Question: Solid reading/literature for investment/retirement/income taxes?

For the mechanices/terms of stock investing, I recommend Learn to Earn by Peter Lynch. I also like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle. It explains why indexing is the best choice for most people. For stock picking, a good intro is The Little Book of Value Investing by Chris Brown. And then there is The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. IMO, this is the bible of investing.

I think it's impossible to work for an evil company without realizing they're evil, just as it's impossible to work for a sinking ship without realizing just that.  Any worker with half a brain would be able to tell the store is going under (open for business and nobody home?  More employees in the store than customers?).  If I worked at any of those places, I'd be sending my resume out day and night looking for a way out.  However, for most of the people on the actual store floors, they're McJobs anyway, and as much as it sucks to axe them, those jobs come and go by the dozen anyway.

"One idea that wouldn't require getting into any special ""SMS-only"" type of software project is to just use email groups - for example, to send an SMS message to a Verizon customer you can email using their phone number like 1234567890@vtext.com.    So ""Joe"" might have an email address of joe@company.com but you could create a new contact named ""SMS-Joe"" that has the cell phone email address.   Look up what domain name each cell carrier uses for that purpose on the page below, put a bunch of those into an email group and 'text' away.    https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-send-e-mail-to-sms-text/"

The new payment on $172,500 3.5% 15yr would be $1233/mo compared to $1614/mo now (26 bi-weekly payments, but 12 months.) Assuming the difference is nearly all interest, the savings is closer to $285/mo than 381.  Note, actual savings are different, the actual savings is based on the difference in interest over the year. Since the term will be changing, I'm looking at cash flow, which is the larger concern, in my opinion.    $17,000/285 is 60 months. This is your break even time to payoff the $17000, higher actually since the $17K will be accruing interest.  I didn't see any mention of closing costs or other expenses. Obviously, that has to be factored in as well.  I think the trade off isn't worth it. As the other answers suggest, the rental is too close to break-even now. The cost of repairs on two houses is an issue. In my opinion, it's less about the expenses being huge than being random. You don't get billed $35/mo to paint the house. You wake up, see too many spots showing wear, and get a $3000 bill. Same for all high cost items, Roof, HVAC, etc.  You are permitted to borrow 50% of your 401(k) balance, so you have $64K in the account. I don't know your age, this might be great or a bit low. I'd keep saving, not putting any extra toward either mortgage until I had an emergency fund that was more than sufficient. The fund needs to handle the unexpected expenses as well as the months of unemployment. In general, 6-9 months of these expenses is recommended.  To be clear, there are times a 401(k) loan can make sense. I just don't see that it does now.  (Disclaimer - when analyzing refis there are two approaches. The first is to look at interest saved. After all, interest is the expense, principal payments go right to your balance sheet. The second is purely cash flow, in which case one might justify a higher rate, and going from 15 to 30 years, but freeing up cash that can be better deployed. Even though the rate goes up say 1/2%, the payment drops due to the term. Take that savings and deposit to a matched 401(k) and the numbers may work out very well.  I offer this to explain why the math above may not be consistent with other answers of mine.)

Ah, but it might be the regulators responsibility. Predatory pricing can be a monopolistic tactic, meaning that large corporations that can afford to lose money on some projects may be wise to do so to keep their smaller competitors out of the industry, and then being the only one (or several) left, can make those losses back on jacked up prices since there is little/no competition in their market.  Bidding at a loss is often [illegal or regulated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Legal_aspects).

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

"If I invest in index funds or other long term stocks that pay dividend which I reinvest, they don't need to be worth more per share for me to make a profit, right? That is, if I sell part of the stocks, it's GOOD if they're worth more than I bought them at, but the real money comes from the QUANTITY of stocks that you get by reinvesting your dividends, right? I would say it is more the other way around.  It is nice to get dividends and reinvest them, but overall the main gain comes from the stocks going up in value. The idea with index funds, however, is that you don't rely on any particular stock going up in value; instead you just rely on the aggregate of all the funds in the index going up.  By buying lots of stocks bundled in an index fund, you avoid being too reliant on any one company's performance. Can I invest ""small amounts"" (part of paycheck) into index funds on a monthly basis, like €500, without taking major ""transaction fees""? (Likely to be index fund specific... general answers or specific answers using popular stocks welcomed). Yes, you can.  At least in the US, whether you can do this automatically from your paycheck depends on whether you employer has that set up.  I don't know that work in the Netherlands.  However, at the least, you can almost certainly set up an auto-invest program that takes $X out of your bank account every month and buys shares of some index fund(s). Is this plan market-crash proof? My parents keep saying that ""Look at 2008 and think about what such a thing would do to your plan"", and I just see that it will be a setback, but ultimately irrelevant, unless it happens when I need the money. And even then I'm wondering whether I'll really need ALL of my money in one go. Doesn't the index fund go back up eventually? Does a crash even matter if you plan on holding stocks for 10 or more years? Crashes always matter, because as you say, there's always the possibility that the crash will occur at a time you need the money.  In general, it is historically true that the market recovers after crashes, so yes, if you have the financial and psychological fortitude to not pull your money out during the crash, and to ride it out, your net worth will probably go back up after a rough interlude.  No one can predict the future, so it's possible for some unprecedented crisis to cause an unprecedented crash.  However, the interconnectedness of stock markets and financial systems around the world is now so great that, were such a no-return crash to occur, it would probably be accompanied by the total collapse of the whole economic system.  In other words, if the stock market dies suddenly once and for all, the entire way of life of ""developed countries"" will probably die with it.  As long as you live in such a society, you can't really avoid ""gambling"" that it will continue to exist, so gambling on there not being a cataclysmic market crash isn't much more of a gamble. Does what I'm planning have similarities with some financial concept or product (to allow me to research better by looking at the risks of that concept/product)? Maybe like a mortgage investment plan without the bank eating your money in between? I'm not sure what you mean by ""what you're planning"".  The main financial products relevant to what you're describing are index funds (which you already mentioned) and index ETFs (which are basically similar with regard to the questions you're asking here).  As far as concepts, the philosophy of buying low-fee index funds, holding them for a long time, and not selling during crashes, is essentially that espoused by Jack Bogle (not quite the inventor of the index fund, but more or less its spiritual father) and the community of ""Bogleheads"" that has formed around his ideas.  There is a Bogleheads wiki with lots of information about the details of this approach to investing.  If this strategy appeals to you, you may find it useful to read through some of the pages on that site."

What the fuck are you talking about. How does religion personally insult you on a daily basis? Do they insult you by serving you free food because you're homeless? Do they insult you by running orginizations that pay for peoples gas or electric bills in the winter seasons so they don't freeze to death?   Seriously people, what the fuck are you doing in your daily life? You're doing fucking nothing with it and you're just on reddit all day making shit up to bitch about, right? I work at a Catholic run non-for profit hospital which treats many children for free even from money we make at fundraising events. Is that so fucking terrible? That children are living because of money this hospital makes through the help of the archdiocese in my city?  Know what's funny? I can manage to be agnostic and not be a judgmental prick just because someone is christian, as long as they don't take it in their own right to attack my own beliefs or try and push their beliefs on me (which has never happened to me in my entire 21 fucking years).


Question: How to save money for future expenses

First, talk to your husband about this. You really need to persuade him that you need to be saving, and get him to agree on how and how much. Second, if you husband is not good at saving, work on getting something set aside automatically - ideally deducted from a paycheck or transferred to a savings account automatically. If he is the kind of person who might dip into that account, try to make it a place he can't withdraw from Third, get some advice, possibly training, on budgeting. Buy a book, take a video course: even start by watching some TV shows on getting out of debt.

"If the country went to a sustainable minimum wage like 15 dollars an hour we would benefit more. Anyone who thinks the walmart strikes are stupid and they should be fired clearly doesnt understand how the economy should work.  Oh?  You do know that all basic goods and services would increase  in price, right?  Raising the minimum wage will not raise minimum value.  ""If you are pro for under 15 dollars an hour, you are pro slavery.""  Haha. Slaves are forced.  You aren't forced to work for minimum wage.  It's a result of many poor life decisions that led you there.  The fact that I'm not working a minimum wage job is because I worked my ass off to learn the skills I needed to make a good living.  ""The only people making these facts up are the ones who own the businesses because their wealth will go down and be spread among employees more.""  Not really.  As a business owner, I would just increase the costs of my goods or services.  Most retail businesses have slim profit margins (restaurants are even worse).  They would not be able to survive long if their workforce cost suddenly doubled and their revenue stayed the same.  You don't know much about business. I'm glad people like you aren't making decision in government."

"A company's valuation includes its assets, in addition to projected earnings. Aside from the obvious issue that ""projected earnings"" can be wildly inaccurate or speculative (as in the case of startups and fast-moving industries like technology), a company's assets are not necessarily tied to the market the company is in. For the sake of illustration, say the government were to ban fast food tomorrow, and the market for that were to go all the way to zero.  McDonald's would still have almost 30 billion dollars worth of real estate holdings that would surely make the company worth something, even though it would have to stop selling its products. Similarly, Apple is sitting on approximately $200 billion dollars in cash and securities in overseas subsidiaries.  Even if they never make another cent selling iPhones and such, the company is still worth a lot because of those holdings. ""Corporate raiders"" back in the 70's and 80's made massive personal fortunes exploiting this disconnect in undervalued companies that had more assets than their market cap, by getting enough ownership to liquidate the company's assets.  Oliver Stone even made a movie about the phenomenon. So yes, it's certainly possible for a company to be worth more than the size of the market for its products."

">*Higher taxes aren't generally a path to economic growth and job creation. Higher cigarette taxes, however, are increasingly boosting at least one sector of the economy, organized crime.*  >*'Smuggled cigarettes have become the new currency of organized crime, and a lot of these criminal organizations are finding that it’s more profitable than illegal narcotics,' Rich Marianos, the retired Assistant Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,recently noted.*  >*Marianos said that black market tobacco smuggling has become ""a high-profit, low-risk criminal enterprise. Compared to drug offenses where there’s a mandatory minimum sentence, there’s no penalties out there for the cigarette trafficker.""*  >*'They’re being sold in the bodegas, in the convenience stores, they’re being sold on the street, they’re being sold in the housing projects,” Marianos said, “by street gangs like the Latin Kings, terrorist organizations, the Russian Mafia.'""*  >*Politicians love raising tobacco taxes. With the number of smokers continuing to fall, fewer voters feel the pain of the higher taxes directly. Last year, three states raised their cigarette taxes, even though the states were enjoying higher tax revenue.*  >*The political addiction to higher cigarette taxes is creating a boon for organized crime. Last month, the Tax Foundation, in testimony before the US Senate, noted that over 56% of the cigarettes sold in New York State were smuggled in from other states. New York has the highest tax on cigarettes in the country.*   Cross-post from /r/MAConservative"

"Generally speaking, the ""we lose good people if we don't pay more"" at organizations where productivity is impossible to measure are usally horsehit.  The actual situation is usually: ""The next person I hire won't do both of our jobs if I can't give them a lot of money, if I have to pay them less I will actually have to work""."

I doubt it.  Securitizations refer to deals that issue tranched bonds backed by a specific cash flow asset. That asset can be mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, syndicated loans, aircraft loans, trade finance...pretty much any type of loan.  - MBS refers to any securitization backed by mortgages. - CLO refers to any securitization backed by syndicated loans. - CMS refers to any securitization backed by commercial mortgage debt. - ABS refers to the rest (car loans, credit cards, airplanes, etc)  CDO refers to a securitization of other securitizations. The underlying securitizations could be MBS, CLO, CMS, ABS, whatever. Most common CDOs are securitizations of MBS or CLO, with the vast majority being MBS from the go-go years '05-'07. And don't even get me started on synthetic structures.  To my knowledge (and again I could be wrong here, please let me know if you've seen otherwise) the market for CDOs has been firmly dead since '07. ABS is still very active, although less than in the mid-oughts, and CLO is around still too. These two proved the best application of the concepts behind securitization: their underlying loans were truly diversified, so a general economic downturn hurt them less then the national collapse in the housing market. MBS issuance that does not involve Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie is rare but still exists. The lack of non-prime issuance of MBS is a huge reason for why the average American can't refi or take out a mortgage: there's no MBS issuance to package the loan into!  Edit: typos

"You're an idiot. There is no such thing as ""statistical heresy"". Picking any given stretch of time will create an assumption. The last year has had historically crazy low volatility, but if they were using a one year sample in mid-2009 it would be the most incredibly conservative VaR in history. On the other hand, using historical volatility from the past 50 years would make no sense either: does the stock market in 1985 look anything like today's? What about the liquidity of pretty much any derivatives market? There is no ""right"" way to measure VaR; any way you do it involves assumptions and tweaks that are entirely subjective.  Also, VaR can be over a variety of confidence intervals. 99% or 95% are standard, with 95% being more common because that's two standard deviations in a normal distribution. And hey! That's what they used."

I got sucked into working with a tech company when I was striving to be an Investment banker in San Francisco.   I can't stress enough how much better I have it now working with a great tech company, with great pay, flexible hours and great vacation time.   But i'll admit, sometimes it feels like we're in our own little flourishing world.


Question: What is a “fiat” currency? Are there other types of currency?

"A ""fiat"" currency is non-convertible paper currency that a government establishes as legal tender. Most countries today are using fiat currencies. The rest have currencies pegged (or convertible to) US Dollars (which is a fiat currency). In the past, money was usually based on precious metals such as gold or silver. Until the end of the gold standard, you could theoretically go the the US Treasury with a US Note or Federal Reserve Note and convert the note into a fixed quantity of gold or silver (depending on the note). The US had a bi-metallic currency policy for political reasons, which means that money was backed by both gold and silver."

I know it may not last longer but i was able to 2.5x my wealth over last 2 years.(2016, 2017 cont) I was successfully able to convert 70k into 452k in 21months. Now at this amount, I am really worried and want to take all the profit. I agree that I have been lucky with these returns but it was not all outright luck. Now my plan is to take 100k of it and try high risk investments while investing 350k in index funds.

Instead of gnucash i suggest you to use kmymoney. It's easier

How about this rule? Sell 10% of your shares every time they double in price.  (of course, only buy stocks that repeatedly double in price)

Most soccer balls are made of blends of polyurethane, polyvinyl chloride, and common rubber or nylon. We provide the best soccer balls all branded companies in the world. At our website, you can search Best 10 soccer balls. We will provide all balls at an affordable price.The best and most expensive PU balls feel like leather and are very firm, durable and water-resistant. The PVC balls are also very durable but are not as soft and responsive as the PU-blend balls.

Possible alternative: In my case, the part-time locksmithing is a small enough portion of my I come that I just submit it as hobby income, rather than trying to track it as a separate entity.

I work in banking for the private bank division for a major bank as a banker. I have been helping clients with these types of transactions for years. I believe that large transactions like this are best left to the big boys. That is where the talented bankers/loan officers/underwriters are, and that is the type of transaction they specialize in. I know for a fact that your credit union will not be able to suit your needs, and a smaller bank will be tough to deal with. I wouldn't worry at all about the credit pulls as much as picking a rock solid bank with lots of experiences doing these kinds of deals. That is my 2 cents, albeit a little bit biased, but it is also coming from experience. History with the bank definitely matters, but what business you can bring to the bank along with the lending (deposits, 401k management, personal investments, business services, etc) matter just as much and can make or break the approval/decline or even the terms being favorable or not favorable to your company.

"Similar, but actually quite different.  A negative income tax on the first $20,000/year has a couple of problems this scheme doesn't:  1) Administration costs and legal complexity.  Are we ""prebating"" or ""rebating"" the stipend?  How is someone supposed to get along if they lose their job unexpectedly in a rebate-based system, can they get their income-tax withholdings back up to $20,000/year?  How does the government register changes in income to know when to write someone a check?  2) With a negative tax up to a certain *fixed* level, there's effectively a changing level of subsidy depending how much of the per-capita income is the break-even tax level.  If the per-capita income is $45,000/year (our current GDP per capita), then the subsidy level is almost 50%, and if it goes up to $60,000/year (our current mean household income), the subsidy level is then 33%.  The system I described and steepk (IIRC) invented fixes the subsidy percentage in relation to the mean reported income (effectively fixing a *relative class level* as minimum) rather than a particular monetary amount (whose relative buying power versus inflation or other incomes can fluctuate wildly).  We pick a subsidy level, say 1/3 (33.33333%).  We then impose a flat income tax of that level plus a little bit more for administration costs (say, 35%).  At the end of the year, everyone is taxed at that flat level, and the government scrapes its administration costs off the top and now has a big pot with 1/3 of everyone's income in it.  This is divided into one portion for each taxpayer, and those portions into monthly or biweekly pieces.  These pieces are sent out regularly as checks to the taxpayer, and *these checks are not taxed as income*.  That last bit is what makes this so nice: it turns the tax progressive, in fact more progressive than our current system.  After taxes and *after stipend*, only the rich will pay an *effective* tax rate asymptotically close to the real 35%.  Most people without incomes many, many times the size of their stipends will be looking at an effective tax rate of less than 15%, including the tax-paying middle class and the professional upper-middle class who currently bitch so much about our tax rates being so confiscatory (which they *are*, for the abysmal level of social services we receive).  Now, to get back to the big benefits of fixing the subsidy percentage.  This means that the subsidy grows with mean income, effectively functioning as easy to run, fair, and direct wealth redistribution without the difficulty of trying to create efficient, productive WPA-style jobs or imposing market-distorting subsidies.  It also means that we can allow things like automation to improve the productivity of our economy because *everyone* gets a share: if automating a certain job is truly more efficient than having a worker do it, the capitalist's income-gain from automation will push up the mean income, and therefore the basic income, further than the worker's lesser income and the capitalist's lesser profit would have."


Question: Why are interest rates on saving accounts so low in USA and Europe?

The United States Federal Reserve has decided that interest rates should be low. (They think it may help the economy. The details matter little here though.) It will enforce this low rate by buying Treasury bonds at this very low interest rate. (Bonds are future money, so this means they pay a lot of money up front, for very little interest in the future. The Fed will pay more than anyone who offers less money up front, so they can set the price as long as they're willing to buy.) At the end of the day, Treasury bonds pay nearly no interest.   Since there's little money to be made with Treasuries, people who want better-than-zero returns will bid up the current-price of any other bonds or similar loan-like instruments to get what whatever rate of return that they can. There's really no more than one price for money; you can think of the price of those bonds as basically (Treasury rate + some modifier based on the risk) percent.  I realize thinking about bond prices is weird and different than other prices (you're measuring future-money using present-money and it's easy to be confused) and assure you it ultimately makes sense :) Anyway. Your savings account money has to compete with everyone else willing to lend money to banks. Everyone-else lends money for peanuts, so you get peanuts on your savings account too. Your banking is probably worth more to your bank on account of your check-card payment processing fees (collected from the merchant) than from the money they make lending out your savings (notice how many places have promotional rates if you make your direct deposits or use your check card to make a purchase N times a month).  In Europe, it's similar, except you've got a different central bank. If Europe's bank operated radically differently for an extended period of time, you'd expect to see a difference in the exchange rates which would ultimately make the returns from investing in those currencies pretty similar as well. Such a change may show up domestically as inflation in the country with the loose-money policy, and internationally as weakness against other currencies. There's really only one price for money around the entire world. Any difference boils down to a  difference in (perceived) risk.

As well as credit risk there's also interest risk. If a bond has a face value of $100, pays 1% and matures in 20 years' time then you expect to receive a total of $120 from buying it now -- $1 per year for 20 years and $100 at the end. But if you can get a 3% return elsewhere, then if you invest your $80 there instead you will get $2.40 per year for 20 years and then $80 at the end, making a total of $128 (and you also get more of the money sooner). So even $80 for the $100 bond is a bad buy, and you should invest elsewhere.

If the Democrats controlled the House the legislation would be equally as crony, bullshit, and corrupt. We just went through the entire ordeal in preventing SOPA from passing, which had explicit support from Democrats. So don't tell me  with a straight face that the parties are any different.   Obama is no different than Romney, the only issue is that Romney is in election mode and Obama has a Congress unwilling to pass any of his laws. If the situation was reversed (Rep white house, Dem congress) it would be equally as fucked up.

"I'm far from certain, but I'll take a swing at it.  Equilibrium term structure models ""predict"" a term structure that we don't observe, and no-arbitrage models ""correct"" prediction to match reality.  An analogous place to look would be implied volatility surfaces.  Black-Scholes predicts a specific implied volatility surface (or rather, it assumes the surface is flat).  So I think a Hull-White-style no-arbitrage model might work by addressing the difference between predicted and actual surfaces.  Like term structure models, you'd take a set of observed volatilities and somehow plug them into BS so that the BS price didn't imply arbitrage opportunities within the observed set of options.  I'm not at all certain that I'm being clear, and there's a distinct possibility that I'm saying/thinking something stupid."

I hired our copywriter from linkedin last month. after 2 failed CL ads, 1 monster and 1 careerbiulder that gave us 90% crap candidates, I scouted some people on linkedin. I emailed 6 on there, 2 came in for an interview and we hired 1. They werent even looking for a new job, but it worked out well.

Financial benefit? No. No matter whether you are paid based on a salary or by the hour, the frequency of your pay check has no effect since at the end of the year you will have received the exact same amount of money. Psychological benefit? Well, from the many answers and comments on this page that seem to think there is a difference, then apparently there is a large psychological difference. Whether that is a benefit or not, I guess, depends on your personality.

If that condition is permanent -- the stock will NEVER pay dividends and you will NEVER be able to sell it -- then yes, it sounds to me like this is a worthless piece of paper. If there is some possibility that the stock will pay dividends in the future, or that a market will exist to sell it, then you are making a long-term investment. It all depends on how likely it is that the situation will change. If the investment is small, maybe it's worth it.

It was everyone, from the bankers, to the no doc loan officers, to the people with no or minuscule incomes applying for a home they knew they could not afford, to the people who used their home as a piggy bank, to house flippers, to speculators, to investors. Everyone has some blame, greed, what ever you want to call it. There was no one person to shoulder the blame.


Question: I am the sole owner of an LLC. Does it make a difference if I file as an S-Corp or a sole-member LLC?

"S-Corp are taxed very different. Unlike LLC where you just add the profit to your income with S-Corp you have to pay yourself a ""reasonable"" salary (on w-2) which of course is a lot more paperwork. I think the advantage (but don't hold me accountable for this) is if your S-Corp makes a lot more than a reasonable salary, then the rest of the money can be passed through on your personal return at a lower (corp) rate."

"What interests me in the article is the way California seems to be quite happy to be losing people who pay taxes because the state can so easily attract new warm bodies. What happens to a state when there is no incentive to retain its people?   It struck a cord with me because I've been reading about the history of mining. If an industry can always bring in newer, poorer people, conditions for those working in that industry will never rise. In mining, conditions can be so bad that you can almost think of it as if the workers are expendable. Working conditions can be so bad that many die each year and nobody seems to care because if one group of workers gets a little uppity, management simply starts importing them from another country.   You can disagree but I see a parallel with California.Sure one is an industry and one is a country but this is a state that seems more than the rest of the country to depend on cheap Mexican labor. As Mexico stopped breeding people for export, California begin to simply import new slave labor from Honduras or any other place that still exports people as though they were only cattle. Of course this makes it difficult for those who came in an earlier wave to improve quality of life. In fact, life gets harder and grittier. Just look at what happened to the world class famous free public education in California. Yeah, distant memory now.   I also wonder if allowing California to ignore national immigration law, is good for the rest of the nation. What about this quote:  ""Also, more than 30% of the nation’s welfare recipients are Californians – even though California has just 12% of the nation’s population.  It is not surprising, therefore, that California is ranked number one in poverty.""  California has so many electoral votes that I don't expect to see them prosecuted by the federal government (like AZ) no matter what they do. The state is too big to piss off. But it is becoming a cancer to the rest of the nation?"

"We had an Aussie who works in Singapore in our office telling us that he couldn't believe how many acronyms Singaporeans have, and GFC was one of them. He said ""they love TLA in Singapore"". TLA? Three Letter Acronyms!"

Oh, ok. You have $3.8m cash to work with in creating a low-risk investment portfolio. All you need to do is pick investment options that stick to the three objectives of the fund. You may assume all the capital is available for immediate investment ($200k out of the $4m is set aside for scholarships so it must stay liquid).

"How can I use a house I own free and clear to purchase another home? Answer: walk in to any bank, that's any bank, or any lending institution. State that you own a house free and clear. This will happen: In all jurisdictions, it's incredibly easy to borrow large amounts of money at the lowest possible rate, once you own a house outright. On top of that, you want to spend the money on another house (as opposed to s sports car or the like), so you have even more equity.  Winner! Your main question will be this.  Say your current house (owned outright!) is worth $500,000.  Go to a bank or lender, and say to them, ""How much money will you give me to buy house B putting both the houses on the mortgage.""  One bank will say ""fantastic!  buy any house you want up to $400,000!""  Another will say ""$450,000!"" another will say ""$300,000!""  In a hot market another will say ""$650,000!"".  So shop around and see who will give you the most."

Stockpiled as treasuries, which are a debt security, they are liabilities.  You're making the case that as the gov't spends it's ability to spend increases as the economy grows? It's not like we're flipping a switch and turning on a light bulb  Edit: it's more like walking out on a tight-rope while people are yelling at you haha

In the united states qualified institutions of higher education should give the student a 1098-t. This form breaks down all money received/billed  and for tuition and scholarships. It would not include items such as books and room and board. The 1098 would constitute proof of attendance and proof of expenses. If a 529 plan was used to pay for part or all of the tuition it should also be sent to you or the student depending on where the funds were sent. If the student can't find the 1098-t it is likely that the college had an electronic copy sent to the students official email, or it can be downloaded from the student's account where tuition bills care paid.  Note: a confusing part of the 1098-T is that many universities include the spring semester numbers in the form for the previous year.   For Example: The 1098-T will tell you if they have done that.

"SEC filings do not contain this information, generally. You can find intangible assets on balance sheets, but not as detailed as writing down every asset separately, only aggregated at some level (may be as detailed as specifying ""patents"" as a separate line, although even that I wouldn't count on). Companies may hold different rights to different patents in different countries, patents are being granted and expired constantly, and unless this is a pharma industry or a startup - each single patent doesn't have a critical bearing on the company performance."


Question: Is it worth investing in Index Fund, Bond Index Fund and Gold at the same time?

"Index funds can be a very good way to get into the stock market. It's a lot easier, and cheaper, to buy a few shares of an index fund than it is to buy a few shares in hundreds of different companies. An index fund will also generally charge lower fees than an ""actively managed"" mutual fund, where the manager tries to pick which stocks to invest for you. While the actively managed fund might give you better returns (by investing in good companies instead of every company in the index) that doesn't always work out, and the fees can eat away at that advantage. (Stocks, on average, are expected to yield an annual return of 4%, after inflation. Consider that when you see an expense ratio of 1%. Index funds should charge you more like 0.1%-0.3% or so, possibly more if it's an exotic index.) The question is what sort of index you're going to invest in. The Standard and Poor's 500 (S&P 500) is a major index, and if you see someone talking about the performance of a mutual fund or investment strategy, there's a good chance they'll compare it to the return of the S&P 500. Moreover, there are a variety of index funds and exchange-traded funds that offer very good expense ratios (e.g. Vanguard's ETF charges ~0.06%, very cheap!). You can also find some funds which try to get you exposure to the entire world stock market, e.g. Vanguard Total World Stock ETF, NYSE:VT). An index fund is probably the ideal way to start a portfolio - easy, and you get a lot of diversification. Later, when you have more money available, you can consider adding individual stocks or investing in specific sectors or regions. (Someone else suggested Brazil/Russia/Indo-China, or BRICs - having some money invested in that region isn't necessarily a bad idea, but putting all or most of your money in that region would be. If BRICs are more of your portfolio then they are of the world economy, your portfolio isn't balanced. Also, while these countries are experiencing a lot of economic growth, that doesn't always mean that the companies that you own stock in are the ones which will benefit; small businesses and new ventures may make up a significant part of that growth.) Bond funds are useful when you want to diversify your portfolio so that it's not all stocks. There's a bunch of portfolio theory built around asset allocation strategies. The idea is that you should try to maintain a target mix of assets, whatever the market's doing. The basic simplified guideline about investing for retirement says that your portfolio should have (your age)% in bonds (e.g. a 30-year-old should have 30% in bonds, a 50-year-old 50%.) This helps maintain a balance between the volatility of your portfolio (the stock market's ups and downs) and the rate of return: you want to earn money when you can, but when it's almost time to spend it, you don't want a sudden stock market crash to wipe it all out. Bonds help preserve that value (but don't have as nice of a return). The other idea behind asset allocation is that if the market changes - e.g. your stocks go up a lot while your bonds stagnate - you rebalance and buy more bonds. If the stock market subsequently crashes, you move some of your bond money back into stocks. This basically means that you buy low and sell high, just by maintaining your asset allocation. This is generally more reliable than trying to ""time the market"" and move into an asset class before it goes up (and move out before it goes down). Market-timing is just speculation. You get better returns if you guess right, but you get worse returns if you guess wrong. Commodity funds are useful as another way to diversify your portfolio, and can serve as a little bit of protection in case of crisis or inflation. You can buy gold, silver, platinum and palladium ETFs on the stock exchanges. Having a small amount of money in these funds isn't a bad idea, but commodities can be subject to violent price swings! Moreover, a bar of gold doesn't really earn any money (and owning a share of a precious-metals ETF will incur administrative, storage, and insurance costs to boot). A well-run business does earn money. Assuming you're saving for the long haul (retirement or something several decades off) my suggestion for you would be to start by investing most of your money* in index funds to match the total world stock market (with something like the aforementioned NYSE:VT, for instance), a small portion in bonds, and a smaller portion in commodity funds. (For all the negative stuff I've said about market-timing, it's pretty clear that the bond market is very expensive right now, and so are the commodities!) Then, as you do additional research and determine what sort investments are right for you, add new investment money in the places that you think are appropriate - stock funds, bond funds, commodity funds, individual stocks, sector-specific funds, actively managed mutual funds, et cetera - and try to maintain a reasonable asset allocation. Have fun. *(Most of your investment money. You should have a separate fund for emergencies, and don't invest money in stocks if you know you're going need it within the next few years)."

You can also roll money from prior 401ks into current 401ks. Call the administrator of the 401k you prefer (i.e., Fidelity/Schwab, whoever the financial institution is). Explain you don't work there anymore and ask if you can roll money into it. Some plans allow this and some don't. So either, 1) You  can roll all your prior 401ks into your current 401k. 2) You might be able to roll all prior 401ks into the prior 401k of your choice if they will accept contributions after you've left. You can't move the amount in your current employer's 401k until you separate or hit a certain age. 3) Like mentioned above, you can roll all prior 401ks into an IRA at any financial institution that will let you set up an IRA. Process: -Call the financial institutions you want to move the money from. Tell them you want a direct rollover. Have them write the check to the financial institution you are rolling into with your name mentioned but not the beneficiary (i.e., check written to Schwab FBO: John Doe account #12345) Tax implications: -If you are rolling from a pre-tax 401k to a pre-tax 401k or IRA, and the money goes directly from institution to institution, you are not liable for taxes. You can also roll from a Roth type (already taxed) account into another Roth type account with no tax implications. If they write a check to YOU and you don't put the money in an IRA or 401k within 60 days you will pay ~20% tax and a 10% early withdrawal penalty. That's why it's best to transfer from institution to institution. 401k vs IRA: -This is a personal decision. You could move all your prior 401ks into an IRA you set up for yourself. Generally the limitations of a 401k are the lack of funds to invest in that fit your retirement strategy, or high expense ratios. Be sure to investigate the fees you would pay for trades in an IRA (401k are almost always free) and the expense ratio for funds in your 401k vs funds you might invest in at a broker for your IRA. Best of both: -You can roll all your 401ks into a single 401k and still set up an IRA or Roth IRA (if your income qualifies) that you can contribute to separately. This could give you flexibility in fund choices if your 401k fees tend to be cheaper while keeping the bulk of your nest egg in low cost mutual funds through an employer account. Last advice: Even if you don't like the options in your current 401k, make sure you are contributing at least enough to get any employer match.

The key to getting a job in college and for the rest of your life is networking and knowing exactly where you want to work not a business card.  During a career fair, recruiters get flocked hundreds of students who don't know shit about the company or industry.  All you need to do is research the company and figure out what makes it better than it's competitors. Then when you talk to a recruiter at the fair, be sure to slip it into the conversation.  Recruiters are looking for people who fit the companies culture. Make sure you structure your elevator pitch in a way that aligns with it perfectly.  If you do these things, I guarantee you will get an interview assuming you have the minimum GPA

"I find this very hard to believe Believe it.  The bottom quarter of American households have negative net worth, and the bottom three quarters have no more than a tiny amount saved up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#/media/File:MeanNetWorth2007.png In an emergency, 63% of Americans would not be able to come up with $500 without going into debt.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-americans-dont-have-enough-savings-to-cover-a-500-emergency/ Nobody can retire with 5k in the U.S. The money will be gone within a year. Is it possible? Now you begin to see why the long-term stability of Social Security and Medicare are at present hot topics in American political life. Without them, a great many more Americans would die in poverty. What is the actual figure? The $5000 figure is accurate but irrelevant; that median includes people who are thirty years from retirement and people who are two days from retirement. The more relevant statistics are those restricted to people at or close to retirement age, and they can be found lower down in the article you cite, or in numerous other studies. Here's one from the GAO for example: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-419 The figures here are, unfortunately, no less terrifying: Now $104K is a lot better than $5K, but it's still not much to retire on. Why we believe that it is reasonable to throw out all the zeros before taking the median, I do not know. That seems like bad math to me. UPDATE: There is some discussion of this point in the comments; all I'm saying here is that this is a clumsy and possibly misleading way to characterize the situation. The linked report has the actual data, but let's try to summarize it here in a more meaningful way. Let's suppose that we make buckets for how dependent on SS is a retirement-age household to avoid starving to death, being homeless, and so on? Maybe these buckets are not ideal, and we could move them around a bit.  The takeaways here are that the ratios of nothing:inadequate:barely adequate:comfortable is about 40:30:20:10. That only the top decile of retirement-age households can fund a comfortable retirement without help illustrates just how dependent on SS American households are. how do 50% of old Americans survive in their old age?  Social Security and Medicare.  As the cited GAO report indicates: ""Social Security provides most of the income for about half of households age 65 and older."" Do most old Americans rely on their children for financial support? One day I met a woman at a party and we were making small talk about her kids. She had a couple already and one more was on the way.  ""I want to have lots of children to support me in my old age"", she said.  ""Do you support your parents?"" I asked, which frankly seemed like an entirely reasonable question.  ""Of course not! I can't afford it. I've got a baby on the way and two more kids at home!"" I left her to draw her own conclusions as to the viability of her retirement plan."

> You are aware that online advertising spending recently overtook tv, right? It had a lot of people in the ad world screaming that tv advertising is dead and online is the only possible future.  That's a very narrow perspective to base your conclusions on.  The fact is I know what I'm talking about.  When a computer and internet expert gives you tips about the internet what you should do is shut up and think of how to use that knowledge to your advantage, instead of being mean.

"I was just going by [this](http://evonomics.com/amazon-accounting-corporate-profits-rich-peoples-income-invisible-bezos/) source and many like it.  They might not be reffering to _literal_ dividends but increased stock value.  Ultimately, I was responding to that idiot who said ""But a business making no profits to avoid tax is the worst tax planning advice I have ever seen!""..."

it would help the economy tremendously.  even better, the US govt should give households massive amounts of money, to pay off debts.  and if they dont have debts they should go spend that money in the economy.   That type of economic stimulous would generate more revenue and taxes for govt to help pay off the US govt debt it accrues by printing money.

"What our friend ""otherwiseyep"" is describing in his first posts is *credit*, not money.  Money and credit are two very different things.  Economies function on capital, which is existing savings and supply of goods/services.  They cannot function on promises alone (credit).  So from the perspective of Austrian economists, his OP's were misleading."


Question: Double-entry bookkeeping: When selling an asset, does the money come from, Equity or Income?

"There are basically two approaches, based on how detailed you want to be in your own personal accounting: Obviously the more like a business or like ""real"" accounting you want to be, the more complex you can make it, but in general I find that the purpose of personal accounting is (1) to track what I own, and (2) to ensure I have documented anything I need to for tax purposes, and as long as you're meeting those goals any reasonable approach is workable."

I think it would be better to remove income from the equation for things people need to live. For everything else we need some kind of market. How that'll end up with automation, 3d printing, and ai sprinting towards market saturation is anybodies guess.

The put will expire and you will need to purchase a new one. My advise will be that the best thing is to sell more calls so your delta from the short call will be similr to the delta from the equity holding.

Could be risky, consider that some of their assets in Bolivia were nationalized.

"For some people, it should be a top priority.  For others, there are higher priorities.  What it should be for you depends on a number of things, including your overall financial situation (both your current finances and how stable you expect them to be over time), your level of financial ""education"", the costs of your mortgage, the alternative investments available to you, your investing goals, and your tolerance for risk. Your #1 priority should be to ensure that your basic needs (including making the required monthly payment on your mortgage) are met, both now and in the near future, which includes paying off high-interest (i.e. credit card) debt and building up an emergency fund in a savings or money-market account or some other low-risk and liquid account.  If you haven't done those things, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and do not consider making advance payments on your mortgage.  Mason Wheeler's statements that the bank can't take your house if you've paid it off are correct, but it's going to be a long time till you get there and they can take it if you're partway to paying it off early and then something bad happens to you and you start missing payments.  (If you're not underwater, you should be able to get some of your money back by selling - possibly at a loss - before it gets to the point of foreclosure, but you'll still have to move, which can be costly and unappealing.)  So make sure you've got what you need to handle your basic needs even if you hit a rough patch, and make sure you're not financing the paying off of your house by taking a loan from Visa at 27% annually. Once you've gotten through all of those more-important things, you finally get to decide what else to invest your extra money in.  Different investments will provide different rewards, both financial and emotional (and Mason Wheeler has clearly demonstrated that he gets a strong emotional payoff from not having a mortgage, which may or may not be how you feel about it).  On the financial side of any potential investment, you'll want to consider things like the expected rate of return, the risk it carries (both on its own and whether it balances out or unbalances the overall risk profile of all your investments in total), its expected costs (including its - and your - tax rate and any preferred tax treatment), and any other potential factors (such as an employer match on 401(k) contributions, which are basically free money to you).  Then you weigh the pros and cons (financial and emotional) of each option against your imperfect forecast of what the future holds, take your best guess, and then keep adjusting as you go through life and things change. But I want to come back to one of the factors I mentioned in the first paragraph.  Which options you should even be considering is in part influenced by the degree to which you understand your finances and the wide variety of options available to you as well as all the subtleties of how different things can make them more or less advantageous than one another.  The fact that you're posting this question here indicates that you're still early in the process of learning those things, and although it's great that you're educating yourself on them (and keep doing it!), it means that you're probably not ready to worry about some of the things other posters have talked about, such as Cost of Capital and ROI.  So keep reading blog posts and articles online (there's no shortage of them), and keep developing your understanding of the options available to you and their pros and cons, and wait to tackle the full suite of investment options till you fully understand them. However, there's still the question of what to do between now and then.  Paying the mortgage down isn't an unreasonable thing for you to do for now, since it's a guaranteed rate of return that also provides some degree of emotional payoff.  But I'd say the higher priority should be getting money into a tax-advantaged retirement account (a 401(k)/403(b)/IRA), because the tax-advantaged growth of those accounts makes their long-term return far greater than whatever you're paying on your mortgage, and they provide more benefit (tax-advantaged growth) the earlier you invest in them, so doing that now instead of paying off the house quicker is probably going to be better for you financially, even if it doesn't provide the emotional payoff.  If your employer will match your contributions into that account, then it's a no-brainer, but it's probably still a better idea than the mortgage unless the emotional payoff is very very important to you or unless you're nearing retirement age (so the tax-free growth period is small).  If you're not sure what to invest in, just choose something that's broad-market and low-cost (total-market index funds are a great choice), and you can diversify into other things as you gain more savvy as an investor; what matters more is that you start investing in something now, not exactly what it is. Disclaimer: I'm not a personal advisor, and this does not constitute investing advice.  Understand your choices and make your own decisions."

Buy something from Nordstrom, then return it and ask for cash. They may ask for your ID.  Nordstrom's return policies are very lax and they will almost always give cash when asked for, sometimes even if you don't have the receipt.

There are short-term and long term aspects. In the long term, if you live and work in Australia and plan to continue doing both indefinitely, you might as well move all your cash investments there.  There would be no point bearing the exchange rate risks.  It may be worth keeping the account open with just enough credit to stop it being shut down.  There is no point needing to (think about) filing foreign tax returns just because you have an account earning a small amount of interest. In the short term, I think the more important question is practicality rather than exchange rate risk.  You want to have enough cash in both countries that if you suddenly have to pay say an apartment deposit or a bill, you won't be caught short.  So I would leave at least a few thousands dollars in a US bank account until at least a couple of months after the move, when I was sure everything was settled. Good luck.

"**Poverty in the United States**  Poverty is a state of deprivation, lacking the usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. The most common measure of poverty in the U.S. is the ""poverty threshold"" set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society. The official threshold is adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.27"


Question: Little hazy on how the entire RSU's and etrade works

Is the remaining amount tax free? As in, if the amount shown (which I can sell) on etrade is $5000 then if I sell the entire shares will my bank account be increased by $5000? The stocks they sell are withholding.  So let's say you had $7000 of stock and they sold $2000 for taxes.  That leaves you with $5000.  But the actual taxes paid might be more or less than $2000.  They go in the same bucket as the rest of your withholding.  If too much is withheld, you get a refund.  Too little and you owe them.  Way too little and you have to pay penalties.   At the end of the year, you will show $7000 as income and $2000 as withheld for taxes from that transaction.  You may also have a capital gain if the stock increases in price.  They do not generally withhold on stock sales, as they don't necessarily know what was your gain and what was your loss.  You usually have to handle that yourself.   The main point that I wanted to make is that the sale is not tax free.  It's just that you already had tax withheld.  It may or may not be enough.

> But overall we are living in one of the most stable-peaceful times in human history.  It's nice to see this stated, because it isn't said enough. We're so afraid of these constant political and social boogymen that we forget that that we live in a country free of civil war, where food is plentiful and clean water a given. Yeah, beyond the low level Maslow stuff we have problems, but damn, we have it good.

You're completely right. They absolutely have an interest in these things. That's why we should reign in Washington, strip it of its power to play favorites.  If government is allowed to stack the deck, its the people who end up losing. How often do politicians really fulfill their campaign promises? Rarely, if ever.

From a page on consumerfinance.gov A debt collector generally may not contact your employer or other third-parties about the debt. Debt collectors may ask your employer to verify your employment, or ask for your address or telephone number. Note - they aren't even allowed to tell the employer that they are trying to collect a debt. So - even if you were the guilty party, this isn't allowed.  They've already broken very clear laws and thus are probably not trustworthy, so (echoing what others have said) don't give them your own personal information.  If they've done one day's research on the law governing their industry they know this is illegal.  If they've actually gotten any money from your employer, it's theft.  If they haven't then it's just attempted theft.  Contact the police regardless. Also - contact a lawyer.  You may well have the right to sue them.  They've broken Federal laws in a way that causes you injury.  Odds are they've broken state laws as well. One last point - do you even have proof that these are debt collectors collecting a real debt, rather than people trying to get you to give them your SSN?  Perhaps their business plan is to look at company webpages and send bogus requests to the employers for some random employee and then see what information they get back (I'm not him, here's my personal information).  Be very careful to not give any personally identifiable information (date of birth, address, SSN, mother's maiden name, etc).  Anything they ask about you don't provide.

Vikram was protecting American’s interest from European/British suckers, now the stocks will have a roller cost ride. American Investors be careful in investing in this stock, Europeans CEO will fund bad assets in Europe and suck up American investors money out of our economy. Why always innocent American have to lose because of corrupt FDIC suckers. I am sure they are colluded with European bad assets owners and cheaters. GOD bless CitiBank, it is on the path to bankruptcy.

Similar to the lawn care you mentioned: if you have space, you could have the kids create a mini-farmstand. They could grow flowers for cutting, some vegetables, etc. It would be a different twist on the classic lemonade stand. If the kids are into animals and space and zoning allows, you could keep chickens and add eggs to your mini-farmstand. Upfront costs for the garden would be small enough that they can learn about how investing in a business works at a very small scale. Along with learning about money, they also learn responsibility because it requires commitment and daily attention. It's also seasonal in a way that meshes well with school (though having animals is a constant year-round responsibility).

Then: (do these in whatever order)  35 is not mid-life.  You're on the tail end of the age to get started on retirement planning. Being single, relatively young, and a great income level, you are ideally situated to consider FIRE'ing yourself. (Financial Independent, Retire Early).  The basic idea is to invest a large chunk of your income and establish your comfort level balancing frugality and comfort.  There's a table on one of the FIRE websites that shows a graph between % of income saved and the number of years it takes to save enough to be financially independent.  If you can go over 50% savings, you can get down to about 10 years.  In this case, financially independent is where you can live on a safe percentage of withdrawal from your savings without depleting the savings.  At that point, you no longer need to work for a paycheck.  You would only do so to extend the savings, increase the safe withdraw rate, or because you want to do something that makes you feel productive.

I don't know. That's not really my call. I know that he is not in America. I know that he thought he was going to be punished so he left. I know he felt that getting the information out was worth the risk of going to jail for.   Also you now get into if it's ok to preform an illegal act to expose an illegal act.   We are talking about a subway owner who created fake employees in order to pay his minimum wage guys less money.


Question: Is stock in a private corporation taxable?

"This stock is the same as any other, but you need to keep clear in your head that you and your company are now different entities.  You (the person) will pay tax on capital gains and losses when you sell any stock that you hold in your own name.  You'll also owe ""regular"" tax if you draw a salary, etc.  The fact that it may be ""your"" company does not change these things. The company will not recognize a gain by selling stock to raise capital since it's nominally exchanging things of equal value, say $100 in cash for $100 in stock.  In order to sell stock, however, you MIGHT need to register with the SEC depending on how you're going about finding your investors, so keep that in mind."

"Basically, the idea of an IRA is that the money is earned by you and would normally be taxed at the individual rate, but the government is allowing you to avoid paying the taxes on it now by instead putting it in the account. This ""tax deferral"" encourages retirement savings by reducing your current taxable income (providing a short-term ""carrot"").  However, the government will want their cut; specifically, when you begin withdrawing from that account, the principal which wasn't taxed when you put it in will be taxed at the current individual rate when you take it out. When you think about it, that's only fair; you didn't pay taxes on it when it came out of your paycheck, so you should pay that tax once you're withdrawing it to live on. Here's the rub; the interest is also taxed at the individual rate. At the time, that was a good thing; the capital gains rate in 1976 (when the Regular IRA was established) was 35%, the highest it's ever been. Now, that's not looking so good because the current cap gains rate is only 15%. However, these rates rise and fall, cap gains more than individual rates, and so by contributing to a Traditional IRA you simplify your tax bill; the principal and interest is taxed at the individual rate as if you were still making a paycheck. A Roth IRA is basically the government trying to get money now by giving up money later. You pay the marginal individual rate on the contributions as you earn them (it becomes a ""post-tax deduction"") but then that money is completely yours, and the kicker is that the government won't tax the interest on it if you don't withdraw it before retirement age. This makes Roths very attractive to retirement investors as a hedge against higher overall tax rates later in life. If you think that, for any reason, you'll be paying more taxes in 30 years than you would be paying for the same money now, you should be investing in a Roth. A normal (non-IRA) investment account, at first, seems to be the worst of both worlds; you pay individual tax on all earned wages that you invest, then capital gains on the money your investment earns (stock gains and dividends, bond interest, etc) whenever you cash out. However, a traditional account has the most flexibility; you can keep your money in and take your money out on a timeline you choose. This means you can react both to market moves AND to tax changes; when a conservative administration slashes tax rates on capital gains, you can cash out, pay that low rate on the money you made from your account, and then the money's yours to spend or to reinvest. You can, if you're market- and tax-savvy, use all three of these instruments to your overall advantage. When tax rates are high now, contribute to a traditional IRA, and then withdraw the money during your retirement in times where individual tax rates are low. When tax rates are low (like right now), max out your Roth contributions, and use that money after retirement when tax rates are high. Use a regular investment account as an overage to Roth contributions when taxes are low; contribute when the individual rate is low, then capitalize and reinvest during times when capital gains taxes are low (perhaps replacing a paycheck deduction in annual contributions to a Roth, or you can simply fold it back into the investment account). This isn't as good as a Roth but is better than a Traditional; by capitalizing at an advantageous time, you turn interest earned into principal invested and pay a low tax on it at that time to avoid a higher tax later. However, the market and the tax structure have to coincide to make ordinary investing pay off; you may have bought in in the early 90s, taking advantage of the lowest individual rates since the Great Depression. While now, capital gains taxes are the lowest they've ever been, if you cash out you may not be realizing much of a gain in the first place."

I believe it's just to limit the less well-off from acquiring one. If your credit history and income do not support a $15,000 credit limit, then don't even think about applying for an Altitude Black card. If they do, then don't bother with a student card. It's primarily about market segmentation by wealth or income.

Makes sense. Why should a company support a group giving it negative press?  Devout followers of the free market, how do you solve this problem? People don't want to pay for news when it only talks about problems they can not fix and only indirectly affects them. That leaves companies free to keep their consumers misinformed.

Dental implants consist of small titanium posts that are inserted into the jawbone, closely replicating a natural tooth root. This does require a small surgical procedure but there is no need to be concerned as our principal dentist here at Radiance Dentistry is an experienced oral surgeon and prosthodontist. Dr. Mounir Iskandar has received specialized training and has many years’ experience in placing dental implants. He will make sure that every step of your dental implant treatment is meticulously planned, ensuring your dental implant surgery proceeds quickly and smoothly and is ultimately more successful. All the treatment you require can be carried out in our comfortable and well-equipped dental office, from a dental team you will already know and trust.  WHAT IS THE PROCEDURE FOR PLANNING DENTAL IMPLANT SURGERY?  To plan your implant surgery, Dr. Iskandar will take digital dental x-rays and a cone beam CT scan. This scan provides highly detailed 3-D images of your jawbone, allowing Dr. Iskandar to fully assess the condition of your jawbone and to identify all the important structures such as sinus cavities, nerves and blood vessels that must be avoided during surgery. These images will show if you have sufficient bone for implant placement or if you require a bone graft or sinus lift prior to surgery. If you do need a bone graft there is no need to be concerned, as Dr. Iskandar is extremely experienced in using the very latest and most advanced bone grafting techniques. Sometimes if only a tiny amount of bone is required it can be placed at the same time as your dental implant.  COMPUTER-GUIDED DENTAL IMPLANT SURGERY  Once Dr. Iskandar has identified the optimal position for your dental implants, a surgical guide is made that will be used during their placement. This is a highly sophisticated template that will guide the implant placement down to the nearest millimeter. Using computer-guided surgery will ensure your treatment is a complete success, providing you with teeth that not only look wonderful but which are fully functional.  WHAT TO EXPECT DURING IMPLANT SURGERY  We will make sure your dental implant surgery is pain-free by using local anesthesia to numb the area. If you are at all anxious about this treatment, you may wish to consider additional sedation. Dr. Iskandar can provide nitrous oxide or oral sedation to help you relax during surgery. To insert the dental implant, Dr. Iskandar will make a small incision in your gum to expose the jawbone, before placing the dental implant in the position identified by the surgical guide. The area is then stitched and left to heal.  At this stage, Dr. Iskandar may attach what is called a healing cap to the dental implant post. This gently shapes the surrounding gum tissue as it heals, providing improved aesthetics once your tooth is restored. If required, we can then fit a temporary restoration to be worn while your dental implants heal and integrate with your jawbone. There is no need to worry as we will make sure you can eat and speak comfortably during this healing period.  If you only require a single dental implant then surgery is really quite quick. A single dental implant may take as little as an hour to place. Bridges and dentures will require multiple dental implants, so surgery will take a little longer. The time required for your surgery can be discussed during your initial consultation.  OSSEO INTEGRATION  It normally takes 3 to 6 months for a dental implant to fully heal with the surrounding bone during a process called Osseo integration. Your dental implant post will have been specially treated to encourage this process, where new bone cells will grow on and around the post. As they do so, the post gradually fuses with the jawbone, becoming strong and stable and able to support a replacement restoration.  ATTACHING THE ABUTMENT  Once Osseo integration is complete, Dr. Iskandar will remove the healing cap and can attach an abutment to your implant post. There are many different types of abutments that can be used, depending on the final restoration. An abutment will protrude above your gum line and is used to support your crown, bridge or denture. A detailed dental impression is taken of your dental implant and is sent to our dental laboratory. They will custom-make your restoration to our exact prescription, using the highest quality materials to create beautiful teeth that will blend in seamlessly with your smile. Your restoration can then be secured in place at your next visit, completing your treatment and providing you with an aesthetically appealing and fully functional smile.  To find out more about dental implant surgery and how it could help restore your smile, contact Radiance Dentistry to schedule your consultation with Dr. Iskandar today.  About US:  http://radiancedentistry.com/dental-implants/surgery/ - Dr. Iskandar is a certified restorative and cosmetic dentistry specialist and is licensed both as a general dentist and as a Prosthodontist. Dr. Iskandar obtained his DDS degree from Cairo University School Of Dentistry in 1998. Dr Iskandar holds a specialty in Prosthodontics and MSD (Masters of Science in Dentistry) obtained from Indiana University School of Dentistry in 2008. Dr. Iskandar is a Diplomate of international Dental Implants association since 2011.  CONTACT US: Radiance Dentistry Mounir Iskandar 2020 W Rochelle Rd  Irving, TX 75062 Phone : (972) 258-1702

">  This is horse shit. You're citing liberal propaganda as fact. ""Cited as the anti scientist president."" By whom? Just liberals with their dress over their heads.  Did you say ""By whom?""??  Have you been living under a rock?  And, even then, do you not know how to google?  Nearly every science oriented magazine and organization has described Trump as anti-science:  1\.  Scientific American ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-5-most-ldquo-anti-science-rdquo-moves/ )  >  **Trump's 5 Most ""Anti-Science"" Moves.**   The president-elect has taken what is widely seen as a hostile stance toward the scientific community ...  2\.  Union of Concerned Scientists ( https://psmag.com/environment/a-brief-survey-of-trumps-assault-on-science )  3\.  Science ... *the magazine* for the American Association for the Advancement of Science ... the worlds largest general science organization (https://sciencemag.org http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/what-trumps-nominees-have-said-about-science-their-senate-hearings ,  http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/hundreds-rally-science-demonstration-near-aaas-meeting , and many others).  And many other news organizations:  4\.  Worst anti-science president ever.  http://www.newsweek.com/trump-expected-be-most-anti-science-president-ever-519226   5\.  Trump anti-science policies imperil the world  http://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2094269/opinion-trumps-anti-science-policies-imperil-world  6\.  President Trump's War on Science.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/opinion/sunday/trump-epa-pruitt-science.html  7\.  Trump has launched a blitzkrieg in the wars on science   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/mar/28/trump-has-launched-a-blitzkrieg-in-the-wars-on-science-and-earths-climate    >  This Nature article is junk, it's just an opinion piece, a few quotes from literally who, and a random bar graph.  That was a news piece, not an opinion piece.  And that doesn't matter anyway.  The result is the graphs which are from the UCLA HERI study.  There was also a Pew Study done in 2009.  http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/  But I don't know why you're arguing ... because you summarized my point (poorly, I may add) with:  >  Trump won on income and was inversely proportional on education.  This was basically my point.  You would know that if you actually read what I wrote.  I say ""basically"" here, because:  1\.  You confused ""inversely proportional"" with negatively correlated ... or proportional with a negative proportionality constant.   Certainly you're aware that ""inversely proportional"" actually means a relation like y = C 1/x + k.     2\.  ""won on income"" is just poor phraseology.  Polls suggest that Trump had a slightly higher edge (2% vs. Hilary) for those whose income was in the higher tiers (most tiers above $50K/yr income).  Polls suggest that he was strongly disfavored for lower incomes.  Of course ... it's best seen in the poll I linked into my first post on this page.  >  Jeez who would have thunk it, lifers post docs are bought it on their liberal academic surroundings. As if that was indicative of intelligence.  Most of your sentences above had poor grammar and, at first, I suspected some advanced Russian bot.  But this is atrocious. Try to express yourself in complete thoughts.  Read what you wrote ... it's complete garbage.  I almost didn't respond at all since it doesn't deserve a response."

"Sigh when will someone teach zero hedge how to make a rigorous argument.  None of those facts actually prove anything. Heck some don't have anything at all to do with NAFTA. Not a single ""fact"" listed actually makes a case for a causal link between ""xyz negative thing"" and NAFTA.  I'm sure a few of them have actually have a causal relationship behind them (I didn't get to read all the links cause time) but they don't even hint at a the existence of an casual relationship."

Start at Investopedia. Get basic clarification on all financial terms and in some cases in detail. But get a book. One recommendation would be Hull. It is a basic book, but quite informative. Likewise you can get loads of material targeted at programmers. Wilmott's Forum is a fine place to find coders as well as finance guys.


Question: I'm thinking of getting a new car … why shouldn't I LEASE one?

If you are looking to build wealth, leasing is a bad idea.  But so is buying a new car.  All cars lose value once you buy them.  New cars lose anywhere between 30-60% of their value in the first 4 years of ownership. Buying a good quality, used car is the way to go if you are looking to build wealth.  And keeping the car for a while is also desirable.  Re-leasing every three years is no way to build wealth. The American Car Payment is probably the biggest factor holding many people back from building wealth.  Don't fall into the trap - buy a used car and drive it for as long as you can until the maintenance gets too pricey.  Then upgrade to a better used car, etc. If you cannot buy a car outright with cash, you cannot afford it.  Period.

">taking your typical GP's advice regarding ""risks"" is really no different than listening to your barber --  If you _truly_ believe that, then go to your barber the next time you have a medical issue. You don't though, so stop talking out of your ass."

That's your assumption, but the details are there are different tiers of liability depending on the level of employees you have. Have 5,000+ you must pay this increased level of medical insurance or other liabilities.   So if he has 7,000 employees and increased liabilities would happen at 5,000+ ---- sounds like there's a $$ incentive to decrease to 4,999.   That's not emotion, that's just business.  The irony would be if he sold to a Chinese company, that cuts employee benefits and wages and sends most of the profit home while employing tax shelters to yield as little as possible in taxes.

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

For #1, I see no advantage in putting money from your non-retirement savings into a Roth just for the purpose of using it as a down payment on your house.  Why not just put the $5.5K directly toward the down payment? For #2, dollars converted from a traditional 401K or IRA to a Roth are considered income, and will be taxed at your marginal rate.  So if your marginal tax rate is 25%, you will need to pay $5K in order to convert the $20K.  Usually this payment is done independent of the conversion amount--in other words, you would convert the full $20K but pay the $5K in taxes out of other funds (checking/savings). Based on your stated goals of using the money for a down payment on a house, I don't see any advantage to contributing (or converting) to a Roth IRA.

You can get an investment manager through firms like Fidelity or E*Trade to manage your account. It won't be someone dedicated exclusively to you, but you're in the range where they'd take you as a managed account customer. Another option would be to get a financial planner (CFP or something) help you to identify your needs and figure out what your investments portfolio should look like. This is not a whole lot of money, but is definitely enough to have an early retirement if managed and invested properly.

The biggest value driver we identified were staff costs. If Amazon implements their Amazon Go technology in Whole Foods' stores(which I assume is their current plan) they would be able to cut a large chunk of staff costs reducing COGS significantly. With Jana Partners buying up shares and an already large institutional share of ownership we saw the likelyhood of success of a deal to be quite high.   The new technology is exciting and we believe interest for shopping at Amazon will be high the first years which brings revenue synergies to the table.   I'm on mobile right now(at work) so maybe I can give a more detailed answer later.

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Question: Protecting savings from exceptional taxes

"What EU wanted to force Cyprus to do is to break the insurance contract the government has with the bank depositors. The parliament rightfully refused, and it didn't pass. In the EU, and Cyprus as part of it, all bank deposits are insured up to 100,000EUR by the government. This is similar to the US FDIC insurance. Thus, requiring the ""small"" (up to 100K) depositors to participate in the bank reorganization means that the government breaks its word to people, and effectively defaults. That is exactly what the Cyprus government wanted to avoid, the default, so I can't understand why the idea even came up. Depositors of more than 100k are not guaranteed against bank failures, and indeed - in Cyprus these depositors will get ""haircuts"". But before them, first come shareholders and bondholders who would be completely wiped out. Thus, first and foremost, those who failed (the bank owners) will be the first to pay the price. However, governments can default. This happened in many places, for example in Russia in the 90's, in Argentina in 2000's (and in fact numerous times during the last century), the US in the 1930's, and many other examples - you can see a list in Wikipedia. When government defaults on its debts, it will not pay some or all of them, and its currency may also be devaluated. For example, in Russia in 1998 the currency lost 70% of its value against the USD within months, and much of the cash at hands of the public became worthless overnight. In the US in 1933 the President issued an executive order forbidding private citizens keeping gold and silver bullions and coins, which resulted in dollar devaluation by about 30% and investors in precious metals losing large amounts of money. The executive order requiring surrender of the Treasury gold certificates is in fact the government's failure to pay on these obligations. While the US or Russia control their own currency, European countries don't and cannot devaluate the currency as they wish in order to ease their debts. Thus in Euro-zone the devaluation solutions taken by Russia and the US are not possible. Cyprus cannot devaluate its currency, and even if it could - its external debt would not likely to be denominated in it (actually, Russian debt isn't denominated in Rubles, that's why they forced restructuring of their own debt, but devaluating the currency helped raising the money from the citizens similarly to the US seizing the gold in 1930's). Thus, in case of Cyprus or other Euro-zone countries, direct taxes is the only way to raise money from the citizens. So if you're in a country that controls its own currency (such as the US, Russia, Argentina, etc) and especially if the debt is denominated in that currency (mainly the US) - you should be worried more of inflation than taxes. But if you're in the Euro-zone and your country is in troubles (which is almost any country in the zone) - you can expect taxes. How to avoid that? Deal with your elected officials and have them fix your economy, but know that you can't just ""erase"" the debt through inflation as the Americans can (and will), someone will have to pay."

This is actually a very good point - any money that is spent on an employee in excess of the bare minimum required for them to perform their job should be viewed as a component of total rewards. You can directly extend OP's logic to any other form of compensation or benefits - Why let public employees take PTO except for when mandated by federal or state law? Why not target the 10th percentile of the market for all federal jobs? Why provide employees with retirement benefits? The answer to all of the above is that all elements of a total rewards package are necessary to attract, retain, and develop good employees.      I've done consulting in the sphere of organizational structure, design, and development. I've seen the type of employees that a bare-bones total rewards philosophy attracts, and I'm not sure that I want them working for the public.

Rent the property?? Is that a possible solution? Since selling the house is not an option and living in it isn't either, then perhaps renting it is the way to go? Since no explanation for the sister's motives is given, i'd speculate it is a mixture of emotional and financial concerns. Maybe mostly emotional. I imagine letting go of the one physical thing that has memories of you and your parents attached to it is very difficult. I don't think getting a lawyer or doing what's convenient for only your boyfriend is the way to go...But that's my own personal opinion. Clearly, he only has one close family member left alive. Creating permanent wounds in that relationship will cost more along the way. And quite frankly, if the house is owned 50-50, don't you need both owners to sign the deed to sell the house anyways? If renting is not an option, then maybe refinancing the mortgage to lower payments? Or Airbnb it only half the time? Or rent it out for events to help with payments? Or ask the sister for a little money...Not for half the mortgage, but at least a few hundred dollars to maintain the house and heat. If she is indeed concerned with the property, then maintaining it to prevent serious damagae is in her interests, no matter her income.

One approach would be to create Journal Entries that debit asset accounts that are associated with these items and credit an Open Balance Equity account. The value of these contributions would have to be worked out with an accountant, as it depends on the lesser of the adjusted basis vs. the fair market value, as you then depreciate the amounts over time to take the depreciation as a business expense, and it adjusts your basis in the company (to calculate capital gains/losses when you sell). If there were multiple partners, or your accountant wants it this way, you could then debit open balance equity and credit the owner's contribution to a capital account in your name that represents your basis when you sell. From a pure accounting perspective, if the Open Balance Equity account would zero out, you could just skip it and directly credit the capital accounts, but I prefer the Open Balance Equity as it helps know the percentages of initial equity which may influence partner ownership percentages and identify anyone who needs to contribute more to the partnership.

"If any intelligent person can answer the title of your article with one word (in this case, ""no""), then you are writing a puff opinion piece. In this case, one obviously sponsored by one of Tesla's many, many detractors in the fossil fuel industry trying to find reasons why we shouldn't save the world by banning over-priced fossil fuels."

The NY company's board of directors are your agents and fiduciaries.  I'll call them your agents below.  The acquiring company entered into some contract that your agents negotiated.  Whatever the acquiring company owes you in terms of money, equity, or specific communication is based on what your agents dealt for in the sale contract.   Best ask your agents what they got for you.

What I'm reading is that they subtracted the $85 you owe them and they're cutting you a cashier's check for the rest. Ethically speaking, you owed them the money, they subtracted it and made you a check for the rest.  Once you cash that check, nobody owes anyone anything in this equation.  Sounds like they're in the clear. Legally speaking, I have no idea, since I'm not a lawyer, but even if it was not legal, good luck getting the $85 back without spending far more in retaining a lawyer and fighting it in court.  Even fighting it in small claims court will take more of your time than $85 is worth. If it's your time that is the problem, 12 days is not horrible in banking terms.  Yes, we're spoiled now by ACH transfers and same day deposit availability, but since you're retired, I'm sure if you think back you'll remember when it used to take two business weeks to clear a check... TLDR; cancel future deposits to that bank, find a new bank, then forget this fiasco and get your revenge by enjoying your life.

There many car loans at zero percent interest.   Finance the car at zero percent, then take your money and invest it. If you want to be super safe buy a CD the same length as the car loan. 5 years you will get 2%.  If you still want safety and a better return take up a asset allocation strategy that moves your cash to risky assets when the market is performing well, then to cash, bonds, or cds when the market under-performs. Now you have your car with a zero percent loan and you are making the return on the money instead of the car company.