"I am going to keep things very simple and explain the common-sense reason why the accountant is right: Also, my sister in law owns a small restaurant, where they claim their accountant informed them of the same thing, where a portion of their business purchases had to be counted as taxable personal income. In this case, they said their actual income for the year (through their paychecks) was around 40-50K, but because of this detail, their taxable income came out to be around 180K, causing them to owe a huge amount of tax (30K ish). Consider them and a similarly situated couple that didn't make these purchases. Your sister in law is better off in that she has the benefit of these purchases (increasing the value of her business and her expected future income), but she's worse off because she got less pay. Presumably, she thought this was a fair trade, otherwise she wouldn't have made those purchases. So why should she pay any less in taxes? There's no reason making fair trades should reduce anyone's tax burden. Now, as the items she purchased lose value, that will be a business loss called ""depreciation"". That will be deductible. But the purchases themselves are not, and the income that generated the money to make those purchases is taxable. Generally speaking, business gains are taxable, regardless of what you do with the money (whether you pay yourself, invest it, leave it in the business, or whatever). Generally speaking, only business losses or expenses are deductible. A purchase is an even exchange of income for valuable property -- even exchanges are not deductions because the gain of the thing purchased already fairly compensates you for the cost. You don't specify the exact tax status of the business, but there are really only two types of possibilities. It can be separately taxed as a corporation or it can be treated essentially as if it didn't exist. In the former case, corporate income tax would be due on the revenue that was used to pay for the purchases. There would be no personal income tax due. But it's very unlikely this situation applies as it means all profits taken out of the business are taxed twice and so small businesses are rarely organized this way. In the latter case, which is almost certainly the one that applies, business income is treated as self-employment income. In this case, the income that paid for the purchases is taxable, self-employment income. Since a purchase is not a deductible expense, there is no deduction to offset this income. So, again, the key points are: How much she paid herself doesn't matter. Business income is taxable regardless of what you do with it. When a business pays an expense, it has a loss that is deductible against profits. But when a business makes a purchase, it has neither a gain nor a loss. If a restaurant buys a new stove, it trades some money for a stove, presumably a fair trade. It has had no profit and no loss, so this transaction has no immediate effect on the taxes. (There are some exceptions, but presumably the accountant determined that those don't apply.) When the property of a business loses value, that is usually a deductible loss. So over time, a newly-purchased stove will lose value. That is a loss that is deductible. The important thing to understand is that as far as the IRS is concerned, whether you pay yourself the money or not doesn't matter, business income is taxable and only business losses or expenses are deductible. Investments or purchases of capital assets are neither losses nor expenses. There are ways you can opt to have the business taxed separately so only what you pay yourself shows up on your personal taxes. But unless the business is losing money or needs to hold large profits against future expenses, this is generally a worse deal because money you take out of the business is taxed twice -- once as business income and again as personal income. Update: Does the business eventually, over the course of the depreciation schedule, end up getting all of the original $2,000 tax burden back? Possibly. Ultimately, the entire cost of the item is deductible. That won't necessarily translate into getting the taxes back. But that's really not the right way to think about it. The tax burden was on the income earned. Upon immediate replacement, hypothetically with the exact same model, same cost, same 'value', isn't it correct that the ""value"" of the business only went up by the amount the original item had depreciated? Yes. If you dispose of or sell a capital asset, you will have a gain or loss based on the difference between your remaining basis in the asset and whatever you got for the asset. Wouldn't the tax burden then only be $400? Approximately, yes. The disposal of the original asset would cause a loss of the difference between your remaining basis in the asset and what you got for it (which might be zero). The new asset would then begin depreciating. You are making things a bit more difficult to understand though by focusing on the amount of taxes due rather than the amount of taxable gain or loss you have. They don't always correlate directly (because tax rates can vary)."


Completely wrong. People are traveling less and Sears has chosen suburban malls requiring lots of space. Urban shopping malls (think Kohls, old navy, home depot, local grocery stores) are doing better, there is a uptick in buy local campaigns.   Also I think the economy is doing so well in terms of employment and wages have grown so little, that the desire and capability of many people to buy expensive and nice fridges and washer machines, watches and housewares because they a) have no time to enjoy them and b) would ratber spend the money on time saving/enjoyment. The retail companies that realize you need to entertain your customers and their families will win.


I don't want to repeat things that have already been said as I agree with most of them. There's just one little thing I'd like to add: If things go the way we're all expecting, this guy will eventually be in desperate need of a friend as he is extremely likely to lose most of his friends sooner or later. Perhaps all you can do is signal that you will not support him now (for obvious reasons), but that you'll be there for him when he may need you in the future...


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If your parents can afford to shell out $1,250 a month for 5 years, they would pretty much have the debt paid off, provided the credit card companies don't start playing games with rates. If that payment is too high, maybe you could kick in $5k every few months to knock the principal down.  If they think the business can keep puttering along without losing more money, that may be the way to go. Five years is long enough that the business or property may have recovered some value. Another option, depending on the value of the home, could be a reverse mortgage. I don't know how the economy has affected those programs, but that might be a good option to get the debt cleared away. My grandfather was in a similar position back in the 70's. He owned taverns in NYC that catered to an industrial clientele... the place was booming in the 60s and my grandfather and his brother owned 4 locations at one point. But the death of his brother, post-Vietnam malaise, suburban exodus and shutting of industry really hurt the business, and he ended up selling out his last tavern in 1979 -- which was a dark hour in NYC history and real estate values. A few years later, that building sold for a tremendous amount of money... I believe 10x more. I don't know whether there was a way for his business to survive for another 5-7 years, as I was too young to remember. But I do remember my grandfather (and my father to this day) being melancholy about the whole affair. It's hard to have to work part-time in your 60's and be constantly reminded that your family business -- and to some degree a part of your life -- ended in failure. The stress of keeping things afloat when you're broke is tough. But there's also a mental reward from getting through a tough situation on your own. Good luck!


If you have a mortgage backed by FHA, Fannie, or Freddie I would hold off.  There is talk of a new plan that would allow refi's on mortages that were underwater.  I would expect rates to stay about the same for the forseeable future.  Take that money you would spend each month on the personal loan and stick it into your mortgage payment to bring down your debt on it.  Your home may be underwater on paper but once the economy comes back, or hyperinflation sets in (one of the 2 will happen) you will have equity in your home again soon after.


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$27,000 for a car?!  Please, don't do that to yourself! That sounds like a new-car price.  If it is, you can kiss $4k-$5k of that price goodbye the moment you drive it off the lot.  You'll pay the worst part of the depreciation on that vehicle. You can get a 4-5 year old Corolla (or similar import) for less than half that price, and if you take care of it, you can get easily another 100k miles out of it. Check out Dave Ramsey's video.  (It's funny that the car payment he chooses as his example is the same one as yours: $475! ;) )  I don't buy his take on the 12% return on the stock market (which is fantasy in my book) but buying cars outright instead of borrowing or (gasp) leasing, and working your way up the food chain a bit with the bells/whistles/newness of your cars, is the way to go.


"Probably but not necessarily.  Your question could also be posed regarding cash & carry for commodities in contango: If I can take delivery on the gold now, short the gold next year and make delivery then, paying the storage fees, is this an arbitrage opportunity? It is in the sense that you know your delivery and the money you will make, but it's not in the sense that until delivery (or execution in the options case) you are still on the hook for the margins due from price fluctuations. Additionally you need to consider what ROI you will make from the trade. Even though it's ""guaranteed"" it may be less than what you can earn from other ""zero risk"" opportunities."


My grandfather owned a small business, and I asked him that very question.  His answer was that year-end closeout is very time-consuming, both before and after  EOY (end of year), and that they didn't want to do all that around Christmas and New Year.


"sorry, my response was supposed to be to the above comment, not yours. My main point was that colonizing in Africa, where there was already a large population did not require bringing in people (which you would need to incentivize to move to, hence offering the ""free"" carrot of property rights to settlers of NA) to extract resources. Instead the British (and other European powers) just used the local populace to extract the resources. The main reason the US and Canada are well off is that property rights were established very early on and this encouraged people to ""invest"" and produce more because the higher production accrued to the producer and the producer would have legal recourse should a negative ""externality"" be put upon them by someone else. Obviously there were other reasons as well, but property rights are huge (this is true globally now) in encouraging people to ""grow"" their assets. Part of the reason Africa is still so screwed up is that many of their institutions and governments are too corrupt to protect their citizens' property rights, thereby discouraging investment and production."


There are two reasons to do a reverse split.  Those partial shares will then be turned into cash and returned to the investors. For large institutional investors such as mutual funds or pension funds it results in only a small amount of cash because the fund has merged all the investors shares together. If the company is trying to meet the minimum price level of the exchange they have little choice. If they don't do the reverse split they will be delisted. If the goal is to reduce the number of investors they are using one of the methods of going private: A publicly held company may deregister its equity securities when they   are held by less than 300 shareholders of record or less than 500   shareholders of record, where the company does not have significant   assets. Depending on the facts and circumstances, the company may no   longer be required to file periodic reports with the SEC once the   number of shareholders of record drops below the above thresholds. A number of kinds of transactions can result in a company going   private, including:


Most companies put the company match in your account each paycheck, but your are not generally vested for the match. If you leave before the specified time period then they pull back part of the matching funds.  I knew somebody who did something similar back in the 1980's with their 401K. They put in 8% of their paycheck after taxes; a 100% match was deposited; then they pulled out the employees contribution every quarter. They did this for the 10 years I knew them. It avoided any tax implications, and they were still saving 8% of their pay for retirement.


It's legal. In fact, they are required to do this, assuming you are in fact a HCE (highly compensated employee) to avoid getting in trouble with the IRS. I'm guessing they don't provide documentation for the same reason they don't explain to you explicitly what the income thresholds are for social security taxes, etc - that's a job for your personal accountant. Here's the definition of a HCE:  An individual who: Owned more than 5% of the interest in the business at any time during   the year or the preceding year, regardless of how much compensation   that person earned or received, or For the preceding year, received   compensation from the business of more than $115,000 (if the preceding   year is 2014; $120,000 if the preceding year is 2015, 2016 or 2017),   and, if the employer so chooses, was in the top 20% of employees when   ranked by compensation. There are rules the restrict distributions from plans like 401ks. For example, treasury reg 1.401a(4)-5(b)(3) says that a plan cannot make a distribution to a HCE if that payment reduces the asset value of the plan to below 110% of the value of the plan's current liabilities. So, after taking account all distributions to be made to HCEs and the asset value of the plan, everyone likely gets proportionally reduced so that they don't run afoul of this rule. There are workarounds for this. But, these are options that the plan administrators may take, not you. I suppose if you were still employed there and at a high enough level, a company accountant would have discussed these options with you. Note, there's a chance there's some other limitation on HCEs that I'm missing which applies to your specific situation. Your best bet, to understand, is simply ask. Your money is still there, you just can't get it all this year.


Dealer financing should be ignored until AFTER you have agreed on the price of the car, since otherwise they tack the costs of it back onto the car's purchase price. They aren't offering you  a $2500 cash incentive, but adding a $2500 surcharge if you take their financing package -- which means you're actually paying significantly more than 0.9% for that loan! Remember that you can borrow from folks other than the dealer. If you do that, you still get the cash price, since the dealer is getting cash. Check your other options, and calculate the REAL cost of each, before making your decisions. And remember to watch out for introductory/variable rates on loans! Leasing is generally a bad deal unless you intend to sell the car within three years or so.


>Well with that logic most older folks wouldn't need healthcare since they're only a decade away from deaths door.   Given how much money is spent on old people near death just to keep them lingering on, I tend to agree with you.


Since you asked about Apple, and I happen to have two positions -   This is what happened. I was long the $500, short the $600, in effect, betting Apple would recover from its drop from $700 down to $450 or so. Friday, my target was to hope that Apple remain above $600, but not really caring how much it went over. Now, post split, the magic number is $85.71. My account shows the adjusted option pricing, but doesn't yet show AAPL's new price.


The biggest benefit to having a larger portfolio is relatively reduced transaction costs. If you buy a $830 share of Google at a broker with a $10 commission, the commission is 1.2% of your buy price.  If you then sell it for $860, that's another 1.1% gone to commission.  Another way to look at it is, of your $30 ($860 - $830) gain you've given up $20 to transaction costs, or 66.67% of the proceeds of your trade went to transaction costs. Now assume you traded 10 shares of Google. Your buy was $8,300 and you sold for $8,600.  Your gain is $300 and you spent the same $20 to transact the buy and sell.  Now you've only given up 6% of your proceeds ($20 divided by your $300 gain). You could also scale this up to 100 shares or even 1,000 shares. Generally, dividend reinvestment are done with no transaction cost.  So you periodically get to bolster your position without losing more to transaction costs.  For retail investors transaction costs can be meaningful.  When you're wielding a $5,000,000 pot of money you can make your trades on a larger scale giving up relatively less to transaction costs.


used to trip out to AC from Pittsburgh (6 hour drive, more convenient than vegas), didn't care much for the beach just the gambling. Now that there's a full casino (tables/poker room/slots) right in downtown most of us don't really have much reason to make the trip out to NJ anymore


"I focus on market research, which is both quant-heavy and quant-lite. Many times I can back up my strategy with numbers (""data-driven decisions""), but many times I just have to rely on qualitative findings.  Obviously the most quantitative MBA jobs are in finance and management consulting. Probably the least is strategy, but then that's a skill that you either have or don't have."


In my experience, the only penalty to breaking a CD is to lose a certain amount of accumulated interest. Your principal investment will be fine.  Close the CD. A few days of interest is nothing.


You know, your attempt at dramatic fiction is beneath you.  You are more than this,  You were taught as a child to love your neighbor and now you are going against your own beliefs to support the increase in income of people who are so much more powerful than you are and really don't care about you at all except for your vote.  Is that how you want to be remembered?  You have your entire life ahead of you.  I want you to enjoy every last moment of it, but keep your eyes open and look around and see all the possibilities in front of you besides hating other people.


Stock prices are indeed proportional to supply and demand. The greater the demand for a stock, the greater the price. If they are, would this mean that stock prices completely depend on HOW the public FEELS/THINKS about the stock instead of what it is actually worth? This is a question people have argued for decades. Literature in behavioral finance suggests that investors are not rational and thus markets are subject to wild fluctuation based on investor sentiment. The efficient market theory (EMT) argues that the stock market is efficient and that a stock's price is an accurate reflection of its underlying or intrinsic value. This philosophy took birth with Harry Markovitz's efficient frontier, and Eugene Fama is generally seen as the champion of EMT in the 1960's and onward.  Most investors today would agree that the markets are not perfectly efficient, and that a stock's price does not always reflect its value. The renowned professor Benjamin Graham once wrote: In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine. This suggests that prices in the short term are mainly influenced by how people feel about the stock, while in the long run the price reflects what it's actually worth. For example, people are really big fans of tech stocks right now, which suggests why LinkedIn (stock: LNKD) has such a high share price despite its modest earnings (relative to valuation). People feel really good about it, and the price might sustain if LinkedIn becomes more and more profitable, but it's also possible that their results won't be absolutely stellar, so the stock price will fall until it reflects the company's fundamentals.


i would check out why other people make good money on the market when they invest but when i do it the economy goes into a recession. am i the only real person in the world and everyone is a simulation? is it black magic? is it the universe telling me to earn my money in other ways?


You are right, and it's 40 cents per liter, not gallon as I originally wrote.  After 60 liters per month, it goes up to 70 cents per liter.  It's around 90 cents per liter right now where I am in the US.  Like you said, still cheap compared to the rest of the world ($1 per liter in India, $1.90 per liter in Britain).


Your house is not an asset, it is a liability. Assets feed you. Liabilites eat you. Robert Kiyosaki From a cash flow perspective your primary residence (ie your house) is an investment but it is not an asset. If you add up all the income your primary residence generates and subtract all the expenses it incurs, you will see why investment gurus claim this. Perform the same calculations for a rental property and you're more likely to find it has a positive cash flow. If it has a negative cash flow, it's not an asset either; it's a liability. A rental property with a negative cash flow is still an investment, but cash flow gurus will tell you it's a bad investment. While it is possible that your house may increase in value and you may be able to sell it for more than you paid, will you be able to sell it for more than all of the expenses incurred while living there? If so, you have an asset.  Some people will purchase a home in need of repair, live in it and upgrade it, sell it for profit exceeding all expenses, and repeat. These people are flipping houses and generating capital gains based on their own hard work. In this instance a person's primary residence can be an asset. How much of an asset is calculated when the renovated house is sold.


"The margin money you put up to fund a short position ($6000 in the example given) is simply a ""good faith"" deposit that is required by the broker in order to show that you are acting in good faith and fully intend to meet any potential losses that may occur.  This margin is normally called initial margin.  It is not an accounting item, meaning it is not debited from you cash account.  Rather, the broker simply segregates these funds so that you may not use them to fund other trading.  When you settle your position these funds are released from segregation.   In addition, there is a second type of margin, called variation margin, which must be maintained while holding a short position.  The variation margin is simply the running profit or loss being incurred on the short position.  In you example, if you sold 200 shares at $20 and the price went to $21, then your variation margin would be a debit of $200, while if the price went to $19, the variation margin would be a credit of $200.   The variation margin will be netted with the initial margin to give the total margin requirement ($6000 in this example).  Margin requirements are computed at the close of business on each trading day.  If you are showing a loss of $200 on the variation margin, then you will be required to put up an additional $200 of margin money in order to maintain the $6000 margin requirement - ($6000 - $200 = $5800, so you must add $200 to maintain $6000).  If you are showing a profit of $200, then $200 will be released from segregation - ($6000 + $200 = $6200, so $200 will be release from segregation leaving $6000 as required). When you settle your short position by buying back the shares, the margin monies will be release from segregation and the ledger postings to you cash account will be made according to whether you have made a profit or a loss.  So if you made a loss of $200 on the trade, then your account will be debited for $200 plus any applicable commissions.  If you made a profit of $200 on the trade then your account will be credited with $200 and debited with any applicable commissions."


no it would not. Did you read the article? corporations and funds are already paying the government to hold money short-term (negative real 2 year bond yields).   or are you advocating that the government place an additional tax on people who buy government bonds?


The problem is that the reason you find out may be that you are at the car dealer, picked out a car, and getting ready to sign the loan papers with your supposedly good credit, and you are denied for late payment on loans you didn't know you have.  Or debt collectors  start hounding you.  Or you credit card interest rates go up.  Or you are charged more for your insurance because you are seen as a bad credit risk.  Or you can't rent an apartment.  The list is almost endless. It can takes many months and hours spent on the phone to fix these things.


If my experience playing tycoon games is any indication, there is usually a point when you can't help but hoard more money faster even if you do nothing.  Also, giving money to employees could have unpredictable effects. It might boost morale in the short term, but in the mid-long term it could mess up with whatever HR or managers are trying to do in managing their team and culture. It will also make your brightest people leave faster to set up new competitors..


> Now, maybe that's the sort of stuff that happens every year and people get by regardless, but still.  Yup. It's strange bumper crops almost never make the news. Probably because there's no suffering, gloom and doom the media can milk for headlines.


"The preferred accounts are designed to hope you do one of several things: Pay one day late.  Then charge you all the deferred interest. Many people think If they put $X a month aside, then pay just before the 6 months, 12 moths or no-payment before 2014 period ends then I will be able to afford the computer, carpet, or furniture. The interest rate they will charge you if you are late will be buried in the fine print. But expect it to be very high. Pay on time, but now that you have a card with their logo on it.  So now you feel that you should buy the accessories from them. They hope that you become a long time customer. They want to make money on your next computer also. Their ""Bill Me Later"" option on that site as essentially the same as the preferred account. In the end you will have another line of credit. They will do a credit check. The impact, both positive and negative, on your credit picture is discussed in other questions.  Because two of the three options you mentioned in your question (cash, debit card) imply that you have enough cash to buy the computer today, there is no reason to get another credit card to finance the purchase. The delayed payment with the preferred account, will save you about 10 dollars (2000 * 1% interest * 0.5 years).  The choice of store might save you more money, though with Apple there are fewer places to get legitimate discounts. Here are your options: How to get the limit increased: You can ask for a temporary increase in the credit limit, or you can ask for a permanent one. Some credit cards can do this online, others require you to talk to them. If they are going to agree to this, it can be done in a few minutes. Some individuals on this site have even been able to send the check to the credit card company before completing the purchase, thus ""increasing"" their credit limit. YMMV. I have no idea if it works.  A good reason to use the existing credit card, instead of the debit card is if the credit card is a rewards card. The extra money or points can be very nice. Just make sure you pay it back before the bill is due. In fact you can send the money to the credit card company the same day the computer arrives in the mail.  Having the transaction on the credit card can also get you purchase protection, and some cards automatically extend the warranty."


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Since returning of capital is the most important, I would go to bankrate.com and find either an online bank savings account or MMA account.  By going to bankrate.com, you can find higher rates.  Sometimes you can find rates that are higher than a CD and are still FDIC insured.  I've found ally bank's raise your rate 2 year CD to always have the best rate.  In addition, if rates go up, you are able to raise the rate to the current rate.


Well that's because you're trying to apply the same rules that apply everyone else to government officials. Don't be silly.  On a serious note, I find this one of the most offensive abuses of power in America today. Insider trading has been illegal in various forms since 1933. It is an enormous conflict of interest. A government official has the ability to enrich themselves in an almost unlimited way from trading on insider information. I don't believe the average American even realizes this. How there can be any justification of this is beyond me. It is a crime. No question about it. So if stealing is illegal for the general public, how can it be ok for public officials?  And they wonder [public trust in government](http://www.people-press.org/2017/05/03/public-trust-in-government-1958-2017/) is at all-time lows.


"There are, in fact, two balances kept for your account by most banks that have to comply with common convenience banking laws.  The first is your actual balance; it is simply the sum total of all deposits and withdrawals that have cleared the account; that is, both your bank and the bank from which the deposit came or to which the payment will go have exchanged necessary proof of authorization from the payor, and have confirmed with each other that the money has actually been debited from the account of the payor, transferred between the banks and credited to the account of the payee.  The second balance is the ""available balance"". This is the actual balance, plus any amount that the bank is ""floating"" you while a deposit clears, minus any amount that the bank has received notice of that you may have just authorized, but for which either full proof of authorization or the definite amount (or both) have not been confirmed. This is what's happening here. Your bank received notice that you intended to pay the train company $X. They put an ""authorization hold"" on that $X, deducting it from your available balance but not your actual balance. The bank then, for whatever reason, declined to process the actual transaction (insufficient funds, suspicion of theft/fraud), but kept the hold in place in case the transaction was re-attempted. Holds for debit purchases usually expire between 1 and 5 days after being placed if the hold is not subsequently ""settled"" by the merchant providing definite proof of amount and authorization before that time. The expiration time mainly depends on the policy of the bank holding your account. Holds can remain in place as long as thirty days for certain accounts or types of payment, again depending on bank policy. In certain circumstances, the bank can remove a hold on request. But it is the bank, and not the merchant, that you must contact to remove a hold or even inquire about one."


How about no property should be tax exempt.  A church puts a heavy toll on the roads and other infrastructure. Surely they can afford to be paying property taxes, of all things.  If they're that broke, and many churches are, this would be the push off the cliff that so many of them deserve.


That's the foundation of Limited Liability.  There is a corporate veil that protects your personal assets from that of your business.  The corporate veil can be pierced if you do certain stuff and thus your personal assets will get effected.  This allows people to start companies and innovate more and take more risks knowing that they could not be personally liable if the business folds.


As I replied to someone else who said that:  I'm often having to send stuff with the check. Paperwork, a bill etc. While that would work to a person who knows me, it's usually not going to work with a business or government who needs to know why I'm sending this check.


"As others have said, that's really just when losses got marked.  For example, let's say I buy a cupcake for $1, and someone else says ""hey, I want a cupcake too"", and tries to buy it from me for $1.50.  Then someone else bids it up to $2.  A baker says ""wow, there's a lot of demand for cupcakes"" and starts making cupcakes instead of bread.  Then someone says ""I should buy a cupcake, as they keep going up in value, even though I only really value the tastiness of a cupcake at $2.  I'll buy the cupcake for $2.50 and then sell it for $3!""  Prices rise to $2.50.  More people do the same thing.  Cupcakes start going for $10 a cupcake, and tons of people are stopping whatever they were doing before and just baking cupcakes.  A few years down the road, cupcakes are selling for $15 a cupcake, and some people have many cupcakes as investments.  People are borrowing money to buy $15 cupcakes with the hopes that they will turn into $20 cupcakes.  Now, everyone is valuing their cupcakes at $15.  There are maybe a million people, and they average 1.5 cupcakes per person, so we thus claim that we have $22.5M in cupcakes.  Finally, someone says ""Wait a minute.  I have three cupcakes.  I don't actually want to eat *three* cupcakes, and we're running out of people to buy cupcakes.  I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to actually sell these to anyone.  I'll sell my $15 cupcakes for $14.70 and make a bit less money but be sure to sell the cupcakes.  And I really don't want to *eat* cupcakes at all if they cost $15/cupcake.""  Everyone else repeats this, and cupcakes plummet to $0.50 in a month.  Now we value our total number of cupcakes at $750,000.  Now, did that month cause us to lose $21.75M in wealth?  Well, the way we were accounting for the cupcakes, certainly that's when we made the numbers reflect our assets not being $22.5M.  However, we'd actually produced far more expensive cupcakes than society wanted; the claim that we had $22.5M assumed that people would keep buying cupcakes based on past price increases rather than because they actually wanted cupcake.  I think that it would be also fair to claim that our wealth was never $22.5M in cupcakes, because there was never a point in time when even the total population wanted to spend $22.5M on the consumption of cupcake; instead, its purchasing was driven predominantly by the desire to gain from the appreciation of cupcake based on past appreciation.  The dark month when cupcakes fell is just when we realized that we didn't have $22.5M in cupcake value."


Royalties. (Once you start getting them.)


Benjamin Grahams strategy was to invest in REALLY SAFE stocks. In his time lean businesses weren't as common as they are now and he found many companies with assets greater than the value of their shares. Putting a number figure on it isn't really necessary but the concept is useful. Its the idea that bigger companies are less turbulent (Which is something to avoid for an investor). Most companies in the top 500 or whatever will satisfy this.


Companies have this weird view of what their workers are doing: if you don't care that your employees get on Facebook at work, then you shouldn't care if they do it at home.  As a consultant who travels around I always laugh when companies only want you to keep track of what you work on when they are at home.


What somebody is paid is directly tied to the worth they generate for their employer.  Management consultants, investment bankers, etc actually generate significant value for their employer.  The supply of people that can do these types of jobs is fairly small.  Supply and demand sets salaries.  The largely government-sector jobs that Reich mentions require the theft of wealth from the private economy in order to staff.  Jobs that have true value to society, such as teachers, hospital staff, etc, can and do find private funding without government coercion.  The best teachers make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, in private educational institutions.


If ordinary income tax rates and contribution rates to tax-advantaged retirement accounts are held constant, It's net negative to the extent that the average retirement account return exceeds the risk-free rate. Rather than pushing money into Roth accounts, the government could leave traditional 401(k)s unchanged, borrow the difference in up-front tax revenue that it's foregoing by doing so, and repay that debt as the tax revenue from traditional 401(k) disbursements comes in. Net of interest on the additional debt, the latter strategy would increase the government's total tax revenue by an amount proportional to the average excess return of the affected retirement accounts, with essentially no downside (other than messaging) relative to the strategy that's being proposed.  Of course, in reality it's likely that retirement savings rates would decline as a result of the change, so that would partially offset the overall reduction in tax revenue. However, the downsides of reduced retirement savings rates arguably far outweigh that benefit. (That's why tax-advantaged retirement accounts exist in the first place.)


You should consider Turbocash. It's a mature open-source project, installed locally (thick client).


"I kind of understand the ""basics"", and have done a couple (with the assistance of pre-made excel sheets haha), I just don't feel that I'm creating an actual valuable valuation when I do one. While on the topic though, do you know where an individual investor can calculate the cost of debt for the WACC? I've been looking on morningstar and search up that public company and take the average of the coupon on all outstanding bonds. I don't feel like that's very correct though :("


The Laffer curve is taught in like the first week of a macro Econ class. You could raise the tax rates to 99% and still collect less tax revenue than if they are at a reasonable rate. But of course there's no mention of that. So I'm gonna go out on a limb and call it what it really is: ideologues championing their agendas.


"I find myself being very skeptical about robotics' use in society. I think robotics will splinter off into many different specifically designed forms. the ""irobot"" dream of a humanoid robot doing all the menial tasks that humans don't want to do will never happen. Instead, there will be robots designed for specific tasks, because that specific design will be better for that purpose than any generally designed robot will. Also, AI will solve most of the use cases that i see robotics used for and it will not require the expensive electronics and manufacturing required."


I'm interested in corporate finance. Can you recommend some great inexpensive online courses for financial modeling training? (maybe something that you took and highly recommend. If no, I'll look up for them myself) I want to get familiar with it first. Don't wanna spend too much and mess up.


Excellent question for a six year old! Actually, a good question for a 20 year old!  One explanation is a bit more complicated. Your son thinks that after the Christmas season the company is worth more. For example, they might have turned $10 million of goods into $20 million of cash, which increases their assets by $10 million and is surely a good thing. However, that's not the whole picture: Before the Christmas season, we have a company with $10 million of goods and the Christmas season just ahead, while afterwards we have a company with $20 million cash and nine months of slow sales ahead.  Let's say your son gets $10 pocket money every Sunday at 11am. Five minutes to 11 he has one dollar in his pocket. Five minutes past 11 he has 11 dollars in his pocket. Is he richer now? Not really, because every minute he gets a bit closer to his pocket money, and five past eleven he is again almost a week away from the next pocket money On the other hand... on Monday, he loses his wallet with $10 inside - he is now $10 poorer. Or his neighbour unexpectedly offers him to wash his car for $10 and he does it - he is now $10 richer.  So if the company got robbed in August with all stock gone, no insurance, but time to buy new stock for the season, they lose $10 million, the company is worth $10 million less, and the share price drops. If they get robbed just before Christmas sales start, they don't make the $20 million sales, so they are $10 million poorer, but they are $20 million behind where they should be - the company is worth $20 millions less, and the share price drops twice as much. On the other hand, if there is a totally unexpected craze for a new toy going on from April to June (and then it drops down), and they make $10 million unexpectedly, they are worth $10 million more. Expected $10 million profit = no increase in share price. Unexpected $10 million profit - increase in share price.  Now the second, totally different explanation. The share price is not based on the value of the company, but on what people are willing to pay. Say it's November and I own 100 shares worth $10. If everyone knew they are worth $20 in January, I would hold on to my shares and not sell them for $10! It would be very hard to convince me to sell them for $19!  If you could predict that the shares will be worth $20 in January, then they would be worth $20 now. The shareprice will not go up or down if something good or bad happens that everyone expects. It only goes up or down if something happens unexpectedly.


Run the numbers in advance. Understand what are the current rates for an additional 2nd mortgage, what are the rates for a brand new mortgage that will cover the additional funds. Understand what they are for another lender.  Estimate the amount of paperwork involved in each option (new first, new 2nd, and new lender). Ask the what are the options they can offer you. Because you have estimated the costs in money and time for the different options, you can evaluate the offer they make. What they offer you can range from everything you want to nothing you would accept. What they offer will depend on several factors: Do they care to keep you as a customer?; Do they expect you to walk away?; are they trying to get rid of mortgages like the one you have?; Can they make more money with the plan they are offering you? You will be interested in the upfront costs, the monthly costs, and the amount of time required for the process to be completed.


IANAL.  In the UK, you (as a Director) would have obligations to minimise any tax liabilities under these two clauses:  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/172  http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/46/section/174  Although I can't see the CPS bringing any cases of criminal charge against over-payment of taxes. It wouldn't be unrealistic to have a scenario where shareholders of a failed enterprise sued a Director who was negligent in minimising tax liabilities.  That said, I think the Starbucks strategy is flagrantly breaching the intent of the law, if not the letter.


If the company reported a loss at the previous quarter when the stock what at say $20/share, and now just before the company's next quarterly report, the stock trades around $10/share. There is a misunderstanding here, the company doesn't sell stock, they sell products (or services). Stock/share traded at equity market. Here is the illustration/chronology to give you better insight:   Now addressing the question What if the stock's price change? Let say, Its drop from $10 to $1 Is it affect XYZ revenue ? No why? because XYZ selling ads not their stocks the formula for revenue revenue = products (in this case: ads) * quantity the equation doesn't involve capital (stock's purchasing)


Fidelity, Charles Schwab, TDA, and just about every make online brokerage gives you massive amounts of free trades each year and when you sign up. Pretty much the same as 100+ free trades /yr over a 10 year period. Also, you get commission-free trade for the most popular ETFs, which is much more important.  Lastly, if you care about free trades, you're probably investing poorly. Non-professionals shouldn't be making that many non-ETF trades in a year. Professional traders wouldn't blink over a tiny $5-10 commission fee.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/18/16162234/regional-inequality-cause) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot) ***** > In the contemporary United States, zoning restrictions that prevent adequate levels of house building mean that much of the higher incomes earned in rich states simply pass through in the form of higher housing costs.  > Two big shifts in migration and economics This set of four charts in Ganong and Shoag&#039;s paper tells the fundamental story - in the old days, there was a strong tendency for poor states&#039; per capita incomes to grow faster than those of rich ones and an equally strong tendency for people to move away from poor states to go live in rich ones.  > The housing fix for regional inequality entails more rather than less concentration of economic activity in rich coastal metro areas.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6ujy5s/the_real_driver_of_regional_inequality_in_america/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~194007 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **state**^#1 **rich**^#2 **income**^#3 **move**^#4 **housing**^#5"


For insurance pricing, it seems as though it doesn't matter all that much which group it is in if they are adjusting it based on just the Tesla data.  I imagine Tesla is more concerned about the perception.  They want to market the car as a safer vehicle to drive.  So if AAA came out and said the increase was due to repair costs, I doubt you'd hear anything from Tesla.  But AAA said that it is also due to accident frequency, which goes against Tesla's marketing strategy.


From the link posted in the other response, it looks like you with be charged 1.3% of the loan value for MMI.  With an 85% LTV loan, in effect, you are paying 1.3% for the 5% down payment you don't have. Let me offer this with a few numbers. $100K home, $85K loan. 1.3% of $85K is $1105/year in MMI. This is for the fact that you are missing the $5000 extra deposit to get to 80% LTV.  This is over 20% in cost for that missing money. Most credit cards are below this rate. If one were at a 95% LTV, I understand that it might be tough to raise the remaining money needed, but in this case, 5% is so close the fee cost actually becomes absurd.


"As i see it, with a debit card, they   are taken kinda out of the game. They   are not lending money, it seems really   bad for them. Not exactly. It is true that they're not lending money, but they charge a hefty commission from the retailers for each swipe which is pure profit with almost no risk. One of the proposals considered (or maybe approved already, don't know) in Congress is to cap that hefty commission, which will really make the debit cards merely a service for the checking account holder, rather than a profit maker for the bank. On the other hand, it's   definitely good for individuals. I disagree with that. Debit cards are easier to use than checks, but they provide much less protection than credit cards. Here's what I had to say on this a while ago, and seems like the community agrees. But, why do we really need a credit   history to buy some of the more   expensive stuff Because the system is broken. It rewards people in debt by giving them more opportunities to get into even more debts, while people who owe nothing to noone cannot get a credit when they do need one. With the current system the potential creditor can only asses the risk of someone who has debt already, they have no way of assessing risks of someone with no debts. To me, all this credit card system   seems like an awfully nice way to make   loads of money, backed by governments   as well. Well, credit cards have nothing to do with it. It's the credit scores system that is broken. If we replace the ""card"" with ""score"" in your question - then yes, you're thinking correctly. That of course is true for the US, in other countries I have no knowledge on how the creditors assess the risks."


"> Simply because there are cases of market failures, I do not therefore conclude that the market system is itself a failure.  No, but without a realistic mechanism to correct for them (especially ones with effects as broad reaching as the financial crisis) I don't see how ""free-markets"" can be compatible with liberty and justice.  If you're seeing some sort of mass organization of the public against market externalities that affect them then I'm afraid I missed that.  In my experience most people don't even understand the nature of the problems, let alone work together to mend them.  That's a shame you won't debate with people who hold opposing viewpoints, I was looking forward to the challenge of your air-tight refutation of ""collectivist systems""."


"If this is truly hobby income (you do not intend to operate as a business and don't have a profit motive) then report the income on Line 21 (""other income"") of form 1040.  If this is a business, then the income and expenses belong on a Schedule C to form 1040. The distinction is in the treatment of profits and losses - your net profits on a business are subject to self-employment tax, while hobby income is not. Net losses on a business are deductible against other income; net losses on a hobby are miscellaneous itemized deductions in the ""2%"" box on Schedule A.  From a tax point of view, selling apps and accepting donations are different. Arguably, donations are gifts; gifts are not taxable income.  The hobby/business and income/gift distinctions are tricky. If the dollar amounts are small, nobody (including the IRS) really cares. If you start making or losing a lot of money, you'll want to get a good tax person lined up who can help you decide how to characterize these items of income and expens, how to put them on your return, and how to defend the return on audit if necessary."


Lower fees are always better, everything else equal. A lower fee makes your transaction overall a better deal, all else equal.  Other transactions costs (like the SEC fee on sales) are mostly the same across brokers and there is unlikely to be any difference in execution quality either.  When comparing brokers be sure to consider the other issues: To me, most of these are minor issues.  For that reason, I'd say let transaction cost be your guide. I hear a lot of talk about the quality of the interface.  If you just want to buy or sell a stock, they are all pretty easy.  Some brokers have better tools for monitoring the market or looking at technical indicators, if you are into that.


I have been doing e-filing and I get the return in my account in 10 to 14 days over the past couple of years. It is worth the e-filing cost to get my money back a month faster.


90% of economists agree that moving forward with production makes a society far better off as a whole even if it means short term job loss. Just think about all the employment changes that have taken place over the centuries. Clothing production, farming, transportation, plumbing just to name a few. Just imagine if we never used modern plumbing because we refused to lay off jack and Jill because it's their job to get the pale of water. This wil suck for the people that loose their job but overall this is just us growing as a society. This is worth reading.... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment


"[Google is your friend](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+does+the+distribution+of+wealth+compare+between+the+States+and+the+rest+of+the+free+world%3F+&l=1)  Scroll down to the section marked ""International Comparisons.""  The short answer is, ""badly.""  The reason, however, is that the US is a crazy rich nation where the richest people are _very_ rich, the poorest people are pretty damned poor, and the ""middle classes"" haven't gained a lot of wealth in the last 40 years.  These are fairly unique features of the US.  Most of the countries that are as unequal as the US are unequal due to access to important resources that are sold globally by well-connected important people.  Or Britain."


If that company issues another 100 shares, shouldn't 10 of those new 100 shares be mine? Those 100 shares are an asset of the company, and you own 10% of them. When investors buy those new shares, you again own a share of the proceeds, just as you own a share of all the company's assets. A company only issues new share to raise money - it is a borrowing from investors, and in that way can be seen as an alternative to taking on loans. Both share issuing and a loan bring new capital and debt into a company. The difference is that shares don't need to be repaid.


"Bring resume copies, a pen, and a leather case (if possible).     Hold it in your left hand, you'll be shaking hands with your right.   Keep a tissue in your right pocket to keep your hand dry.   Don't take off your suit jacket, even if asked. You will be sweaty.   Ask for water from the secretary or admin at the front desk. Keep this water with you in the interview. If you need time to think, nervous, or just don't know what to do with your hands, hold the cup or sip. (I love this advice I was given. It's weird how it changes you to have something to hold.)  Stand when people enter the room to shake your hand.   Ask questions!  Ask ""what does day 30 and day 90 look like?"".  I'm not sure the internship works, but I'm sure you want to know where you are in a month, and a quarter or so later.   Know your hometown or college's trivia. What it is known for. It's like clockwork that I've had the person come into the interview and say to me ""so you're from _____,  those ______'s are looking good this year"".   Just be prepared to say ""yup, I love going to the games , but don't follow as closely now"".  Or anything. That statement will happen.   Are you clean cut, able to hold a conversation, and inquisitive?  That's all they want to know. At this level, they just want to make sure you don't embarrass the person hiring you.    Good luck!"


It depends on where you live and how you can think out of the box on earning little extra income on the side. If  you live in North America and based on the needs in your city, you can try out these ideas. Here is what one of my friend has done,  The family has two kids and the wife started a home day care as she was already taking care of two kids anyways. Of course, she had to be qualified and she took the relevant child care classes and got certified, which took six months. And she is managing 4 kids in addition to her two kids bringing in at least 2000$ per month in addition. And my friend started a part time property management business on the side, with one client. For example there is always work on real estate whether its going up or going down. You have to be involved locally to increase your knowledge on real estate. You can be a property manager for local real estate investors. If its going down, you can get involved in helping people sell and buy real estate. Be a connector, bring the buyers and sellers together.


There is a company that will sell you single paper shares of stock for many companies and handle framing. But you pay a large premium over the stock price. Disney stopped doing paper share certificates a while ago, but you should be able to buy some of the old ones on eBay if you want.


"The fact that women and elderly people work is actually bad for the economy: when half the population wasn't competing for labor, wages were higher. This isn't a gender thing, men could stay home-- it'd be cheaper than daycare, kids won't grow up institutionalized, could improve a house or raise livestock or something more productive than vacuous employment, etc.  You had to pay ""family men"" more than some guy with a kid across the country. By entering into labor competition, women drove down wages and fucked up a generation emotionally distant children."


Grocery coupon sites I use: http://www.coupons.com http://www.smartsource.com http://www.redplum.com


I could see them taking over the old Intel campus in Hudson, or Suffolk Downs.. if there's space for an enormous casino, there's space for Amazon. the Globe speculated today they could also do something like the old NAS South Weymouth.  I think they will be tempted by the high end talent coming out of MIT, Harvard and the other top schools. Tufts and WPI are great engineering schools. Not just for engineering, but HBS, Sloan, and beyond that BC/BU/NU all have good management programs. There is also already a large footprint for Amazon here, particularly in the speech recognition area.  With GE, Massachusetts has already signaled willingness to commit to tax breaks to lure prestige businesses.  Realistically Boston and Toronto are the only places that checks all their boxes, short of Silicon Valley. Austin, Denver and Minneapolis might also compete if the public transportation requirement isn't strict.


I'm not sure if there are nuances between countries and appreciate your question is specifically about the US, but in the UK, mobile phone contracts, including SIM only, as seen by the chat in this experion website chat shows that mobile contracts are included in credit ratings for 6 years.


So you're telling me you can't commute upwards of one hour away from your work to find affordable housing? That is what Californians do.   High-price houses are a convenience based on location, you can easily find great deals if you're willing to remove convenience.


Pay off your highest-interest debt first: credit card, car, maybe even mortgage. Pay minimums on all else. Student loans are typically low interest, so pay off anything else first, but double-check your rate of course.  Even if you have no other debt, you may still want to hang on to your savings instead of paying down your student loans if getting rid of your savings causes you to accrue debt. For example, if you have a low income and no savings, you may accrue credit card debt (high interest). Or you may want to buy a car with cash instead of getting a loan. Even if this is not an issue, consider what you can do with your savings that others who lack them cannot do. You can put it into mutual funds, which may offer higher rate of return (albeit with risk) than your student loan interest. Or you may pay a down payment on a home. The very low interest rates of student loans are, to a person with savings, essentially a source of cheap money that doesn't need to be justified to a bank. You can use it as seed money to start a business, as funds for travel, for living expenses while in the Peace Corps, or whatever else. But if you pay down that principal, you bind yourself. In short, pay down your student loans when there is no better use for the money.


Put £50 away as often as possible, and once it's built up to £500, invest in a stockmarket ETF. Repeat until you retire.


Gift taxes kick in at around $13K per giver per recipient per year. That means that a straight up gift of $200K (as cash or a house) will incur a tax. It is possible, however, that if the father has a spouse, he and the spouse could each give the mother and each child the full gift limit, for a total of about $78K per year, and that money could be used by all 3 of them to buy the house jointly, over a couple of years. I think the children would have to be on the title, since part of the gift money would be theirs (and one is an adult). As far as lending the money, my in-laws are our mortgage lenders, and when we structured the loan, it had to be at a market rate (which could be the lowest advertised rate we found for a fixed-rate mortgage, independent of what we might actually qualify for) or we could not deduct interest payments. Forgiving the loan could also be considered a gift, so they would need to keep an audit trail showing that payments were made, and her father would need to declare the interest income on his taxes. If he bought the house as a second home and let her and her children live there rent-free, it might work, but I'm not sure. It would, in that case, be an asset of his estate when he dies. I don't know anything about structuring it as a trust. Free rent could conceivably also be construed as a gift, subject to the limits stated above. Disclaimer: Not a tax professional.


"What you're describing is a non-deductible traditional IRA.  That is what happens when your employer 401K or your high income disqualifies gou from using a traditional IRA the normal way.   Yes, non-deductible traditional IRAs are stupid.**   Now let's be clear on the mechanism behind the difference.  There's an axiom of tax law that the same money can't be taxed twice.  This is baked so deep into tax law that it often isn't even specified particularly.  The IRS is not allowed to impose tax on money already taxed, i.e. The original contribution on an ND Trad IRA.  So this is not a new kind of IRA, it is simply a Trad IRA with an asterisk.  **But then, some say so are deductible traditional IRAs when compared to the Roth.   The real power of an ND Trad IRA is that it can be converted to Roth at all income levels.  This is called the ""Roth Backdoor"".  It combines three factors. Contribute to an ND Trad IRA, stick it in a money market/sweep fund, and a week later convert to Roth, pay taxes on the 17 cents of growth in the sweep fund since the rest was already taxed.  The net effect is to work the same as a Roth contribution - not tax deductible, becomes a Roth, and is not taxed on distribution.   If you already have traditional IRA money that you contributed that wasn't taxed, this really screws things up.  Because you can't segment or LIFO your IRA money, the IRS considers it one huge bucket, and requires you draw in proportion. EEK! Suppose you contribute $5000 to an IRA in a non-deductible mode.  But you also have a different IRA funded with pretax money that now has $45,000.   As far as IRS is concerned, you have one $50,000 IRA and only $5000 (10%) is post-tax.   You convert $5000 to Roth and IRS says 90% of that money is taxable, since it's the same pool of money.  You owe taxes on all of it less the $500 fraction that was pre-taxed, and $4500 of already-taxed IRA remains in the account.  The math gets totally out-of-hand after just a couple of conversions.   Your best bet is to convert the whole shebang at one time -- and to avoid a monstrous tax hit, do this in a gap year."


I've heard that B&N also OWNS the property of the bookstore itself, so there are other benefits beyond selling books. Most other book stores simply rented the property, which means they HAD to make quote for sales.   I love browsing book stores, but it's SO much more convenient, faster and cheaper to buy online, half.com or amazon are my gotos for when I know what book I want.


"Sorry buddy, you don't get to say you're wrong when your models are consistently proven inaccurate. It is demonstrative of a fundamental flaw in methodology.   If you want to throw around statistical anylaysis it behooves you to verify and critique those models.   >hey, look at all these facts, well researched figures, and data that gets someone to this conclusion  I didn't say that. I said oh hey look someone trying to stand on Nate Silver's shoulders, as if his methodologies and analysys weren't the laughing stock of the previous election.   The other ""statistics"" was one poorly done histogram from a loosely related study offered as evidence to support an opinion piece.   That's what you don't get. You're bought into a world with a substantial cognitive dissonance and then you try to swing science around as if it supports your beliefs when it doesn't.  >From your understanding of the processes, to random sampling, to what stastical models represent, to facts in and of themselves.  Explain to me how the methodology for an exit poll is substantially different from the methodology for a prediction poll, other than the obvious ""everyone is a likely voter.""   That being said I think the numbers are representative of the voting trends ( the silver one, the other one is to small) from the exit polls because they don't get to play with the voter model, my critique is against the logical leap that one must be unintelligent or uninformed to have voted for Trump. There is no evidence for that. Only your ad hominem attacks.  The arguement is that those willing to manipulate their models to make a conclusion evident shouldn't be trusted to make reaching conclusions about the state of the electorate when they hold obvious bias."


Your gain is $1408. The difference between 32% of your gain and 15% of your gain is $236.36 or $1.60 per share. If you sell now, you have $3957.44 after taxes.  Forget about the ESPP for a moment. Are you be willing to wager $4000 on the proposition that your company's stock price won't go down more than $1.60 or so over the next 18 months? I've never felt it was worth it. Also, I never thought it made much sense to own any of my employer's stock. If their business does poorly, I'd prefer not to have both my job and my money at risk. If you sell now: Now assuming you hold for 18 months, pay 15% capital gains tax, and the stock price drops by $1.60 to $23.40:


open a bank account  under the business name and put tthe money in there  You can probably simply speak to the banker about having a business account and  setting aside money for taxes,, etc  no rocket science there  just don't  lie about  your income is most important,   or many  It's not how much you make its how much you deposit in a bank, that's the first thing   the tax man might look at IMO


Interesting, I know a fair few doctors and lawyers (heck my fiance is a doctor) and it's not that common to earn more than $300k at 30 years old. Maybe it's more common at 50+? I know for doctors it's all dependent on your specialty, for example it's pretty common for surgeons to earn more than $300k but not so much for specialists in other fields such as palliative care or general practitioners. Then again I don't live in America so maybe it's different there.


"There are many different kinds of SEC filings with different purposes.  Broadly speaking, what they have in common is that they are the ways that companies publicly disclose information that they are legally required to disclose.  The page that you listed gives brief descriptions of many types, but if you click through to the articles on individual types of filings, you can get more info. One of the most commonly discussed filings is the 10-K, which is, as Wikipedia says, ""a comprehensive summary of a company's financial performance"".  This includes info like earnings and executive pay. One example of a form that some people believe has potential utility for investors is Form 4, which is a disclosure of ""insider trading"".  People with a privileged stake in a company (executives, directors, and major shareholders) cannot legally buy or sell shares without disclosing it by filing a Form 4.  Some people think that you can make use of this information in the sense that if, for instance, the CEO of Google buys a bunch of Twitter stock, they may have some reason for thinking it will go up, so maybe you should buy it too.  Whether such inferences are accurate, and whether you can garner a practical benefit from them (i.e., whether you can manage to buy before everyone else notices and drives the price up) is debatable. My personal opinion would be that, for an average retail investor, readng SEC filings is unlikely to be useful.  The reason is that an average retail investor shouldn't be investing in individual companies at all, but rather in mutual funds or ETFs, which typically provide comparable returns with far less risk.  SEC filings are made by individual companies, so it doesn't generally help you to read them unless you're going to take action related to an individual company.  It doesn't generally make sense to take action related to an individual company if you don't have the time and energy to read a large number of SEC filings to decide which company to take action on.  If you have the time and energy to read a large number of SEC filings, you're probably not an average retail investor.  If you are a wheeler dealer who plays in the big leagues, you might benefit from reading SEC filings.  However, if you aren't already reading SEC filings, you're probably not a wheeler dealer who plays in the big leagues. That said, if you're a currently-average investor with big dreams, it could be instructive to read a few filings to explore what you might do with them.  You could, for instance, allocate a ""play money"" fund of a few thousand dollars and try your hand at following insider trades or the like.  If you make some money, great; if not, oh well.  Realistically, though, there are so many people who make a living reading SEC filings and acting on them every day that you have little chance of finding a ""diamond in the rough"" unless you also make a living by doing it every day. It's sort of like asking ""Should I read Boating Monthly to improve my sailing skills?""  If you're asking because you want to rent a Hobie Cat and go for a pleasure cruise now and then, sure, it can't hurt.  If you're asking because you want to enter the America's Cup, you can still read Boating Monthly, but it won't in itself meaningfully increase your chances of winning the America's Cup."


"The answer to the question, can I exercise the option right away? depends on the exercise style of the particular option contract you are talking about. If it's an American-style exercise, you can exercise at any moment until the expiration date. If it's an European-style exercise, you can only exercise at the expiration date. According to the CME Group website on the FOPs on Gold futures, it's an American-style exercise (always make sure to double check this - especially in the Options on Futures world, there are quite a few that are European style): http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/gold_contractSpecs_options.html?optionProductId=192#optionProductId=192 So, if you wanted to, the answer is: yes, you can exercise those contracts before expiration. But a very important question you should ask is: should you? Option prices are composed of 2 parts: intrinsic value, and extrinsic value. Intrinsic value is defined as by how much the option is in the money. That is, for Calls, it's how much the strike is below the current underlying price; and for Puts, it's how much the strike is above the current underlying price. Extrinsic value is whatever amount you have to add to the intrinsic value, to get the actual price the option is trading at the market. Note that there's no negative intrinsic value. It's either a positive number, or 0. When the intrinsic value is 0, all the value of the option is extrinsic value. The reason why options have extrinsic value is because they give the buyer a right, and the seller, an obligation. Ie, the seller is assuming risk. Traders are only willing to assume obligations/risks, and give others a right, if they get paid for that. The amount they get paid for that is the extrinsic value. In the scenario you described, underlying price is 1347, call strike is 1350. Whatever amount you have paid for that option is extrinsic value (because the strike of the call is above the underlying price, so intrinsic = 0, intrinsic + extrinsic = value of the option, by definition). Now, in your scenario, gold prices went up to 1355. Now your call option is ""in the money"", that is, the strike of your call option is below the gold price. That necessarily means that your call option has intrinsic value. You can easily calculate how much: it has exactly $5 intrinsic value (1355 - 1350, undelrying price - strike). But that contract still has some ""risk"" associated to it for the seller: so it necessarily still have some extrinsic value as well. So, the option that you bought for, let's say, $2.30, could now be worth something like $6.90 ($5 + a hypothetical $1.90 in extrinsic value). In your question, you mentioned exercising the option and then making a profit there. Well, if you do that, you exercise your options, get some gold futures immediately paying $1350 for them (your strike), and then you can sell them in the market for $1355. So, you make $5 there (multiplied by the contract multiplier). BUT your profit is not $5. Here's why: remember that you had to buy that option? You paid some money for that. In this hypothetical example, you payed $2.30 to buy the option. So you actually made only $5 - $2.30 = $2.70 profit! On the other hand, you could just have sold the option: you'd then make money by selling something that you bought for $2.30 that's now worth $6.90. This will give you a higher profit! In this case, if those numbers were real, you'd make $6.90 - $2.30 = $4.60 profit, waaaay more than $2.70 profit! Here's the interesting part: did you notice exactly how much more profit you'd have by selling the option back to the market, instead of exercising it and selling the gold contracts? Exactly $1.90. Do you remember this number? That's the extrinsic value, and it's not a coincidence. By exercising an option, you immediately give up all the extrinsic value it has. You are going to convert all the extrinsic value into $0. So that's why it's not optimal to exercise the contract. Also, many brokers usually charge you much more commissions and fees to exercise an option than to buy/sell options, so there's that as well! Always remember: when you exercise an option contract, you immediately give up all the extrinsic value it has. So it's never optimal to do an early exercise of option contracts and individual, retail investors. (institutional investors doing HFT might be able to spot price discrepancies and make money doing arbitrage; but retail investors don't have the low commissions and the technology required to make money out of that!) Might also be interesting to think about the other side of this: have you noticed how, in the example above, the option started with $2.30 of extrinsic value, and then it had less, $1.90 only? That's really how options work: as the market changes, extrinsic value changes, and as time goes by, extrinsic value usually decreases. Other factors might increase it (like, more fear in the market usually bring the option prices up), but the passage of time alone will decrease it. So options that you buy will naturally decrease some value over time. The closer you are to expiration, the faster it's going to lose value, which kind of makes intuitive sense. For instance, compare an option with 90 days to expiration (DTE) to another with 10 DTE. One day later, the first option still has 89 DTE (almost the same as 90 DTE), but the other has 9 DTE - it relatively much closer to the expiration than the day before. So it will decay faster. Option buyers can protect their investment from time decay by buying longer dated options, which decay slower! edit: just thought about adding one final thought here. Probabilities. The strategy that you describe in your question is basically going long an OTM call. This is an extremely bullish position, with low probability of making money. Basically, for you to make money, you need two things: you need to be right on direction, and you need to be right on time. In this example, you need the underlying to go up - by a considerable amount! And you need this to happen quickly, before the passage of time will remove too much of the extrinsic value of your call (and, obviously, before the call expires). Benefit of the strategy is, in the highly unlikely event of an extreme, unanticipated move of the underlying to the upside, you can make a lot of money. So, it's a low probability, limited risk, unlimited profit, extremely bullish strategy."


Almost certainly not on these councils, which are for little more than show. I believe one of the members of this council said this week that they've never actually even had a meeting.  So he's having trouble holding on to people who are only symbolically part of the administration and don't even have to do anything.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-income-the-flood-217db9889c07) reduced by 97%. (I'm a bot) ***** > We have at least hints from current behavior that UBI may be fundamentally attacking the wrong problem and I think many UBI advocates under-appreciate this.  > If the total UBI system cost as a percent of tax receipts becomes large, UBI may preclude these things from ever being built.  > I have a big list of pro/con worked out for Basic Jobs/Agriculture, which will eventually be Part 2.I would be happy to read any thoughts, especially about uncommon UBI plusses or alternatives.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/788a7w/after_universal_basic_income_the_flood/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~233563 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **UBI**^#1 **people**^#2 **money**^#3 **more**^#4 **problem**^#5"


"Is any article painting a company's policies in a positive light by difinition a ""spin piece""? Costco has been paying their employees more than their competitors for ages as it leads to better productivity and less turnover. Try looking at the world in a less cynical light, you'll be happier for it."


Give this a try https://www.catalogchoice.org/ I started using it about 6 months ago and my junk mail intake has lowered dramatically! About the only thing I get regularly are stupid cash advance checks from companies I have credit cards with.


I am under the impression these comments are where we put our subjective thoughts. Kind of like how all of your comments are subjective as well.   I have not heard Trump express such thoughts. Regardless, what he says is always meaningless pandering.


theres nothing you could probably do but hold an intervention or something, and i dont even know how effective that is. maybe gamblers anonymous? im not really sure this is the subreddit for this kind of question.


The easiest way to get started on a budget is just to track where you spend your money. If you have set bills each month I would make a category for each of those to make sure you have enough to pay. You can try and split up the remaining income into categories but the easiest way to start is just to track your spending for a month or two. This gives you a birds eye view of what is actually realistic. Start with that total as your preliminary budget and then adjust as you go along to meet other financial goals. We use neobudget.com for tracking our income.


In a process called collateralization, your mortgage is combined with others to form a security that other can invest in. When done right, this process provides liquidity, more money to be lent for more loans. When done wrong, bad things happen.  My mortgage happens to be held by the issuing bank. Yours was sold into such a pool of mortgages. One effect of this is the reselling of the servicing of the loan. I've had other mortgages that were sold every year, but I never paid ahead. With this bank, I'm on my fifth refinance, but the bank keeps the loan in house no matter what. I don't know if there's any correlation, it depends on the originating bank, in my opinion.


Floyd Mayweather isn't wealthy???? Wtf are you talking about? Forbes puts his net worth somewhere near 400M. That's not all in liquid assets he can just hand to the IRS (which would be stupid if they were liquid). The guy has houses, cars, jets, boats, planes, businesses. Wtf? The guy has made himself into one of the best boxers and promoters on the planet, he'll be rich off of boxing forever.  He has tax liability, i'm not sure why but it's not crippling for a guy who in a month will make literally 10x his liability in one day. If $500M isn't wealthy... no stop, it's insanely wealthy. Y'all are just bonkers.


The catch is in the Premium amount you pay. In a pure term insurance, there is no survival benefit. You get paid only for the event, i.e. when you die during the policy term, the sum assured is paid to your nominee. The money back on the other hand, charges a huge premium, typically 5X more than the pure term, part of it is for the risk cover. The balance is then invested in safe instruments and at the end if you survive you would get that money. Typical calculations would show that if you had yourself invested the difference in premium even in CD's you would get much more money back. The reason this product is available in the market is more of people cannot part with money when they don't get anything back. To these vast majority, it looks like insurance company is taking all their money and doesn't give them back if they survive. Hence to make it seem better to these vast majority, there is money back. Hence people all over the world buy these policy much more than a pure term policy.


Without getting to hung-up on terminology here, the management of a company will often attempt to keep stock prices high because of a number of reasons: Ideally companies keep prices up through performance.  In some cases, you'll see companies do other things spending cash and/or issuing bonds to continue to pay dividends (e.g. IBM), or spending cash and/or issuing bonds to pay for stock buybacks (e.g. IBM).  These methods can work for a time but are not sustainable and will often be seen as acts of desperation.  Companies that have a solid plan for growth will typically not do much of anything to directly change stock prices. Bonds are a bit different because they have a fairly straight-forward valuation model based on the fact that they pay out a fixed amount per month.  The two main reason prices in bonds go down are: The key here is that bonds pay out the same thing per month regardless of their price or the price of other bonds available.  Most stocks do not pay any dividend and for much of those that do, the main factor as to whether you make or lose money on them is the stock price. The price of bonds does matter to governments, however.  Let's say a country successfully issued some 10 year bonds last year at the price of 1000.  They pay 1% per month (to keep the math simple.)  Every month, they pay out $10 per bond.  Then some (stupid) politicians start threatening to default on bond payments.  The bond market freaks and people start trying to unload these bonds as fast as they can.  The going price drops to $500.  Next month, the payments are the same.  The coupon rate on the bonds has not changed at all.  I'm oversimplifying here but this is the core of how bond prices work. You might be tempted to think that doesn't matter to the country but it does.  Now, this same country wants to issue some more bonds.  It wants to get that 1% rate again but it can't.  Why would anyone pay $1000 for a 1% (per month) bond when they can get the exact same bond with (basically) the same risks for $500?  Instead they have to offer a 2% (per month) rate in order to match the market price. A government (or company) could in fact put money into the bond market to bolster the price of it's bonds (i.e. keep the rates down.)  The problem is that if you are issuing bonds, it's generally (caveats apply) because you need cash that you don't have so what money are you going to use to buy these bonds?  Or in other words, it doesn't make sense to issue bonds and then simply plow the cash gained from that issuance back into the same bonds you are issuing.  The options here are a bit more limited.  I have to mention though that the US government (via a quasi-governmental entity) did actually buy it's own bonds.  This policy of Quantitative Easing (QE) was done for more complicated reasons than simply keeping the price of bonds up.


"I've seen some Chipotles where you can see the McDonald's ownership coming through in a big way. Some of their employees just have a massive case of ""don't give a fucks"" that's usually not the type of people you want handling raw chicken."


Obviously the only way to have good credit is by owing money, and making payments as scheduled. To do this I would do everything I could to place all of your required expenses on a credit card. This can include paying rent, food, transportation, etc.  These are all payments that you already make, but simply move then through a different payment vehicle. It sounds like at this time you may not have a credit card that allows you to do this, but I would watch out for those cards that come in via mail with all kinds of special deals. While you have not mentioned if you have any of this, make sure that you keep up with your past debt and negotiate repayment if needed. Once your credit improves, you should begin to see doors opening that are problems now.


Masai Auto City is a trustable place, from where you can buy active used car which is certified by our expert team. If you have to buy the second hand and want to save the money, then you should come here and visit our place. We have more than 1000 thousand insisted car that is every our car dynamic and awesome in condition Skudai used car. We offer you most noticeable second hand that is all around ensured the vehicle from our ruler gathering, they check the car. The Masai Auto City is a decent open door for those individuals who need to spare the cash and purchase second hand auto in the best condition.


Don't remember the exact details but I recall watching in class a video about a Chinese company that had (at least at some point) had a refrigerator manufacturing plant on the East Coast (Virginia?) because the skilled labor was indeed cheaper than China.


It can be done, but I believe it would be impractical for most people - i.e., it would likely be cheaper to fly to Europe from other side of the world to handle it in person if you can.  It also depends on where you live. You should take a look if there are any branches or subsidiaries of foreign banks in your country - the large multinational banks most likely can open you an account in their sister-bank in another country for, say, a couple hundred euro in fees.


I dont remember the specifics, but basically I have been staying away from sears for years (passively, not like an intentional boycott) because of the poor customer service my friends and I have experienced (believe it was with either with returns, or with store credit card).  Apparently they still suck majorly: http://www.resellerratings.com/store/Sears


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/09/real-reason-wages-stagnated-economy-optimized-financialization.html) reduced by 84%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Each of these dynamics may well exacerbate the trend, but they all dodge the dominant driver of wage stagnation and rise income-wealth inequality: our economy is optimized for financialization, not labor/earned income.  > What does our economy is optimized for financialization mean? It means that capital and profits flow to the scarcities created by asymmetric access to information, leverage and cheap credit-the engines of financialization.  > As for selling one&#039;s labor in an economy optimized for capital and the asymmetries of finance-there&#039;s no premium for labor in such an economy, other than technical/managerial skills required by finance to exploit markets.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6z41av/the_real_reason_wages_have_stagnated_our_economy/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~207199 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **economy**^#1 **labor**^#2 **financialization**^#3 **flow**^#4 **credit**^#5"


On your credit report make sure that each debt included in bankruptcy is marked as discharged. After a bankruptcy case discharge you are free from debts that were included in your bankruptcy case. Credit card debt, medical bills and old taxes are common debts that you will no longer be responsible for. Court records that are of high importance are to keep a copy of your bankruptcy records.


Utilizing a GPS vehicle tracking and fleet management system is not an issue of questioning the dedication of your workers towards the organization. Then again, a compelling checking has regularly brought about change of profitability, fuel productivity and work hour use.


"What you're pretty systematically failing to appreciate is the **pain** felt by people during structural unemployment.  Yes, they should get an education, but guess what, they're probably too old for it to be worth or so far behind on the education ladder that it'd be a real struggle.  Maybe they should move to a city where there are jobs, but moving is expensive and so is living in a city.  The libertarian arguments here have the same problem as the (more extreme) arguments about civil rights.  Yes, the ""equilibrium"" will converge to a society without discrimination, where people get educated because low-skilled jobs don't pay much anymore, etc.  But those arguments completely neglect the pain of getting from here to there.  Maybe you think the government always screws things up (despite pretty glaring arguments to the contrary), and maybe you think the free market always ends up with the most efficient solution (despite some pretty glaring examples to the contrary), but that still doesn't mean that inefficient government programs that cost the future (GDP, whatever that means) can't be an appropriate means of reducing the overall suffering of the populace in both the short and long term."


I think we should all just boycott our student debt. We were sold useless degrees with promises of jobs that don't exist, for triple the inflation rate. Cut us a better deal or fuck off, and take back your barely used $500 textbooks while you're at it. Enough of this shit, white or black.


When you are putting your money in an index fund, you are not betting your performance against other asset classes but rather against competing investments withing the SAME asset class. The index fund always wins due to two factors: diversity, and lower cost.  The lower cost attribute is essentially where you get your performance edge over the longer run. That is why if you look at the universe of mutual funds (where you get your diversification), very few will have beaten the index, assuming they have survived. -Ralph Winters


when you are that big you typically run a hybrid environment with a mix of public and private cloud environments. At that scale it becomes more cost efficient to build and operate on your own hardware while bursting public cloud resources on demand


">But Facebook, which claims more than 900 million members, had 158 million unique visitors to its site in April, according to researcher ComScore, up just 5% from a year ago. That compares with year-over-year growth rates of 89% in April 2010.  So, about 1 in 6 users (~16%) visited facebook during a particular (recent) month.  The other 5 of 6 (~83%) of users didn't visit during that month...  Hmmm...  Sounds like a lot of relatively dead/fairly inactive accounts/users to me\*.  And the thing is that -- different than other social sites like LinkedIn (which is in a lot of ways an ""online resume"" & business contact database) -- facebook pretty much NEEDS continuous and regular use (that's the premise that their whole model, especially advertising-wise, is built on, if FB reverts to people simply using it to maintain a once or twice a year ""update"" on movements of friends {i.e. it becomes the equivalent of a Xmas card list storage site} then it's potential ""value"" diminishes rather dramatically).  >Also, the social network is testing ways to allow those under 13, currently prohibited, to participate with parental supervision.  Which seems (from a cynical perspective anyway) to be a sign that they are potentially getting ""desperate"" to maintain the purported ""growth"" in number of users. (And in a certain sense, they are doing what all companies with ""saturated"" markets do... a futile attempt to pull future demand into the present; which of course -- to the extent that it succeeds anyway -- really just moves the inevitable ""dropoff"" that much closer.)  ---  \* EDIT: And in addition (not surprisingly) it looks like Pareto principle, which tends to be recursive.. Of the roughly 20% (~16%) ""unique"" visitors during the month, probably the majority of them (roughly 80% of the 16%) engaged in minimal activity, with only some 20% of it (and thus somewhere round 3.2%~4%) of the total user base being truly ""active"", and then again, probably only 20% of *that* (maybe at or under 1%) were of the *hyper*-""active"" users that everyone thinks facebook'ers are."


Bedford, TX is known as The Center because it quite literally sits at the heart of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. It is a typical Texan neighborhood that was designed with families in mind– close to schools, hospitals, and churches as well as amusement and leisure centers.


"According to this post on TurboTax forums, you could deduct it as an ""Unreimbursed Employee"" expense. This would seem consistent with the IRS Guidelines on such deductions: An expense is ordinary if it is common and accepted in your trade, business, or profession. An expense is necessary if it is appropriate and helpful to your business. An expense does not have to be required to be considered necessary. Office rent is not listed explicitly among the examples of deductible unreimbursed employee expenses, but this doesn't mean it's not allowed.  Of course you should check with a tax professional if you want to be sure."