Question: How are mortgage payments decided? [duplicate]

It's easiest to get your payment from the PMT function in Excel or Google Sheets.  So a $100,000 30 year mortgage at 3% looks like this: The basic calculation is pretty simple.  You take the annual interest rate, say 3%, divided by 12, times the existing principal balance: The idea is that borrowers would like to have a predictable payment.  The earlier payments are proportionally more interest than principal than later payments are but that's because there is much more principal outstanding on month 1 than on month 200.

For an extra $99.99/month, upgrade your speed! 50mph potential now available as an upgrade from standard 30mph capabilities!! Or, for real speed demons, access blinding 70mph premium service for just $199.99/month*  *3-year contract, a $5,000 early termination provision applies

Aside from everyone else's explanation about bundling them with other mortgages, a buddy of mine who worked at a boutique lending group basically said that they KNOW these people can't pay the loans back and thus the bank will be able to take over ownership of the home.  Since **housing prices are guaranteed to go up**, they'll be able to make money once they re-sell the property.

"She pissed off a customer service person, and that person obviously called over and had her good reviews ""filtered"". I'm betting she's not an easy person to get along with, and Yelp doesn't necessarily HAVE to give you good reviews - they just have to ""promote"" you. I'm not a business owner, so I will honestly admit I don't know the details of the service you are guaranteed to receive when you pay Yelp."

Your very first link says that there's an average fifteen point difference between IQ scores for blacks and whites. A full standard deviation and they have no explanation as to why that is.  It backs up my original point directly. Of course you didn't actually read that.

Its not going off at a tangent. You need to be fully grounded in healthcare in order to understand it. If you are grounded in economic abstraction you will never understand it, because it is not like any other economic activity.    If you treat it like a business, it will be very expensive because it deals with the most precious thing that people have, their lives.

The stock market was already reaching highs way before trump took office. Fortune 500s and Dow were already reporting record profits every quarter before trump. The dozens of new retail/food/medial/plaza buildings to open this year in my city were already being built and going to open. The expansion on our already brand new hospital was already happening. The new school and medical university has nothing to do with trump. No i don't think the new 10,000 home development site approval has anything to do with trump. Trump literally has done nothing so far but win the election. These things were happening already. Employers are already desperate for employees I don't think anyone is hiring more because trump is in office when they were hiring already.

Lets be real here about this economic stuff. The uber rich do no work, get all the money, through stock ownership and a tax system thats made for them, by them.   The working poor do all the work, get none of the reward. Either you need universal basic income or you need a 15 dollar min wage. UBI i think is better.   Edit: the middle and upper classes do hard work. But at least they get a piece of the pie


Question: What does “Net Depreciation in Fair Value” mean on a financial report?

First, the annual report is just that, a snapshot that shows value at the beginning and end of the period. Beginning = Aug 08 = $105B End =       Aug 09 =  $89B Newsletter date May 10 = $96B Odd they chose end of August as it's not even a calendar quarter end. The $16B was market loss during that period. Nearly half of that seemed to be recovered by the time this newsletter came out. The balance sheet also has to show deposits and payments made to existing retirees. I haven't looked at the S&P numbers for those dates, but my gut says this is right. The market tanked and the plan was down, but not too bad.  Protect? The PBGC guarantees pensions up to a certain limit. I believe that in general, teachers are below the limit and are not at risk of a reduced benefit. You do need to check that your plan is covered. If not, I believe the state would take over directly. I hope this helps.

>how can one argue plastic's inability to store value comes artificially/by opinion?  That's backwards. Gold's *ability* to store value is artificial. Plastic's value is naturally determined by the market. It's cheap to produce, and abundant. Therefore, the market dictates it's going to be cheap.  Gold is artificially priced because it still retains many of its characteristics as a store of value for things unrelated to itself. People, for example invest in gold bullion, driving up the price. It's abundant, though costly to produce; yet its quantity and cost of production don't determine its price. Investors do.  You don't see people investing in plastic bars.

I can't see how. Portland raised their minimum wage by 50 cents a year ago ($9.25 to $9.50), which is probably not enough to drown any restaurants that aren't already in trouble. The plan for $15 minimum wage is a gradual increase over 5 years.   The next increase will come July 1st, as far as I can tell. That will be the one to watch.

> But does that mean that we can blame a poor child for being born poor?  No, we should feed the poor/hungry child. But most importantly, we should help families and educate people to become responsible parents. Because that's where the most damage is being done.

I agree with the consensus as far as getting a cheaper car, paying with cash, getting a more fuel efficient car, etc.  But I'd like to point out, you should make sure you really need a car at all.  I ride a bike to work!  If I need a car, I can use Zipcar or City Car Share or borrow a friend's car, rent a car, take the train, ride a bus, walk.  But mostly, ride my bike.  Burn fat not gasoline! ;)

As for refinancing: Many institutions charge up-front fees when doing any type of vehicle loan. Typically this is in the neighborhood of 1% the value of the loan, with a floor of $100 (although this may vary by lender). However, for the loan the be secured by the vehicle, the principle value must be less than the collateral value. In your case, this means there is a collateral shortfall of $4,000. When working with a traditional bank, you would have two options: pay the difference up front (reducing the principle value of the loan), or obtaining a separate loan for the difference. This separate loan would often have a higher interest rate unless you have some other form of collateral to secure it with. I doubt CarMax would do a separate loan. All that being said, if you plan on selling the vehicle within the next twelves months, don't bother refinancing. It won't be worth the hassle.

Information is useless in this case.  IR is useful when you are trying to replicate the risk exposures of an index and beat it. I.E.If I am a tech fund, I would compare myself to the tech S&P.  IR is useless in this case as it is just the ratio of excess returns over the benchmark to vol.  From a trading sense he needs a rate of wins to losses, so a sharpe like construct of R/SemiDeviation. Essentially his avg return divided by negative volatility.  Going further on that is omega which introduces a threshold as in trading you care more about the equity curve so MAXDD is probably more relevant.

"TL;DR: Sure, ""do your own homework"" is sometimes a cop out. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our homework. I agree that in many cases this is a cop-out by commentators. However, even if you believe in perfect market efficiency, there is benefit in ""doing your homework"" for many reasons. One of which you already mention in the question: different stocks all with the same ""value"" might have widely ranging risk. Another factor that might vary between stocks is their tax consequences. High dividend stocks might be a better fit for some buyers than others. One stock might be priced at $40 because there is a small chance they might get regulatory approval for a new product. This might make this stock very risky with a 20% of being $150 in 12 months, and a 80% chance of being $20. Another stock might be priced at $40 because the company is a cash cow, declining in revenues but producing a large dividend of $0.40 per quarter. Low risk, but also with some potential tax disadvantages. Another stock might be priced at $40 because it's a high growth stock. This would be less risky than the first example, but more risky than the second example. And the risk would be more generalized, i.e. there wouldn't be one day or one event that would be make or break the stock. In short, even if we assume that the market is pricing everything perfectly, not all stocks are equal and not all stocks are equally appropriate to everyone. Sometimes when we hear an analyst say ""they should have done their homework"" they are really saying ""This was a high risk/high reward stock. They should have known that this had a potential downside."" And that all assumes that we believe in 100% pure market efficiency. Which many disagree with, at least to some extent. For example, if we instead subscribe to Peter Lynch's theories about ""local knowledge"", we might believe that everyone has some personal fields of expertise where they know more than the experts. A professional stock analyst is going to follow many stocks and many not have technical experience in the field of the company. (This is especially true of small and mid cap stocks.) If you happen to be an expert in LED lighting, it is entirely feasible (at least to me) that you could be able to do a better job of ""doing homework"" on CREE than the analysts. Or if you use a specialized piece of software from a small vendor at work, and you know that the latest version stinks, then you will likely know more than the analyst does. I think it is somewhat akin to going to a doctor. We could say to ourselves ""the doctor is more knowledgeable about me than medicine, I'm just going to do what they tell me to do."" And 99% of the time, that is the right thing to do. But if we do our ""homework"" anyway, and research the symptoms, diagnoses, and drugs ourselves as well, we can do get benefits. Sometimes we just can express our preferences amongst equal solutions. Sometimes we can ask smarter questions. And sometimes we have some piece of knowledge that the doctor doesn't have and can actually make an important discovery they didn't know. (And, just like investing, sometimes we can also have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and do ourselves harm if we go against the advice of the professionals.)"


Question: Long term drip (dividend reinvestment plan) stock

"If you sold the stock for a profit, you will owe tax on that profit. Whether it is taxed as short-term or long-term capital gains depends on how long you held the stock before selling it. Presumably you're going to invest this money into mutual funds or something of that sort. Those may pay dividends which can be reinvested, and will grow in value (you hope) just as the individual stock shares would (you hope). Assuming the advice you've been given is at all reasonable, there's no need for buyer's remorse here; you're just changing your investing style to a different point on the risk-versus-return curve. (If you have to ask this question, I tend to agree that you should do more homework before playing with shares in individual companieS ... unless you're getting thess shares at employee discount, in which case you should still seriously consider selling them fairly quickly and reinvesting the money in a more structured manner. In a very real sense your job is itself an ""investment"" in your employer; if they ever get into trouble you don't want that to hit both your income and investments.)"

Investopedia defines it in the following way: It's essentially a market order that doesn't get entered until the last minute (or thereabouts) of trading. With this type of order you are not necessarily guaranteed the closing price but usually something very similar, depending on the liquidity in the market and bid-ask for the security in question. Traders who believe that a security or market will move more heavily during the last few minutes of trading will often place such an order in the hopes of having their order filled at a more desirable price.

This is only one of a series of questions your friend needs to understand. They will also need to know what happens to: vacation balances; the vacation earning schedule; retirement fund matching; the pension program; all the costs and rules regarding health, dental and vision;life insurance amounts. Some of these can be changed immediately. Some will not be changed this year because of IRS regulations. Everything can be changed by the next year. But there is no way to know if they will change a little a possible or as much a possible. It will depend on if they are buying the company, or if the company is going out of business and the new company is buying the remnants. They may also be essentially terminating the employees at the old place, and giving them the first opportunity for interviews. If they are essentially quitting they will not have to continue paying into the plan. The bad news is that their last day of work is also probably their last day to incur expenses that they can pay for with the flexible plan. If They are being purchased or absorbed the company will likely make no changes to the current plan, and fold them into the plan next year. I have been involved with company purchases and company splits, and this is how it was handled.

It's important to distinguish between speculation and investing. Buying something because you hope to make money on market fluctuations is speculation. Buying something and expecting to make money because your money is providing actual economic value is investing.  If Person A buys 100 shares of a stock with the intent of selling them in a few hours, and Person B buys 100 shares of the same stock with the intent of holding on to it for a year, then obviously at that point they both have the same risk. The difference comes over the course of the year. First, Person B is going to be making money from the economic value the company provides over the whole year, while the only way Person A can make money is from market fluctuation (the economic value the company provides over the course of an hour is unlikely to be significant). Person B is exposed to the risk of buying the stock, but that's counterbalanced by the profit from holding the stock for a year, while Person A just has the risk. Second, if Person A is buying a new stock every hour, then they're going to have thousands of transactions. So even though Person B assumed just as much risk as Person A for that one transaction, Person A has more total risk.

That's very inconvenient if you ask me.  This is my opinion. Anytime I shop for shoes and even when I observe others, different shoes are tried on until one is bought. And I'm not talking about trying on couple pairs either.  Maybe others can guess what shoe will fit on their feet without trying them on.

On average, you should be saving at least 10-15% of your income in order to be financially secure when you retire.  Different people will tell you different things, but really this can be split between short term savings (cash), long term savings (401ks, IRAs, stocks & bonds), and paying down debt. That $5k is a good start on an emergency fund, but you probably want a little more.  As justkt said, 6 months' worth is what you want to aim for.  Put this in a Money Market account, where you'll earn a little more interest but won't be penalized from withdrawing it when its needed (you may have to live off it, after all). Beyond that, I would split things up; if possible, have payroll deductions going to a broker (sharebuilder is a good one to start with if you can't spare much change), as well as an IRA at a bank. Set up a separate checking account just for rent and utilities, put a month's worth of cash in there, and have another payroll deduction that covers your living expenses + maybe 5% put in there automatically.  Then, set up automatic bill payments, so you don't even have to think about it.  Check it once a month to make sure there aren't any surprises. Pay off your credit cards every month.  These are, by far, the most expensive forms of credit that most people have.  You shouldn't be financing large purchases with them (you'll get better rates by taking a personal loan from a bank). Set specific goals for savings, and set up automatic payroll deductions to work towards them.  Especially for buying a house; most responsible lenders will ask for 20% down.  In today's market, that means you need to write a check for $40k or $50k.  While it's tempting to finance up to 100% of the property value, it's also risky considering how volatile markets can be.  You don't want to end up owing more on the property than it's worth two years down the road. If you find yourself at the end of the month with an extra $50 or so, consider your savings goals or your current debt instead of blowing it on a toy.  Especially if you have long term debt (high balance credit cards, vehicle or property loans), applying that money directly to principal can save you months (or years) paying it back, and hundreds or thousands of dollars of interest (all depending on the details of the loan, of course). Above all, have fun with it :)  Think of your personal net worth as you do your Gamer score on the XBox, and look for ways to maximize it with a minimum of effort or investment on your part!  Investing in yourself and your future can be incredibly rewarding emotionally :)

It's not unusual/undesirable. If everyone prepaid their mortgage, banks would not like this, but we're in no danger of that :). Also, the amount you are pre-paying is not so significant as to make them pay special attention. In many cases when a borrower pre-pays, they will not continue to do so over the life of the loan since it's so easy to stop at any time, and the extra payments are voluntary. Depending on who originated the mortgate, it might be sold even more often than in your case. It's no longer commonplace for a bank to hold a mortgage to maturity, now that banks and other institutions have separated the origination of the loan from its servicing. It's likely that your mortgage was bundled with others through a process called securitization, and will be bought/sold based on the bank's need for liquitity or to balance out the maturity of its assets and liabilities (whether they need more cash now versus later), or based on the types of ways your bank has decided that it wants to make money versus farming out other types of business to others. What would substantially change the value of your mortgage to a bank is if it were performing (ie you are paying on time) but then became non-performing (ie you fall behind in your payments). It's also possible that if you have a very small mortgage or principal balance, that there is very little risk to the bank, and little difference between the present and future values of your loan, but banks don't typically make these types of transactions based on the characteristics of an individual loan.

"My parents and I were suckered into buying this kind of thing when I was in high school. The sales people literally told us that it could be used to pay off student loans - they left out the ""in the event of your death"" part. We knew it was a life insurance policy, but were told that it would ""mature"" 6 months after graduation from college, and that it would then be disbursed to pay off loans, even if I didn't die. That seemed strange to us, so we explicitly asked several different ways whether it would pay off the loans after graduation, even if I lived, and they just straight up told us, ""Yes."" I'm guessing this ploy is still being used. Also, last I checked, student loans are non-transferable in the unfortunate event that your child dies - which means the loan is forgiven anyway - so this whole thing seems like garbage to me, at least in the student loan sense. I would steer clear from this stuff - it's pure snake oil in my experience."


Question: Why small retail stores ask for ID with a credit card while big don't

Because large stores do not pay their cashiers enough that the companies can dock the employees' pay if they allow a bad credit card to go through.  So most cashiers at large stores won't take the extra effort to check the card properly.  As a result, large stores come up with other ways to handle potential credit card fraud.  For example, they calculate a certain amount of fraud as expected and include it in their price calculations.  Or they can use cameras to catch fraudsters.   At small stores, there is a much higher chance that the cashier is either the owner or a relative of the owner.  And even those who are unrelated tend to be hired by the owner directly.  The owners do have their pay docked if a bad credit card is accepted, as their pay is the profit from the business.  So they tend to create protocols that, at least in their mind, reduce the chance of taking a bad credit card.  The cashier is often the only employee in the store to check anything.   Another issue is that small stores have a harder time getting approved to accept credit cards.  The companies that process the credit cards can take back their machine if there is a lot of fraud.  So the companies can require more from small stores than they can from big stores.  Those companies can't stop processing cards for Safeway, because they need Safeway as much if not more than Safeway needs them.  So the processors have more leverage to make small stores do what they want.  And small stores can feasibly fire (non-owner) cashiers who do not comply.   Owners of course can't be fired.  But they are far more vulnerable to business losses.  So it is really important to an owner to keep the credit card machine.  And it is pretty important to avoid losses, as it is their money directly.   Relatives of owners may be safe from firing, but they are not safe from family retaliation like taking away television privileges.  And they may also think of the effect of business losses on the family.   Large stores can fire cashiers, but they are chronically understaffed and almost none of their cashiers will consistently follow a strict protocol.  Since fraudsters only need to succeed once, an inconsistent application is almost as bad as no application.  They might charge the cashiers for fraud, but then they would have to pay the cashiers more than minimum wage specifically for that reason (e.g. a $50 a month bonus for no fraud).  For many of them, it's cheaper to risk the fraud.   And large stores can't mix owners and relatives of owners into the mix.  It's hard to say who owns Safeway.  And even if you could, the relationship between one fraud transaction and the dividend paid on one share of stock is tiny.  It would take thousands of shares to get up to a penny.

The answers you've received already are very good. I truly sympathize with your situation. In general, it makes sense to try to build off of existing relationships. Here are a few ideas: I don't know if you work for a small or large company, or local/state government. But if there is any kind of retirement planning through your workplace, make sure to investigate that. Those people are usually already paid something for their services by your employer, so they should have less of an interest in making money off you directly. One more thought: A no-fee brokerage company e.g. Charles Schwab. They offer a free one hour phone call with an investment adviser if you invest at least $25K. I personally had very good experiences with them. This answer may be too anecdotal and not specifically address the annuity dilemma you mentioned. That annunity dilemma is why you need to find someone you can trust, who is competent (see the credentials for financial advisers mentioned in the other answers), and will work the numbers out with you.

"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-27/climate-shocks-may-cost-u-s-1-billion-a-day-as-planet-heats-up) reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Stronger hurricanes, hotter heat waves, more frequent wildfires and more severe public-health issues are all adding to the costs of climate change, which will reach almost $1 billion a day in the U.S. within a decade, according to a report released Wednesday.  > Total costs to address the impact of rising temperatures will swell 50 percent by 2027, to $360 billion annually, according to the study from the Universal Ecological Fund.  > If global warming goes unchecked, corn and soybean production may fall as much as 30 percent in the next three decades, costing farmers as much as $25 billion annually, according to the study.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/73888a/climate_shocks_may_cost_us_1_billion_a_day_by_2027/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~218914 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **economic**^#1 **study**^#2 **billion**^#3 **U.S.**^#4 **change**^#5"

"> Though I'd counter that if your goal is to manipulate economic exchanges between individuals with the intention of guiding the economy at large to a specific desired outcome, I think that capitalism is not the economic system for you :P   Touche :)   I will say that, to your point, I have come to believe that there are two forces at odds that are required for a robust and long lived prosperous society:  1.  A capitalist system that encourages innovation through competition and  2.  A government to check the inevitable concentration of wealth that capitalism naturally trends toward.  They most effective ways for a government to check that concentration is through a progressive tax system, and a check on the power that the concentration of wealth creates (eg: forcing employers to pay a living wage instead of using a bully pulpit to extract the maximum effort for the lowest possible cost, as shown by the ""robber barons"" etc of the 1900s).  Either way, I'll admit that I am not talking about pure capitalism.  However, like the philosopher Georg Hegel theorized, all ideas go through a process of thesis (the first idea: aka capitalism), antithesis (the countering idea: in this case socialism), and then synthesis (the resulting compromise).  The synthesis then becomes the new thesis for the system to further evolve upon.  It's time for American capitalism to evolve."

What is not permitted in Islam is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. Originally, usury meant interest of any kind. A loan may be considered usurious because of excessive or abusive interest rates or other factors. But In case of financial markets, people borrow money to make money and both parties benefits, and no one is taking advantage of the other. I may be wrong in interpreting this way, God knows the best.

> Google and others essentially have in-house investment banking departments that are vetting, valuing, negotiating, and sealing these deals. These M&A guys are mostly former bankers.  Corporations are also making more use of consultants for M&A deals, often former banking MDs who play a similar 'oversight' role as they would in a bank.   Perhaps we are seeing the emergence of a new business model - fixed price costs (no commission),  in-house at junior levels and highly flexible at senior levels. By cutting out the bank there are huge amounts of money to be saved.  I agree with you about the article being a bit silly. The vast majority of deals are done is small sub-sections of industry where everyone knows the potential targets. A match.com style dating for m&a algorithm wouldn't really add much value.

Firstly 795 is not even. Secondly - generally you would pay tax on the sale of the 122 shares, whether you buy them back or not, even one minute later, has nothing to do with it. The only reason this would not create a capital gains event is if your country (which you haven't specified) has some odd rules or laws about this that I, and most others, have never heard of before.

You definitely can under those conditions. Just be very careful to specify that you are making extra principal payments.


Question: Do the nasdaq small cap stocks or penny stocks get promoted?

"The penny/pink sheet stocks you tend to see promoted are the ones a) with small public floats or, b) they are thinly traded.  This means that any appreciable change in buy/sell volume will have an outsized effect on the stock's share price, even when the underlying fundamentals are not so great.  Promoters are frequently paid based on how much they can move a stock's price, but such moves are not long-lasting.  They peter out when the trading volumes return to more normal ranges for the stock because all of the hype has died out. There are some small-cap NASDAQ stocks which can be susceptible to promotion for the same reason -- they have small floats and/or are thinly traded.  Once someone figures out the best targets, they'll accumulate a position and then start posting all kinds of ""news"" on the web in an effort to drum up interest so they can sell off their position into the buying that follows.   The biggest problem with penny/pink sheet stocks is that they frequently fail to publish reliable financial statements, and their ownership is of a dubious nature.  In the past, these types of stocks have been targeted by organized crime syndicates, which ran their own ""pump and dump"" operations as a way to make relatively easy money.  This may still be true to some extent today.   Be wary of investing in any publicly-traded firm that has to use promoters to drum up investor interest, because it can be a serious red flag.  Even if it means missing out on a short-term opportunity, research the company before investing.  Read its financials, understand how it has behaved through its trading history, learn about the products/services it is selling.  Do your homework.  Otherwise you are doing the investing equivalent of taking your money and lighting it on fire. Remember, there's a good reason these companies are trading as penny/pink sheet stocks, and it generally has nothing to do with the notion (the promoters will tell you) that somehow the ""market has missed out on this amazing opportunity.""  Pump and dump schemes, which lie at the heart of almost all stock promotion, rely on convincing you, the investor, that you're smart enough to see what others haven't.  I hope this helps. Good luck!"

As someone who spends a lot of time in France, I learned that many French banks will issue debit cards to US citizens, as an add-on feature to a bank account.  The fees are not low.  Societe Generale charges 8 Euros per month, Credit Agricole charges 30 Euros a year, BNP Paribas charges 12 Euros a month.  I'm sure other banks will issue cards as well.  You need to show 2 items proving US residence, such as a utility bill, plus a passport.  They can open an account immediately, on that basis and it takes about 7-10 days to get your debit card.

Depending on jurisdiction, the fact that you made some payments might give you an ownership share in the house in your own right. What share would be a complex question because you might need to consider both the mortgage payments made and maintenance. Your sister might also be able to argue that she was entitled to some recompense for the risk she describes of co-signing, and that's something that would be very hard to quantify, but clearly you would also be entitled to similar recompense in respect of that, as you also co-signed. For the share your mother owned, the normal rules of inheritance apply and by default that would be a 50-50 split as JoeTaxpayer said. You imply that the loan is still outstanding, so all of this only applies to the equity previously built up in the house prior to your mother's death. If you are the only one making the ongoing payments, I would expect any further equity built up to belong solely to you, but again the jurisdiction and the fact that your sister's name is on the deeds could affect this. If you can't resolve this amicably, you might need to get a court involved and it's possible that the cost of doing so would outweigh the eventual benefit to you.

Domini offers such a fund.  It might suit you, or it might include things you wish to avoid. I'm not judging your goals, but would suggest that it might be tough to find a fund that has the same values as you. If you choose individual stocks, you might have to do a lot of reading, and decide if it's all or none, i.e. if a company seems to do well, but somehow has an tiny portion in a sector you don't like, do you dismiss them? In the US, Costco, for example, is a warehouse club, and treats employees well. A fair wage, benefits, etc. But they have a liquor store at many locations. Absent the alcohol, would you research every one of their suppliers?

I am sorry for your troubles, but impressed with your problem solving skills.  Keep going, things will get better.   Your best hope is to find a place that does manual underwriting.  If they do computer generated stuff, then you will be kicked for sure.  If you can show 20% down, and have some savings, and have some history of paying bills, then you might be approved.   Here in Florida, RP Funding still does manual underwriting.  Another one that is mentioned is Church Hill mortgage.  Also you might check with local credit unions. Of course your best bet to be approved is to be open and state upfront the challenges.  You have to find someone that has the ability to think, has the ability to see passed the challenges, and has the authority to do so.

">""Our support for these (shareholder resolutions on climate risk) proposals is not a matter of ideology, it's a matter of economics,"" he said. ""To the extent there are significant risks to a company's long-term value proposition, we want to make sure there is long-term disclosure of those risks to the market.""  the irony is indescribable"

Here is the solution: any money made inside the United States will be taxed under US tax law.  You want to do business here, open up a US headquarters that handles all the sales tracking and reporting. No tax dollars, no operations inside the US.   The united states carries such bulk buying power that companies will be forced to abide by its rules.

"By issuing additional equity. In this case, the pie isn't ""fixed,"" it's getting bigger. Now, to avoid lawsuits and other potential issues (some of which may be unavoidable), the owner will likely need to subscribe for additional equity himself.  Example:  100 shares outstanding. 51 to owner, 49 to 2 others.  That 49 will have to equal 20%, as none of their shares are being sold (likely). This means total shares will need to be increased to 245.  Subtract 49 from that number: 196  Marcus gets half of that at a determined price. 98  Owner must increase his stake from 51 to 98 shares. To do so, he'll need to contribute additional cash for the same price Marcus gets in on. That could be expensive."


Question: How do I Fundamentally Analyze this Stock so I may see if the Company is Running Well?

a) Nothing would support this company going back to $.50 per share b) Fundamentally the market for this sectors has been obliterated and the fundamentals don't look like they will improve. Similar companies experience what this one is and will be going through, they borrow the hilt and hope they can pump enough oil and sell the oil at a high price. Oil goes below, WAYYY below the price they can sell it at and even break even, so they are burning cash until they declare bankruptcy. This company is not an exception. So here is what to look at on their balance sheet: assets and liabilities. Liabilities are debt. Their debt is over 50% of their assets, that debt has interest and there is NO WAY they are making a profit. Their website's last financial statement is from September 30th.. LOL, so they haven't even released a quarterly financial statement in two quarters straight, so have they released anything? Given what we know about the dire state of the entire oil drilling industry, lets see if these guys are the exception to the rule (spoiler; they aren't) February 15th, 2015 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/strategic-oil-gas-ltd-provides-operations-update-2015-02-19-16173591 The Company prudently elected to stop the winter Muskeg drilling program     in order to preserve capital. So now they aren't even getting new assets to resale, they aren't making any money from that operation, their debt still has interest payments though. Approximately 700 Boe/d of production has been shut-in by suspending     operations at Bistcho, Cameron Hills and Larne, which are not economic     at current commodity prices. Predictable. Also, you should notice from their actual financial statements (from 6 months ago, lol) (when the price of oil was over 100% higher than it is today, lol), this company already wasn't a good performer. They have been financing themselves by doing private placements, by issuing shares to investors that are not you, and diluting the share value of ALL OTHER SHAREHOLDERS. Dead in the water. I got this from skimming their financial report, without even being familiar with how canadian companies report. Its just bad news. You shouldn't be married to this investment.

No. Black Scholes includes a number of variables to calculate the value of the derivative but taxation isn't one of them. Whether you are trading options or futures, the dividend itelf may be part of the equation, but not the tax on said dividend.

"Look at the graph in the article and one of the legends say ""Thinking their funny"".  > I understand your cynicism of bad products, but how will people find out about your good product?  It's actually easier than ever today because today you can easily search for what you need and you are exposed to media more than ever. There also tools to show specific ads depending on the viewer location, keywords and data on the user.  The challenge is that few bad companies selling junk and crap have huge advertising budget and overwhelm the users who search for one thing and get TONS of ads for something they did not even search for."

You're eligible to do whatever you please, regardless of what you owe as long as you're in a payment plan approved by the IRS which you follow religiously.  That said, let me incorporate some of the comments, as they're important: ChrisInEdmonton said: Note that almost all such 'opportunities' are scams. In order to   provide a complete answer, you'll need to explain the terms of your   installment agreement with the IRS. Also, just curious. If you have   the money to start up a business, why aren't you using it to pay back   the money you owe John Bensin added: I strongly recommend you read through a few links on work-at-home   scams, e.g. fraud.org, forbes, Wikipedia, and the FTC   before joining something like this, to be safe

Deming Electro Plating Corporation specializes in all types of electroplating and surface finishing services in New York. We provide high quality metal finishing work using top grade materials. With over 60 years of experience in electroplating services we provide fastest turnaround time on all types of finishing work.

I have a fb account, I never use it. I wont delete it, because those bastards actually wont let you. So Ive intentionally become a dead customer to them. I actually campaign to my friends to communicate with me via any other method. I hate everything fb stands for as a company. Imo this company defines narcissitic scum, a stunt in our socities development selling out our privacy for the quick buck without even realizing the damage theyve done. I know they wont go away anytime soon, but their user base is dramatically loosing value to advertisers. Talks of less fb engagement is no secret in social media buzz. A lot of lame attempts to blame it on the new algorithim or newsfeed changes but when you read between the lines, you can tell more and more people are using it less and less. With an exception to the older gen, who quite honestly dont really understand fb anyway. Seems like any fade after it reaches mass adoption.

Indiabulls. Low brokerage (If you bargain) I'm user of it and I'm getting 25paisa for delivery and 5 paisa for intraday. All transactions can be done online. Also they provide an stand alone application PowerIndiabulls, which is too good and appraised by many users as best in the industry. Not sure about it, but I think Powerindiabulls application is the answer for this. Please have a look at their website for more details.

The value of Coins & Currency is more of Demand Vs Supply Situation. The value of Coins is not just due to it being old, but also   For example the 1876 US Nickel around 300,000 were minted. The 1916 US Nickel around 400,000 were minted.  However the 1916 Nickel is at more premium than the 1876. This is because there are many collectors who want to complete the collection post 1900. They can never complete the 1800 to 1900 collection as other year coins are not available.   It is hard to tell which currency will catch craze amongst collectors. That's what will drive the prize. For example if 50 years from now, Zimbabwe becomes a leading developed country, there will be craze / nostalgia to collect things of past.   Certain coins like the American Double Eagle are a craze because the design is very good, its made of Gold, has history to it. It's sold for USD 7-8 Million, Or the USD 1 Dollar uncut sheets [16 notes in a sheet], the sheet goes for around 1-2 Million USD As an individual if you have some coins / currencies keep them more as a hobby than as something that would return value.   Investments in Collectibles and Art is an emerging form of investment and needs to be looked at separately and shouldn't be mixed with a simple hobby.


Question: Is it a good practice to keep salary account and savings account separate?

"This seems like a risky setup.  All it takes is one missed or delayed transfer for you to overdraw your ""savings"".  There is a benefit to keeping your regular expenses and savings separate, and I can see some benefits in having multiple checking accounts depending on how you organize your finances, but I don't see a benefit to having a paycheck go to one account and all regular spending (and ""savings"") come from another.  It requires some regular maintenance to transfer money over to use for regular spending.  I suppose if you have a checking account that earns interest, but requires direct deposits, and a savings account that earns slightly higher interest you could squeeze out a bit, but it's probably not worth the effort these days unless you have a LOT of money going in and out. Also, it should not be easy to tap into savings, but your day-to-day spending should be very accessible.  All those factors suggest (to me) that your paycheck should go into your regular spending account, and keep your savings separate."

Enormous revenue, not profits. Profits would be taxed. Doesn't seem like a problem to me. You can't spend money without realizing the profits - it's wealth on paper. (You can do interesting things like use it for donations to offset current income, as an individual. Or use it as collateral for transactions without actually selling it and realizing the gains.)

Do NOT use the same LLC.  By default he would own 1/2 of the DBA so you would have to hire an attorney to section it off.  Then you have to worry about him changing his mind later and suing you if the DBA is sucessful.  Not to mention the EIN controls the cash and tax flow and the DBA would be using the same EIN so it gets really murky.  Don't even consider it, just create a new LLC.

There are plenty of firewalls - Fortinet and Sonicwall UTM, and dedicated DLP devices - that do SSL MITM to sniff traffic for violations. Your employer simply installs the relevant cert on your machine first and most people never notice.  Worth noting: Fortinet has a default setting to NOT monitor or log traffic from bank and health SSL sites. It can be disabled though.

Right you **don't** ever want to use that account for your traditional 401k rollovers.  Realistically, you could *probably* still have it reclassified as a traditional IRA and roll your traditional 401ks into it, which was basically your original idea except none of the funds would be Roth; but if you see yourself ever potentially contributing to a Roth IRA going forward (which makes all the more sense if you have only traditional 401k funds in your retirement portfolio so far), there's nothing *wrong* with having both types of IRA at the same time.  But no, don't cross the streams!  :)

There is a very steep learning curve in any area of finance. I have no idea what all goes into a PhD in a hard science but, if you're worried about the math and programming stuff, I would look at Pharma and Biotech coverage groups. Reach out to people in the space and see what they say. Also, leverage the Alumni network from your school as you can probably make some headway with the schools you named.

Can't be true.  I read r/economy and I know **real** inflation is 15%, **real** unemployment is 25%, we're in a double-dip recession, a second tsunami of mortgage foreclosure is coming, hundreds of cities are going to default on their bonds, and ...  And we're all going to die on the side of the road.  Alone.  In the rain.  Edit: [See](http://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/2dm13e/job_surge_suggests_higher_wages_are_coming/cjr00wh)?  And this guy is an optimist.

Everybody on the car title will need to participate in the selling process. The person who is buying the car will need everybody to sign the paperwork so that nobody months later tries to say they never agreed to sell the car. The money will have to be sent to the lender to pay off the rest of the loan. If the money isn't enough to pay off the loan everybody will have to decide how the extra money will be sent to the lender. This will have to be done as part of the selling process because the lender doesn't want you to sell the car and keep the cash. Once the car is gone so is the collateral and they can't take it back if you miss payments.  If the cousin is too far away to participate in the selling of the car, you may need the buyer and the lender to tell you how to proceeded. If you are selling at a dealership they will know what documents and signatures will be needed, the bank will also know what to do. If the loan is almost paid off it may be easier to pay the loan first, and then get the title without the lenders name before trying to sell it.


Question: How an ETF reinvests dividends

Let me answer by parts: When a company gives dividends, the share price drops by the dividend amount.  Not always by that exact amount for many different reasons (e.g. there are transaction costs if you reinvest, dividend taxes, etc). I have tested that empirically. Now, if all the shareholders choose to reinvest their dividends, will the share price go back up to what it was prior to the dividend? That is an interesting question. The final theoretical price of the company does not need to be that. When a company distributes dividends its liquidity diminish, there is an impact on the balance sheet of the company. If all investors go to the secondary market and reinvest the dividends in the shares, that does not restore the cash in the balance sheet of the company, hence the theoretical real value of the company is different before the dividends. Of course, in practice there is not such a thing as one theoretical value. In reality, if everybody reinvest the dividend, that will put upward pressure over the price of the company and, depending on the depth of the offers, meaning how many orders will counterbalance the upward pressure at the moment, the final price will be determined, which can be higher or lower than before, not necessarily equal. I ask because some efts like SPY automatically reinvest dividends. So what is the effect of this reinvestment on the stock price? Let us see the mechanics of these purchases. When a non distributing ETF receives cash from the dividends of the companies, it takes that cash and reinvest it in the whole basket of stocks that compose the index, not just in the companies that provided the dividends. The net effect of that is a small leverage effect. Let us say you bought one unit of SPY, and during the whole year the shares pay 2% of dividends that are reinvested. At the end of that year, it will be equivalent to having 1.02 units of SPY.

">Basically interest rates are near 0 and the banks are very risk adverse right now, so they sit on reserves instead of lending them out.  There is a very significant reason (actually a couple) that the banks are ""sitting on reserves"":  1. The large banks have HUGE derivative exposure and HUGE potential losses (and anyone who denies that has apparently been hiding under a rock and missed the news of JPMorganChase) -- while the reserves held are not enough to cover ALL of those potential derivative losses (nor do they have to), the bankers are uncertain of what their REAL exposure is, and so they want to (and indeed are probably being told to) hold onto enough to prevent a catastrophic ""insolvency"" situation.  2. The Fed is paying interest on excess reserves (likewise, this is no secret). This serves a two-fold purpose of making the banks *appear* to be solvent (even in the face of potentially HUGE derivative exposure); and secondarily it is a way to ""gift"" the banks with money -- known as ""recapitalizing"" them.  What Krugman is engaging in is simple misdirection. Now whether this is because he actually believes his own bullshit, or whether he is being intellectually dishonest... is anyone's guess. (Hanlon's razor would tell us it is the former, rather than the latter; but that isn't really dispositive in a single case and is rather a general principle. Occam's razor doesn't tell us anything in regard to this, since either is a fairly simple and straight-forward explanation; and given the history of ""economists"" as being professional apologists & apparatchiks in service of the financial & government establishment, the latter is at least as likely as the former.)"

I agree that there is a lot of filtering going on. I run filters for people's blogs and news sites I rarely read. The caveat is that I unblock sites I use frequently, and pay for YouTube Red, music streaming and Patreon to support content creators that I enjoy. This, to me, is an issue of the ad targeting not being mature enough yet. Once companies figure out that I'm responsive to ads on certain sites but will blacklist others that do the same, they can selectively serve ads on platforms I'm more likely to engage with. In the meantime the shotgun approach is what advertisers go for.   The future is really in honing how and when these ads are delivered, as well as offering more widespread alternatives to ads, such as subscription services.  For what its worth, I also run noscript. I've had ISPs in the past that had data caps, and given how much data I already use via streaming and Steam, I need every spare Mb I can get.

Written by salesmen, for clueless executives.   Why bother to ask your in house tech people for their input? It's so degrading when everyone knows you are better than they are.  it goes so wrong almost every time.

"[ See Hopstar's comment : ](http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/ujwei/dont_mean_to_be_alarmist_but_the_tv_business_may/c4w52l9)  > They're an exception to all of this because they're owned by ""a joint venture of NBCUniversal (Comcast/General Electric), Fox Entertainment Group (News Corp) and Disney-ABC Television Group (The Walt Disney Company), with funding by Providence Equity Partners, the owner of Newport Television...""  > Even with the full support of three major conglomerates, the service is still gimped (delays in broadcasting new episodes, limited availability of past episodes/seasons) by their fear of change."

After doing some investigating, my employers contract with the credit card company has a clause that basically specifies that despite my name being on the credit card, and bills being sent to me, all liability is on the company. Additionally, the employer reserves the right to garnish wages in the event of a balance on the card. So it looks like it won't affect my credit score. I appreciate all of the advice.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this statement.  As a libertarian myself, the only thing that's really surprising to me is that it was Keynes who said it. It's pretty much standard fare for liberterian socioeconomic thought to decry corporatism / rent-seeking while simultaneously praising industriousness and capitalism as we understand it to be.  All this is saying to me is that Keynes *understood* what capitalism was, but recommended what he recommended anyhow. Which is unfortunate, but not really surprising now that I think about it given how the Chicago School operates in general.

"Again massive generalisations I haven't looked at the numbers at all, so could be way off, and it will be a local issue.   If overall housing demand > supply; little movement in price  If current supply = current demand; then the increase in supply should lower prices a little. I'd expect a lot of conversions to enable greater access to the housing market from first time buyers (which is generally where the growth comes from).   If current supply > current demand (rare, Detroit, some ""company towns"" where the company has left etc) ; prices should already be depressed, more supply pushes them lower still. If people can keep up with mortgage payments then all okay, if not repossessions. I doubt this option is large enough to carry much risk.    I'm fairly sure any bank has people far smarter, and far more qualified,  than me looking at macro trends with actual data, so whatever shocks are coming from the boomers dying off will be well managed."


Question: Passing money through a different account to avoid cash pay-in fees

"Let me do the math. .6% * (not large) = really tiny. Since ""not large"" = ""small"" , etc.  I suggest that even a small chance that you need to explain this to anyone in the future is a sign to avoid the risk. Yes, there are times that it's illegal. A real estate office may not deposit escrow funds into anything but a segregated escrow account.  In your case, even if legal, it messes up 'the books' and can cost you more in grief than the 'tiny amount' saves you in cash."

"When did I say that?     All I said was that my success had nothing to do with luck. Partly because I did more than just work hard and partly because there is *no such thing as luck*.    They may be working just as hard or harder than me, but are they doing all the right things to increase their chances of success? Did they major in business or journalism? Do they network, or is that ""a fucking bullshit game"" they don't want to play? Do they ask for letters of recommendation, or think that people just automatically write them and know where to send them? I've actually met many people who think it's rude to ask for a letter of recommendation. Do they use their resources wisely or spend their student loan money on Macbooks and iPhones? There's more factors at play than simply the number of hours they work in a day or their GPA."

Western Union is one way to send emergency cash to a family member. It seems suspicious as a method of goods payment because many frauds have used it as a means of collecting irreversible payments. EBay and Paypal would be a better more trustworthy way to sell to usa customers.   Most USA banks need a USA address for the account owner..... But you may not need a USA bank account as PayPal can store and exchange funds to other currencies.

They are a distributer. They're not doing anything but making products available. If Shimano wants to sell me a reel and I don't like Bass pro now, I'll go to Shimano website. easy. Or you know, another company who can do it better can come along. My main point is this isn't like a utility company that has a monopoly where you only have one choice on how to get gas to heat your home in the winter.  That have much different powers and potential problems.

You don't need to notify the IRS of new members, the IRS doesn't care (at this stage). What you do need, if you have a EIN for a single-member LLC, is to request a new EIN since your LLC is now a partnership (a different entity, from IRS perspective). From now on, you'll need to file form 1065 with the IRS in case of business related income, on which you will declare the membership distribution interests on Schedules K-1 for each member.

"Is english not your first language? I'm not trying to be rude i just want to understand if the difficulty in communicating with you comes from a language barrier or something else.  Finance and accounting knowledge are things people go to university for years for, just to learn the basics to get in the door. What you're asking requires years of experience and earned expertise.  The expectation that you can just post here with some questions and suddenly have enough of a grasp to become a decision maker with respect to these situations is borderline offensive to professionals like myself.  Either you need this knowledge for a practical application, or an academic pursuit. It seems to be the latter given your previous message. There are textbooks dedicated to what you're asking about, if you are really serious about learning then go pick them up and put in the hours necessary just like anyone else. Otherwise stop wasting peoples time on here.  If you have one or two small questions to help clarify something you've been self studying that's fine, but honestly coming on here and asking ""how can a company issue bonds and what are bonds is it like a mortgage"" is absolutely a waste of time and reeks of laziness on your part."

Well they did not seem to be able to shoot down the two that flew over Japan and those were definitely a threat, so it seems to me the only non-threatening missiles they seem to be able to shoot down are the ones they fire them selves  I am starting to wonder and its starting to seem the missile shields might just be another big military boondoggle.

"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/07/10/commentary/world-commentary/trumps-trade-trap/#.WWOdSOmQyUk) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Trump sees the costs of these programs as showing that past U.S. leaders were willing to sacrifice the interests of ordinary Americans to meaningless global cooperation.  > U.S. officials negotiated horrible trade deals; American workers lost their jobs to imports; our putative allies didn&#039;t pick up their fair share of military spending.  > Last week, Europe and Japan announced they&#039;re negotiating a trade agreement that covers 40 percent of world trade and excludes the U.S. Being outside these agreements would weaken U.S. exports.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6mg13e/trumps_trade_trap/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~163838 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **U.S.**^#1 **Trump**^#2 **American**^#3 **trade**^#4 **percent**^#5"


Question: How will the net assets of a bankrupt company be divided among the common share holders

All investors of equal standing get the same proportion of the net assets on bankruptcy but not all shareholders are of equal standing. In general, once all liabilities are covered, bond holders are paid first as that type of investment is company debt, then preferred stock holders are paid out and then common shareholders. This is the reason why preferred stock is usually cheaper - it is less risky as it has a higher claim to assets and therefore commands a lower risk premium. The exact payout schedule is very corporation dependent so needs research on a per firm basis.

"Holy crap you really bought what was being sold.  For 8 years I watched as my gun owning friends, some I would call 2nd amendment ""enthusiasts"" go crazy as they talked about all the ways their gun owning rights were threatened by that man in the white house.   All the while gun and ammo sales went like gangbusters.  He acted once (twice?) to expand gun rights and, to my knowledge, did nothing to set them back.    For 8 years FUD was spread throughout the ""2nd amendment community"" while gun and ammo manufacturers profited like crazy and nothing actually threatened them and the NRA was turned into a parody of itself.  It's ...  Odd."

"The question should read: ""Borrow huge money for speculating"". This is a bad idea on many levels. The lowest rates available will be from time-limited credit card offers, followed by broker margin accounts. Personal loans are going to be higher. My advice: if you insist on throwing your money away, go to Vegas with $40k. At least you'll get some complimentary food and drink."

That is not completely true. Many of these companies use public easements or have had public funds invested in them.  And the infrastructure would continue to be privately owned, there would just be some regulations placed on how they can operate it.

The answers provided already pretty much answer the differences and trade-offs, and I'd agree with recommending an online savings account like ING because the rate is just about the same as most CDs you'll find right now.  It's really a matter of when the CD rate is higher, and you can accept not accessing the money, then the CD is a better value, otherwise go with the savings account. However, here is an interesting option with CDs that helps with not being able to access the money: a CD ladder.  Basically, you get a CD every 3 months (or some other acceptable time frame), starting with 3, 6, 9, and 12-month CDs.  When the time is up for each of them, take that money and put it back into a new yearly CD.  Eventually you will get to the point when you have all of the CDs long-term, but you'll get some of the money every 3 months.  If you need the money, you'll have the option to use it, but you can always just keep it going, too.  The exact timing you use depends on your situation, but it's a great way to help get around not being able to access the money for a year or more.

I am no expert, but lots of things can cause drops.  Large unsecured revolving debt (credit cards) - even jf you payoff monthly, unpaid medical bill, acquiring multiple credit cards or other multiple credit searches, any form of lawsuit, and I am sure several other things

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Don't all of the major bitcoin processors limit the risk to basically zero for the large multinationals that choose to accept bitcoin? I haven't been involved recently, but I know when bitpay and coinbase were starting, whatever bitcoin you received was automatically transferred to USD at the current rate, unless you opted out and chose to keep the bitcoin.


Question: Can an Indian citizen/resident invest in a US company and collect the profits in India?

Every month I will get a return in from my share of the profit which would be used for repayment of capital and interest in India. Not to sure what the business plan is. Please factor all the modalities, Exchange rate fluctuations, etc. My concern is regarding RBI rules and regulations, FEMA guidelines, and Income tax. Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme; Funds can be transferred outside India. Any profit you make will be taxable in India. You will have to declare this pay tax in as per schedule.

Don't know about rest of the world but oat based milk products (yoghurt, milk, cream, anything) and other similar plant based products (soy being biggest) are currently a huge trend here in Finland. Their major consumers are urban folk (more expensive than regular milk) but it is spreading across the country

I would suggest equity research, or as mentioned, consulting. You could go into IB. Your main hindrance is your age, how long has it been since you finished your PhD?  Equity Research: you will analyze companies, on an individual and micro basis, and provide macro point of views on the industry etc.   Sales/Trading: you will not get a job in trading, sales...maybe, if you get a bank large enough that has a healthcare/industrial chemicals sales positions, but this is a job that requires you to be able to sell your bank's point of view to large, very sophisticated clients, and provide them with better ideas than other sales guys, so that they will trade with your bank...can you learn finance and the industry fast enough? You would be better off working in a buy side shop (there are tons in boston)  IB: never met anyone that likes ib. depends on the bank but even mid market small banks it is 80hr weeks on avg. bulge bracket its 100. but you would likely start as an associate, (if at all) so that would go down really fast, (3-5 yrs to vp)  If you went to a top tier school, find alum from your school that work at banks and talk to them first, a 30 min conversation with anyone is incredibly useful. Just ask them how to get in. Also make sure you know all the capital markets firms in your area, know what all the fields are from a basic level (read the shit on wallstreetoasis etc) so that you dont waste time when talking to people.   You will likely need a CFA level 1 to get any traction, unless you can find some people that are willing to pull for you, which you will find is actually more simple than it seems - people love helping their alma matter, and every firm is always looking for smart people. anyways, sign up for the december 2012 cfa exam, and download/buy the schweser notes (don't read the actual books) this will be a great refresher about finance and economics even if you don't end up switching careers.  actual answers to your questions 1) yes 2) start as an associate in ib, spend 3 years doing bs, and workin average 90hrs a week, either quit of become vp and start selling work vs doing it 3) ib: immediate sales/trading: immediate, buy side: varies on the firm, size, performance, could be immediate, could be the year after, or you could get fired after 3 months because your phd isnt as useful as they thought it was. 4) mentioned above...a few years, its managable, suck it up 5) no sorry   goodluck

"Perhaps the real question you are asking is ""How can the tax code be fixed to make it simple for everyone (including me), and what would it take to effect those changes""? There are really two causes for the complexity of the tax code. Many of those who enter Government hold a desire for power, and Government uses the tax code as one lever of power to distribute largess to their supporters, and to nudge everyone to behaviors which they favor. The current system enables incumbents to spend taxpayer money to reward those they favor, and thus they accumulate power and security. Those who enter Government also love to spend money (especially other people's money), and their rapacious behavior recognizes no boundaries. They will spend money without control until the taxpayers yank them to a brutal stop. They enact complex rules which are used to ease the (tax) burden for some, which buys their support (with taxpayer money), and they spend money to benefit those which they favor. The system of lobbyists and contributors exists to entice Government to treat them and the causes they support favorably. This system enables incumbents to spend taxed money to reward those they favor, and to tax those they disfavor. Thus their greed is satisfied, and their power is increased. The freedom you seek is not available, although you can minimize the effort required for compliance. You can take the standard deduction, and use nothing but the W-2 provided by your employer, and unless you are subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax, you will find that the tax software will do most of the work for you. Do you want to approach the Nirvana of minimal effort to appease your tax collectors? Avoid starting your own business, charitable donations, investment income, 1099 income, and you will need minimal paperwork. Avoid earning enough to risk the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). Refuse to take the mortgage interest deduction, tax credits for electric vehicles, tax credits for high-efficiency appliances and air conditioners, tax credits for residential solar panel installations. Do not own investments which pay interest, or own stocks where you need to track the ""basis"" (purchase price) of the stocks, nor buy and then sell valuable items that might gain value (where you would need to track the purchase price, the ""basis""). Avoid owning and leasing a rental home for income, deducting businesses expenses and mileage for business purposes, contributions to a retirement plan (outside an employer plan) -- all complicate your tax filing. The solution you truly desire is either a ""Flat Tax"" or the ""Fair Tax"". These solutions would effect either a single tax rate (with no deductions or adjustments to income, yeah right), or a national retail sales tax, which would tax the money spent in the economy regardless of the source of the money (legal, gifts, crime) and there would be no need to report income, or classify it. The largest objection to either is that the tax code might become less ""progressive"" (increasing tax rate with increasing income). Good Luck!"

This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.    - [/r/bestof] [/u/Beebles1 explains how to break into the finance sector](http://np.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2dl483/ubeebles1_explains_how_to_break_into_the_finance/)   *^If ^you ^follow ^any ^of ^the ^above ^links, ^respect ^the ^rules ^of ^reddit ^and ^don't ^vote ^or ^comment. ^Questions? ^Abuse? [^Message ^me ^here.](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmeta_bot_mailbag)*

If the cards are tied to a specific vendor, they will work only at that vendor. If they're generic cards just charged with a specific amount of money, they should work at any vendor who accepts that card network... though there may be specific exceptions.

No.  You already received the deduction, since that lost FSA money was pre-tax.  You can't double dip.  However if your FSA amount was less than your actual expenses, you can file on the difference. Example: $4500 actual expenses, $3000 FSA (lost).  You can get the dependent care credit based on $1500.

"EDIT: It was System Disruption or Malfunctions August 24, 2015 2:12 PM EDT   Pursuant to Rule 11890(b) NASDAQ, on its own motion, in conjunction   with BATS, and FINRA has determined to cancel all trades in security   Blackrock Capital Investment. (Nasdaq: BKCC) at or below $5.86 that   were executed in NASDAQ between 09:38:00 and 09:46:00 ET. This   decision cannot be appealed. NASDAQ will be canceling trades on the   participants behalf. A person on Reddit claimed that he was the buyer. He used Robinhood, a $0 commission broker and start-up.  The canceled trades are reflected on CTA/UTP and the current charts will differ from the one posted below.  It is an undesired effect of the 5-minute Trading Halt.  It is not ""within 1 hour of opening, BKCC traded between $0.97 and $9.5"".  Those trades only occurred for a few seconds on two occasions.  One possible reason is that when the trading halt ended, there was a lot of Market Order to sell accumulated.  Refer to the following chart, where each candle represents a 10 second period. As you can see, the low prices did not ""sustain"" for hours.   And the published halts."


Question: How do I know when I am financially stable/ready to move out on my own?

One big deciding factor will be what standard of living you want to maintain once you move out.  Your parents have had years to get raises, accumulate savings, and establish the standard of living you are used to.   Regardless of how much you save up now, you'll still have to be living at or below your means once you move out, that means that all the expenses you currently have covered by your parents have to come out of something you are currently spending elsewhere.  If they can come out of whatever extra money you have now, then great.  If not, you'll have to re-align your budget to align with your income. In my experience, seeing my friends and I move out, this was the biggest issue.  Those who settled into a new standard of living until their wages went up did fine (even the few who moved out at 18 with no savings).  Those who couldn't drop the extra expenses, and wanted to continue living at their parent's standard of living either never left home, ended up moving back, or ended up massively in debt.  We're only just hitting 30 now, so it didn't take long for things to settle out.

"I used to travel a lot for work, in '14 I spent 35 work weeks on the road, so I know air travel pretty well. Thing is, anyone who travels that often generally doesn't need to pay for a better seat. I got upgraded to first class for free about 50% of the time, some trips I'd get first class on all the flights. At the worst, you're sitting in the coach ""plus"" with larger seats, more legroom, and often free drinks. Regular fliers don't sit in the back by the bathrooms, they're sitting further up right behind first class. Either you travel infrequently enough that you can suck it up for a coach flight every so often, or you're traveling often enough that you don't need to worry about it."

Around 22 million bitcoin maximum. I can't remember full details but it's designed to dish out 12.5 coins every 10 minutes on average. Sometimes it might be 10 seconds, sometimes an hour, and half every 4 years until 22 million it just halved so in about 3.5 years you will get 6.25. Now to SEND bitcoin you can bribe miners and pay a few cents to jump the line, so you get your 12.5 + the donated coin.   As for eth it's confusing shit. Bitcoin is like a virtual dollar, eth you can 'transform' into other things to do things I don't know what it's for. Research 'dao' and eth. Dao was some sort of contract system using eth.

"For personal investing, and speculative/ highly risky securities (""wasting assets"", which is exactly what options are), it is better to think in terms of sunk costs. Don't chase this trade, trying to make your money back. You should minimize your loss. Unwind the position now, while there is still some remaining value in those call options, and take a short-term loss. Or, you could try this.  Let's say you own an exchange traded call option on a listed stock (very general case). I don't know how much time remains before the option's expiration date. Be that as it may, I could suggest this to effect a ""recovery"".  You'll be long the call and short the stock. This is called a delta hedge, as you would be delta trading the stock. Delta refers to short-term price volatility.  In other words, you'll short a single large block of the stock, then buy shares, in small increments, whenever the market drops slightly, on an intra-day basis. When the market price of the stock rises incrementally, you'll sell a few shares. Back and forth, in response to short-term market price moves, while maintaining a static ""hedge ratio"". As your original call option gets closer to maturity, roll it over into the next available contract, either one-month, or preferably three-month, time to expiration. If you don't want to, or can't, borrow the underlying stock to short, you could do a synthetic short. A synthetic short is a combination of a long put and a short call, whose pay-off replicates the short stock payoff.  I personally would never purchase an unhedged option or warrant. But since that is what you own right now, you have two choices: Get out, or dig in deeper, with the realization that you are doing a lot of work just to trade your way back to a net zero P&L.  *While you can make a profit using this sort of strategy, I'm not certain if that is within the scope of the money.stachexchange.com website."

I recently lent some money to my sister.  While I generally agree with Phillip that lending to family and friends should be avoided, I felt I needed to make an exception.  She really needed the cash, and my husband and I agreed that we would be ok without it.  Here are some guidelines I used that may be helpful to others: In the end, I think lending to family and friends should be avoided, and certainly should not be done lightly, but by communicating clearly and directly, and keeping careful records, I think you can help someone out and still avoid the lingering awkwardness at future Thanksgivings when one person is convinced that the other owes one more payment, and the other swears it was paid in full.

"The danger to your savings depends on how much sovereign debt your bank is holding.  If the government defaults then the bank - if it is holding a lot of sovereign debt - could be short funds and not able to meet its obligations. I believe default is the best option for the Euro long term but it will be painful in the short term.  Yes, historically governments have shut down banks to prevent people from withdrawing their money in times of crisis.  See Argentina circa 2001 or US during Great Depression.  The government prevented people from withdrawing their money and people could do nothing while their money rapidly lost value. (See the emergency banking act where Title I, Section 4 authorizes the US president:""To make it illegal for a bank to do business during a national emergency (per section 2) without the approval of the President.""  FDR declared a banking holiday four days before the act was approved by Congress.  This documentary on the crisis in Argentina follows a woman as she tries to withdraw her savings from her bank but the government has prevented her from withdrawing her money.) If the printing press is chosen to avoid default then this will allow banks and governments to meet their obligations.  This, however, comes at the cost of a seriously debased euro (i.e. higher prices).  The euro could then soon become a hot potato as everyone tries to get rid of them before the ECB prints more.  The US dollar could meet the same fate. What can you do to avert these risks?  Yes, you could exchange into another currency.  Unfortunately the printing presses of most of the major central banks today are in overdrive.  This may preserve your savings temporarily. I would purchase some gold or silver coins and keep them in your possession.  This isolates you from the banking system and gold and silver have value anywhere you go.  The coins are also portable in case things really start to get interesting.  Attempt to purchase the coins with cash so there is no record of the purchase.  This may not be possible."

What's easy? Debt, personal, marketing related finance.   What we look for in hires is simple though - modeling skills (everyone thinks they're better than they actually are) and case analysis (same story). If you can get those two under your belt, and a good school under your name you should be good.

I was also going to mention people going through savings during unemployment.  And given the unemployment figures, 28% having no emergency savings even seems low.  Purely anecdotal but I cleared through my savings a few years ago during seven months of unemployment and have several friends who did the same and/or racked up thousands in debt.


Question: Can I deduct taxes for home office as a freelance computer software developer?

This answer is assuming you're in the US, which apparently you're not. I doubt that the rules in the EU are significantly different, but I don't know for sure. In case of an IRS control, is it ok to say that I regularly connect   remotely to work from home although in the work contract it says I   must work at client's office? No. Are there any other ways I can prove that this deduction is valid? No. You can't prove something is valid when its not. You can only deduct home office expense if it is used exclusively for your business, and your bedroom obviously is not.

This is a great answer.  It's worth noting that often internal charging is commonly an issue in less clear cut situations like IT departments charging for their services - there is much less of an 'real' value that they could charge for their services to the outside world (as it is an internal service not a physical product that is relatively liquid), yet their chargeable costs gets inflated and can slow down businesses by making projects seem more expensive than they are. I would describe that as one of the most common gripes.  Also I'd argue that your latter scenario where profits are shifted around to reduce tax bills IS well understood by the top of the business, and unlikely to create a situation where divisions are mistakenly regarded as unprofitable (unless the CFO / FD is missing from all the board meetings!). It's a situation that is carefully designed by the business.

All forms of liquid investing necessarily have the same expected value. If any one form were more profitable, money would flood in, equalizing it. Day trading is unusual in two key ways. First, although the expected value is the same, the risk profile is very different. For example, would you wager a dollar on the flip of a coin?  You might.  Why not, after all? Would you wager a million dollars?  Probably not. The risk is too great. Similarly, day trading can easily lose you all of your investment, which is why you should be careful doing it. (In his memoirs Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis tells an anecdote about a rich bond trader who proposes a million-dollar, even-money bet with his rival, an amount both could just barely afford to lose.  The rival, not wanting to play but not wanting to lose face by declining, accepted.. with the proviso that the stakes be raised to 10 million dollars! The trader backed down.) Also, the efficient market only guarantees the price will be efficient.  It says nothing about transaction costs.  A busy day-trader can easily incur thousands in commission and other fees.

Bermis Inc has a team of industrial electricians that can handle all of your electrical construction and maintenance needs.  This includes lighting retrofits, single equipment installs, full production lines to complete plant relocations and incoming service upgrades.

You might want to check again on the whole best standard of living thing. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/countries-with-the-highest-standard-of-living-social-progress-index/ Not even in top 12. We also have by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, housing more prisoners than China with 1/4 the population. Our infant mortality rate is the highest in the developed world. Our healthcare is also the worst in developed countries and even some developing ones despite paying more for it than in any other country in the world. We rank near last in education despite also paying the most for it. It's is almost as if adding a profit motive to social services results in the highest costs with the lowest output. Europe is doing great actually, pretty much is the reverse of all these statistics.

I actually think it's the opposite.  Outside the city is tons of infrastructure and there would be no traffic issues at all.  As I said Raytheon had multiple large campuses in Tewksbury, woburn, Waltham, and Andover.  It also has sites in many other towns. Amazon could set up shop just outside the city.   Also if they were intent on being in the city they could probably find good space in the seaport district or southie.

That's not how science works. Demonstrating non-spurious correlation is the responsibility of the author. Null hypothesis and all that.  That is to say, if some guy on the street tells you something, it's not _your_ responsibility to spend your time explaining to him or others how he might be wrong.

For most business purposes, Gmail/ Outlook should suffice. Just make sure your username sounds professional enough.   Try and stick to FirstName+LastName @ Gmail/Outlook dot com, if that's available. You could also get yourself NameOfYourBusiness @ Gmail/ Outlook dot com  If you want to come across as a well established business, and only if you've some cash to spare every year, getting yourself a domain name would be a good idea. But, if your business/ services aren't too popular, yet; I'd suggest you defer that expense.


Question: Company asking for card details to refund over email

If it is a well known company that wants to give you a refund, I would not worry about giving them your credit card number.  However, I would never type my credit card number into an e-mail message. E-mail messages are very insecure, and can be read by many people along its way to the destination. They also can be archived in many places, meaning that your number will continue to be posted out there for someone to grab in the future.  If you need to give this company your credit card number, do it over the phone.  Having said that, ultimately you are not generally responsible for fraudulent charges if your card number is stolen and misused. I've had so many fraudulent charges, despite my being relatively careful with my number, that I don't really worry much anymore about losing my number. I just check my statement for false charges, and when they happen,  the bank cancels the charge and issues me a new number. It has happened to either my wife or I maybe 5 times over the last two years.

Here's my approach: As for Google Docs, I think that its safe enough for most people. If you in a profession that was subject to heavy regulatory scrutiny, of if you are cheating on your taxes, I would probably not use a cloud provider. Many providers will provide documents to government agencies without a subpoena or notice to you.

"Although they may have some similar functions, CPAs and Enrolled Agents operate in two rather different areas of the accounting ""space."" CPAs deal with financial statements, usually of corporations. They're the people you want to go to if you are making an investment, or if you own your own business, and need statements of pretax profit and loss prepared. Although a few of them are competent in taxation, the one thing many of them are weak at is tax rules, and this is where enrolled agents come in. Enrolled agents are more concerned with personal tax liability. They can 1) calculate your income taxes, and 2) represent you in hearings with the IRS because they've taken courses with IRS agents, and are considered by them to be almost ""one of us."" Many enrolled agents are former IRS agents, actually. But they are less involved with corporate accounting, including things that might be of interest to stock holders. That's the CPA's province."

"> company was incorporated, which makes it a public institution and that changes things.  People keep saying this, but it simply is not true.  No business is ever a ""public institution"".  Even publicly traded companies are still *privately owned*.  They are ""public"" only in the sense that they extend the opportunity to own a part of the company to the larger public.  Insfar as this is true, they incur certain responsibilities to be transparent in reporting their financials, for example.  But the idea that any private institution - corporation, church, parochical school, or small business ought to be forced to hire on the basis of someone else's idea of fairness is idiotic.  It's a fundamental matter of property rights.  Except in matters of fraud or force, I should be free to dispose of my property - say my business - in any way I wish, hiring, serving, or otherwise running that business as I see fit.  If it is OK to force private sector institutions to hire and serve people because the government says so, then by the same reasoning the government should be able to force you to invite certain classes of people to your dinner parties.  Even in the extreme cases of outright bigotry - say the KKK member that owns a business and hates blacks or the Muslim shop onwer that hates Jews - this should not be prevented.  However offensive I most of the rest of my fellow citizens find the Klackers or the nutjob Islamists, they too have rights and privileges under our system and they too should not have those rights removed to suit my sense of fair play."

">> Did President Trump...then come out saying he now opposed Medicare doing so?  > Yes. So he said that.  Great, I wasn't sure we could find agreement there.  > Did he ACT to make it so? Maybe, as usual, he's playing business chess...  That argument cuts both ways.  Maybe this is part of his master plan to get Medicare Part-D to negotiate drug prices, but maybe this is part of his master plan to maximize pharmaceutical company profit.  At the end of the day you have to judge a person on what he says and what he appears to do.  >> Has President Trump...prepare for the upcoming problems caused by global warming?  > Absolutely not! Absolutely not!  I agree.  > President Trump is not against any method or measure to reduce pollution or emission.  [Global warming is a serious risk to this country](https://www.americansecurityproject.org/climate-security/).  Given that it is President Trump's job to protect the country, a position of bring ""not against emission reductions"" doesn't cut it.   Thanks for answering my questions.  From your earlier replies I wasn't sure you understood how someone might see my issues as reflective of a president who is not working in the best interests of his people.  Of course you can disagree but you're not going to change my mind by dismissing what I see as tests of character and asking me to provide another.  > I am not happy with everything he said or do before and after the elections.  That's great.  Like and dislike him for your own reasons and challenge both perspectives."

>Obviously, if we've got far, far fewer government workers that any any point since World War II  Got a cite?  The number of federal workers has expanded steadily for a while now, but a cite might save me from trying to napkin math population ratios and whatnot.

Yes a minor can have a checking account, or a savings account. They can even get a debit card. The money in that bank account belongs to the minor. The account can be established as soon as the are assigned their social security number. If they are a newborn the account is generally set up as a joint account with a parent to facilitate transferring money into the account. For us the money was birthday gifts from relatives.  The IRS allows minors to receive small amounts of interest, or other unearned income, tax free. In 2015 that is up to $1,050, if they have no earned income. When bank rates were higher some parent's wanted to put all their saving under their child's name, of course in the eyes of the law the money belonged to the child and was only to be spent for items that benefited the child. Credit cards are another matter because the CARD act in 2009 required lenders to only give credit to those under 21 who had proof of sufficient income, unless there was a co-signer. You do have to be careful when talking about owning a house as minor. They generally can't sign a contract. You could gift the house to the minor, but if it was time to sell it the courts would insist on appointing a legal guardian to represent the interest of the child. That could add significant time to the transaction.

They also pay really well and give people freedom.  The dignity you get from not having to worry about your time off being refused or worrying about picking your kid up in an emergency is priceless and builds loyalty.


Question: What percent of a company are you buying when you purchase stock?

What percent of a company are you buying when you purchase stock? The percent of a company represented by a single share can be calculated by percent = 1/number_of_shares*100% Apple comprises 5,250,000,000 shares, so one share makes up about 1.9e-8% of a company, or 0.000000019% of Apple.

"> Wal-Mart already pays below market wages anyway.  What they pay *is* the market wage by definition.  > They are just treated worse.  In which case, why don't they work for one of those other employers?  > People don't choose to work for Wal-Mart vs other places, it's because Wal-Mart literally shuts down entire small towns mainstreets.  In what way does that force people to work for Wal-Mart? You act like the only way to get a job is to work for them. If you do not like the job that Wal-mart offers you, there is no compulsion to accept it.  > Nothing I'm talking about has anything to do with productivity, which really doesn't apply here. At the retail level, all workers are essentially the same. What, exactly, are they producing? They provide a service.  They are producing the service of retail. Shelves need to be stocked, registers need to be manned, things need to be cleaned, prices need to be adjusted, etc. etc. Employees can be nicer to the customers, or faster at performing tasks, or less likely to make mistakes, or hundreds of other things. Workers are *not* essentially the same - if they were, they would tend to have the same wage.  ""Production"" does not refer solely to the creation of goods. It refers to anything that results in an increase of *wealth* - in other words, it is any action that produces something of *value* to someone."

If he asked you to invest his money with certain objectives which resulted in you buying specific stocks for him with his money, then sell all the stocks which you bought with his money and the capital and profits to him. You may want to calculate the trading fees that you incurred while buying these specific stocks and taxes from the sale of these stocks, withholding them to over the trading fees that you have already paid and the taxes that you might still need to pay. If you traded with his money no different than yours, then I would think of your investment account as a black box. Calculate the initial money that you both invested at the time you added his capital to the account, calculate how much it all is currently worth, then liquidate and return a percentage equal to that of his initial investment. You can account for trading fees and taxes, subtracting by the same percentage.

I filed all my tax returns when I was abroad so they know how much I   made (just not how much I saved). I smell problems here. If you were compliant wrt to your filings, you must have filed FBAR forms and form 8938. Even if you were below the threshold for form 8938, you will probably be above it when you move back to the US - the threshold for people living in the US is much lower. Do I still need to declare it, even though I might not intend to use   this money to help my kids through college? I believe so. Here's what they want: Nothing there suggests that it is only limited to the accounts in the US or to the money you intend to use to help your kids through college.

Are you kidding? The stock markets just took a nose dive this week. Perfect buying opportunity. Just be sure to dollar cost average your way in to avoid excessive timing risk.

Long-term capital gains, as you note, get special tax treatment.  They are lower than regular income tax rates.  Short-term capital gains aren't penalized, they are just treated as regular income under the regular rates.  So, from a tax perspective, the day-trader gets by the same way as the rest of us because they are paying the same rates on the same progressive income tax scale.

Oh what a crock of shit. The guy basically admits his bias in regards to being fired in that statement alone.  The government isn't afraid of Bitcoin. Anyone who thinks that they are is a fucking moron.  /u/SatyapriyaCC posts in fucking /r/conspiracy, so there you go.

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