"You could end up with nothing, yes.  I imagine those that worked at Enron years ago if their 401(k) was all in company stock would have ended up with nothing to give an example here.  However, more likely is for you to end up with less than you thought as you see other choices as being better that with the benefit of hindsight you wish you had made different choices. The strategies will vary as some people will want something similar to a ""set it and forget it"" kind of investment and there may be fund choices where a fund has a targeted retirement date some years out into the future.  These can be useful for people that don't want to do a lot of research and spend time deciding amongst various choices.  Other people may prefer something a bit more active.  In this case, you have to determine how much work do you want to do, do you want to review fund reviews on places like Morningstar, and do periodic reviews of your investments, etc.  What works best for you is for you to resolve for yourself. As for risks, here are a few possible categories: Time - How many hours a week do you want to spend on this?  How much time learning this do you want to do in the beginning?  While this does apply to everyone, you have to figure out for yourself how much of a cost do you want to take here. Volatility - Some investments may fluctuate in value and this can cause issues for some people as it may change more than they would like.  For example, if you invest rather aggressively, there may be times where you could have a -50% return in a year and that isn't really acceptable to some people. Inflation - Similarly to those investments that vary wildly there is also the risk that with time, prices generally rise and thus there is something to be said for the purchasing power of your investment.  If you want to consider this in more detail consider what $1,000,000 would have bought 30 years ago compared to now. Currency risk - Some investments may be in other currencies and thus there is a risk of how different denominations may impact a return. Fees - How much do your fund's charge in the form of annual expense ratio?  Are you aware of the charges being taken to manage your money here?"


I'm going to go out on a limb and say the issue isn't so much construction productivity as it is financial security. It's not uncommon for large projects to start off the belief that the money will show up by the time the project is over, look at the US, major road projects are started off the assumption that tax receipts will pay for the roads if the receipts don't then everything gets back logged which just costs even more money as nothing is done.


I have held an in the money long position on an option into expiration, on etrade, and nothing happened.   (Scalping expiring options - high risk) The option expired a penny or two ITM, and was not worth exercising, nor did I have the purchasing power to exercise it. (AAPL) From etrade's website: Here are a few things to keep in mind about exercises and assignments: Equity options $0.01 or more in the money will be automatically   exercised for you unless you instruct us not to exercise them. For   example, a September $25 call will be automatically exercised if the   underlying security's closing price is $25.01 or higher at expiration.   If the closing price is below $25.01, you would need to call an   E*TRADE Securities broker at 1-800-ETRADE-1 with specific instructions   for exercising the option. You would also need to call an E*TRADE   Securities broker if the closing price is higher than $25.01 at   expiration and you do not wish to exercise the call option. Index   options $0.01 or more in the money will be automatically exercised for   you unless you instruct us not to exercise them. Options that are out   of the money will expire worthless. You may request to exercise   American style options anytime prior to expiration. A request not to   exercise options may be made only on the last trading day prior to   expiration. If you'd like to exercise options or submit   do-not-exercise instructions, call an E*TRADE Securities broker at   1-800-ETRADE-1. You won't be charged our normal fee for   broker-assisted trades, but the regular options commission will apply.   Requests are processed on a best-efforts basis.  When equity options are exercised or assigned, you'll receive a Smart   Alert message letting you know. You can also check View Orders to see   which stock you bought or sold, the number of shares, and the strike   price.  Notes: If you do not have sufficient purchasing power in your account   to accept the assignment or exercise, your expiring options positions   may be closed, without notification, on the last trading day for the   specific options series. Additionally, if your expiring position is   not closed and you do not have sufficient purchasing power, E*TRADE   Securities may submit do-not-exercise instructions without   notification. Find out more about options expiration dates.


"Making these difficult portfolio decisions for you is the point of Target-Date Retirement Funds.  You pick a date at which you're going to start needing to withdraw the money, and the company managing the fund slowly turns down the aggressiveness of the fund as the target date approaches.  Typically you would pick the target date to be around, say, your 65th birthday.  Many mutual fund companies offer a variety of funds to suit your needs. Your desire to never ""have to recover"" indicates that you have not yet done quite enough reading on the subject of investing.  (Or possibly that your sources have been misleading you.)  A basic understanding of investing includes the knowledge that markets go up and down, and that no portfolio will always go up.  Some ""recovery"" will always be necessary; having a less aggressive portfolio will never shield you completely from losing money, it just makes loss less likely. The important thing is to only invest money that you can afford to lose in the short-term (with the understanding that you'll make it back in the long term).  Money that you'll need in the short-term should be kept in the absolute safest investment vehicles, such as a savings account, a money market account, short-term certificates of deposit, or short-term US government bonds."


Pre-qualification is only a step above what you can do with a rate/payment calculator.  They don't check your credit history and credit score; they don't ask for verification of your income; or verify that you have reported your debts correctly. They also don't guarantee the interest rate. But if you answer truthfully, and completely, and nothing else changes you have an idea of how much you can afford factoring in the down payment, and estimates of other fees, taxes and insurance. You can get pre-quaified by multiple lenders; then base your decision on rates and fees.  You want to get pre-approved. They do everything to approve you. You can even lock in a rate. You want to finalize on one lender at that point because you will incur some fees getting to that point. Then knowing the maximum amount you can borrow including all the payments, taxes, insurance and fees; you can make an offer on a house. Once the contract is accepted you have a few days to get the appraisal and the final approval documents from the lender. They will only loan you the minimum of what you are pre-approved for and the appraisal minus down-payment. Also don't go with the lender recommended by the real estate agent or builder; they are probably getting a kick-back based on the amount of business they funnel to that company.


>However, you would have to pay income taxes on that wage and could end up with less money overall to spend on healthcare.   That's not truth tho. You can open IRA and 401k and now you have more money to put into them that won't get tax and it help you save for the retirement.


"Without knowing anything else about you, I'd say I need more information. If all of your investments are in stocks, then that's not really diversified, regardless of how many stocks you own.  There are other things to invest in besides stocks (and bonds, for that matter). What countries?  ""International"" is pretty broad, and some countries are better bets than others at the moment. If you're old, I'd say very little of your money should be in stocks anyway. I'd also seek financial advice that is tailored to your goals, sophistication, etc."


Tax Deducted at source is applicable to Employee / Employer [contract employee] relations ... it was also made applicable for cases where an Indian company pays for software products [like MS Word etc] as the product is not sold, but is licensed and is treated as Royalty [unlike sale of a consumer product, that you have, say car] ... Hence it depends on how your contract is worded with your India clients, best is have it as a service agreement. Although services are also taxed, however your contract should clearly specify that any tax in India would be borne by your Indian Client ... Cross Country taxation is an advanced area, you will not find good advice free :)


"Is it possible to profit from some of this money in the short term before I need to access it? Sure, it's possible.  But if the stock market decides to ""correct"" (or even crashes), you'll be in a world of hurt. Thus, since it's so important that you not lose this money, just stick it in an online bank earning 1.2%, and withdraw ""enough"" twice a month. EDIT: by ""withdraw"", I mean to transfer to your checking account."


"The actual increase in the cost of living for one month over the previous month cannot be calculated from the annualized increase in cost over the entire previous year. Consider the hypothetical case of a very stable economy, where prices stay constant for decades.  Nevertheless, the authorities issue monthly statements, reporting that the change in the cost of living, for the last month, year over year, is 0.00%.  Then they go back to sleep for another month. Then, something happens, say in August, 2001.  It causes a permanent large increase in the cost of many parts of the cost of living components. So, in September, the authorities announce that the cost of living for the end of August, 2001, compared to August a year ago, was up 10%. Great consternation results.  Politicians pontificate, unions agitate on behalf of their members, etc... The economy returns to its customary behavior, except for that one-time permanent increase from August, 2001.  So for the next eleven months, each month, the authorities compare the previous months prices to the prices from exactly a year ago, and announce that inflation, year over year, is still 10%.   Finally, we reach September, 2002.  The authorities look at prices for the end of August, 2002, and compare them to the prices from the end of August, 2001 (post ""event"").  Wonder of wonders, the inflation rate is back to 0.00%!!  Absolutely nothing happened in August 2002, yet the rate of inflation dropped from 10% to 0%."


Credit card companies charge merchants for accepting their cards.  They'll take their cut and give you some of the fee back as a reward.   So, in reality merchants have increased their prices to accommodate for the credit card processing fees. The credit card takes a bit of their fee and gives you back some of the money you wouldn't have spent if there were no fees for using a credit card.


"Previously (prior to Capital One acquisition -- it's kind of like K-Mart buying Sears) Sharebuilder offered 12 automatic (i.e. pre-scheduled) stock purchases per month if you subscribed to their $12/mo ""Advantage"" plan. So, 12 trades for $1 a trade. Great deal. Except then they flattened their pricing to everyone's acclaim (that is, everyone except for the non-millionaire casual investors) and jacked it up to $4 per automatic investment. As far as I know, Sharebuilder's 12 no-fee investments for $12/mo was rather unique in the online trading world -- and now it's very sadly extinct. They do have no-fee mutual fund investing, however, for what it's worth."


There are a number of ways this can result. In a broad ETF, such as SPY, the S&P 500 spider, the S&P index will have 500 stocks no matter what, so a buyout would simply result in a re-shuffling of the index makeup. No buyout will happen so quickly that there's no time to choose the next stock to join the index. In your case, if the fund manager (per the terms of the prospectus) wishes to simply reallocate the index to remove the taken-over stock that's probably how he handle it.  Unless of course, the prospectus dictates otherwise. In which case, a cash dividend is a possible alternative.


I'm surprised nobody else has suggested this yet: before you start investing in stocks or bonds, buy a house. Not just any house, but the house you want to live in 20 years from now, in a place where you want to live 20 years from now - but you also have to be savvy about which part of the country or world you buy in. I'm also assuming that you are in the USA, although my suggestion tends to apply equally anywhere in the world. Why? Simple: as long as you own a house, you won't ever have to pay rent (you do have to pay taxes and maintenance, of course). You have a guaranteed return on investment, and the best part is: because it's not money you earn but money you don't have to spend, it's tax free. Even if the house loses value over time, you still come out ahead. And if you live abroad temporarily, you can rent out the house and add the rent to your savings (although that does make various things more complicated). You only asked for options, so that is mine. I'll add some caveats. OK, now here are the caveats:


"If you look at the biotech breakdown, you'll find a lot of NAs when it comes to P/E since there are many young biotech companies that have yet to make a profit.  Thus, there may be something to be said for how is the entire industry stat computed. Biotechnology can include pharmaceutical companies that can have big profits due to patents on drugs. As an example, look at Shire PLC which has a P/E of 1243 which is pretty high with a Market Capitalization of over a billion dollars, so this isn't a small company.  I wonder what dot-com companies would have looked like in 1998/1999 that could well be similar as some industries will have bubbles you do realize, right? The reason for pointing out the Market Capitalization is that this a way to measure the size of a company, as this is merely the sum of all the stock of the company.  There could be small companies that have low market capitalizations that could have high P/Es as they are relatively young and could be believed to have enough hype that there is a great deal of confidence in the stock.  For example, Amazon.com was public for years before turning a profit.  In being without profits, there is no P/E and thus it is worth understanding the limitations of a P/E as the computation just takes the previous year's earnings for a company divided by the current stock price.  If the expected growth rate is high enough this can be a way to justify a high P/E for a stock.  The question you asked about an industry having this is the derivation from a set of stocks.  If most of the stocks are high enough, then whatever mean or median one wants to use as the ""industry average"" will come from that."


This is a junk article with a junk assumption. We have higher levels of debts today, but we have low rates of defaults. We don't have NINJA loans coming to an end in 6 months where the default rate suddenly doubles and triples. We don't have massive amounts of swaps against mortgages or even other forms of private debt skyrocketing. Moody's and S&P review process was totally revamped.  If this article could get beyond basic theory and talk about specifics, it might be able to make a point, but instead it lost me after 2 paragraphs.


My daughter is two, and she has a piggy bank that regularly dines on my pocket change.  When that bank is worth $100 or so I will make it a regular high yield savings account.  Then I will either setup a regular $10/month transfer into it, or something depending on what we can afford. My plan is then to offer my kid an allowance when she can understand the concept of money.  My clever idea is I will offer her a savings plan with the Bank of Daddy.  If she lets me keep her allowance for the week, I will give her double the amount plus a percentage the next week.  If she does it she will soon see the magic of saving money and how banks pay your for the privilege. I don't know when I will give her access to the savings account with actual cash.  I will show it to her, and review it with her so she can track her money, but I need to know that she has some restraint before I open the gates to her.


The initial and overnight margin requirements are set by the exchanges (who calculate them using the Standard Portfolio of Analysis of Risk, or 'SPAN' system), and positions are market to market according to these at the end of the trading session. To find these margin requirements you will need to consult the website of the exchange on which the contract you are trading is issued (i.e. if you're trading on the London Metal Exchange it's no good looking at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's margin requirements as a previous answer suggests!). However, for positions entered and exited within the same day, the daytrade margin rate will apply. This is set by your broker rather than the exchange, and can be as little as 10% of the exchange requirement. You can find a useful comparison of different margin types and requirements in the article I have published here: Understanding Margin for Futures Trading.


"Profit sharing adds complexity. I'd pitch it as a percentage of revenue to him. ""Profit"" is a term than can be abused. Sales are sales.   Somewhat related, if you're giving him 30% of all profit on all deals, you're basically selling 30% of your business for $80K. No surprise he's interested.   Think more about how you'll finance working capital. You need money to buy the pool supplies, pay for labor, etc. Ideally, you should float as little of this money as you can.   An incentive structure that rewards the salespeople should also be taken into consideration. Build that in somewhere. You want his reps to want to pitch your pools. They need some kind of incentive.   These are just thoughts off the top of my head. I don't completely understand the details, but maybe it'll help."


First, put the money someplace that is safe - a saving account is fine - while you figure out what you want to do with it. You will obviously want to think about it what to do for a while. A financial advisor could help out, but not that many of them make their money on commission and therefore don't act in your best interest. The ones where you pay them directly are more aligned with your interests. As for how to invest, you have a lot of different options depending on your timeline and your risk tolerance.


The T+3 settlement date only affects cash accounts.  In a cash account, you need to wait until the T+3 settlement date for your funds to be available to make your next trade.  But if you convert your cash account into a margin account, then you do not need to wait until the T+3 settlement date for your next trade - your broker will allow you to make another trade immediately.


I wasn't talking about college or university, which are severely overpriced, I was talking about tech schools or trade schools. I live in a city that has a lot of manufacturing jobs open but not enough people educated in the field to actually get those jobs. So there was a breakdown somewhere along the way in terms of the preparation for good paying manufacturing jobs. This is what we need to address, I think you thought I was talking about something else.


"Without any highly credible anticipation of a company being a target of a pending takeover, its common stock will normally trade at what can be considered non-control or ""passive market"" prices, i.e. prices that passive securities investors pay or receive for each share of stock. When there is talk or suggestion of a publicly traded company's being an acquisition target, it begins to trade at ""control market"" prices, i.e. prices that an investor or group of them is expected to pay in order to control the company.  In most cases control requires a would-be control shareholder to own half a company's total votes (not necessarily stock) plus one additional vote and to pay a greater price than passive market prices to non-control investors (and sometimes to other control investors). The difference between these two market prices is termed a ""control premium.""  The appropriateness and value of this premium has been upheld in case law, with some conflicting opinions, in Delaware Chancery Court (see the reference below; LinkedIn Corp. is incorporated in the state), most other US states' courts and those of many countries with active stock markets. The amount of premium is largely determined by investment bankers who, in addition to applying other valuation approaches, review most recently available similar transactions for premiums paid and advise (formally in an ""opinion letter"") their clients what range of prices to pay or accept. In addition to increasing the likelihood of being outbid by a third-party, failure to pay an adequate premium is often grounds for class action lawsuits that may take years to resolve with great uncertainty for most parties involved. For a recent example and more details see this media opinion and overview about Dell Inc. being taken private in 2013, the lawsuits that transaction prompted and the court's ruling in 2016 in favor of passive shareholder plaintiffs.  Though it has more to do with determining fair valuation than specifically premiums, the case illustrates instruments and means used by some courts to protect non-control, passive shareholders. ========== REFERENCE As a reference, in a 2005 note written by a major US-based international corporate law firm, it noted with respect to Delaware courts, which adjudicate most major shareholder conflicts as the state has a disproportionate share of large companies in its domicile, that control premiums may not necessarily be paid to minority shareholders if the acquirer gains control of a company that continues to have minority shareholders, i.e. not a full acquisition: Delaware case law is clear that the value of a dissenting [target company's]   stockholder’s shares is not to be reduced to impose a minority   discount reflecting the lack of the stockholders’ control over the   corporation. Indeed, this appears to be the rationale for valuing the   target corporation as a whole and allocating a proportionate share of   that value to the shares of [a] dissenting stockholder [exercising his appraisal rights in seeking to challenge the value the target company's board of directors placed on his shares]. At the same   time, Delaware courts have suggested, without explanation, that the   value of the corporation as a whole, and as a going concern, should   not include a control premium of the type that might be realized in a   sale of the corporation."


First of all, Dilip's answer explains well how the business deductions generally work. For most (big) expenses you depreciate it. However, in some cases you need to capitalize it, which is another accounting method. When you capitalize your expense, it becomes part of the basis of the product you're creating. Since you're an engineer, this might be relevant for you. Talk to your tax adviser. How exactly you deduct/depreciate/capitalize things, and what expense goes which way depends greatly on the laws and jurisdictions. Even in the US, different states have different laws, and the IRS and State laws don't have to conform (unfortunately). For example, the limitations on Sec. 179 deduction in 2010-2011 were 20 times higher on Federal level than in the State of California. This could have lead to cases where you fully deducted your expense on your Federal tax return, but need to continue and depreciate it on your State return (or vice versa). Good tax adviser is crucial to avoid or manage these cases.


There is one massive catch in this which I found out when I went to Nationwide to ask for a loan. I've got a credit card which they kept increasing my credit limit, it's now at something ridiculous - nearly £10,000 but they keep increasing it. I never use that card, when I went to Nationwide though they said they couldn't give me a loan because I had £10,000 credit already and if I reduced this credit this would affect my credit rating and they could potentially give me a loan. I then realised what MBNA had craftily done.  I have two cards with this bank, one with really low interest and the other with really high interest (and a high credit limit) - even though the other card has a zero balance loan companies still see it as money I could potentially go and spend, it doesn't matter to them that I've not spent any money on that card in about 12 months, to them it's the fact that they could give me a loan and then I could go and spend another £10,000 on that card (as you can see extremely risky).   Of course this means that what MBNA are craftily doing is giving me such a high credit, knowing full well that I'm not going to use it, but it also prevents their competitors from offering me a loan, even at a lower rate, because I've already got too much credit available. So yes there is a catch to giving you a high credit limit on your cards and it's to prevent you from either leaving that bank or getting a lower interest rate loan out to clear the debt.


"You are correct that it could refer to any of the types of interest rates that you've mentioned. In general, though, phrases such as ""rising interest rates"" and ""falling interest rates"" refer to the Federal Funds Rate or LIBOR. These are the interest rates at which banks in the U.S. and U.K., respectively, are lending money to each other."


Scalability is the key determinate - if it doesn't scale easily then chances are the big bucks will elude you. To the extent that unless your entrepreneurial idea doesn't have scalability built into the business model, you should probably think again.  Straight contracting/manpower sub is always limited and problematic - whereas encapsulating the IP and developing the *system* of applying that IS scalable.


You don't have to wait.  If you sell your shares now, your gain can be considered a capital gain for income tax purposes. Unlike in the United States, Canada does not distinguish between short-term vs. long-term gains where you'd pay different rates on each type of gain.  Whether you buy and sell a stock within minutes or buy and sell over years, any gain you make on a stock can generally be considered a capital gain. I said generally because there is an exception:  If you are deemed by CRA to be trading professionally -- that is, if you make a living buying and selling stocks frequently -- then you could be considered doing day trading as a business and have your gains instead taxed as regular income (but you'd also be able to claim additional deductions.)  Anyway, as long as your primary source of income isn't from trading, this isn't likely to be a problem. Here are some good articles on these subjects:


You are an internship. I worked at Citibank in highschool as a junior financial advisor and I sat for 8 hours on Saturday cold-calling clients with +$150,000 sitting in the bank.   I did this for 5 months until I got fed up with it, but the point is your an intern, don't expect the stars.


When you decided to invest to China. The big problem is corruption. You have to pay so much for the government before opening your company such as: documents for opening, certificate for your standard products, etc., and a lots of undertable expense that you can not add them into your income statement. China has only the advantage of population. Products manufactured from China are not seemed high-quality. I'm glad that U.S companies return their countries. It's a good decision.


"I'm going to subtly and cheekily change the obvious advice. There are three ways to deal with negative cashflow, not two: You're currently studying for a degree. You don't say what country you're in or how your studies are funded, but most people in the US, UK, and a fair number of other countries, run up debts while studying for a degree. They do this because a degree is valuable to them. They can't avoid it because the tuition alone costs more than most students can generate in income, never mind their living expenses. So by all means look for savings, (1). Clearly strangers on the internet can't just think up ways for you to spend less money without knowing anything about what you do spend money on. But you can at least list your expenditures for yourself, and see what's necessary. Consider also how much fun you want your studies to be: 4 years in a cold house to avoid paying for heating, and never going out with friends to avoid spending on unnecessary stuff is all very well. But with hindsight you'll regret torturing yourself if you're ever well-off enough to pay back whatever you would have borrowed to use for heating and fun. Only do (2) if it doesn't affect your studies or if the money you're paid justifies delaying the valuable asset you seek to acquire (a degree, leading perhaps to a better job but at least to the capacity to do a full-time job rather than fitting work around your studies). There are some jobs that are really good fits for students (reasonably low hours that don't clash with classes) and some jobs that are terrible. If these fail, resort to (3). I don't mean dishonest book-keeping, I mean accept that you are going to borrow money in order to pay for something of value that you can account as an asset. Work out now what you'll need to borrow and how you think you can pay it back, make sure the sum is worth it, budget for that, stick to your budget. You'll still have negative cashflow, nothing changes there, but your capital account looks fine. Personally I wouldn't actually put a monetary value on the degree, I'm not that bothered about the accounts and it's really difficult to be accurate about it. You can just consider it, ""more than I expect to borrow"" and be done with it. Studying costs money. Once you've graduated, you probably aren't going to be back here saying, ""I want to buy a house but I have no capital and I don't want to go into debt"". Are you? ;-) Although if you are, the answer happens to be ""Islamic mortgage""! I don't know whether Islamic banks have an equivalent answer for student debt, since they can't own a share of your degree like they can a share of your home. Unless you're a Muslim, presumably the ways that Islamic finance avoids interest payments would not in any case satisfy your desire to be ""not in debt""."


It is correct, in general. Gift tax is indeed at 35%, but you have the first 14K of your gift exempt from it for each person you give to, yearly (verify the number, it changes every year). You can also use your lifetime exemption ($5.45M in 2016, subject to change each year), but at the amounts you're talking about it still will not be enough. Charitable (501(c)) organizations, paying for someone's tuition or medical expenses (directly to the providers), political donations, transfer between you and your spouse - these are all exempt from gift tax. If you have 10 millions to give, I'm sure you can afford a $200 consultation with a EA/CPA licensed in your state.


"There are two components of option valuation, the value that's ""in the money"" and the ""time value."" In the case of the $395 put, that option was already in the money and it will move less than the stock price by a bit as there will still be some time value there. $22.52 is intrinsic value (the right word for 'in the money') and the rest is time. The $365 strike is still out of the money, but as jldugger implied, the chance of it going through that strike is better as it's $6.66 closer.  Looking at the options chain gives you a better perspective on this. If Apple went up $20 Monday, and down $20 Tuesday, these prices would be higher as implied volatility would also go higher.  Now, I'd hardly call a drop of under 2% ""tanking"" but on the otherhand, I'd not call the 25% jump in the option price skyrocketing. Options do this all the time. Curious what prompted the question, are you interested in trading options? This stock in particular?"


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"Average person's life I'm going to say there is no normal debt level. Here's the standard life pattern: So it really depends on your situation, it's way too spread out to quote a ""normal"" figure. Cost of debt vs Gain from assets and Risk of income You need to strike a sweet spot based on: Someone who is more educated in finance will probably be able to run a tighter and more aggressive financial strategy, whereas someone who is educated in, say, creative media may not be able to do as good of a job. Running your life as a business Someone here mentioned this, I think it's very true. Unless you intend on living day to day, with no financial strategies, much of our lives parallel businesses. Both need to pay tax, both look for low risk high growth strategies, and both will (hopefully) have a purpose that goes beyond bringing in $$$."


I'm amazed at how much debt my mom was able to accumulate before they finally cut her off. And it was all unsecured debt so there was jack shit they can do about her defaulting.  If you're poor, and old (no assets, no house, no nothing), it makes sense to go as far into unsecured debt as possible.


The Government doesn't borrow money. It in fact simply prints it. The bond market is used for an advanced way of controlling the demand for this printed money. Think about it logically. Take 2011 for example. The Govt spent $1.7 trillion more than it took in. This is real money that get's credited in to people's bank accounts to purchase real goods and services. Now who purchases the majority of treasuries? The Primary Dealers. What are the Primary Dealers? They are banks. Where do banks get their money? From us.  So now put two and two together. When the Govt spends $1.7 trillion and credits our bank accounts, the banking system has $1.7 trillion more. Then that money flows in to pension funds, gets spent in to corporation who then send that money to China for cheap products... and eventually the money spent purchases up Govt securities for investments. We had to physically give China 1 trillion dollars for them to be able to purchase 1 trillion dollars in securities. So it makes sense if you think about how the math works in the real world.


>(thus credit does cost a bit more)  A ton more. An incredible amount more. You are basically going from secured creditors who can recover assets like rent, improvements, or the real estate to unsecured creditors who can recover nothing. The cost of financing would be prohibitive. Congrats, you've grinded the economy to a halt.


"Anything under 0.20% is ""really good, leave it alone."" However, since you have access to their institutional funds, it isn't unreasonable to come up with your own desired asset allocation and save another half of the fees.  If you're happy with the Target Retirement date fund, just stick with it, but if you've got a particular AA you want to maintain, go for that with the cheaper underlying funds."


If you are going to the frenzy of individual stock picking, like almost everyone initially, I suggest you to write your plan to paper. Like, I want an orthogonal set of assets and limit single investments to 10%. If with such limitations the percentage of brokerage fees rise to unbearable large, you should not invest that way in the first hand.  You may find better to invest in already diversified fund, to skip stupid fees. There are screeners like in morningstar that allow you to see overlapping items in funds but in stocks it becomes trickier and much errorsome. I know you are going to the stock market frenzy, even if you are saying to want to be long-term or contrarian investor, most investors are convex, i.e. they follow their peers, despite it would better to be a concave investor (but as we know it can be hard).  If the last part confused you, fire up a spreadsheet and do a balance. It is a very motivating activity, really. You will immediately notice things important to you, not just to providers such as morningstar, but alert it may take some time. And Bogleheads become to your rescue, ready spreadsheets here.


"As the other answer said, the person who owns the lent stock does not benefit directly.  They may benefit indirectly in that brokers can use the short lending profits to reduce their fees or in that they have the option to short other stocks at the same terms.   Follow-up question: what prevents the broker lending the shares for a very short time (less than a day), pocketing the interest and returning the lenders their shares without much change in share price (because borrowing period was very short). What prevents them from doing that many times a day ? Lack of market.   Short selling for short periods of time isn't so common as to allow for ""many"" times a day.  Some day traders may do it occasionally, but I don't know that it would be a reliable business model to supply them.  If there are enough people interested in shorting the stock, they will probably want to hold onto it long enough for the anticipated movement to happen.   There are transaction costs here.  Both fees for trading at all and the extra charges for short sale borrowing and interest.  Most stocks do not move down by large enough amounts ""many"" times a day.  Their fluctuations are smaller.  If the stock doesn't move enough to cover the transaction fees, then that seller lost money overall.  Over time, sellers like that will stop trading, as they will lose all their money.   All that said, there are no legal blocks to loaning the stock out many times, just practical ones.  If a stock was varying wildly for some bizarre reason, it could happen."


"There really isn't any good ways that I'm aware of. (The exception is in New York or California, where hospitals must post prices.) The law sets price floors on many procedures by setting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates. As a result, the ""list price"" for a given procedure is dramatically inflated, and various health insurers negotiate rates somewhere in the middle. I'd recommend talking to the business offices or financial counselors at medical groups that you do business with. Ask about ""self pay discounts"" or other programs appropriate for folks in your position."


"I agree with some of the points of the other answers but why not avoid all the guesswork? I highly recommend you not charge him now. Wait until the end of the year when you have much more information about both of your companies and then you can run the numbers both ways and decide if it would benefit you (collectively). If either of your businesses runs on a cash basis and you decide to invoice, just make sure the check is deposited before Dec 31. Update: If you want to do this for 2016, at least your husband's business would have to be using an accrual basis (since it's too late to take the deduction on a cash basis). Simply run the numbers both ways and see if it helps you. If it doesn't help enough to warrant it for 2016 you could rerun the numbers near the end of 2017 to see if it helps then. Diclaimer: I think it's OK to do this type of manipulation for the scenario you described since you have done (or are doing) the work and you are charging a reasonable fee, but realize that you shouldn't manipulate the amount of the invoice, or fabricate invoices. For example, you shouldn't ever think about such things as: ""If I invoice $50K instead of $3K, will that help us?"""


"First, you are not exactly ""giving"" the brokerage $2000. That money is the margin requirement to protect them in the case the stock price rises. If you short 200 shares as in your example and they are holding $6000 from you then they are protected in the event of the stock price increasing to $30/share. Sometime before it gets there the brokerage will require you to deposit more money or they will cover your position by repurchasing the shares for your account. The way you make money on the short sale is if the stock price declines. It is a buy low sell high idea but in reverse. If you believe that prices are going to drop then you could sell now when it is high and buy back later when it is lower. In your example, you are selling 200 shares at $20 and later, buying those at $19. Thus, your profit is $200, not counting any interest or fees you have paid. It's a bit confusing because you are selling something you'll buy in the future. Selling short is usually considered quite risky as your gain is limited to the amount that you sold at initially (if I sell at $20/share the most I can make is if the stock declines to $0).  Your potential to lose is unlimited in theory. There is no limit to how high the stock could go in theory so I could end up buying it back at an infinitely high price. Neither of these extremes are likely but they do show the limits of your potential gain and loss.  I used $20/share for simplicity assuming you are shorting with a market order vs a limit order. If you are shorting it would be better for you to sell at 20 instead of 19 anyway. If someone says I would like to give you $20 for that item you are selling you aren't likely to tell them ""no, I'd really only like $19 for it"""


I am like you with not acknowledging balances in my accounts, so I pay my credit card early and often.  Much more than once a month.  With my banks bill pay, I can send money to the credit card for free and at any time.   I pay it every two weeks (when I get paid), and I will put other extra payments on there if I bought a large item.  It helps me keep my balances based in reality in Quicken. For example, I saved the cash for my trip, put the trip on my credit card, then paid it all off the day after I got home.  I used the card because I didn't want to carry the cash, I wanted the rewards cash back, I wanted the automatic protection on the car rental, and I couldn't pay for a hotel with cash. There are many good reasons to use credit cards, but only if you can avoid carrying a balance.


I would definitely be putting in enough to get the most out of the match.  Only reasons I can think of not too would be: Other than that, not investing in the 401(k) is turning down free money. Edit based on feedback in comments. The only time I would advocate number 1 is if you are intensely committed to getting out of debt, were on a very tight budget and had eliminated all non-essential spending. In that situation only, I think the mental benefit of having that last debt paid off would be worth more than a few dollars in interest.


Ah, I did some more research and apparently Rental Income is considered Passive Income, and as such the IRS does not allow a net loss to exist, but you can carry the loss over into the next year. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc425.html Generally, losses from passive activities that exceed the income from passive activities are disallowed for the current year. You can carry forward disallowed passive losses to the next taxable year. A similar rule applies to credits from passive activities. So in the event in a loss on my rental business activity, I simply pay no tax on it, and deduct the remainder in income in 2017 from taxes. I don't make any changes to my Consulting income at all.


I found additional evidence on TDAmeritrade's website that helps confirm that the 3/17/11 prices Jason found are the ones to use since all three were traded on that day.  Although GM+A had prices and trading as early as 2/28/11, GM+B's price and trading shows up no earlier than 3/14/11, but there was no trading indicated for GM+A on 3/14 so 3/14 can't be used.  The two warrants were not traded every day after they came out. The next date that I found when all three, GM, GM+A and GM+B had trades was 4/11/11.  I found Google and Yahoo Finance unable to produce the historical prices for the warrants that far back.  Unfortunately, you need to be a TDA accountholder in order to access TDA's historical price information for stocks.


I must say that this is a question that you should hire a professional tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) to answer. It is way above our amateurs' pay-grade. That said, I'll tell you what I personally think on the issue. I'm not a licensed tax adviser, and nothing that I write here can be used in any way as a justification for any action. Read the full disclaimer in my profile. I believe you're right to treat those as assets. You bought them as an investment, and you intend to sell them for profit. Here the good news for you end. As we decided to define the domains as an asset, we need to decide what type of asset it is. I believe you're holding a Sec. 197 asset. This is because domain is essentially akin to franchise and trademark, and as such falls under the Sec. 197 definition. That means that your amortization period is 15 years. Your expenses related to these domains should also be amortized, on the same schedule. When you sell a domain, you can deduct the portion that you have not yet deducted from the amortization schedule from your proceeds. Keep in mind passive loss limitations, since losses from assets held as investment cannot offset Schedule C income.


"Hello! I am working on a project where I am trying to determine the profit made by a vendor if they hold our funds for 5 days in order to collect the interest on those funds during that period before paying a third party.  Currently I am doing ""Amount x(Fed Funds Rate/365)x5"" but my output seems too low. Any advice?"


The LLC can be formed within just 24 hrs from the time of submitting of the form. It mainly includes all the business presence packages which is very much important for doing Incorporating your business so that the business can able to setup and startup very easily and quickly. It also help in protecting the assests and other liabilities that are the part of the Delaware llc.


There is a positive not being mentioned above: the depreciation vs your regular earned income. Disclaimer: I am not a tax attorney or an accountant, nor do I play one on the internet. I am however a landlord. With that important caveat out of the way: Rental properties (and improvements to them) depreciate in value on a well-defined schedule. You can claim that depreciation as a phantom loss to lower the amount of your taxable regular income. If you make a substantial amount of the latter, it can be a huge boon in the first few years you own the property. You can claim the depreciation as if the property were new. So take the advice of a random stranger on the internet to your accountant/attorney and see how much it helps you.


There are fund of funds,e.g. life cycle funds or target retirement funds, that could cover a lot of these with an initial investment that one could invest into for a few years and then after building up a balance large enough, then it may make sense to switch to having more control.


Reading the plan documentation, yes, that is what it means.  Each purchase by bank debit, whether one-time or automatic, costs $2 plus $0.06 per share; so if you invested $50, you would get slightly less than $48 in stock as a result (depending on the per-share price). Schedule of Fees Purchases – A one-time $15.00 enrollment fee to establish a new     account for a non-shareholder will be deducted from the     purchase amount. – Dividend reinvestment: The Hershey Company pays the     transaction fee and per share* fee on your behalf. – Each optional cash purchase by one-time online bank     debit will entail a transaction fee of $2.00 plus $0.06 per     share* purchased. – Each optional cash purchase by check will entail a     transaction fee of $5.00 plus $0.06 per share* purchased. – If funds are automatically deducted from your checking or     savings account, the transaction fee is $2.00 plus $0.06     per share* purchased. Funds will be withdrawn on the     10th of each month, or the preceding business day if the     10th is not a business day. – Fees will be deducted from the purchase amount. – Returned check and rejected ACH debit fee is $35.00.


Your question doesn't make much sense. The exceptions are very specific and are listed on this site (IRS.GOV). I can't see how you can use any of the exceptions regularly while still continuing being employed and contributing. In any case, you pay income tax on any distribution that has not been taxed before (which would be a Roth account or a non-deductible IRA contribution). Including the employer's match. Here's the relevant portion: The following additional exceptions apply only to distributions from a   qualified retirement plan other than an IRA:


Shareholders have voting rights, and directors have fiduciary obligations to shareholders. Sure, shareholders have rights to the dividends, but stock confers decisionmaking powers. I'm not really sure what your answer to this is, or how you are differentiating the concept of ownership from this.


"I would like to first point out that there is nothing special about a self-managed investment portfolio as compared to one managed by someone else. With some exceptions, you can put together exactly the same investment portfolio yourself as a professional investor could put together for you. Not uncommonly, too, at a lower cost (and remember that cost is among the, if not the, best indicator(s) of how your investment portfolio will perform over time). Diversification is the concept of not ""putting all your eggs in one basket"". The idea here is that there are things that happen together because they have a common cause, and by spreading your investments in ways such that not all of your investments have the same underlying risks, you reduce your overall risk. The technical term for risk is generally volatility, meaning how much (in this case the price of) something fluctuates over a given period of time. A stock that falls 30% one month and then climbs 40% the next month is more volatile than one that falls 3% the first month and climbs 4% the second month. The former is riskier because if for some reason you need to sell when it is down, you lose a larger portion of your original investment with the former stock than with the latter. Diversification, thus, is reducing commonality between your investments, generally but not necessarily in an attempt to reduce the risk of all investments moving in the same direction by the same amount at the same time. You can diversify in various ways: Do you see where I am going with this? A well-diversed portfolio will tend to have a mix of equity in your own country and a variety of other countries, spread out over different types of equity (company stock, corporate bonds, government bonds, ...), in different sectors of the economy, in countries with differing growth patterns. It may contain uncommon classes of investments such as precious metals. A poorly diversified portfolio will likely be restricted to either some particular geographical area, type of equity or investment, focus on some particular sector of the economy (such as medicine or vehicle manufacturers), or so on. The poorly diversified portfolio can do better in the short term, if you time it just right and happen to pick exactly the right thing to buy or sell. This is incredibly hard to do, as you are basically working against everyone who gets paid to do that kind of work full time, plus computer-algorithm-based trading which is programmed to look for any exploitable patterns. It is virtually impossible to do for any real length of time. Thus, the well-diversified portfolio tends to do better over time."


"But in the debt-payoff-first scenario, I'd be wiping out my debt in   two years. It would take several more years if I were to just pay the   minimums and put the extra money toward investing instead. Right. The idea is that in 2 years, you are likely to have more in the savings/stock account than you owe on the loan. But. The range of returns for X years has a smaller standard deviation the greater X is. e.g. any year has about a 1 in 3 chance of being negative. A 10 year period had a negative return (-1% CAGR) in the '00s recently, but the 15 year return even around that decade would have been successful. Jan 1 '96 - Dec 31 2010 returned 6.76% CAGR, Jan 1 2001 - Dec 31 2015 returned 4.96% CAGR.  This tells you that the time frame is as important as your sleep factor. Your 2 years? I'd just kill the loans. A 10-15 year horizon? I'd ask how you ""feel"" about that debt. The cost of going after a potential higher return may not be worth the risk to many. For some, it's fine. I retired, with a mortgage still in place, but the money in my 401(k) that could have paid off the mortgage is now about twice the remaining balance. So I sleep like a baby.  In the end, I'm a fan of investing for the long term vs paying off low rate debt, but it's a choice based on the individual."


Adding a couple more assumptions, I'd compute about $18.23 would be that pay out in 2018.  This is computed by taking the Current Portfolio's Holdings par values and dividing by the outstanding shares(92987/5100 for those wanting specific figures used). Now, for those assumptions: Something to keep in mind is that bonds can valued higher than their face value if the coupon is higher than other issues given the same risk.  If you have 2 bonds maturing in 3 years of the same face value and same risk categories though one is paying 5% and the other is paying 10% then it may be that the 5% sells at a discount to bring the yield up some while the other sells at a premium to bring the yield down.  Thus, you could have bonds worth more before they mature that will eventually lose this capital appreciation.


Sorry, but that's a load of sh*t.  The economy tanked in March of 2000 when the tech bubble burst.  Projecting the insane bubble economy outwards showed the debt could be paid off, but it was already over when Bush came into office.  (Tax receipts are backwards looking, the stock market is forward looking.  The world knew in early 2000 that the party was over.)


It may be tempting to be financially lenient with your customers as you start to build business relationships, but doing so may ultimately jeopardize your profitability. Establish clear payment terms on all invoices and documents, including a reasonable penalty (start with eight percent) over the invoice amount if the total is not paid within the standard payment terms.


"When margin is calculated as the equity percentage of an account, the point at which a broker will forcibly liquidate is typically called ""maintenance margin"". In the US, this is 25% for equities. To calculate the price at which this will occur, the initial and maintenance margin must be known.  The formula for a long with margin is: and for a short where P_m is the maintenance margin price, P_i is the initial margin price, m_i is the initial margin rate, and m_m is the maintenance margin rate.  At an initial margin of 50% and a maintenance margin of 25%, a long equity may fall by 1/3 before forced liquidation, a short one may rise by 50%. This calculation can become very complex with different asset classes with differing maintenance margins because the margin debt is applied to all securities collectively."


I don't see why not. Many ways this could go. Perhaps you can arrange an agreement where you earn 50% of profits over the basic operating costs. This gives them an incentive to let you open it up. This gives you a chance to see if the business actually makes sense financially... It may not.


You really need /r/personalfinance    These questions are not hard but not simple either. I think if this is your retirement money and you are retired, you should speak with a professional financial advisor. Find someone you trust, someone other people you know use. Do not follow anyone who promises guaranteed great returns. Find someone who is honest.


"I just want to make clear that the Fed saying this is much more significant than a pollster or other source. It gives it a great deal of credibility and makes it, in some way, the Fed's ""official"" stance on this."


It looks like you need a lot more education on the subject. I suggest you pick up a book on investing and portfolio management to get a first idea. Dividend yields are currently way below 5% on blue chips. Unlike coupons from fixed income instruments (which, in the same risk category, pay a lot less), dividend yields are not guaranteed and neither is the invested principal amount.  In either case, your calculation is far away from reality.  Sure, there are investments (such as the mentioned direct investments in companies or housings in emerging economies) that can potentially earn you two digit percentage returns. Just remember: risk always goes both ways. A higher earning potential means higher loss potential. Also, a direct investment is a lot less liquid than an investment on a publicly quoted high turnover market place. If you suddenly need money, you really don't want to be pressed to sell real estate in an emerging market (keyword: bid ask spread). My advice: the money that you can set aside for the long term (10 years plus), invest it in stock ETFs, globally. Everything else should be invested in bond funds or even deposits, depending on when you will need the access. As others have pointed out, consider getting professional advice.


You are in the perfect window for making an IRA contribution. The IRS allows you to make IRA contributions for last year until tax day. So you know that for 2014 you didn't have access to a 401K at work. You want to avoid making a deductible IRA contribution for this year (2015) until you are sure that you wont have a 401K at work this year. Take your time and decide if the detectible IRA or the Roth works best for your situation. Having a IRA now will be good becasue you have many years for it to grow. Keep in mind that it is not unusual to have multiple retirement accounts: Current 401K; rolled over into a IRA;  Roth IRA... Each has different rules, limits, and benefits. There is no reason to pick one way of investing for retirement becasue you never know if the next employer will have the type of plan you like. I am assuming that your spouse, if you are married, doesn't have access to a 401K; otherwise you would have to consider the applicable limits.


You understand that the Fed is *supposed* to make overnight loans to banks, that one of its primary jobs is to be a lender of last resort?  And yes, some were foreign banks; foreign subsidies of US banks or counter-parties to large US banks.  Near-zero, yes for course we're talking about *overnight* loans.  The current commercial rate for overnight euro LIBOR is 0.26179%, in other words, 0.0026, near zero OMG conspiracy!


Most 401k plans (maybe even all 401k plans as a matter of law) allow the option of moving the money in your 401k account from one mutual fund to another  (within the group of funds that are in the plan).  So, you can exit from one fund and put all your 401k money (not just the new contributions) into another fund in the group if you like.  Whether you can find a fund within that group that invests only in the companies that you approve of is another matter. As mhoran_psprep's answer points out, changing investments inside a 401k (ditto IRAs, 403b and 457 plans) is without tax consequence which is not the case when you sell one mutual fund and buy another in a non-retirement account.


If you have income in the US, you will owe US income tax on it, unless there is a treaty with your country that says otherwise.


If you want to farm credit card benefits, there are a few low-cost ways to do so:


I would agree with the other answers about it being a bad idea to invest in stocks in the short term. However, do consider also long-term repairs. For example, you should be prepared to a repair happening in 20 years in addition to repairs happening in a couple of months. So, if it is at all possible for you to save a bit more, put 2% of the construction cost of a typical new house (just a house, not the land the house is standing on) aside every year into a long-term repair fund and invest it into stocks. I would recommend a low-cost index fund or passive ETF instead of manually picking stocks. When you have a long-term repair that requires large amounts of money but will be good for decades to come, you will take some money out of the long-term repair fund. Where I live, houses cost about 4000 EUR per square meter, but most of that is the land and building permit cost. The actual construction cost is about 2500 EUR per square meter. So, I would put away 50 EUR per square meter every year. So, for example, for a relatively small 50 square meter apartment, that would mean 2500 EUR per year. There are quite many repairs that are long-term repairs. For example, in apartment buildings, plumbing needs to be redone every 40 years or so. Given such a long time period, it makes sense to invest the money into stocks. So, my recommendation would be to have two repair funds: short-term repairs and long-term repairs. Only the long-term repair fund should be invested into stocks.


"Regardless of the source of the software (though certainly good to know), there are practical limits to the IRS 1040EZ form.  This simplified tax form is not appropriate for use once you reach a certain level of income because it only allows for the ""standard"" deduction - no itemization.   The first year I passed that level, I was panicked because I thought I suddenly owed thousands.  Switching to 1040A (aka the short form) and using even the basic itemized deductions showed that the IRS owed me a refund instead. I don't know where that level is for tax year 2015 but as you approach $62k, the simplified form is less-and-less appropriate.  It would make sense, given some of the great information in the other answers, that the free offering is only for 1040EZ.  That's certainly been true for other ""free"" software in the past."


It is the first time I encounter redemption programme and I would like to know what are my options here You can hold on to the shares and automatically receive 2.25 SEK per share some time after 31-May; depending on how fast the company and its bank process the payouts. Alternatively you can trade in the said window for whatever the market is offering. how is this different from paying the dividend? I don't know much about Sweden laws. Structuring this way may be tax beneficial. The other benefit in in company's books the shareholders capital is reduced. can I trade these redemption shares during these 2 weeks in May? What is the point of trading them if they have fixed price? Yes you can. If you need money sooner ... generally the price will be discounted by few cents to cover the interest for the balance days.


"I take it you have nearly zero expenses, since you don't mention any savings and with your income you wouldn't have much left over for investing. At your level of income, any actual investing is either going to unwisely reduce your cash available should you need it (such as investment in mutual funds, which often have minimum investment periods of 2-6 months or more to avoid fees), or cost you a high percentage of your income in commissions (stock trading). So, I wouldn't recommend investing at all — yet. I find Dave Ramsey's baby steps to be very good general money management advice.  Here is how I would adapt the first three steps to your income and stage in life. Beyond this, Dave recommends saving for retirement, college (for kids) and paying off your house early.  These things are a little beyond your stage in life, but it would be good to start thinking about them. For you, I recommend following DJClayworth's advice to ""invest in yourself"".  Specifically, plan to get through college debt-free.  Put away money so that you have a head start once you do have living expenses — save for a car, save money for rent, etc. so that you don't have to live month to month as most people do starting out. So, what this boils down to: Put away every cent you have, in a savings account."


"One description of what happened is at 401(k) Plan Fix-It Guide.  The issue is the plan was ""Top Heavy,"" i.e. those making a high income were making disproportionately larger deposits than the lower paid employees. As the IRS article suggests, a nice matching deposit from the employer can eliminate the lower limit caused by the top heavy-ness.  Searching on [top heavy 401(k)] will yield more details if you wish to research more."


You can rehypo securities which are regulated by the SEC. No funding ladder with any counter party will Accept non-security assets (which loans btw aren't securities like bonds). We see the same in the broadly syndicated loan market.   TRS loan facilities are just now developing into more mature vehicles to the point where banks are structuring collateral upgrades through writing fully funded participations to SPV's  and borrowing treasuries from a counter party who has a lien against the SPV (oc'd of course) but that's a bespoke and uncommon solution. Most banks are still funding these TRS facilities with unsecured funds.   The repo market is ultimately the robust and tradional means of securing funding against loan assets. Middle market and broadly syndicated repo are most common but ABS desks will often times reverse repo while loans or asset backed loans in addition to their normal warehousing businesses.


"All of the provided advice is great, but a slightly different viewpoint on debt is worth mentioning. Here are the areas that you should concentrate your efforts and the (rough) order you should proceed. Much of the following is predicated upon your having a situation where you need to get out of debt, and learn to better budget and control your spending. You may already have accomplished some of these steps, or you may prioritize differently. Many people advise prioritizing contributing to a 401(k) savings plan. But with the assumption that you need advise because you have debt trouble, you are probably paying absurd interest rates, and any savings you might have will be earning much lower rates than you are paying on consumer debt. If you are already contributing, continue the plan. But remember, you are looking for advice because your financial situation is in trouble, so you need to put out the fire (your present problem), and learn how to manage your money and plan for the future. Compose a budget, comprised of the following three areas (the exact percentages are fungible, fit them to your circumstances). Here is where planning can get fun, when you have freed yourself from debt, and you can make choices that resonate with your individual goals. Once you have ""put out the fire"" of debt, then you should do two things at the same time. As you pay off debt (and avoid further debt), you will find that saving for both independence and retirement become easier.  The average American household may have $8000+ credit card debt, and at 20-30%, the interest payments are $150-200/month, and the average car payment is nearly $500/month.  Eliminate debt and you will have $500-800/month that you can comfortably allocate towards retirement. But you also need to learn (educate yourself) how to invest your money to grow your money, and earn income from your savings. This is an area where many struggle, because we are taught to save, but we are not taught how to invest, choose investments wisely and carefully, and how to decide our goals.  Investing needs to be addressed separately, but you need to learn how. Live in an affordable house, and pay off your mortgage.  Consider that the payment on a mortgage on even a modest $200K house is over $1000/month. Combine saving the money you would have paid towards a mortgage payment with the money you would have paid towards credit card debt or a car loan. Saving becomes easy when you are freed from these large debts."


"People treat an emergency fund as some kind of ace-in-the-hole when it comes to financial difficulty, but it is only one of many sources of money that you can utilize. What is an emergency? First, you have to define what an emergency is.  Is it a lost job?  Is it an unplanned event (pregnancy, perhaps)?  Is it a medical emergency?  Is it the death of you or your spouse? Also, what does it mean to be unplanned?  Is being so unhappy with your job that you give a 2-week notice an emergency?  Is one month of planning an emergency?  Two? Only you can answer these questions for yourself, but they significantly shape your financial strategy.  Planning is highly dependent on your cashflow, and, for some people, it may take them a year to build enough savings to enable them to take 3 months off work.  For others, they may be able to change their spending to build up enough for 3 months in 1 month. Also, you have to consider the length of the emergency.  Job-loss is rarely permanent, but it's rarely short as well.  The current average is 30.7 weeks: that's 7 months! Money in an Emergency There are six main places that people get money during a financial emergency: A good emergency strategy takes all six of these into account.  Some emergencies may lean more on one source than the other.  However, some of these are correlated. For example, in 2008, three things happened:  the stock market crashed, unsecured debt dried up, and people faced financial emergency (lost jobs, cut wages).  If you were dependent on a stock portfolio and/or a line of credit, you'd be up a creek, because the value of your investments suddenly decreased, and you can't really tap your now significantly limited line of credit. However, if you had a one or more of cash savings, unemployment income, and unemployment insurance, you would probably have been OK. Budgeting for an emergency When you say ""financial emergency"", most people think job loss.  However, the most common cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical debt.  Depending on your insurance situation, this could be a serious risk, or it may not be.   People say you should have 3x-6x of your monthly income in savings because it's an easy, back-of-the-envelope way to handle most financial emergency risk, but it's not necessarily the most prudent strategy for you. To properly budget for an emergency, you need to fully take into account what emergencies you are likely to face, and what sources of financing you would have access to given the likely factors that led to that emergency. Generally, having a savings account with some amount of liquid cash is an important part of a risk-mitigation strategy.  But it's not a panacea for every kind of emergency."


"A lot of financial software will calculate the value of operating leasess for you (bullet 2). E.g. Capital IQ, BB.   What a lot of professionals do is ""reverse"" out EBITDA/EBIT etc. for:  - non-recurring expenses (think big accounting changes, some impairments) - change operating expenses into capital leases to adjust the capital structure - occasionally change some operating expenses (e.g. options) because you are under the assumption if you take a company private that those expenses will not be relevant  The whole point is simply to see the operating revenues/expenses of the firm"


Sorry, I was thinking of PCs. which are professional corporations. LLPs are limited partnerships.  If he has partners, an LLP might be suitable. Again, talk to a lawyer and accountant to see what is best for your friend.


You are on the right path. Especially for the fact that you are paying the highest rate card with highest priority.  As long as your credit score will not stop you from getting the credit union loan, this is a great idea. It will turn the highest rate card(s) into something more reasonable and let you continue to attack principal instead of mostly paying interest.


> Your question is expressed as a run-on sentence, which I'm having trouble parsing. Maybe you could restate.  The one in the title? If yes, here it is restated:  *As I currently understand, we owe much of our national debt to ourselves. The reason for this is that people are being charged interest that does not exist in the system. Therefore, if we tried to pay the debt (like some conservative politicians are fighting for) it would be a massive transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1%, since most of the debt is owed to the 1% (banks).*  So I was wondering if this conclusion/summary/understanding is flawed in some way.


"After the initial public offering, the company can raise money by selling more stock (equity financing) or selling debt (e.g. borrowing money).  If a company's stock price is high, they can raise money with equity financing on more favorable terms.  When companies raise money with equity financing, they create new shares and dilute the existing shareholders, so the number of shares outstanding is not fixed. Companies can also return money to shareholders by buying their own equity, and this is called a share repurchase.  It's best for companies to repurchase their shared when their stock price is low, but ""American companies have a terrible track record of buying their own shares high and selling them low."" The management of a company typically likes a rising stock price, so their stock options are more valuable and they can justify bigger pay packages."


You can make a capital contribution, not a loan. It's not a taxable event, no interest, and you can take a distribution later when the business has the money to pay you back. So yes, transfer the money. If you use software like Quickbooks, make use of unique accounts for tracking the contribution


Also, interest rates and credit risk directly corelate to Greece's ability to service the debt.  Japan could be at 400% and Greece 50%, but if they can't make payments or have credit good enought to refi the debt, that's when they will default.   Meanwhile, the fact that they are risky drives up rates further and makes it even harder to make payments.  It's called the death spiral.   Japan has low rates, solid GDP and good credit = non-issue.


Normally, incorporation is for liability reasons.  Just file your taxes as a business.  This just means adding a T2125 to your personal return.  There's no registering, that's for GST if over a certain threshold. There's even a section in the instructions for internet businesses. http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tg/t4002/t4002-e.html#internet_business_activities This is the form you have to fill out.  Take note that there is a place to include costs from using your own home as well.  Those specific expenses can't be used to create or increase a loss from your business, but a regular business loss can be deducted from your employment income. http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pbg/tf/t2125/t2125-15e.pdf


"Trying to ""time the market"" is usually a bad idea. People who do this every day for a living have a hard time doing that, and I'm guessing you don't have that kind of time and knowledge.  So that leaves you with your first and third options, commonly called lump-sum and dollar cost averaging respectively.   Which one to use depends on where your preferences lie on the risk/reward scpectrum. Dollar cost averaging (DCA) has lower risk and lower reward than lump sum investing. In my opinion, I don't like it. DCA only works better than lump sum investing if the price drops. But if you think the price is going to drop, why are you buying the stock in the first place? Example: Your uncle wins the lottery and gives you $50,000. Do you buy $50,000 worth of Apple now, or do you buy $10,000 now and $10,000 a quarter for the next four quarters? If the stock goes up, you will make more with lump-sum(LS) than you will with DCA. If the stock goes down, you will lose more with LS than you will with DCA. If the stock goes up then down, you will lose more with DCA than you will with LS. If the stock goes down then up, you will make more with DCA than you will with LS. So it's a trade-off. But, like I said, the whole point of you buying the stock is that you think it's going to go up, which is especially true with an index fund! So why pick the strategy that performs worse in that scenario?"


If you are using the money to invest in a property (even abroad) then you can claim tax exemption. while some people will tell you that the reinvestment should be in India only, it have been ruled that the property can be purchased abroad too..


I have been in a similar position as you for the past few years. I put a bunch of cash into a tax free savings account (canadian) instead of paying down debt.   My rationale was that I wanted the exposure to the market and had to be in it in order to pay attention. I also put money into an rasp,  but only because my employer matched it (100% gain, no brainer).  Looking back, I think it would have been a better idea to get debt free sooner. Having that debt weighs on you and haunts everything you try to do. You can't afford rent where you want to be, where you should be. There's no keeping up with the Jones' if you're paying off debt.  That being said, in Canada your student loans are secured and if you lose your job, the government makes payments for you. If your loans are structured like this, then you are better off hanging onto that money.


I think it is just semantics, but this example demonstrates what they mean by that: If you put $100 in a CD today, it will grow and you will be able to take out a greater amount plus the original principal at a later time. If you put $100 extra on your house payment today, you may save some money in the long run, but you won't have an asset that you wouldn't otherwise have at the end of the term that you can draw on without selling the property. But of course, you can't live on the street, so you need another house. So ultimately you can't easily realize the investment. If you get super technical, you could probably rationalize it as an investment, just like you could call clipping coupons investing, but it all comes down to what your financial goals are. What the advisers are trying to tell you is that you shouldn't consider paying down your mortgage early as an acceptable substitute for socking away some money for retirement or other future expenses. House payments for a house you live in should be considered expenses, in my opinion. So my view is that paying off a note early is just a way of cutting expenses.


Dividends are a form of passive income.


"If you have a single member LLC there is no need to separate expenses in this way since it is simply treated as part of the owner's normal tax returns.  This is the way I've been operating. Owner of Single-Member LLC   If a single-member LLC does not elect to be treated as a corporation, the LLC is a ""disregarded entity,"" and the LLC's activities should be reflected on its owner's federal tax return. If the owner is an individual, the activities of the LLC will generally be reflected on: Form 1040 Schedule C, Profit or Loss from Business (Sole Proprietorship) (PDF) Form 1040 Schedule E, Supplemental Income or Loss (PDF) Form 1040 Schedule F, Profit or Loss from Farming (PDF) An individual owner of a single-member LLC that operates a trade or business is subject to the tax on net earnings from self employment in the same manner as a sole proprietorship.   If the single-member LLC is owned by a corporation or partnership, the LLC should be reflected on its owner's federal tax return as a division of the corporation or partnership. https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/single-member-limited-liability-companies"


I can answer Scenario #3. If you are purchasing a property with buy-to-let intentions […] can you use the   rental income exclusively to fund the mortgage repayments? Yes – this is exactly how buy-to-let mortgage applications are evaluated. Lenders generally expect you to fund the mortgage payments with rent. They look for the anticipated monthly rent income to cover a minimum of 125% of the monthly mortgage payment. This is to make sure you can allow for vacant periods, maintenance, compliance with rules and regulations, and still be in profit (i.e. generate a positive yield on your investment). However, buy-to-let (BTL) mortgage lenders also generally expect you to own your own home to begin with. It's up to them, but rare is the lender who will provide a buy-to-let mortgage to a non-owner-occupier. This is because of point 2 above. The lender doesn't want you to end up living in the property because then you'll need to repay the loan capital, since you'll always need somewhere to live. This makes the economics of BTL unfavourable. They look at your application as a business proposal: quite different to a residential mortgage application, which is what your question seems to be addressing. Bottom line: You're right about scenario #3 but it sounds like you're trying to afford a home first, whereas BTL is best viewed as an investment for someone who already has their main residence under ownership (mortgaged or otherwise). As for Scenarios #1 and #2 I can't offer first hand answers but I think Aakash M. and Steve Melnikoff have covered it.


If you are talking about a corporate entity, weighted average tenor refers to the average maturity of the company's bond portfolio (or all debt) from the issue date. For example, a company issues 2 bonds in 2017, one for $100 with a maturity of 2019 and one for $50 with a maturity of 2020. The weighted average tenor would be 2.33 years. These numbers are not exact, just trying to give you an illustrative example.


There is no reason for you to open a firm. However, it will help you, if you operate separate bank account for business and personal purposes. You can run your business as proprietorship business. Your inward remittance is your income. You can deduct payment made to your colleagues as salary. You should pay them by way of cheques or bank transfer only. You are also entitled to deduct other business expenses provided you keep proper receipt of the same such as broadband connection charges, depreciation on equipment and more importantly, rent on your house. If your total receipt from such income exceeds INR 60,00,000 you will need to withhold tax on payment made to your colleagues as also subject to audit of your accounts. If you want to grow your business, suggest you should take an Import / Export Code in your own name.  You can put any further question in this regard.


"Typically you diversify a portfolio to reduce risk. The S&P 500 is a collection of large-cap stocks; a diversified portfolio today probably contains a mix of large cap, small cap, bonds,  international equity and cash. Right now, if you have a bond component, that part of your portfolio isn't performing as well. The idea of diversification is that you ""smooth out"" the ups and downs of the market and come out ahead in most situations. If you don't have a bond or cash component in your portfolio, you may have picked (or had someone pick for you) lousy funds.  Without more detail, that's about all that can be said. EDIT: You provided more detail, so I want to add a little to my answer. Basically, you're in a fund that has high fees (1.58% annually) and performance that trails the mid-cap index. The S&P 500 is a large-cap index (large cap == large company), so a direct comparison is not necessarily meaningful. Since you seem to be new at this, I'd recommend starting out with the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX) or ETF (VTI). This is a nice option because it represents the entire stock market and is cheap... it's a good way to get started without knowing alot. If your broker charges a transaction fee to purchase Vanguard funds and you don't want to change brokers or pay ETF commissions, look for or ask about transaction-fee free ""broad market"" indexes. The expense ratio should be below 0.50% per year and optimally under 0.20%. If you're not having luck finding investment options, swtich to a discount broker like TD Ameritrade, Schwab, ScottTrade or Fidelity (in no particular order)"


"My education on this topic at this age range was a little more free-form. We were given a weeklong project in the 6th grade, which I remember pretty clearly:  Fast forward 6 years (we were 12). You are about to be kicked out of   your parents' house with the clothes on your back, $1,000 cash in your   pocket, your high school diploma, and a ""best of luck"" from your   parents. That's it. Your mission is to not be homeless, starving and   still wearing only the clothes on your back in 3 months. To do this, you will find an apartment, a job (you must meet the qualifications fresh out of high school with only your diploma; no college, no experience), and a means of transportation. Then,   you'll build a budget that includes your rent, estimated utilities,   gasoline (calculated based on today's prices, best-guess fuel mileage of the car, and 250% of the best-guess one-way distance between home and job), food (complete nutrition is not a must, but 2000cal/day is), toiletries, clothing, and anything else you want or   need to spend your paycheck or nest egg on. Remember that the laundromat isn't free, and neither is buying the washer/dryer yourself. Remember most apartments aren't furnished but do have kitchen appliances, and you can't say you found anything on the side of the road. The end product of your work will be a narrative report of the first   month of your new life, a budget for the full 3 months, plus a ""continuing"" budget for a typical month thereafter to prove you're not just lasting out the 3 months, and all supporting   evidence for your numbers, from newspaper clippings to in-store   mailers (the Internet and e-commerce were just catching on at the time, Craigslist and eBay didn't exist yet, and not everyone had home Internet to begin with).  Extra Credit: Make your budget work with all applicable income and   sales taxes. Extra Extra Credit: Have more than your original $1000 in the bank at   the end of the 3 months, after the taxes in the Extra Credit. This is a pretty serious project for a 12-year-old. Not only were we looking through the classified ads and deciphering all the common abbreviations, we were were taking trips to the grocery store with shopping lists, the local Wal-Mart or Target, the mall, even Goodwill. Some students had photos of their local gas station's prices, to which someone pointed out that their new apartment would be on the other side of town where gas was more expensive (smart kid). Some students just couldn't make it work (usually the mistakes were to be expected of middle-class middle-schoolers, like finding a job babysitting and stretching that out full-time, only working one job, buying everything new from clothes to furniture, thinking you absolutely need convenience items you can do without, and/or trying to buy the same upscale car your dad takes to work), though most students were able to provide at least a plausible before-tax budget. A few made the extra credit work, which was a lot of extra credit, because not only were you filling out a 1040EZ for your estimated income taxes, you were also figuring FICA and Social Security taxes which even some adults don't know the rates for, and remember, no Internet. Given that the extra-extra credit required you to come out ahead after taxes (good luck), I can't remember that anyone got that far. The meta-lesson that we all learned? Life without a college education is rough."


"Since you have emphasized that you don't mind about variability, and that you have other funds you could liquidate, then I think a solution is to do with this money the same thing that you are already doing with those other funds. Then when you need the money, if the market has gone up sell the lots that were part of your original ""other funds"", which presumably have aged enough to qualify for long term gains rates, and let the newly purchased shares take their place."


Your question indicates confusion regarding what an Individual Retirement Account (whether Roth or Traditional) is vs. the S&P 500, which is nothing but a list of stocks. IOW, it's perfectly reasonable to open a Roth IRA, put your $3000 in it, and then use that money to buy a mutual fund or ETF which tracks the S&P 500. In fact, it's ridiculously common...  :)


Our company gives the best business valuation services. If you want to any business valuation service, then you can come to our company website. When it comes to obtaining a business valuation, business owners are faced with a myriad of choices of the business valuation services. Kirk Kleckner valuation businesses need understanding and analysis of a variety of complex factors including detailed technical knowledge of value drivers and in-depth industry knowledge.


Remember that long term appreciation has tax advantages over short-term dividends. If you buy shares of a company, never earn any dividends, and then sell the stock for a profit in 20 years, you've essentially deferred all of the capital gains taxes (and thus your money has compounded faster) for a 20 year period. For this reason, I tend to favor non-dividend stocks, because I want to maximize my long-term gain. Another example, in estate planning, is something called a step-up basis:


There's no standard formula. You can compare the going rates on the market for unsecured LOCs and take that as the starting anchor. Unsecured lines of credit run in the US at about 8-18%. Your risk should be reflected in the rate, and I see no reason why the rate would change throughout the loan. As to the amount of principal changing? Just chose one of the standard compounding options - daily (most precise, but most tedious to calculate), monthly average balance, etc.


Pay attention to nickel-and-dime charges (atm fees, low balance fees, limit on atm transactions per month, charge for human teller transaction, charge for paper statements or tax records).  Consider that a financial company will spend on the order of $100-500 to sign up a good customer.  Are you getting this in a cash bonus, competitive high interest rate, reasonable other gift, or advertising directed at your eyeballs?  A variation in rates less than 1% easily fits into a marketing cost and there doesn't have to be any other magic to it.


I would always suggest rolling over 401(k) plans to traditional IRAs when possible.  Particularly, assuming there is enough money in them that you can get a fee-free account at somewhere like Fidelity or Vanguard.  This is for a couple of reasons. First off, it opens up your investment choices significantly and can allow you significantly reduced expenses related to the account.  You may be able to find a superior offering from Vanguard or Fidelity to what your employer's 401(k) plan allows; typically they only allow a small selection of funds to choose from.  You also may be able to reduce the overhead fees, as many 401(k) plans charge you an administrative fee for being in the plan separate from the funds' costs. Second, it allows you to condense 401(k)s over time; each time you change employers, you can rollover your 401(k) to your regular IRA and not have to deal with a bunch of different accounts with different passwords and such.  Even if they're all at the same provider, odds are you will have to use separate accounts. Third, it avoids issues if your employer goes out of business.  While 401(k) plans are generally fully funded (particularly for former employers who you don't have match or vesting concerns with), it can be a pain sometimes when the plan is terminated to access your funds - they may be locked for months while the bankruptcy court works things out. Finally, employers sometimes make it expensive for you to stay in - particularly if you do have a very small amount.  Don't assume you're allowed to stay in the former employer's 401(k) plan fee-free; the plan will have specific instructions for what to do if you change employers, and it may include being required to leave the plan - or more often, it could increase the fees associated with the plan if you stay in.  Getting out sometimes will save you significantly, even with a low-cost plan.


I don't see this article being about the merit of the customers claim but rather the condition of sale:  > You agree not to file any complaint, chargeback, claim, dispute, or make any public forum post, review, Better Business Bureau complaint, social media post, or any public statement regarding the order, our website, or any issue regarding your order, for any reason, within this 90 day period, or to threaten to do so within the 90 day period, or it is a breach of the terms of sale, creating liability for damages in the amount of $250, plus any additional fees, damages - both consequential and incidental, calculated on an ongoing basis.  I'm happy to rally my pitchfork against any company that includes these conditions.


"There are a few of ways to do this: Ask the seller if they will hold a Vendor Take-Back Mortgage or VTB. They essentially hold a second mortgage on the property for a shorter amortization (1 - 5 years) with a higher interest rate than the bank-held mortgage. The upside for the seller is he makes a little money on the second mortgage. The downsides for the seller are that he doesn't get the entire purchase price of the property up-front, and that if the buyer goes bankrupt, the vendor will be second in line behind the bank to get any money from the property when it's sold for amounts owing. Look for a seller that is willing to put together a lease-to-own deal. The buyer and seller agree to a purchase price set 5 years in the future. A monthly rent is calculated such that paying it for 5 years equals a 20% down payment. At the 5 year mark you decide if you want to buy or not. If you do not, the deal is nulled. If you do, the rent you paid is counted as the down payment for the property and the sale moves forward. Find a private lender for the down payment. This is known as a ""hard money"" lender for a reason: they know you can't get it anywhere else. Expect to pay higher rates than a VTB. Ask your mortgage broker and your real estate agent about these options."


"Your CHMC insurance is payable to the lender not to you if you default. So technically you get nothing from it. However the likelihood is that you could not have got this loan, or got it only at an extremely high interest rate, without this insurance. The Canadian government has a page on CHMC, including a link to a page called ""What's in it for you?""."


The main restrictions you see with IRA's involve contributions, and not the actual investments themselves. I would be indifferent to having a single investment across multiple accounts. It might be a bit trickier to manage, especially if your strategy involves some specific asset allocation. Other than account management though, there's no big issue.


Yes, via a margin account, one can trade or transfer on unsettled funds. These are tight regulations that begin with the Federal Reserve, extend to FINRA, and downward. In a cash account, this is not possible. Since speed is a necessity, a margin account can actually be approved nearly instantly.


"For a newly registered business, you'll be using your ""personal"" credit score to get the credit.  You will need to sign for the credit card personally so that if your business goes under, they still get paid. Your idea of opening a business card to increase your credit score is not a sound one. Business plastic might not show up on   your personal credit history. While   some issuers report business accounts   on a consumer's personal credit   history, others don't. This cuts both ways. Some   entrepreneurs want business cards on   their personal reports, believing   those nice high limits and good   payment histories will boost their   scores. Other small business owners,   especially those who keep high running   balances, know that including that   credit line could potentially lower   their personal credit scores even if   they pay off the cards in full every   month. There is one instance in which the   card will show up on your personal   credit history: if you go into   default. You're not entitled to a   positive mark, ""but if you get a   negative mark, it will go on your   personal report,"" Frank says. And some further information related to evaluating a business for a credit card: If an issuer is evaluating you for a   business card, the company should be   asking about your business, says   Frank. In addition, there ""should be   something on the application that   indicates it's for business use,"" he   says. Bottom line: If it's a business   card, expect that the issuer will want   at least some information pertaining   to your business. There is additional underwriting for   small business cards, says Alfonso. In   addition to personal salary and credit   scores, business owners ""can share   financials with us, and we evaluate   the entire business financial   background in order to give them   larger lines,"" she says. Anticipate that the issuer will check   your personal credit, too. ""The vast   majority of business cards are based   on a personal credit score,"" says   Frank. In addition, many issuers ask   entrepreneurs to personally guarantee   the accounts. That means even if the   businesses go bust, the owners promise   to repay the debts. Source"