potential risks are and have a plane to manage and reduce those risks.


Frederic Mishkin wrote a few text books on financial concepts that are widely used in colleges.  If you're not looking for a textbook - I'd really recommend Khan Academy on YouTube.  He's got some great videos on supply and demand - bonds, exchange rates - monetary policy by the federal reserve. All academically sound. They're very easy to digest and watch over again for reference.


Strange that they're holding you personally legally liable rather than the company. That's normally a big part of the corporate veil. You need a lawyer, not a stackexchange.


It depends on your situation. For families with small amounts over the FDIC limit, there's account structures that let you get multiple coverages. Things like holding 100k in an account in joint with your wife, each of you holding 100k in individual accounts etc. For larger sums and institutions, there's CDARS. This system spreads your money out to multiple institutions with an eye to FDIC insurance limits. Some people feel this system is abusing FDIC, so I suppose it's possible it gets outlawed / shut down some day. Alternatively, you can just invest it yourself. Treasury Direct allows small buyers to buy US govt bonds at finished auction rates, or submit a qualified bid at auction. You won't get great rates, but Treasuries are about as good as dollars.


A Breakdown of Stock Buy Backs has this bottom line on it: Are share buybacks good or bad? As is so often the case in finance, the question may not have a definitive answer. If a stock is undervalued and a buyback truly represents the best possible investment for a company, the buyback - and its effects - can be viewed as a positive sign for shareholders. Watch out, however, if a company is merely using buybacks to prop up ratios, provide short-term relief to an ailing stock price or to get out from under excessive dilution. Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/02/041702.asp#ixzz3ZHdOf2dJ What is the reason that a company like AAPL is buying back its own   shares?  Offsetting dilution would be my main thought here as many employees may exercise options putting more stock out there that the company buys back stock to balance things. Does it have too much cash and it doesn't know what to do with it?  No as it could do dividends if it wanted to give it back to investors. So it is returning the cash back to investors? Not quite. While some investors may get cash from Apple, I'd suspect most shareholders aren't likely to see cash unless they are selling their shares so I wouldn't say yes to this without qualification. At the same time, the treasury shares Apple has can be used to give options to employees or be used in acquisitions for a couple of other purposes.


No.  Mark-to-market valuation relies on using a competitive market of public traders to determine the share price --- from free-market trading among independent traders who are not also insiders.   Any professional valuation would see through the promotional nature of the share offer. It is pretty obvious that the purchaser of a share could not turn around and sell their share for $10, unless the 'free hosting' that is worth most of the $10 follows it... and that's more of hybrid of stock and bond than pure stock.  It is also pretty obvious that selling a few shares for $10 does not mean one could sell 10,000,000 shares for $10, because of the well known decreasing marginal value effect from economics. While this question seems hypothetical, as a practical matter offering to sell share of unregistered securities in a startup for $10 to the general public,  is likely to run afoul of state or federal securities laws -- irregardless of the honesty of the business or any included promotional offers.   See http://www.sec.gov/info/smallbus/qasbsec.htm for more information about the SEC regulations for raising capital for small businesses.


"I think it's worth pointing out explicitly that the biggest difference between a credit card (US/Canada) and a debit card (like your French carte de crédit) is that with a credit card, it's entirely possible to not pay the bill or to pay only the ""minimum payment"" when asked. This results in you owing significantly more money due to interest, which can snowball into higher and higher levels of debt, and end up getting rapidly out of control. This is the reason why you should ALWAYS pay off the ENTIRE balance every month, as attested to in the other answers; it's not uncommon to find people in the US with thousands of dollars of debt they can't pay off from misuse of credit cards."


"When you buy something with your credit card, the store pays a fee to the credit card company, typically a base fee of 15 to 50 cents plus 2 to 3% of the purchase. At least, that's what it was a few years back when I had a tiny business and I wanted to accept credit cards. Big chain stores pay less because they are ""buying in bulk"" and have negotiating power. Just because you aren't paying interest doesn't mean the credit card company isn't making money off of you. In fact if you pay your monthly bill promptly, they're probably making MORE off of you, because they're collecting 2 or 3% for a month or less, instead of the 1 to 2% per month that they can charge in interest. The only situation I know where you can get money from a credit card company for free is when they offer ""convenience checks"" or a balance transfer with no up-front fee. I get such an offer every now and then. I presume the credit card company does that for the same reason that stores give out free samples: they hope that if you try the card, you'll continue using it. To them, it's a marketing cost, no different than the cost of putting an ad on television."


First read mhoran's answer, Then this -  If the company sold nothing but refrigerators, and had 40% market share, that's $4M/yr in sales. If they have a 30% profit margin, $1.2M in profit each year. A P/E of 10 would give a stock value totaling $12M, more than the market size. The numbers are related, of course, but one isn't the maximum of the other.


This is assuming that you are now making some amount X per month which is more than the income you used to have as a student. (Otherwise, the question seems rather moot.) All figures should be net amounts (after taxes). First, figure out what the difference in your cost of living is. That is, housing, electricity, utilities, the basics that you need to have to have a place in which to live. I'm not considering food costs here unless they were subsidized while you were studying. Basically, you want to figure out how much you now have to spend extra per month for basic sustenance. Then, figure out how much more you are now making, compared to when you were a student. Subtract the sustenance extra from this to get your net pay increase. After that is when it gets trickier. Basically, you want to set aside or invest as much of the pay increase as possible, but you probably have other expenses now that you didn't before and which you cannot really do that much about. This mights be particular types of clothes, commute fares (car keepup, gas, bus pass, ...), or something entirely different. Anyway, decide on a savings goal, as a percentage of your net pay increase compared to when you were a student. This might be 5%, 10% or (if you are really ambitious) 50% or more. Whichever number you pick, make sure it's reasonable giving your living expenses, and keep in mind that anything is better than nothing. Find a financial institution that offers a high-interest savings account, preferably one with free withdrawals, and sign up for one. Each and every time you get paid, figure out how much to save based on the percentage you determined (if your regular case is that you get the same payment each time, you can simply set up an automated bank transfer), put that in the savings account and, for the moment, forget about that money. Try your best to live only on the remainder, but if you realize that you set aside too much, don't be afraid to tap into the savings account. Adjust your future deposits accordingly and try to find a good balance. At the end of each month, deposit whatever remains in your regular account into your savings account, and if that is a sizable amount of money, consider raising your savings goal a little. The ultimate goal should be that you don't need to tap into your savings except for truly exceptional situations, but still keep enough money outside of the savings account to cater to some of your wants. Yes, bank interest rates these days are often pretty dismal, and you will probably be lucky to find a savings account that (especially after taxes) will even keep up with inflation. But to start with, what you should be focusing on is not to make money in terms of real value appreciation, but simply figuring out how much money you really need to sustain a working life for yourself and then walking that walk. Eventually (this may take anywhere from a couple of months to a year or more), you should have settled pretty well on an amount that you feel comfortable with setting aside each month and just letting be. By that time, you should have a decently sized nest egg already, which will help you get over rough spots, and can start thinking about other forms of investing some of what you are setting aside. Whenever you get a net pay raise of any kind (gross pay raise, lower taxes, bonus, whichever), increase your savings goal by a portion of that raise. Maybe give yourself 60% of the raise and bank the remaining 40%. That way, you are (hopefully!) always increasing the amount of money that you are setting aside, while also reaping some benefits right away. One major upside of this approach is that, if you lose your job, not only will you have that nest egg, you will also be used to living on less. So you will have more money in the bank and less monthly expenses, which puts you in a significantly better position than if you had only one of those, let alone neither.


"If you need less than $125k for the downpayment, I recommend you convert your mutual fund shares to their ETF counterparts tax-free: Can I convert conventional Vanguard mutual fund shares to Vanguard   ETFs? Shareholders of Vanguard stock index funds that offer Vanguard ETFs   may convert their conventional shares to Vanguard ETFs of the same   fund. This conversion is generally tax-free, although some brokerage   firms may be unable to convert fractional shares, which could result   in a modest taxable gain. (Four of our bond ETFs—Total Bond Market,   Short-Term Bond, Intermediate-Term Bond, and Long-Term Bond—do not   allow the conversion of bond index fund shares to bond ETF shares of   the same fund; the other eight Vanguard bond ETFs allow conversions.) There is no fee for Vanguard Brokerage clients to convert conventional   shares to Vanguard ETFs of the same fund. Other brokerage providers   may charge a fee for this service. For more information, contact your   brokerage firm, or call 866-499-8473. Once you convert from conventional shares to Vanguard ETFs, you cannot   convert back to conventional shares. Also, conventional shares held   through a 401(k) account cannot be converted to Vanguard ETFs. https://personal.vanguard.com/us/content/Funds/FundsVIPERWhatAreVIPERSharesJSP.jsp Withdraw the money you need as a margin loan, buy the house, get a second mortgage of $125k, take the proceeds from the second mortgage and pay back the margin loan. Even if you have short term credit funds, it'd still be wiser to lever up the house completely as long as you're not overpaying or in a bubble area, considering your ample personal investments and the combined rate of return of the house and the funds exceeding the mortgage interest rate.  Also, mortgage interest is tax deductible while margin interest isn't, pushing the net return even higher. $125k Generally, I recommend this figure to you because the biggest S&P collapse since the recession took off about 50% from the top.  If you borrow $125k on margin, and the total value of the funds drop 50%, you shouldn't suffer margin calls. I assumed that you were more or less invested in the S&P on average (as most modern ""asset allocations"" basically recommend a back-door S&P as a mix of credit assets, managed futures, and small caps average the S&P). Second mortgage Yes, you will have two loans that you're paying interest on. You've traded having less invested in securities & a capital gains tax bill for more liabilities, interest payments, interest deductions, more invested in securities, a higher combined rate of return. If you have $500k set aside in securities and want $500k in real estate, this is more than safe for you as you will most likely have a combined rate of return of ~5% on $500k with interest on $500k at ~3.5%.  If you're in small cap value, you'll probably be grossing ~15% on $500k. You definitely need to secure your labor income with supplementary insurance.  Start a new question if you need a model for that. Secure real estate with securities A local bank would be more likely to do this than a major one, but if you secure the house with the investment account with special provisions like giving them copies of your monthly statements, etc, you might even get a lower rate on your mortgage considering how over-secured the loan would be. You might even be able to wrap it up without a down payment in one loan if it's still legal.  Mortgage regulations have changed a lot since the housing crash."


Lol i work at a major prop shop and it is far from retail trading. Existing relations are important and if used well will result in an increased pnl.  Also, this is why i was referring to risk adjusted pnl to take into account different firms strategies.  Honestly your company might have a different way of doing things but at every prop shop and bank ive worked for my pnl was their primary focus.  Edit: i also wouldnt take such a condescending tone if i were you. You are far from the only person on reddit working in the industry.


"You have to calculate the total value of all shares and then ask yourself ""Would I invest that amount of money in this stock?""  If the answer is yes, then only sell what you need to sell. Take the $3k loss against your income, if you have no other gains.   If you would not invest that amount of cash in that stock, then sell it all right now and carry forward the excess loss every year. Note at any point you have capital gains you can offset all of them with your loss carryover (not just $3k)."


>What I was talking about is personal income tax   Got it, thanks for clarifying.  >That would mean Amazon would need to offer 5k more pay for an equal job vs an employer in another state.  I think cost of living would also be a factor. So I don't know that a state with income tax would automatically not make the cut, as you asserted in your first comment, because the cost of living might be cheaper and even everything out.  >This is just one factor a company this huge would consider when moving.   Agreed, there are numerous factors that Amazon will have to consider so I see no reason why a state that has an income tax should not submit an application.


"Diversification is the only real free lunch in finance (reduction in risk without any reduction in expected returns), so clearly every good answer to your question will be ""yes.""  Diversification is good.""  Let's talk about many details your question solicits. Many funds are already pretty diversified.  If you buy a mutual fund, you are generally already getting a large portion of the gains from diversification.  There is a very large difference between the unnecessary risk in your portfolio if you only hold a couple of stocks and if you hold a mutual fund.  Should you be diversified across mutual funds as well?  It depends on what your funds are.  Many funds, such as target-date funds, are intended to be your sole investment.  If you have funds covering every major asset class, then there may not be any additional benefit to buying other funds. You probably could not have picked your ""favorite fund"" early on.  As humans, we have cognitive biases that make us think we knew things early on that we did not.  I'm sure at some point at the very beginning you had a positive feeling toward that fund.  Today you regret not acting on it and putting all your money there.  But the number of such feelings is very large and if you acted on all those, you would do a lot of crazy and harmful things.  You didn't know early on which fund would do well.  You could just as well have had a good feeling about a fund that subsequently did much worse than your diversified portfolio did. The advice you have had about your portfolio probably isn't based on sound finance theory.  You say you have always kept your investments in line with your age.  This implies that you believe the guidelines given you by your broker or financial advisor are based in finance theory.  Generally speaking, they are not.  They are rules of thumb that seemed good to someone but are not rigorously proven either in theory or empirics.  For example the notion that you should slowly shift your investments from speculative to conservative as you age is not based on sound finance theory.  It just seems good to the people who give advice on such things.  Nothing particularly wrong with it, I guess, but it's not remotely on par with the general concept of being well-diversified.  The latter is extremely well established and verified, both in theory and in practice.  Don't confuse the concept of diversification with the specific advice you have received from your advisor. A fund averaging very good returns is not an anomaly--at least going forward it will not be.  There are many thousand funds and a large distribution in their historical performance.  Just by random chance, some funds will have a truly outstanding track record.  Perhaps the manager really was skilled.  However, very careful empirical testing has shown the following: (1) You, me, and people whose profession it is to select outperforming mutual funds are unable to reliably detect which ones will outperform, except in hindsight  (2) A fund that has outperformed, even over a long horizon, is not more likely to outperform in the future. No one is stopping you from putting all your money in that fund. Depending on its investment objective, you may even have decent diversification if you do so.  However, please be aware that if you move your money based on historical outperformance, you will be acting on the same cognitive bias that makes gamblers believe they are on a ""hot streak"" and ""can't lose.""  They can, and so can you. ======== Edit to answer a more specific line of questions =========== One of your questions is whether it makes sense to buy a number of mutual funds as part of your diversification strategy.  This is a slightly more subtle question and I will indicate where there is uncertainty in my answer.   Diversifying across asset classes.  Most of the gains from diversification are available in a single fund.  There is a lot of idiosyncratic risk in one or two stocks and much less in a collection of hundreds of stocks, which is what any mutual fund will hold.  Still,you will probably want at least a couple of funds in your portfolio.  I will list them from most important to least and I will assume the bulk of your portfolio is in a total US equity fund (or S&P500-style fund) so that you are almost completely diversified already. Risky Bonds.  These are corporate, municipal, sovereign debt, and long-term treasury debt funds. There is almost certainly a good deal to be gained by having a portion of your portfolio in bonds, and normally a total market fund will not include bond exposure.  Bonds fund returns are closely related to interest rate and inflation changes.  They are also exposed to some market risk but it's more efficient to get that from equity.  The bond market is very large, so if you did market weights you would have more in bonds than in equity.  Normally people do not do this, though.  Instead you can get the exposure to interest rates by holding a lesser amount in longer-term bonds, rather than more in shorter-term bonds.  I don't believe in shifting your weights toward nor away from this type of bond (as opposed to equity) as you age so if you are getting that advice, know that it is not well-founded in theory.  Whatever your relative weight in risky bonds when you are young is should also be your weight when you are older. International. There are probably some gains from having some exposure to international markets, although these have decreased over time as economies have become more integrated.  If we followed market weights, you would actually put half your equity weight in an international fund.  Because international funds are taxed differently (gains are always taxed at the short-term capital gains rate) and because they have higher management fees, most people make only a small investment to international funds, if any at all. Emerging markets  International funds often ignore emerging markets in order to maintain liquidity and low fees.  You can get some exposure to these markets through emerging markets funds.  However, the value of public equity in emerging markets is small when compared with that of developed markets, so according to finance theory, your investment in them should be small as well.  That's a theoretical, not an empirical result. Emerging market funds charge high fees as well, so this one is kind of up to your taste.  I can't say whether it will work out in the future. Real estate.  You may want to get exposure to real estate by buying a real-estate fund (REIT).  Though, if you own a house you are already exposed to the real estate market, perhaps more than you want to be.  REITs often invest in commercial real estate, which is a little different from the residential market. Small Cap.  Although total market funds invest in all capitalization levels, the market is so skewed toward large firms that many total market funds don't have any significant small cap exposure.  It's common for individuals to hold a small cap fund to compensate for this, but it's not actually required by investment theory.  In principle, the most diversified portfolio should be market-cap weighted, so small cap should have negligible weight in your portfolio.  Many people hold small cap because historically it has outperformed large cap firms of equal risk, but this trend is uncertain.  Many researchers feel that the small cap ""premium"" may have been a short-term artifact in the data.  Given these facts and the fact that small-cap funds charge higher fees, it may make sense to pass on this asset class.  Depends on your opinion and beliefs. Value (or Growth) Funds.  Half the market can be classed as ""value"", while the other half is ""growth.""  Your total market fund should have equal representation in both so there is no diversification reason to buy a special value or growth fund.  Historically, value funds have outperformed over long horizons and many researchers think this will continue, but it's not exactly mandated by the theory.  If you choose to skew your portfolio by buying one of these, it should be a value fund. Sector funds.  There is, in general, no diversification reason to buy funds that invest in a particular sector.  If you are trying to hedge your income (like trying to avoid investing in the tech sector because you work in that sector) or your costs (buying energy because you buy use a disproportionate amount of energy) I could imagine you buying one of these funds. Risk-free bonds.  Funds specializing in short-term treasuries or short-term high-quality bonds of other types are basically a substitute for a savings account, CD, money market fund, or other cash equivalent.  Use as appropriate but there is little diversification here per se. In short, there is some value in diversifying across asset classes, and it is open to opinion how much you should do.  Less well-justified is diversifying across managers within the same asset class.  There's very little if any advantage to doing that."


"To put a positive spin on the whole thing, maybe it's a small family shop, and having the check made out to ""cash"" means that your barber can hand it to someone else without the need to countersign. Or maybe his last name is ""Cash"" - there was a pretty famous singer who fit that description. Either way, it's not your place to nanny his finances."


In general, the higher the return (such as interest), the higher the risk. If there were a high-return no-risk investment, enough people would buy it to drive the price up and make it a low-return no-risk investment. Interest rates are low now, but so is inflation. They generally go up and down together. So, as a low risk (almost no-risk) investment, the savings account is not at all useless. There are relatively safe investments that will get a better return, but they will have a little more risk. One common way to spread the risk is to diversify. For example, put some of your money in a savings account, some in a bond mutual fund, and some in a stock index fund. A stock index fund such as SPY has the benefit of very low overhead, in addition to spreading the risk among 500 large companies. Mutual funds with a purchase or sale fee, or with a higher management fee do NOT perform any better, on average, and should generally be avoided. If you put a little money in different places regularly, you'll be fairly safe and are likely get a better return. (If you trade back and forth frequently, trying to outguess the market, you're likely to be worse off than the savings account.)


> Try it! Deposit a check or buy with a credit card and scribble something unrelated as a signature! The deposit or credit card transaction will go through.  About that you are correct, however during any sort of forensic investigation they are going to ask to see a signature receipt if one is available.  > For decades, retailers never compared signatures on credit cards to the person's signature.  No that isn't true. Retailers are required by many card processing vendors to send in a signed receipt. This is changing, because employees are lazy, and retailers don't care about their customers at all so they don't bother enforcing any standards on their minimum wage register jockeys. However many of them are still required to send signed receipts in. When I was younger I worked at a store that would not get paid by the bank if it did not send in a signed receipt for every transaction.  Go on, try walking away without signing your credit card receipt at stores where they present it for signature, and see what happens.  > I know what I am talking about because I deal with credit cards a lot, professionally, in IT.  You and everyone else. Big deal. Different credit card processors have different requirements for their customers (merchants).  > The credit card companies don't really care.  I think the real lesson here is **nobody cares**. Not the banks, not the credit card companies, and not the merchants. The only thing any of them give a fuck about is keeping the money flowing, especially into their own wallets, and if that means customers get ripped off sometimes because of inadequate protections, so what.  My only point is, if I have one at all, **merchants _should_ care** about protecting the customer, and **customers _should_ care** about what protections are in place to prevent fraud. **PIN numbers are fine** as an authentication method, **but they should be completely shielded from view** by people standing in line or cameras overhead.


If you are planning this as a tax avoidance scheme, well it is not. The gains will be taxable in your hands and not in the Banks hands. Banks simply don't cash out the stock at the same price, there will be quite a bit of both Lawyers and others ... so in the end you will end up paying more. The link indicates that one would pay back the loan via one's own earnings. So if you have a stock worth USD 100, you can pledge this to a Bank and get a max loan of USD 50 [there are regulations that govern the max you can get against 100]. You want to buy something worth USD 50. Option1: Sell half the stock, get USD 50, pay the captial gains tax on USD 50. Option2: Pledge the USD 100 stock to bank, get a loan of USD 50. As you have not sold anything, there is no tax. Over a period pay the USD 50 loan via your own earnings. A high valued customer may be able to get away with a very low rate of intrest and very long repayment period.   The tax implication to your legal hier would be from the time the stock come to his/her hands to the time she sold. So if the price increase to 150 by the time Mark dies, and its sold at 160 later, the gain is only of USD 10. So rather than paying 30% or whatever the applicable tax rate, it would be wise to pay an interest of few percentages.


"(See also the question How many stocks I can exercise per stock warrant? and my comments there). Clearly, at the prices you quote, it does not seem sensible to exercise your warrants at the moment, since you can still by ""units"" (1 stock + 1/3 warrant) and bare stock at below the $11.50 it would cost you to exercise your warrant.  So when would exercising a warrant become ""a sensible thing to do""? Obviously, if the price of the bare stock (which you say is currently $10.12) were to sufficiently exceed $11.50, then it would clearly be worth exercising a warrant and immediately selling the stock you receive (""sufficiently exceed"" to account for any dealing costs in selling the newly-acquired stock). However, looking more closely, $11.50 isn't the correct ""cut-off"" price. Consider three of the units you bought at $10.26 each. For $30.78 you received three shares of stock and one warrant. For an additional $11.50 ($42.28 in total) you can have a total of four shares of stock (at the equivalent of $10.57 each). So, if the price of the bare stock rises above $10.57, then it could become sensible to exercise one warrant and sell four shares of stock (again allowing a margin for the cost of selling the stock). The trading price of the original unit (1 stock + 1/3 warrant) shouldn't (I believe) directly affect your decision to exercise warrants, although it would be a factor in deciding whether to resell the units you've already got. As you say, if they are now trading at $10.72, then having bought them at $10.26 you would make a profit if sold. Curiously, unless I'm missing something, or the figures you quote are incorrect, the current price of the ""unit"" (1 stock + 1/3 warrant; $10.72) seems overpriced compared to the price of the bare stock ($10.12). Reversing the above calculation, if bare stock is trading at $10.12, then four shares would cost $40.48. Deducting the $11.50 cost-of-exercising, this would value three ""combined units"" at $28.98, or $9.66 each, which is considerably below the market price you quote. One reason the ""unit"" (1 stock + 1/3 warrant) is trading at $10.72 instead of $9.66 could be that the market believes the price of the bare share (currently $10.12) will eventually move towards or above $11.50. If that happens, the option of exercising warrants at $11.50 becomes more and more attractive. The premium presumably reflects this potential future benefit. Finally, ""Surely I am misunderstand the stock IPO's intent."": presumably, the main intent of Social Capital was to raise as much money as possible through this IPO to fund their future activities. The ""positive view"" is that they expect this future activity to be profitable, and therefore the price of ordinary stock to go up (at least as far as, ideally way beyond) the $11.50 exercise price, and the offering of warrants will be seen as a ""thank you"" to those investors who took the risk of taking part in the IPO. A completely cynical view would be that they don't really care what happens to the stock price, but that ""offering free stuff"" (or what looks like ""free stuff"") will simply attract more ""punters"" to the IPO. In reality, the truth is probably somewhere between those two extremes."


Nowhere. To back up a bit, mutual funds are the stock market (and the bond market). That is, when you invest in a mutual fund, your money is ultimately buying stocks on the open market. Some of it might be buying bonds. The exact mix of stocks and bonds depends on the mutual fund. But a mutual fund is just a basket of stocks and/or bonds (and/or other, more exotic investments). At 25, you probably should just be investing your Roth IRA in index stock mutual funds and index bond mutual funds. You probably shouldn't even be doing peer-to-peer lending (unless you're willing to think of any losses as the cost of a hobby); the higher interest rate you're getting is a reflection of the risk that your borrowers will default. I'm not even sure if peer-to-peer lending is allowed in Roth IRA's.  Investing in just stocks, bonds, and cast is boring, but these are easy investments to understand. The harder the investment is to understand, the easier it is for it to be a scam (or just a bad investment). There's not necessarily anything wrong with boring.