"Yeah, until people decide that drinkable water is important and ban fracking. It doesn't take a genius to realize that water > natural gas. I guess so long as it's ""someone else's water"" and that someone else is poor it'll continue..."


I use another solution: debit card with an account kept empty most of the time and another account in the same bank without any card. I keep the money on the second card-less account, and when I want to buy something, I instantly transfer the appropriate amount to the account with the card and pay. That way money is on the account tied to a debit card only for a minute before payment, and normally it is empty - so even if someone would try to fraudulently use my card number - I don't care - the transaction will be rejected. I think its the perfect solution - no fraud possible, and I don't have to worry about possibly having to bother calling my bank and requesting a chargeback, which is stressful and a waste of time and harmful to peace of mind (what if they refuse the chargeback)? I prefer to spend a minute before each transaction to transfer the money between the two accounts, and that time is not a waste, because I use it to reconsider the purchase - which prevents impulse-buying.


Your hard and compelling preparing must be related with the correct amount of games sustenance important protein. This will help you in expanding your wellness capacity and in the process acquire more power, quality, and stamina as you prepare. You have the right stuff and are legitimately spurred so you are into games and need steady training. To have the training, you require Sports Nutrition and Workout Support. This will help in arranging you for your next exercise, the more will be your requirement for a holding framework, similar to sports sustenance items, for example, essential protein.


"First paragraph is very true. But you also have to take into consideration that the adviser and the company are 2 different ""things"" to look into. For the adviser, quickest and easiest way is to do a Facebook search. The point of this is to see how transparent they are with their personal life. Even companies are now relying on Facebook to see how they ""really"" are. I wouldn't care if the person has lots of photos with booze and girls, but I would be concerned if they are using FB for spamming purposes, have pictures with drugs, or hints that they don't like their job and want to move on to something else.  Second paragraph is spot on as well. But I would rather want to know if the company cold calls or not... which leads in to your last statement.  For one adviser, more than 100 clients is a red flag. This could mean that they push savings plans left and right, they don't contact their current clients, and/or they may not have the ability to assist clients should they get many queries.  A few good questions to ask:  1. How do you make your salary?  2. Besides this plan you are selling me, what other types of products do you work with and show me several examples?  3. How many other advisers are in your firm?  4. How many clients does your colleagues and boss have?  5. How often do you cold call?  6. Who else cold calls in your office?  7. How does your company get new clients OTHER than referrals?   Go interrogation style and ask the above questions several times using different phrases."


yes and it does make the review less likely to be genuine.  yelp is a community.  people make accounts all the time and post one review for marketing or trashing purposes.  i find yelp quite useful, but obviously you need to take the reviews with a grain of salt.  sorry they rustled your jimmies.


I got paid less than Walmart's starting rate while working an hourly position at Kohl's and at Target, so I've never understood the overwhelming distaste for Walmart's employee treatment. Is it more of how managers at the store level treat employees rather than their pay?


A 529 plan is set up in a specific beneficiary's name but the money can be rolled over or transferred into another 529 plan in the same beneficiary's name, or the beneficiary can be changed by the owner of the account.  I mistakenly believed that the new beneficiary could be anyone else, but as mhoran_psprep has  pointed out in the comment below, the new beneficiary must be related to  the previous one in specific ways as detailed in Publication 970 2011, Tax Benefits for Education in order for the change to occur without any tax consequences.  So my original statement that distributions can be used for anyone's educational expense without tax consequences was incorrect; if the new beneficiary is not related to the original beneficiary, tax consequences will indeed occur.  Note also that unlike IRAs where the entire amount can be withdrawn by the owner without incurring a 10% penalty after a certain period or after reaching a certain age, distributions from a 529 plan for nonqualified expenses (including as a special case a withdrawal of funds by the owner) will incur the 10% penalty tax regardless of when this occurs. The problem with UGMA accounts is that you have to turn the money over to the beneficiary when that beneficiary becomes an adult (18 years old in most cases) regardless of your current opinion of that beneficiary, and the beneficiary is free to use the money to buy a motorcycle with it if she chooses instead of using it for her education.  In this sense, I agree with mhoran_psprep's answer that it is best to put away the money in an ordinary account without seeking tax benefits, and deal with the matter as you see fit when the niece is filling out her college paperwork.


"I started storing and summing all my receipts, bills, etc. It has the advantage of letting me separate expenses by category, but it's messy and it takes a long time.  It sounds from this like you are making your summaries far too detailed. Don't. Instead, start by painting with broad strokes. For example, if you spent $65.17 at the grocery store, don't bother splitting that amount into categories like toiletries, hygiene products, food, and snacks: just categorize it as ""grocery spending"" and move on to the next line on your account statement. Similarly, unless your finances are heavily reliant on cash, don't worry about categorizing each cash expense; rather, just categorize the withdrawal of cash as miscellaneous and don't spend time trying to figure out exactly where the money went after that. Because honestly, you probably spent it on something other than savings. Because really, when you are just starting out getting a handle on your spending, you don't need all the nitty-gritty details. What you need, rather, is an idea of where your money is going. Figure out half a dozen or so categories which make sense for you to categorize your spending into (you probably have some idea of where your money is going). These could be loans, cost of living (mortgage/rent, utilities, housing, home insurance, ...), groceries, transportation (car payments, fuel, vehicle taxes, ...), savings, and so on -- whatever fits your situation. Add a miscellaneous category for anything that doesn't neatly fit into one of the categories you thought of. Go back something like 3-4 months among your account statements, do a quick categorization for each line on your account statements into one of these categories, and then sum them up per category and per month. Calculate the monthly average for each category. That's your starting point: the budget you've been living by (intentionally or not). After that, you can decide how you want to allocate the money, and perhaps dig a bit more deeply into some specific category. Turns out you are spending a lot of money on transportation which you didn't expect? Look more closely at those line items and see if there's something you can cut. Are you spending more money at the grocery store than you thought? Then look more closely at that. And so on. Once you know where you are and where you want to be (such as for example bumping the savings category by $200 per month), you can adjust your budget to take you closer to your goals. Chances are you won't realistically be able to do an about-face turn on the spot, but you can try to reduce some discretionary category by, say, 10% each month, and transfer that into savings instead. That way, in 6-7 months, you have cut that category in half."


Taxes should not be calculated at the item level. Taxes should be aggregated by tax group at the summary level. The right way everywhere is LINE ITEMS SUMMARY PS:If you'd charge at the item level, it would be too easy to circumvent the law by splitting your items or services into 900 items at $0.01 (Which once rounded would mean no tax). This could happen in the banking or plastic pellets industry.


(1) Not literally every person...this screams that you don't know what you are talking about. There is literally no one on my team that puts it behind their name nor any of my friends from my MBA program.  (2) They aren't as I just proved to you in 3 minutes  (3) Your advice is complete and utter shit.   (4) As I have already articulated:   (A) undergrads know shit, those that have zero experience and an MBA know less than shit.  (B) Learning advanced concepts without knowing anything about the real world won't help him, he won't be able to apply anything he has learned.   (C) He loses any opportunity to reset his career or recruit into a high level position based on some asshole's advice on the internet.   (D) He will command a higher wage exiting MBA with work experience instead of likely taking more debt that he needs to.   (E) he gets to deal with hiring managers like me that will grill him on why he thought it was a good idea to do his MBA directly after undergrad with no work experience.   I might sound like a dick - but I'm not the one handing out shitty advice that highlights how inexperienced you are.


"I would also suggest finding the training resource within your state for real estate agent license exam prep...  When I was getting started, I took the ""101"" level course and it was worth the few hundred bucks for the overview I gleaned."


If it is Texas company, you can try doing a taxable entity search on the Texas Comptroller website.


Ah - sadly I have no money. Mostly just curious after watching The Big Short last week haha.   I find that line of insight interesting though.  I've been seeing a lot of mall closures in Canada as anchor tenants like sears leave though. Kind of makes me wonder whether franchisees will start closing stores like footlocker and food court restaurants since they operate on such small margins, and the leases usually seem to be written around the presence of foot traffic generating anchor tenants.


"Much of the interest on a loan comes in the first years of a mortgage, so the sooner you can pay that off, the better.  But let's see what the numbers say. If you have a loan at 4%, principal of $100,000, a term of 30 years, then this gives monthly payments of $477.42 (using the Excel PMT function). If you sell the house after precisely 5 years worth of payments, then you have made $28,644.92 in payments, you still owe $90,924.93. Suppose you sell the house for $100,000.  That means you will be in the hole for: $100,000 - $90,924.93 - $28,644.92 = -$19,569.85 Now, suppose you pay an extra $50 per month over the five years.  The same calculation becomes: $100,000 - $87,659.98 - $31,644.92 = -$19,304.90 So in this scenario, which is a little simplistic, you are $264.95 better off. The question you have to ask is whether you could have done better investing the $3,000 in extra payments somewhere else. The CAGR in doing this is 1.7%, so you might be better off putting the money away. Running the same numbers for a 6% mortgage the CAGR you have is about 2.7%. Edit I've added a Google Docs spreadsheet (read-only) that you can download and play with.  Feel free to correct anything you find amiss! Edit 2  OK, so I've had a look at what JoeTaxpayer is saying in the comments below, and now I agree:  The CAGR should be 4%. Where I want wrong was to assume that the $50 per month payments over the five years are worth $50 * 5 * 12 = $3000.   This neglects the ""time value of money"" --- having small amounts of money periodically, rather than all of it in a lump sum. Including this makes the ""effective"" value of the monthly $50 payments $2714.95 written as =PV(0.04/12,60,-50) in Excel or Google Docs. I've added a tab to the original spreadsheet to show the different calculations.  Note that it still doesn't quite come to 4%, but I guess it's a minor error in the sheet. NB: I know, I'm leaving out mortgage interest tax relief, costs for selling etc. etc."


There is a thing called the Sharpe Ratio. This Ratio takes return/risk with risk being defined as the standard deviation of prices over time. According to Financial theory the investment with the highest (best) Sharpe Ratio is a market portfolio. Technically accepting the lower risk of a treasury is accepting an amplified lower return(market sharpe would be 1 than tbill sharpe would be at most .9999999999999).  Because of this, unless there are liquidity restraints (don't buy ETFs with your payroll money DUH) you should ALWAYS be in market funds, otherwise you are leaving money on the table. Everything else is just speculation.  Now the real question is value or growth.......


I  found that  an application already exists which does virtually everything I want to do with a reasonable interface.  Its called My Personal Index.  It has allowed me  to look at my asset allocation all in one place. I'll have to enter: The features which solve my problems above include:  Note - This is related to an earlier post I made regarding dollar cost averaging and determining rate of returns.   (I finally got off my duff and did something about it)


Has any country in their existence, paid their debt in full?  To me it seems that every country is in debt and it will just keep growing.  It's like they know that the debt is impossible to pay and they just play along so that they get their paycheck and pass the debt to the other guy/gal who wins the office.  Do we just want to believe that one day everybody would receive so much money that everybody would pay off their debt?


"It becomes illegal when it is both material and nonpublic information. Material being defined as: Information that you would want and significantly alters the perception of the stock. To your point -- ""materiality"" is really up to the courts Nonpublic This is a little easier to define, but need to be careful if the information is disclosed selectively -- ie to just a small number of investment analysts -- this may still be nonpublic There is also an exception to this -- Mosaic Theory - This is the research you are referring to where the analyst calls up suppliers, etc and obtains information that is nonmaterial (wouldn't move the price of the security) but using experience and combined with public information creates something that is meaningful and could move the price of the security.  This is perfectly legal.  Material examples:"


Timing the market and by extension the efficient market hypothesis is one of the most hotly debated subjects in finance academia. If you are to believe the majority of finance professors and PHD's out there chances of timing a market like the NYSE, NASDAQ or LSE is not possible. If you are to take into account the huge amount of hedge funds and money managers who make it their job to prove the efficient market hypothesis wrong then you may have a chance. My opinion is that the EMH is true and that timing a highly efficient market like the NYSE is very difficult or impossible even for those who spend their whole lives trying to beat it. For someone whose primary job isn’t in investments I would put the idea of timing the markets out of your head.


1) Repo is not a bailout. Unless you're claiming that the Fed has been actively bailing out the entire financial sector since 1917.  2) Given the price of credit, is it any surprise that the interest rates were near zero?  3) With this line:  >At a time when small businesses could not get affordable loans to create jobs  You have to wonder if the author of this article has never heard of a credit card, which lends the Average Joe $5000+ in 30-day paper EVERY MONTH at ZERO PERCENT INTEREST.  Wait, I know how to go full retard too!  With [600 million](http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/credit-card-industry-facts-personal-debt-statistics-1276.php) credit cards in existence, at a $1000/month spending limit, this means credit card companies give Americans $600 BILLION in bailouts EVERY MONTH.   Since 2008, the CREDIT CARD COMPANIES have given American citizens $30 TRILLION in BAILOUTS.


Million Dollar Marketing Machine is a top tier business venture that offers the new business owner the opportunity to make large sums of money earning money in sums greater than $500 per transaction.  The financial transactions can be as high as $12,000.  Each business owner collects their own money and they have the opportunity to have their own websites set up by the company of Million Dollar Marketing Machine.  Previously known as Million Dollar Marketing Formula.  Affiliation to the Pizza Box Business.


Lazy man's budget.  Four separate accounts for timing of expenses: short (monthly; utilities etc.), medium (quarterly+; property taxes), long (yearly+; house improvements) and retirement.   Set target levels for each account, to cover 1 full cycle.  The short target is smallest; it should comfortably cover a month.  For me each target is about 10x larger than the last.  (Cycles & targets for a homeowner w/ family; YMMV).   All income goes in short term.  When an account gets above target level, the excess gets swept up to the next longer term account.  That's all I keep firm track of; takes just a few minutes a month. Watching the account balances vs. their targets (and how short some of them are of target) keeps me focused on spending, and thinking about how much I can sweep (or can't) next paycheck.


I'm going to guess you're on Verizon and your wife has an iPhone. I just went through this exact same situation with my mom's phone last week. When you're off contract with Verizon you're saving $25/month on your plan (at least, I am), so staying off contract is big. If you do the monthly payment you're paying full retail over 2 years, without interest, so you do stay off contract at least. Here's the thing, as long as it's a 16GB iPhone 5 or better, you're going to be able to Craigslist it for the cost of the deductible, no problems. To me that makes the decision pretty easy to make. As long as you can Craigslist it for more than the deductible, get the insurance replacement. Then when you want a new phone you can sell your old one. Since you can sell the phone, I think that makes the comparison between the deductible and deciding to pay off the $100 now and start payments on the new phone less relevant. The real comparison I'd suggest looking at is the value of the phone and the deductible.


Buying a car is a very big financial decision.  There are three major factors to decide which car to buy: Pick two because you can't have all three.  You can either have a reliable car that has cheap running costs but will be expensive to buy or a cheap car that is unreliable.  If you are mechanically minded then reliability might not be that important to you.  However, if you must get to work on time every day then owning a car that breaks down once every six months might be something you wish to avoid. There are a lot of hidden costs that should be thought about very carefully when considering purchasing a car: In my country, annual car registration costs are around $650.  I budget around $1000 for maintenance each year (a major + minor service and some extra repair work).  When I factor in an amount for depreciation, that brings the running costs of the car to somewhere between $1500 and $2000 per annum before I've driven it anywhere. Generally I will fill up my car for $50 around once a month (I don't drive too often) which makes my total cost of ownership somewhere around $2500 per annum.  When I was driving my car to work daily, the petrol costs were much higher at around $50 per week, which made my TCO somewhere around $4500 p.a. And this is on an extremely reliable, fuel efficient 2006 model car which cost me $18k to purchase.  I have no debt on this car.  But the car itself is a liability.  Any car will be a liability. I understand that petrol prices are ridiculously low in the US and probably registration is lower as well.  In this case you will need to adjust your figures and do the maths to work out what your annual cost of ownership will be. There are three alternatives to car ownership to consider which may save you money: Public transportation and car pooling are highly recommended from a financial perspective, though you may not have access to either in your situation.  Moving closer to work may also be an option, though for many jobs this may increase your cost of living. If you decide that you do need a car and decide that $2000 is not going to get you the car you feel you need ($2000 usually does not get you much), you will need to decide how to finance the car. You will want to avoid most dealer-based finance deals.  Be very wary of any dealer offering interest free finance as they usually have some pretty nasty conditions. Getting a loan from your parents or another family member is usually the best option.  Otherwise consider getting a personal loan, which will have a lower interest rate than a credit card or dealer finance. Another option could be to get a credit card on an interest-free promotional deal which you could pay down before the interest kicks in.  Be warned though, these deals usually require you to pay off your whole balance before the due date or they will back-charge interest on the whole amount. In short, these are the decisions that you will need to make:


"This is easy but you won't like it. The reason you give away to large corporations is that you are communists and simply take so much tax that nobody in their right mind wants anything to do with you. This means you have to buy companies to make your economy work. If you cannot understand the difference between the word ""buy"" and ""give away"" then you have been suckered by this local government. The government has simply failed to perform efficiently and is trying to make up for it. We see the advertisements across the country, come here and be tax free for 10 years, as if it is a retail purchase item. Just put a spinner on your hat that says something stupid because it garners the same type of attention.  TLDR; NY is a nerd trying to buy friends."


You haven't indicated where the funds are held. They should ideally be held in NRO account. If you haven't, have this done ASAP. Once the funds are in NRO account, you can repatriate this outside of India subject to a limit of 1 million USD. A CA certificate is required. Please contact your Indian Bank and they should be able to guide you. There are no tax implications of this in US as much as I know, someone else may post the US tax aspect.


Bingo.   The problem is most people associate the warranty as “warranty vs. total replacement” ($300 now vs. $3,500 later) instead of “warranty vs. repair” ($300 now vs. potentially $300 later). The fun part is when they still charge you.   Edit: Your grandma has had the same appliances for 15+ years without needing any repairs.


Why? You will rarely find a good deal at a liquidation sale.....liquidators will come in and raise the prices well above what they ever sold at (higher than Kmart's average retail price) then slap some fake % off sale on it. The real deals are in the last couple days when everything is 90+% off...and even then, you might not find a great deal. (Kmart near me went out years ago...went on the last day and picked up a bunch of supplies they used in the store like copy machine toners and flipped it on ebay).


"2010 - What $20M looks like with hindsight of 7 years  Friend: ""Dude there is this new thing, you should grab some, it is $0.10 per.""  Me: ""So like a penny stock? Nah im good that seems like a waste.""  Friend: ""No man this is going to blow up and is the future.  Take like $500 buy some and it will be worth like $1000 next year.""  Me: ""Nah ill keep putting my $500 in safe investments making me 5-10% a year.""  Edit: I am aware I probably made the ""smart"" choice but turning $500 into even $200,000 would have been nice"


"Except it's not going to be ""Whole Foods"" as you know it. In the article it says how Amazon is planning to get rid of all the expensive whole food inventory and replace it with cheap foods with mass appeal. Their goal to to compete with Walmart.   I don't really believe Amazon bought Whole Foods for their products, but instead bought a struggling national grocery chain with tons premium real estate in high income neighborhoods."


"Alas, yes many did fall for that trap.  They either bough during the bubble, or attempted to ""catch the falling knife"" as the housing market crashed. (Many people who bought *after* the bubble burst ended up buying houses that were *still* overvalued, and have little or no equity as a result, even if they had saved and put ""good money"" into it as a down-payment.)"


It's likely that your bill always shows the 24th as the due date. Their system is programmed to maintain that consistency regardless of the day of the week that falls on. When the 24th isn't a business day it is good to error on the side of caution and use the business day prior.  It would have accepted using their system with a CC payment on the 24th because that goes through their automated system. I would hazard a guess that because your payment was submitted through your bank and arrived on the 23rd it wasn't credited because a live person would have needed to be there to do it and their live people probably don't work weekends. I do much of my bill paying online and have found it easiest to just build a couple days of fluff into the schedule to avoid problems like this. That said, if you call them and explain the situation it is likely that they will credit the late charge back to you.


"An ETF does not track any one individual stock. It ""is a marketable security that tracks an index, a commodity, bonds, or a basket of assets like an index fund."" Check out this link to learn more about ETFs. The easiest way see what ETF tracks a stock is to determine what sector and industry that company is in and find some ETF that trade it. The ETF will likely trade that stock, assuming that its market cap and exchange it trades on fits within the parameters of the ETF."


As everyone is saying, this depends on a lot of variables. However... I had my dad help me with the downpayment on my house. In my case, the cost of mortgage payment and all maintenance expenses is still lower than paying rent. If I sell my house and walk away from the closing office with just $1 then I've still come out ahead compared to renting. The New York Times has a fantastic tool figure out if it's a good idea to buy vs. rent. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html?_r=0 It's asks all the relevant questions, and then it tells you how cheap rent would have to be make it the better option.


no, not rampant BofA fraud  Fed pumping hundreds of billions in funny money and government pressure to make bad loans is why we had the bubble  the banks are being extorted by government...because they can (plus it makes Reddit think banks are evil...and not government)


And the card companies not only don't seem to care, they actively try to prevent public knowledge of the issue. I think Mythbusters was going to do a show about it, and on of the companies told Discovery they'd pull their large ad campaign if the show was aired.


She sold the rights to her photo. Burger King bought a stock photo. She no longer has any rights to control the photo.   She suddenly has a problem with the ad 5 years after it ran. Clearly just trying to milk money out of the company or get attention.


[] As you can see from the graphs above, as absolute distance from ATM (At The Money) increases, the ratio represented by Delta begins to approach 0:1 or 1:1. Meaning, as Delta approaches 1 the option price moves up 1 dollar for every 1 dollar the stock price moves up. As Delta approaches 0 the option price does not move as the stock price moves. As the absolute distance from ATM increases Gamma approaches zero (0). Meaning, as the price of the option increases or decrease the change in delta is at its highest as the option price is nearest the money. As the price of the option moves away from the money, in either direction, it changes less drastically. Interestingly, Delta is the first derivative of the value of the option price with respect to the underlying asset price. And Gamma is the first derivative of Delta. Definition of Delta Definition of Gamma


I agree. I think that is a good point, and that is also why I wanted to post and ask. If I could do this in a bear market I bet I could be Warren Buffett by the time my heart stops.  I use my benchmark as a mix of S&P, Nasdaq, and Russell 3000. I got a near flat market for 2015 (only 0.23%). I thought that was decent but yes the rest of the years have been quite bullish


This sounds like it makes no difference if you behave in the same manner (i.e. take the same vacation time). For example, say you work 1 hour and take 1 hour of vacation and the current hourly rate is $1/hour.  You would make $2. Using your formula, new rate = 1* (1+1)/1 = 1*2 = $2.  So they would pay you $2 for the hour you worked and then you would take the 1 hour of vacation with no pay. If you plan on taking LESS vacation than used in the formula, you make more money.  If you plan on taking MORE vacation, you make less money.


I work at a large bank, that isn't too unusual although a lot of banks are moving to fee-free basic accounts and upping their fees on other specific transactions. For example, my bank did away with minimum balance requirements to waive a monthly service fee, but we started charging $2/month for paper statements and upped our out-of-network ATM fee by 50 cents.  Would like to point out that most financial institutions will reorder your transactions slightly for the purposes of accounting. It is much easier to run all transactions in big batches at the end of the day than individually as they come in. Required disclosures you receive upon account opening explain the exact order but most banks do all credits (money in) first and then debits (money out) like checks, debit cards, and ACH payments after. If you overdraft you can usually avoid a fee if you make a cash deposit before the end of the business day as the cash will go into your account before your purchases are debited.  OCCASIONALLY this accounting-based reordering will result in additional fees but that is not the intended purpose of reordering them. And I would always refund any incurred fees that happened due to accounting-based transaction reordering.   What Wells Fargo is doing has been illegal since 2008 and their continued appeals are hoping to get the ruling overturned so they won't have to pay out restitution to affected customers. It's frankly despicable.


You continue with this form. The fact that the trade in value is less than market value doesn't mean that you don't have taxable income from the sale. Since you depreciated the car before selling it, you need to compare the trade in value not to the market value, but to your cost basis, which may be lower.


You should look into an inventory service that comes in and counts/weighs the bottles and kegs once a month. This keeps of inventory and keeps the bartenders accountable. Some restaurants do this daily which would be  consuming.  I’d also install cameras over every well and register. Bring the heat!


You’re conflating deductions with expenses, which are different. Revenue is all money collected. Income is revenue minus the sum of expenses and deductions and exemptions. You’re also treating direct subsidies as the only form of subsidisation, which would make the word “direct” superfluous, while ignoring indirect subsidies, which include deductions. And, no, not every business takes deductions and certainly not while simultaneously complaining (or standing idly by while others complain) about subsidies.


That information is the only way to get money wired directly into your account so you don't have a lot of options. You should be reasonably comfortable giving out that information as there checks and balances (as noted above) but more than this the banks tend to err on the side of avoiding a PR nightmare if someone uses routing/account to defraud their customer.  For bank security you should be more concerned about a) your credit card, only use secure https sites and ones you can see are dealing with lots of customers b) your identity, someone with your social security number, a recent bank statement and some basic information about you (like family, birth location etc) can assume your identity c) your bank login, be sure to create a strong password, pref 10 characters or more with numbers, symbols and upper & lower case. A site like http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/ can help here.


This is stupid.  Change the US tax law, that will fix it.    Apple is avoiding taxes by playing an overseas card, are you getting rid of your iPhone, too, if you are about to boycott Burger King?  Microsoft, is doing it, all the multinationals are playing games like this.  I am not blaming them, I am just saying.  More and more of the largest companies are leaving because of our excessive tax laws, we end up with lower net tax income as a result (fewer and fewer companies to pay the large taxes).  These taxes also make us less and less competitive.  Articles like this aren't going to cut it, waving a flag won't either.  Oh, and don't get me started on the total stupidity on taxing US citizens living overseas for overseas income, even if they haven't lived or worked in the US for years.   They have to pay whatever taxes of the country they are in, plus have to file and declare income to the US government, to also pay US taxes.  I think only USA is doing that, btw.  Look up how many people are force to give up their US citizenship because of these laws.  That, too, has to be changed.  The sooner the better.


UtR had legal permits to have a rally. Antifa showed up with the intentions of causing a huge disruption. The police and mayor have a role in this fabricated counter rally also. There were no American flags, so I highly doubt the people there were the true representatives of the Trump movement. But the media will use it anyway to make us look bad, even when 99% of real supporters do not advocate hate, racism and bigotry.  Where is all the outrage when Antifa, BLM or islamic extremists harm people? Is it silenced by the media because it doesnt perfectly frame the lefts narrative, like what happened recently?   Trump disavowed all violence. It truly doesnt matter because whatever he said, it was going to be used against him. Obama never disavowed BLM for their henious actions. Its what politicians do, I guess.


*It is true that people who are overweight, including myself, get that way because they eat too many calories relative to what their bodies need.*  This is highly controversial.  It is also possible that the Standard American Diet (SAD) is unsafe at any number of calories.  Quality may matter as much as quantity, and that is terrifying because we still don't have solid information about exactly what is best to eat, when, how, and why.


"One of the most effective tools we have to keep ourselves from doing things is procrastination.  Most of the time procrastination is a bad thing because we use it to avoid doing things we should be doing.  But it's equally effective at keeping us from doing things that are not good for us, like overspending or overeating. How do we procrastinate things like this?  Put it on a big, fat, TODO list somewhere that you seldom look at.  That will get it out of your head...your subconscious will not keep bugging you about it because it's not worried about forgetting it.  Save the discount code in the list so you know you will have it if you ever want it.  Put other things that you are unlikely to do any time soon on that same list.  Then move on with your life and enjoy your freedom from useless and expensive clutter. I use online TODO lists (also google docs) for keeping track of things I'm supposed to be doing.  One of my lists, ""long term purchases,"" contains a bunch of expensive stuff that I have wanted at some point but not gotten around to purchasing.  I think the list has saved me a lot of money.  Stuff stays on that list a long time.  Ultimately most of the items on the list either become cheap or I lose interest in them. There's a reason salesmen push you to buy NOW NOW NOW.  They know if you procrastinate the decision, you are much less likely to buy."


Well-defined definitions of a successful tax plan and its likely outcomes. Concrete, simple tax brackets. Hard numbers with real world value, not rhetorical promises washed through special interest groups and lobbyists. Well done.  There's no way the current administration will do anything remotely this intelligent.


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


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Non-electronic stock exchanges still exist because they used to exist. There are a lot of people in trading firms who grew up with floor trading and don't want to give it up, either because they feel more comfortable with it or because they might lose their job if they went away from it.


I hope so. I remember when chain Mexican restaurants started serving gigantic embarrassingly huge portions back in the 80s - couldn't believe it and no one could ever eat all that food. Even then I thought it was wasteful, extravagant and stupid. Who knew that it would also leads to dramatic increases of diabetes and death?


You need to read up on how QE works. Banks are not reinvesting deposits at the Fed in Equities. They are earning interest and sitting there, hence why the velocity of any money supply measure is far below where it used to be.


Tribes within which chiefs and elders occupy a position of privilege from which they expect tribute from those underneath them.  I would also hope modern society wishes more for itself than that which is available to tribes of primitive peoples.


"Not sure what your point is, but not all journalists are trying to predict the future. Some just report existing trends and let the readers make their own conclusions. The trend the article talked about was work, and therefore capital, flowing to cities. You said this trend would reverse over the next few years, because Trump. I'm not sure what you think that means. I would surmise that if America were to double down on ""Trump,"" we will lose the subsequent trade war, we will fail to invest in or heed science, we will fail to invest in national infrastructure (yes I know Trump promised this, but the Republicans only understand how to cut things,) and our healthcare system will be whittled away to something worse than it already is.   In that case, talented workers would not only stop going to cities, they would leave the country entirely."


It depends on the terms of the lease, but it's hard to imagine a lease that would allow to do this unilaterally with no strings attached.  That means it actually depends not on how much you like your landlady, but on how much she likes you. In general, by signing the lease you assume a contractual obligation to pay the rent every month for the entire term of the lease.  In theory, you can be sued if you don't do that. In practice, a lot depends on your relationship with your landlord, as well as the rental market in your area.  If the landlord can easily find a replacement tenant, they may be willing to allow you to leave early.  If the rental market is slow, they will be more likely to hold you to the agreement.  Obviously, if you have a good relationship with the landlord, they may be more inclined to go easy on you. As far as telling your landlady you want to terminate the lease early, unless she's a particularly nasty person, you can just go ahead and tell her you'd like to leave early.  What you can't do is actually stop paying rent.  If you're on reasonably good terms with your landlady, you could just tell her your situation and say you'd like to move out.  She may be willing to work out an arrangement where she lists the apartment while you're still living there, allows prospective tenants to view it while it's occupied, and then has you move out if and when someone else wants to move in (e.g., at the end of the month).  Again, exactly how this works will probably depend on the rental market. Assuming you're in the USA, here is a useful page with some info on breaking a lease.  As mentioned there, the legal details vary by state.


"You will be able to use the subsequent 4% matching contributions as repayments toward the HBP in the same tax year. You can designate it as such when you do your tax return for the year. Note that the first payment for HBP will be in the second year after you withdraw from your RRSP, but you are free to designate any contributions before this time toward the HBP repayment. One blog post indicates that if you pay more than the minimum amount in any year (including pre-payments prior to the first required payment), ""future payments will be the remaining amount owing divided by the number of payment years remaining."" My experience with my LLP repayment (similar to HBP) is the same."


This is what I'm planning on.  Retirement would be difficult, if not impossible, without the expected SS payments. In terms of current retirement planning, it's the difference between putting 20% of my income aside for retirement, and 35% of my income aside. It's one thing to keep the wealthy happy and tax free, it's another to deny 80% of the population something that they will have to have at some point.


Wish I could upvote this more than once. I built my company on my integrity and customer service. I have had numerous referrals through a few key elements such as * Showing up to every job ON TIME. you have no idea how much people appreciate it when you say you will be there at 1PM and show up at 12:56PM. * Breaking down what I am doing for the customer so they get a feel for what they are paying for (if they show interest, that is) * Eye contact, body language, and any other way you can exude honesty makes a world of a difference. I happen to be somewhat charming which assists me here, but anyone can do it.  I think these points have allow my business to grow faster than expected, and I am in a similar industry (electrical).


Add accounting as a second major, you'll look extra good and will be able to get a good paying job straight out out of school. All of my friends who have been accountants (sample size of two) have gotten very high paying internships with BOA ($25-$35 an hour), with guaranteed well paying jobs straight out of school. I went to a decent school, not great or anything. I got into finance because of a family member.   Finance and accounting are a great combo too, so it will increase your chances of breaking into finance. They often share a lot of courses, so it is not a difficult switch to make, and if you're going into your junior year it shouldn't add more than a year with a packed schedule; plus the classes are easy.


"Monsanto: ""you could literally drink 10 gallons of glyphosate and you'd be perfectly fine! Trust us, we've done the studies!!""  SeaWorld: ""we *only* care about the animals! No no no, we don't care at all about the profits. Seriously guys, double pinky swear!""  The shilling is real."


Silvrback is a blogging platform offering minimalistic writing experience without the distractions of the complex customization features. With multiple features like scheduling the blog post to using an efficient word editor, Silvrback is the best simple blogging platform that can help you make the impact you want to create with ease. With no ads features you get an uncluttered blogging platform for all your writing needs.


Altough this may vary a lot depending on where you live and your actual finance, here what convinced me buying a home instead of renting : Other benefits :


Your title question, Who could afford a higher premium who couldn't afford a higher monthly payment?, contrasts premium with monthly payment, but those are the same thing.  In the body of your question, you list monthly payment and deductible, which is entirely different. The deductible is paid only if you need that much medical care in any one year.  Most years a person in good health pays little because of the deductible.  Thus, the higher deductible options offer catastrophic health insurance without giving much in the way of reimbursement for regular medical expenses. Note - the original question has been edited since.


We, “M.M.K. Engineering Co. Pvt Ltd”, are operating in the industry from 2001, as a credible manufacturer, Fabrication, supplier & exporters of an exclusive range of Industrial Valves & Accessories. Our objective is to provide the finest quality range of products to the customers. Furthermore, we have received repeated orders from our customers due to the superior quality, optimum performance, corrosion resistance, robust construction and easy installation. Our sincere team has supported us in providing the best quality products to our clients at cost-effective prices. Besides,our team has shown utmost dedication in upgrading our facilities and product line so as to stay at par with the current industrial standards. Our team has been working in close proximity with the patrons, which in turn helps in timely meeting their required specifications.  Under the able guidance of our mentor, Mr Aziz Khan, we have become one of the reputable organizations in the industry. His leadership abilities and rich domain experience have allowed us to work as a cooperative team.


Although valuable details are available using the internet keywords offered, it is still important to seek advice from people who have had the surgery treatment about the opinions of experts. This way, you can gain knowledge from the personal encounters of others and know what can be expected. All of these things can help you choose the right Eye Doctor in Barrington IL.


No, you can't claim personal expenses as business expenses. What is the alternative to paying someone to do your chores? Letting the chores go undone.  How does it affect your business if your household chores go undone? It doesn't; it only affects your personal life--that's why they are personal expenses.


First pay yourself. When you get salary, send some parts of that (for example 10%) to your saving account.  Step by step you'll save nice money ;)


I wish him the best - recently left a company that was using ADP and they have **major** issues.  Based on what I saw they'd be my last choice for a payroll company, so if he can force them to fix those practices it would probably give them a significant boost in customer retention.


Interest rates do generally affect house prices but other factors do too, especially the unemployment rate. However, everything else being equal, when interest rates drop, it makes the borrowing of money cheaper so tends to stimulate the economy and the housing market, increasing the demand for houses and generally causes house prices to increase (especially if the supply of new housing doesn't increase with the demand). When interest rates go up the opposite happens. Usually interest rates go down in order to stimulate  a slowing economy and interest rates go up to slow down an overheated economy. Regarding your situation you are able to get a 30 year fixed rate at today’s interest rates (in Australia the longest fixed rate you can get is for 10 years and the rate is usually 1 or 2 percent higher than the standard variable rate. Most people here go for the variable rate or a fixed rate of between 1 to 3 years). This means that even if rates do go up in the future you won't be paying a higher rate, which is a positive for you. You are buying the house to live in so as long as you can keep making the repayments you should not be too worried if the price of the house drops sometime in the future, because if your house has dropped and you want to sell to buy another house to live in, then that house would have also dropped relative to yours (give or take). So your main worry is that rates will go up causing both house prices to fall and unemployment to rise, and you yourself losing your job and eventually your house. It is a risk, but what you need to consider is if you can manage that risk. Firstly, I believe rates won't be going up in the US for a number of years, and if and when they do start going up they will most probably start going up slowly. So you have some time on your side. Secondly, what can you do between now and when interest rates do start going up in a few years: Try to put more saving away to increase your safety net from 6 months to 12 months or more, or make extra repayments into your home loan so that you are ahead if things do go wrong. If you are worried that you could lose your job, what can you do to reduce your chances of losing your job or increasing your chances of getting a new job quickly if you do lose it? Improve your current skills, get new skills, become an invaluable employee, or look at possible opportunities to start your own business. Do your own research on the types of houses you are looking at buying, the more houses you look at the better prepared you will be when the right house at the right price comes along, and the less chance that you will be rushed into buying what might be an overpriced house. So to sum it up; do as much research as you can, have an understanding of what your risks are and how you are going to manage those risks.


Its dismissive because it's in reply to the absolute nonsense that makes up Trump support and Trump's own words. At some fucking point, it's ok to put a line in the sand without writing a dissertation about the line. What needs to be said has been said. Provide some real substance or fuck right on off. Good Day sir.


The DOD is socialism for the working class. It creates  millions of jobs. We need a solution to shift those people from making guns, to building bridges, and fiber internet lines. So those jobs are secure but the money is well spent.


Several options: Banks - ask in the branches near to you if any of them would do that. They generally only service their account members, but if you smile and talk nicely to the tellers they might do that for you. It may involve some nominal commission. Check cashing places - they're everywhere, and they carry large denomination bills. They will probably do that, but will likely charge a commission. Money orders - if you don't want to give a personal check, buy a money order at the post office, and dump the cash on them. It costs a nominal fee ($1.60 at USPS).


I don't get that comparison at all. The guy still gets his. Business profits go up and down. Real CEO's figure out how to make more profits under given circumstances. Whiny children complain about it not being fair and fire all their staff out of spite.  If I was a shareholder I'd be worried. Not about Obama but about the loose cannon CEO that is threatening to devalue my stock out of spite because he doesn't know how to run a business properly.


"Outside of broadly hedging interest rate risk as I mentioned in my other answer, there may be a way that you could do what you are asking more directly: You may be able to commit to purchasing a house/condo in a pre-construction phase, where your bank may be willing to lock in a mortgage for you at today's rates. The mortgage wouldn't actually be required until you take ownership from the builder, but the rates would be set in advance. Some caveats for this approach: (1) You would need to know the house/condo you want to move into in advance, and you would be committing to that move today. (2) The bank may not be willing to commit to rates that far in advance. (3) Construction would likely take far less than 5 years, unless you are buying a condo (which is the reason I mention condos specifically). (4) You are also committing to the price you are paying for your property. This hedges you somewhat against price fluctuation in your future area, but because you currently own property, you are already somewhat hedged against property price fluctuation, meaning this is taking on additional risk. The 'savings' associated with this plan as they relate to your original question (which are really just hedging against interest rate fluctuations) are far outweighed by the external pros and cons associated with buying property in advance like this. By that I mean - if it was something else you were already considering, this might be a (small) tick in the ""Pro"" column, but otherwise is far too committal / complex to be considered for interest rate hedging on its own."


Congratulations!  You own a (very small) slice of Apple. As a stockholder, you have a vote on important decisions that the company makes.  Each year Apple has a stockholder meeting in Cupertino that you are invited to.  If you are unable to attend and vote, you can vote by proxy, which simply means that you register your vote before the meeting.  You just missed this year's meeting, which was held on February 26, 2016.  They elected people to the board of directors, chose an accounting firm, and voted on some other proposals.  Votes are based on the number of shares you own; since you only own one share, your vote is very small compared to some of the other stockholders. Besides voting, you are entitled to receive profit from the company, if the company chooses to pay this out in the form of dividends.  Apple's dividend for the last several quarters has been $0.52 per share, which means that you will likely receive 4 small checks from Apple each year. The value of the share of stock that you have changes daily.  Today, it is worth about $100.  You can sell this stock whenever you like; however, since you have a paper certificate, in order to sell this stock on the stock market, you would need to give your certificate to a stock broker before they can sell it for you. The broker will charge a fee to sell it for you.  Apple has a website for stockholders at investor.apple.com with some more information about owning Apple stock.  One of the things you'll find here is information on how to update your contact information, which you will want to do if you move, so that Apple can continue to send you your proxy materials and dividend checks.


I don't want to get involved in trading chasing immediate profit  That is the best part. There is an answer in the other question, where a guy only invested in small amounts and had a big sum by the time he retired. There is good logic in the answer. If you put in lump sum in a single stroke you will get at a single price. But if you distribute it over a time, you will get opportunities to buy at favorable prices, because that is an inherent behavior of stocks. They inherently go up and down, don't remain stable. Stock markets are for everybody rich or poor as long as you have money, doesn't matter in millions or hundreds, to invest and you select stocks with proper research and with a long term view. Investment should always start in small amounts before you graduate to investing in bigger amounts. Gives you ample time to learn. Where do I go to do this ?  To a bank ? To the company, most probably a brokerage firm. Any place to your liking. Check how much they charge for brokerage, annual charges and what all services they provide. Compare them online on what services you require, not what they provide ? Ask friends and colleagues and get their opinions. It is better to get firsthand knowledge about the products. Can the company I'm investing to be abroad? At the moment stay away from it, unless you are sure about it because you are starting. Can try buying ADRs, like in US. This is an option in UK. But they come with inherent risk. How much do you know about the country where the company does its business ? Will I be subject to some fees I must care about after I buy a stock? Yes, capital gains tax will be levied and stamp duties and all.


"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."


This is probably more of an /r/AskReddit than a /r/finance question, but whatever.   From the title I was going to tell you to start working on your resume- if a company is having trouble paying wages it is not a good sign. But the text makes it sound like the company's financial health is fine and the HR department is just totally incompetent. Go back to them with a smile on your face and just be polite but persistent until they fix the problem. Ask nicely and they may be able to cut you a check on the spot or pay you out of petty cash.   People screw up repeatedly and it sucks. When your coworkers screw up your priorities should be fixing the problem but also embarrassing them as little as possible in the process.


This makes a lot of sense for Apple considering the current lawsuits between them and Qualcomm. It would also mean even more control over the hardware manufacturing of their products, and they definitely have the cash for it. Sounds like a good idea all around.


"This is yet another in a long series of ""stop whining, the economy is fine"" articles.  It's a lie.  The economy is not fine.   There are good points in the article and it is important to not be misled by bad statistics, but he works hard to pretend that there are not problems in places where those problems are evident in the statistics.   He claims that falling labor force participation rate is because the statistics don't adjust to an increasing percentage of retirees, but everyone I know talks about the 25-54 statistics, in which retirement is negligible.  When you compare those to overall numbers, it shows big problems in the 25-54 numbers, and that people over 54 are working more and longer than they used to, not retiring sooner, an indication that they can't afford retirement.  He claims stagnation in median household income is misleading  because of a 5% drop in hours worked, which is completely bogus given the scale of the difference we're talking about.  Then he dismisses the disconnect between productivity and median wages by claiming that it's inappropriate to compare an average with a median, despite the fact that that's exactly what inequality is."


The cold caller is just a different way to contact you compared to the junk mail that they send. The business  gets information from the credit rating companies for households that meet a specific set of criteria. It could be town, age, home ownership, low credit utilization...Or the exact opposite depending on what they are selling. Some business do sell your data. Grocery store know who buys certain products: parents buying diapers may want to start saving for college; ones buying acne medicine may want to talk about lower rates for car insurance.  When they call via phone they have a different success rate compared to junk mail, but for that business that may be acceptable for their needs.


Yep that wasn't a shot at you. I had to read the article to determine if it meant that:  A.) A rule exists that makes it easier to sue banks, and republicans are killing it, OR  B.) Republicans are killing a rule, creating a situation that makes it easier to sue banks


No way.  The ride sharing space is big enough for multiple successful players.  Good analogy is soft drinks - if Warren Buffet puts money into Coke, that doesn't mean Pepsi is going out of business.  Also, Google has a large stake in Uber.  An investment in Lyft would mean Alphabet believes in the ridesharing industry and they're hedging.


Usually I've seen people treat the dividend like a separate cash flow, which is discounted if the company doesn't have a well-established dividend history. I've never really seen dividends rolled into a total return chart (except in the context of an article), probably because dividend reinvestment is a nightmare of record-keeping in a taxable account, and most folks don't do it. One of my brokers (TD Ameritrade) does allow you to plot dividend yield historically on their charts.


REIT's usually invest in larger properties (apartment complexes), individuals usually invest in small properties (single units, duplexes, fourplexes, etc). REIT's also invest in a lot of commercial properties - malls, commercial and business office buildings, etc. These are very different markets. Not to mention the risk spread, geographical spread, research, management and maintenance that someone has to do for REIT and it comes out of the earnings (while your own rentals you can manage yourself, if you want), etc.


You should examine the letter more closely.  Most letters in this area are ones which inform you of a proposed settlement of a class action (not the initiation of a class action), and that you may be a member of the class.  A main point of such a letter is normally that if you take no action, you will be included in the settlement class.   Usually there are no major consequences to not opting out of the class other than you will lose the ability to get a lawyer and sue the defendants for the actions in question. To obtain benefits from the settlement, you will typically be required to submit documentation of the nature of your membership in the class.  This may be easy or hard.  The benefits are described in the materials, and could be substantial but usually are close to trivial, such as a coupon for $10 off when purchasing another product from the defendant.


"> Everything isn't about you?  I'm Ron Burgundy?  > Do statistics only matter when they correlate directly to you?  No, but they have to directly relate to *someone*!  Median income represents no individual.  These collective statistics are a meaningless metric when looking at providing a life for yourself and your family.  These ""news"" articles are meaningless.  What is the purpose here?  The ""middle class"" is poorer!  What does that even mean?  What are you trying to say?  This is nothing but a distraction, all to earn clicks to get ad money."


"equifax is not too big to fail. equifax needs to be made an example of. congress should be trying to start to legislate some privacy for us citizens like germany/eu. this just shows that the government is very unconcerned about our privacy. they could at least fake it. EDIT: i realized i am a hypocrite. i trashed hillary for her ""public/private positions"" and here i am asking for it. i feel defeated."


"> Being concerned for people isn't naive, it is naive to think slightly above minimum wage retail employees ever had a fighting chance.  > You are naive to think these people ever had a chance to begin with.  > It is naive and gullible to think the Sears' employees ever had a chance.  When did I say they had a fighting chance?  What part of ""fucked"" leads you to believe that they had a fighting chance?  Surely everything I've said is that they did not, do not and will not have a fighting chance.  If I thought they had a chance I wouldn't be so upset.  To repeat myself yet again - these people are fucked.  All people working in retail are fucked;  and it's very likely that there's going to be a collapse and almost everyone without a specific technical skill that's in demand is going to be fucked.    _All these people are fucked.  They never had a fighting chance.  Things were bad for them when they were working; things are going to be much worse for them now.  And I am sad._  Is this clear to you now?  This is what I've said from the beginning - but somehow simply expressing sympathy for all these people getting fucked is so controversial that people somehow feel compelled to claim that I'm a supporter of exploitative capitalism.  > The good news is a $9/hr job is easier to find than a $100,000/year job. These Sears employees can go work at Khols or Panera Bread for very little loss in income.  Can you give me any evidence of your claim?  There are five job searchers for every open position in the United States.  Businesses are not expanding, why would they be hiring unskilled labor?  They're sitting on large piles of cash, waiting for the recession to end - and if it doesn't, why, they now have a guaranteed pool of labor at near-slavery prices.    Even if we had enlightened businesses, which we do not, the logical thing to do during a recession is not to hire unskilled labor and have them sit around all day, but upgrade the training on your skilled labor force, modernize your infrastructure, streamline your processes, so when the recession lifts you have a modern company that can outcompete others.  Look to Germany for a guide.  The German Model, where businesses, the unions and the government _cooperate_ to keep their companies efficient and their jobs profitable, has _worked_ for two generations.  The fact that they can compete aggressively in the world markets, provide a social safety net for their citizens, while also paying at least part of the costs for the kleptocracies in the EU (we're looking at you, Greece) shows how effective it is."


I’ve stopped using uber after hearing the podcasts of lyft. They may be farther behind but it’s because they want to take care of their employees. They’re growing at the rate is required to maintain the company where Uber is trying to grow Tesla style.


I am trying to learn about Collateralized Loan Obligation (CLO) and I was wondering how the tranches are created in terms of priority. When an investor comes to CLO manager to buy a stake or a tranch, do they get to decide what type of tranch they want? Less risky one that gets paid first or higher risky one that gets paid last but more? Or is it like first come first serve basis?


Former pension/retirement/401(k) administrator here.  1.  If you don't want to bother with maintaining your own investments, you can 'roll-over' your existing 401(k) into *your new company's 401(k) plan*.  Then you will choose your investments in the new plan, you will be 100% vested in 'rollover account'.  2.  If you want control over your own investments (recommended!) you can roll over your existing 401(k) into an IRA (Individual Retirement Account).  Then *your entire account* will go into your new IRA.  3.  You can take part, or all, of your existing account as cash, paid directly to you.  Note that this will trigger *20% mandatory Federal Withholding* on whatever goes straight to you.  So some of your money is going to the IRS.


"Hmm, this would seem to be impossible by definition.  The definition of an ""index fund"" is that it includes exactly the stocks that make up the index. Once you say ""... except for ..."" then what you want is not an index fund but something else. It's like asking, ""Can I be a vegetarian but still eat beef?"" Umm, no. There might be someone offering a mutual fund that has the particular combination of stocks that you want, resembling the stocks making up the index except with these exclusions. That wouldn't be an index fund at that point, but, etc. There are lots of funds out there with various ideological criteria. I don't know of one that matches your criteria. I'd say, search for the closest approximation you can find. You could always buy individual stocks yourself and create your own pseudo-index fund. Depending on how many stock are in the index you are trying to match and how much money you have to invest, it may not be possible to exactly match it mathematically, if you would have to buy fractions of shares. If the number of shares you had to buy was very small you might get killed on broker fees. And I'll upvote @user662852's answer for being a pretty close approximation to what you want."


Patents grant one company or individual a coercive monopoly on an idea.  One cannot own information...information is neither scarce nor rivalrous.   “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”  -George Bernard Shaw   Granting someone a monopoly on an idea is a wrong in practical terms, as stories like these, and the various patent trolling occurring in the tech sector demonstrate.  Patent/copyright protect neither the fashion nor the food industry (in terms of recipes) and those industries thrive, as well as constantly innovate (indeed, they are *forced* to innovate, since they cannot monopolize one idea and rest on their laurels).  Coercively preventing someone from doing as they will with an idea using their own resources is morally wrong because you are denying their freedom to act using their own body, and justly owned property.  By building a chair using my own tools and materials, that happens to look similar to another chair someone else built 1000 miles away using their own resources, I've done nothing to deprive the other chair builder of his property...yet under current law, I can be prosecuted (i.e. fined, jailed, and beaten if I attempt to resist) if he has been granted a legal monopoly to that design...whether I've ever even seen his chair or not.    On both ideological and pragmatic grounds, the concept of patents is a failure.


"The type of ""office job"" and the level at which you're expected to perform (usually relative to the compensation) need to be considered.  Just because you know Susie, the slacker data entry specialist I, can play on Facebook and Snap chat in between her poor attempts at being productive doesn't mean that all office jobs are like this.  Susie probably isn't expected to get very much done and is most likely compensated as such, most likely less than a good manufacturing or laborer's job."


"Dude, it's your lucky day!  You just won the lottery!! Do like this guy and sue them for $67 million :-) Pearson v. Chung, better known as the ""pants lawsuit"",1 is a civil   case filed in 2005 by Roy L. Pearson, Jr., an administrative law judge   in the District of Columbia in the United States, following a dispute   with a dry cleaning company over a lost pair of trousers.  Pearson   filed suit against Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung, the   owners of Custom Cleaners in Washington, D.C., initially demanding $67   million for inconvenience, mental anguish and attorney's fees for   representing himself, as a result of their failure, in Pearson's   opinion, to live up to a ""satisfaction guaranteed"" sign that was   displayed in the store.  The case drew international attention[2][3]   when it went to trial in 2007 and has been held up as an example of   frivolous litigation and the need for tort reform in the United   States. The entire story dragged on for years, with many appeals, and makes fascinating reading."


It misses :-  [My Hero](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233084/) , [The Goodies](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065296/) , [Monty Python's Flying Circus](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063929/) - understandably .  The [Carry On](http://www.imdb.com/keyword/carry-on/) series - eg. [Carry On Up the Khyber](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062782/) . [Bless This House](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066633/) . [George and Mildred](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073995/) . [Man about the House](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069607/) .  and stand up's :-  [The Morecambe & Wise Show](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063930/) , [The Two Ronnies](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066721/) , [Alas Smith & Jones](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088475/) , [The Dave Allen Show](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131162/) .


The other factor in increasing disability claims is that during an up economy, someone with a disability can probably get a job doing what little they are able to.  Go through a down turn, and no employer is going to hire a worker that has a known disability that might in any way limit their productivity.  So having a disability can go from having a lower paid job, to having no job and no chance of getting one.


"The answer to your question depends on what you mean when you say ""growth"".  If you mean a literal increase in the aggregate market capitalization of companies, across the entire market, then, no, this sort of growth is not possible without concomitant economic growth.  The reason why is that the market capitalization of each company is proportional to its gross revenue, and the sum of all revenue from selling ""final goods"" (i.e., things purchased and used by consumers) is, apart from a few technicalities, the definition of GDP.  The exact multiplier might fluctuate up or down depending on investors' expectations about how sales will grow or decline going forward, but in a zero-growth economy this multiplier should be stable over the long run.  It might, however, still fluctuate over the short term, but more about that in a minute.   Note that all of this applies to aggregate growth across all firms.  Individual firms can still grow, of course, but as they must do this by gaining market share from other companies such growth would be balanced by a decline for some other firm.  Also, I've assumed zero net exports (that's one of the ""technicalities"" I mentioned above) because obviously you could have export-driven growth even if the domestic economy were stationary. However, often when people talk about ""growth"" in the market, what they really mean is ""return"".  That is, how much does your investment earn for you.  This isn't really the same thing as growth, but people often think of it that way, particularly in the saving phase of their investing career, when they are reinvesting their returns, and therefore their account balances are growing.  It is possible to have a positive return, averaged across the market, even in a stationary economy.  The reason why is that there are really only two things a firm can do with its net profits.  One possibility is that it could invest it in growing the business.  However, there is not much point in doing that in a stationary economy because by assumption no increase in aggregate consumption (and therefore, in the long run, aggregate production) are possible.  Therefore, firms are left with only the second option, which is to pay them out to investors as dividends.  Those dividends provide a return that is independent of economic growth. Would the stock market still be a good investment in such an economy?  Yes.  Well, sort of.  The rate of return from firms' dividend payouts will depend on investors' demand (in aggregate) for returns on their investments.  Stock prices will rise or fall, causing returns to respectively fall or rise, to find that level.  If your personal desire for returns is lower than the average across the investing public, then the stock market would look like a good investment.  If your desired return is higher than the average, then it will look like a poor investment.  The marginal investor will, of course be indifferent.  The practical upshot of this is that the people who invest in the stock market in this scenario will be precisely the ones for whom the stock market is a good investment, given their personal propensity to save and desire for returns, and so forth. Finally, you mentioned that in your scenario the GDP stagnation is due to declining population.  I am less certain what this means for investment, but my first thought is that you would have a large retired population selling its investments to fund late-life consumption, and you would have a comparatively small (relative to history) working population buying those assets.  This would lead to low asset prices, and therefore high rates of return.  However, that's assuming that retirees need to sell assets to fund their retirement consumption.  If the absolute returns on retirees' assets are large enough to fund their retirement consumption then you would wind up with relatively few sellers, resulting in high prices and therefore relatively low rates of return.  It's not obvious to me which effect would dominate, and so it's hard to say whether or not the resulting returns would look attractive to the working-age population."


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"I gather from your mention of ""stamp duty"" that you're in Britain?  I'm only familiar with US cards, but for them I can't see that there is any reason (other than a lack of self-discipline) not to use a credit card wherever possible, especially these days. 1) There are plenty of cards with no annual fee. 2) You get anywhere from 1-5% discount/cash back on purchases. 3) Many will give you sign-up bonuses, and a year or more of zero interest.  (So you put that money in your investment account, and odds are you make a profit on it.) 4) Even after the introductory 0% interest period, you get on average about a month of 0% interest between purchase and due date, during which period the money can be earning interest for you. I've made a good many thousands of dollars over the years doing this.  Again, the only drawback I can see is that you may not have the self-discipline to pay off the accounts before they start charging interest."


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Started as pt at a grocery store. Will never get used to throwing all that good meat out. Still has 2 days but there's fresher stock in back. It seems having bold and full shelves is the reason. They throw out food to have that clean magazine photo look of a store.


The pharma company gets paid for the use of a drug, regardless of what they are used for.  FDA rules prohibit pharma companies from promoting (in any fashion) the use of their products for non-labelled uses. This includes situation where there is some scientific and clinical evidence for the products use, but they do not have formal approval yet.  In these situations, doctors are allowed to use their judgement on what would work for their patient. If the doctor chooses to use a particular product for treatment, then they can.  However, payers (i.e. insurance companies) can choose whether or not to reimburse a drug for off-label use. If they don't, then the patient would need to pay out of pocket.


I would recommend against loans from family members. But if you decide to go down that path take care of the basics: This is a business decision so treat it like one. I would add that the situation you describe sounds extremely generous to your family member. I'd look at standard loan agreements (ie. in the marketplace) and model your situation more on them - if you do this, even with you paying a premium, you'd never come up with something as generous as what you have described.


"You're just outright wrong.    I'm sure if you post an ask reddit asking about people who smoke and what they do for a living you will be outright amazed at the cross section you find.  I make 6 figures, work my but off, and run a consulting business on the side and I'm a regular smoker.    I have co-workers who are regular smokers who also make 6 figures, in fact of the people I work with that smoke, the lowest paid makes somewhere in the 70k range.    Now, that anecdotal evidence is not super compelling as there are confounding factors.  But it's far more compelling than ""This is how it is because this is how I feel it is"", which seems to be the gist of your responses."


"When people talk about ""the price"" of a stock, they usually mean one of the following: Last price:  The price at which a trade most recently took place.  If someone sold (and someone else bought) shares of XYZ for $20 each, then until another trade occurs, the last price of the stock will be quoted at $20. Bid price: The highest price at which someone is currently offering to buy the stock. Ask price: The lowest price at which someone is currently offering to sell the stock. As you can see, all of these are completely determined by the people buying and selling the stock."


Yes, I think so. The goverment should fix the loopholes of tax laws. Apple is very smart to take advantages of them. If you run your own business. What should you do? You will do like APPL or pay taxes for the Government?


Which sucks.  I'm a liberal gun owner, and I'd love to support the NRA because I want to support gun rights... but I just cant bring myself to do it since I'm directly funding the campaigns of a bunch of republicans I disagree with on... well... everything else.


No. There's no inherent reason to link the place that you bank with any other financial service. There may occasionally be benefits; for instance you can sometime get lower rates on mortgages or loans by having a a checking account with an institution. Or perhaps it'll be easier for you to make a same-day payment on a credit account. There could be some negatives as well. If you fall behind on a loan account, the bank may take money from your savings/checking account to satisfy your debt. Choose a bank or CU that's convenient to you. Choose a credit card from whatever bank or CU provides you with the best benefits. If that credit card is coming from a CU that requires a savings account for membership, open a minimum balance savings account and apply for the product you're interested in. If your credit is as good as you claim, they'll be happy to offer you the credit card regardless of whether you do your day-to-day banking with them.


This company is doesn't actually sell tangible goods.  Just a process.  And apparently fails at succeeding?  Sheesh.   I bet the owner dropped out of college, is constantly seeking initial investors for random ideas to come to life, gets money, buys more coke.


"Barring unusual circumstances, a healthy adult is **absolutely** able to come off a domestic flight ""in a functional state"" and ""be operational at a high level.""   EDIT: someone else pointed out the issue of in-flight productivity. If you're working on the plane (and the work is worth doing on the plane given the price of the upgrade), then it's a different situation."


In Singapore, this is sufficiently common that the Singapore IRS has a page on their website dedicated to informing employers of how to properly pay this under Responsibilites of an Employer.   Specifically, tax paid by employer is taxable income for the employee (as it's really the employee's responsibility), so they must pay tax for that tax.  A tax-on-tax is computed for the tax paid, which also would be owed by the employer if they were paying the full tax rate for the employee. As a clarification, this is not the employer being truly responsible for the employee's income; this is the employer compensating the employee further to offset their taxable income.  This is effectively a fringe benefit, although it may be particularly useful in countries where either tax evasion is common (and thus an employer must compete with employers willing to pay under the table) or where employers are competing with others in nearby countries with lower tax rates.  It is not the same thing as the employer making your income nontaxable, though, and has implications for your tax filing. Significantly, it is likely that if you have additional income beyond income from that employer, it is likely to be taxed at your highest tax rate, as the employer will likely calculate the tax due based on their income being the only income you have in that year. *Edit based on emphasis in question: I'm not from Singapore nor am I a lawyer, but based on my reading of the IRAS website, it looks like you do not have to file if you have no other source of income, because they have a No-Filing Service which takes income information from your employer automatically and generates a tax bill, which presumably would be fully paid in your case.  This only aplies if you have no other sources of income, however; you still have to file if you have other sources of income since your employer would not know about them. If you are eligible for this service, you should get a letter informing you as such.  They also have a tool to check your filing status on their website.


You can calculate the fully diluted shares by comparing EPS vs diluted (adjusted) EPS as reported in 10K. I don't believe they report the number directly, but it is a trivial math exercise to reach it. The do report outstanding common stock (basis for EPS).


The fact base evidence is reinforcing the understanding that dramatic increases in minimum wage is detrimental in the short and long term for marginal workers.  I suppose we can stick on head in the sand but I would rather call it the way it is.  The politicians jumping up and down demanding increased minimum wages are only looking for the short-term publicity.   By time everyone realizes it was a rotten deal the politicians will be long gone.


Was Denninger ever not fed up? Dude seems to be in a perpetual state of rage. Kind of amazing that he has time to run a business what with all the blogging, TV interviews, radio shows, book-writing, etc. Much of what he says makes sense but it's hard to take him seriously when his presentation is so juvenile.


I am not an accountant and this is not tax or other legal advice! :-) Provided you were tax-compliant in Ireland for the tax years that the US money was earned I believe you are OK. This page makes the statements: Income earned prior to moving to Ireland If you are moving to Ireland for the first time or you are an Irish citizen returning to live in Ireland and you were not resident or ordinarily resident when the income was earned, the position will be as follows: Funds accumulated from income earned prior to the beginning of the tax year in the year that you become resident in Ireland will not be liable to income tax.   However, income other than employment income arising between the beginning of the tax year and the date of your arrival will be taxable if brought into Ireland, unless a double taxation agreement provides for a different treatment. which seems to back this up.


"it is the amount of trust you put in the investments... to be honest, noone could've predicted anything because it was a new market, along with a whole new type of currency (also along with no banks or institutions that could ""alter"" the natural way a currency would evolve)"


My current strategy is long equity in blue chips with limited growth but large profits... Some call that value investing.  GM, AAPL, BRK.B have done very well for me. VZ is a notable straggler. Regardless, my overall positions have grown considerably :)  Not a fan of shorting... but TSLA would be my short of choice since it is very expensive to short SHLD.


I'd suggest you start with a budget that includes savings, the minimum payment for those loans, estimates for recurring expenses, entertainment, and lifestyle items. That will let you baseline how much money you need for the lifestyle you want to have. Then apply your income to that model and whatever is left distribute out to your loans starting with the highest risk (not forgivable in bankruptcy/would make you homeless if you don't pay) and highest interest rate.


I'll give it a shot, even though you don't seem to be responding to my comment. SIPC insures against fraud or abuse of its members. If you purchased a stock through a SIPC member broker and it was held in trust by a SIPC member, you're covered by its protection. Where you purchased the stock - doesn't matter. There are however things SIPC doesn't cover. That said, SIPC members are SEC-registred brokers, i.e.: brokers operating in the USA. If you're buying on the UK stock exchange - you need to check that you're still operating through a US SIPC member. As I mentioned in the comment - the specific company that you mentioned has different entities for the US operations and the UK operations. Buying through them on LSE is likely to bind you with their UK entity that is not SIPC member. You'll have to check that directly with them.


I did find this information from the US Department of the Treasury: What are the penalties for withdrawing money early from a Time Certificate of Deposit (CD)? Federal law stipulates that all time certificates of deposit (CD) that are cashed out early are subject to a minimum penalty. If you withdraw an amount within the first six days after deposit, the penalty consists of at least seven days' simple interest. Other than that, national banks can set their own penalties; there is no maximum. Additionally, you may want to review the Account Agreement that the bank provided when you opened the account, as it explains the early withdrawal penalties. Check the paperwork to see if there is a short period at the start where the penalty is minimal. Each bank can set their own rules for the maximum penalty. Some base it on x months interest, some as a percentage of the CD, others may use a more complex formula.


What about the debt attached to more recently purchased properties, purchased at the price before the market gets flooded with baby-boomer homes? I'm not an expert in real estate finance, but it sounds like if that downward pressure on prices isn't slight, financial institutions will be taking that risk for anyone who defaults on a mortgage after their property loses a substantial amount of its value.  It seems like immigration could play an important role in offsetting this and keeping the prices stable, but that's a politically unpredictable issue to say the least.


"Gold had value because it could be stamped with a value.  The value is the number on the coin.   Gold really doesn't have intrinsic value and it's value during a actual famines is very very low.  For more info, see a very interesting digression in ""Wealth of Nations."""


"What are you trying to do Exactly?  What is a covariance ""profile""? (Cov Matrix)?   Also lose the jargon.  From my understanding you want the same covariance in the portfolio, however it doesn't work like that as covariance is an observed matrix. It's hard enough to target variance in a portfolio (see GMV) and to target covariance would be even more difficult. You can attempt to use the weights you have right now in terms of exposures, but LEAPS may give you unwanted theta.   Are you long short or long only? if you're long only the interplay between the positions is rather irrelevent, as right now all that matters are the weights."


Without knowing the specifics it is hard to give you a specific answer, but most likely the answer is no. If they limit the participation in the site to accredited investors, this is probably not something they are doing willingly, but rather imposed by regulators. Acredited investors have access to instruments that don't have the same level of regulatory protection & scrutiny as those offered to the general public, and are defined under Regulation D.  Examples of such securities are 144A Shares, or hedgefunds.


If you are looking for a simple formula or buying order / strategy to guarantee a lower buying price, unfortunately this does not exist.  Otherwise, all investors would employ this strategy and the financial markets would no longer have an validity (aka arbitrage).  Buying any investment contains a certain level of risk (other than US treasuries of course). Having said that, there are many option buying strategies that can employed to help increase your ROR or hedge an existing position.  Most of these strategies are based a predicted future direction of a stock on the investor's part.  For example, you hold the Ford stock and feel they are releasing their earnings report next week.  You feel that they will not meet investors' expectations.  You don't want to sell your shares but what you can do is buy put options.  If the stock does indeed go down then you make money on your put options. Here is a document on options.  It is moderately technical but very good if you want a good introduction on the subject.  The strategy that I described above is on pg 33. http://www.m-x.ca/f_publications_en/en.guide.options.pdf


Traders trade for a living, stockbrokers tell people to get involved in trades for a living. To be employed as a trader, you need a proven track record of being able to consistently make money. To be employed as a stockbroker, you need to get licensed but you don't need to prove you can consistently make money.


"Hearing somewhere is a level or two worse than ""my friend told me.""  You need to do some planning to forecast your full year income and tax bill. In general, you should be filing a quarterly form and tax payment. You'll still reconcile the year with an April filing, but if you are looking to save up to pay a huge bill next year, you are looking at the potential of a penalty for under-withholding.  The instructions and payment coupons are available at the IRS site.  At this point I'm required to offer the following advice - If you are making enough money that this even concerns you, you should consider starting to save for the future. A Solo-401(k) or IRA, or both. Read more on these two accounts and ask separate questions, if you'd like."


> So... the only way airline companies can reduce their carbon tax is to buy new airplanes?  I was giving an example. Better weather forecasts that allow charting routes to avoid turbulence and headwinds could improve fuel consumption without new aircraft.


You should have her sell it to you for the amount of the outstanding loan. You take out a loan in your name for the amount (or at least, the amount you have to come up with). You then transfer the title from her to you, just as you would if you were buying the car from someone else. While the title is in her name, she has ownership. This isn't a technicality, this is the explicit legal situation you two have agreed to.


Oil adds to the costs because it takes man-hours to pump and refine that oil. Materials add to the costs because someone has to put the hours to mine them. Bad weather adds to the costs because someones job is now more difficult and it takes more hours. It forms a kind of net, and at the end of the day everything is just man hours (+ some percentage as profit/taxes).  Land is probably the only exception here as it's quite purely priced by supply and demand. And there are no labor involved in producing it. (actually it's kind of ridiculous that it's possible to own land, against just renting it from government)  “Buy land, they're not making it anymore” - Mark Twain


Generally, an activity qualifies as a business if it is carried on with the reasonable expectation of earning a profit. In order to make this determination, taxpayers should consider the following factors: The IRS presumes that an activity is carried on for profit if it makes a profit during at least three of the last five tax years, including the current year — at least two of the last seven years for activities that consist primarily of breeding, showing, training or racing horses. From the IRS document FS-2007-18. The entire text can be found here: http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=169490,00.html


Yet we are told, and I assumed, to be a profession of honor. I always thought of bankers as stodgy concervatives who DEMANDED a RESPONSIBLE borrower, not a daredevil trying to become ultra wealthy.  It was a service for growth, not a confidence scam. Too many people are chasing money/wealth as opposed to service and responsible growth. With our GROWTH in population we get a growth in greedy people and predators (and parasites) who's only wish is to obtain wealth for no cost.