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Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | What exactly happens during a settlement period? | "Securities clearing and settlement is a complex topic - you can start by browsing relevant Wikipedia articles, and (given sufficient quantities of masochism and strong coffee) progress to entire technical books. You're correct - modern trade settlement systems are electronic and heavily streamlined. However, you're n... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Should I purchase a whole life insurance policy? (I am close to retirement) | "First of all, congratulations on being in an incredible financial position. you have done well. So let's look at the investment side first. If you put 400,000 in a decent index fund at an average 8% growth, and add 75,000 every year, in 10 years you'll have about $1.95 Million, $800k of which is capital gain (more ... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Value of credit score if you never plan to borrow again? | "In the United States, the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows companies to buy your credit information for ""legitimate business needs."" The legitimate use of credit scores and credit reporting varies state to state, but like it or not, you can expect a lot more non-lending use of your credit information in the future. ... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | For SSI, is “authorized user” status on a bank account the same as “ownership”? | "Having dealt with with Social Security, state agencies, and banks more than I'd care to, I would urge you to do the following: 1) Get a 100% clear answer on whether or not you are listed as ""joint"" or ""authorized user/signer"" for an account. This will probably require a call to the bank, but for less than an hour ... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Insurance company sent me huge check instead of pharmacy. Now what? | The insurance company issued the check. I'd contact the insurance company to have the current check voided and a new one issued to the pharmacy. |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How much of my home loan is coming from a bank, how much it goes back? | "Judging from your comments, you seem to be confused about the way banking works. Banks can only lend out money that they actually have: whether from deposits or investors or loans taken from other banks/government entities. The rules on how this works varies from country to country, but the principle is always the s... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Are there any statistics that support the need for Title Insurance? | There seems to be no such information available. What is available is that number of claims are high and the Title Insurance companies have gone bankrupt as per the wikipedia article In 2003, according to ALTA, the industry paid out about $662 million in claims, about 4.3% percent of the $15.7 billion taken in as premi... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Would it make sense to take a loan from a relative to pay off student loans? | "My biggest concern with this plan is that there's no going back should you decide that it is not going to work, either due to the strain on the relationship or for some other reason. If you were borrowing from a relative in place of a mortgage or a car loan, you can always refinance, and might just pay a little more... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | My medical bill went to a collection agency. Can I pay it directly to the hospital? | Short Answer Collections agencies and the businesses they collect for are two different animals. If you don't want this to hurt your credit I suggest you deal directly with the hospital. Pay the bill, but prior to paying it get something in writing that specifically says that this will not be reported onto your credit.... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? | "You can make a contingent offer: ""I will buy this house if I sell my own."" In a highly competitive environment, contingent offers tend to be ignored. (Another commentator described such a contingency clause as synonymous with ""Please Reject Me"".) You can get a bridge loan: you borrow money for a short term, at pu... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | How do you measure the value of gold? | "Gold may have some ""intrinsic value"" but it cannot be accurately determined by investors by any known valuation techniques. In fact, if you were to apply the dividend discount model of John Burr Williams - a variation of which is the basis of Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis and the basis of most valuation techni... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | If I want a Credit Card offered through a different Credit Union should I slowly transition my banking to that CU? | No. There's no inherent reason to link the place that you bank with any other financial service. There may occasionally be benefits; for instance you can sometime get lower rates on mortgages or loans by having a a checking account with an institution. Or perhaps it'll be easier for you to make a same-day payment on a ... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Flex spending accounts and hsa when changing jobs | "Some of this may depend on how your employer chose to deal with your notice period. Most employers employ you for the duration (which means you'd be covered for March on your insurance). They could 'send you home' but pay you (in which case you're an employee for the duration still); or they could terminate you on y... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Buying my first car: why financing is cheaper than paying cash here and now? | The dealership is getting a kickback for having you use a particular bank to finance through. The bank assumes you will take the full term of the loan to pay back, and will hopefully be a repeat customer. This tactic isn't new, and although it maybe doesn't make sense to you, the consumer, in the long run it benefits t... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What are the typical repayment plans for Credit Cards in the United States? | "In the U.S., when you receive your credit card bill each month there's a ""minimum payment amount."" That minimum payment is usually the greater of $25 or 1% of the new balance on the card plus new interest and fees. As long as you pay the minimum payment amount, you can pay as much as you want each month. Note, in yo... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Joint account that requires all signatures of all owners to withdraw money? | Savings accounts have lower fees. If you don't anticipate doing many transactions per month, e.g. three or fewer withdrawals, then I would suggest a savings account rather than a checking account. A joint account that requires both account holder signatures to make withdrawals will probably require both account holders... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | I am trying to start a “hedge fund,” and by that, I really just mean I have a very specific and somewhat simple investment thesis that I want to | "Kudos for wanting to start your own business. Now let's talk reality. Unless you already have some kind of substantial track record of successful investing to show potential investors, what you want to do will never happen, and that's just giving you the honest truth. There are extensive regulatory requirements for s... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | How should minor children be listed as IRA beneficiaries? | "First - for anyone else reading - An IRA that has no beneficiary listed on the account itself passes through the will, and this eliminates the opportunity to take withdrawals over the beneficiaries' lifetimes. There's a five year distribution requirement. Also, with a proper beneficiary set up on the IRA account the w... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | What could be the harm in sharing my American Express statements online? | "American Express is great for this use case -- they have two user roles ""Account Agent"" and ""Account Manager"" which allow you to designate logins to review your account details or act on your behalf to pay bills or request service. This scheme is designed for exactly what you are doing and offers you more security... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Borrowing money for a semi-urgent medical expense | The best option would be to have the dental office allow you pay in installments. That would be probably the cheapest and most convenient way. When high amounts are involved - many medical offices are flexible with payments and allow spreading over long period of time, so you should check it out. Otherwise, credit card... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Saving/ Investing a lump sum | In my mind, when looking at a five year period you have a number of options. You didn't specify where you are based, which admittedly makes it harder, to give you good advice. If you are looking for an investment that can achieve large gains, equities are impossible to ignore. By investing in an index fund or other div... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | CFD market makers: How is the price coupled to the underlying security? | CFD providers typically offer CFDs to investors using either the direct market access (DMA) model or the market maker (MM) model. Direct Market Access The DMA model gives you access to trade the Underlying instrument on the relevant Exchange from which the CFD is then derived. All CFD Transactions under the DMA model h... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Can individuals day-trade stocks using High-Frequency Trading (HFT)? | The answer is to your question is somewhat complicated. You will be unable to compete with the firms traditionally associated with High Frequency Trading in any of their strategies. Most of these strategies which involve marketing making, latency arbitrage, and rebate collection. The amount of engineering required to b... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Is debt almost always the cause of crashes and recessions? | While debt increases the likelihood and magnitude of a crash, speculation, excess supply and other market factors can result in crashes without requiring excessive debt. A popular counter example of crashes due to speculation is 16th century Dutch Tulip Mania. The dot com bubble is a more recent example of a speculati... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What factors you have do you count on to speculate effectively? | "Strategy would be my top factor. While this may be implied, I do think it helps to have an idea of what is causing the buy and sell signals in speculating as I'd rather follow a strategy than try to figure things out completely from scratch that doesn't quite make sense to me. There are generally a couple of differen... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | As a minor in the UK do I need to pay taxes on self-employment income, and if so how? | "As a minor you certainly can pay tax, the government wants its cut from you just like everyone else :-) However you do get the personal allowance like everyone else, so you won't have to pay income tax until your net income reaches £10,800 (that's the figure for the tax year from April 2015 to April 2016, it'll probab... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | What factors should I consider when evaluating index funds? | The idea of an index is that it is representative of the market (or a specific market segment) as a whole, so it will move as the market does. Thus, past performance is not really relevant, unless you want to bank on relative differences between different countries' economies. But that's not the point. By far the most ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Is keeping track of your money and having a budget the same thing? | A budget is a plan for spending money in the future. Tracking spending is only looking at what happened in the past. Many people only track their spending, a proper budget can be key to achieving financial goals. You might earn enough and not spend frivolously enough that you aren't hamstrung by lack of a budget, but ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | How does a big lottery winner cash his huge check risk-free? | If the funds are deposited into a noninterest-bearing account, they will be covered by FDIC insurance regardless of the amount (However, this extended coverage may not be valid after Dec. 31, 2012): On November 9, 2010, the FDIC issued a Final Rule implementing section 343 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consu... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Lending to the bank | "This will happen automatically when you open an interest-bearing account with a bank. You didn't think that banks just kept all that cash in a vault somewhere, did you? That's not the way modern banking works. Today (and for a long, long time) banks will keep only a small fraction of their deposits on hand (calle... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What's the best application, software or tool that can be used to track time? | People rave about Basecamp by 37signals. The impressive part is all the add-ins you can get for it. There are add-ins for invoicing, billing, accounting, and time tracking. |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How to account for Capital Gains (Losses) in double-entry accounting? | "First, the balance sheet is where assets, liabilities, & equity live. Balance Sheet Identity: Assets = Liabilities (+ Equity) The income statement is where income and expenses live. General Income Statement Identity: Income = Revenue - Expenses If you want to model yourself correctly (like a business), change your ""i... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Could someone explain this scenario about Google's involvement in the wireless spectrum auction? | "If history is any guide, Page’s idealistic impulses could result in a vaster, more sprawling company. The following is an example of one of Page’s idealistic impulses (wanting people to share spectrum) which could result in a vaster, more sprawling company (if they hadn't been outbid, Google would have expanded by buy... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | For young (lower-mid class) investors what percentage should be in individual stocks? | "The short answer: zero. dg99's answer gives some good reasons why. You will basically never be able to achieve diversification with individual stocks that is anywhere close to what you can get with mutual funds. Owning individual stocks exposes you to much greater risk in that random one-off events that happen to af... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Is 401k as good as it sounds given the way it is taxed? | Your analysis is not comparing apples to apples which is why it looks like investing money in a non-qualified account is better than a 401k (traditional or Roth). For the non-qual you are using post tax dollars (money that has already been taxed). Now on top of that original tax you are also going to pay capital gains... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | How can banks afford to offer credit card rewards? | There are 3 entities in a credit card transaction; Typically when you swipe for 100, the merchant only gets around 97.5. The 2.5 is divided amongst the 3 entities, roughly around 0.5 for the Merchant Bank, around 0.5 for the Card Network and a lions share to Issuing Bank of around 1.5 The reason Issuing Bank gets large... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Will a credit card company close my account if I stop using it? | Please realize that your issuer can close the account for any number of reasons. Inactivity is one, as having a credit line open costs them money and if you never charge anything, the company doesn't get any transaction fees from vendors nor does the company get to charge you any interest. An occasional charge is like... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How to determine contractor hourly rate and employee salary equivalents? | Here are a few points to consider: Taxes: As a consultant, you will be responsible for the employer portion of the Social Security and Medicare taxes, and you might have to pay for state unemployment insurance and state disability insurance, as well. Office expenses: As a consultant, you may be required to buy your own... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Has anyone heard of Peerstreet? | "(Disclosure - PeerStreet was at FinCon, a financial blogger conference I attended last month. I had the chance to briefly meet a couple people from this company. Also, I recognize a number of the names of their financial backers. This doesn't guarantee anything, of course, except the people behind the scenes are no sl... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | How is Los Angeles property tax calculated if a 50% owner later buys out the other 50%? | "Can't vouch for LA, but property typically is taxed at either the appraised value, the most recent purchase price (""if it wasn't worth that much, you wouldn't have paid that much""), or some combination of the two (usually highest of the two, to prevent ""$1 and other goods and services"" from lowering the tax to zer... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Are stocks only listed with one exchange in one place? | "Depends. The short answer is yes; HSBC, for instance, based in New York, is listed on both the LSE and NYSE. Toyota's listed on the TSE and NYSE. There are many ways to do this; both of the above examples are the result of a corporation owning a subsidiary in a foreign country by the same name (a holding company), whi... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What is a “convertible note”? | Source, see if you have access to it Convertible notes are often used by angel investors who wish to fund businesses without establishing an explicit valuation of the company in which they are investing. When an investor purchases equity in a startup, the purchase price of the equity implies a company valuation. Fo... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Why was my Credit Limit Increase Denied? | "I think they gave you the answer: You haven't previously shown that you can run that particular card up to (near) its existing maximum and then pay it off, so they don't have a strong indication that you can handle that large an unsecured loan. Generally, requests to have the limits raised when there isn't evidence th... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Pay or not pay charged-off accounts for mortgage qualification | "Your post has some assumptions that are not, or may not be true. For one the assumption is that you have to wait 7 years after you settle your debts to buy a home. That is not the case. For some people (me included) settling an charged off debt was part of my mortgage application process. It was a small debt that a... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Filing Taxes for Two Separate Jobs Being Worked at the Same Time? | "You file taxes as usual. W2 is a form given to you, you don't need to fill it. Similarly, 1099. Both report moneys paid to you by your employers. W2 is for actual employer (the one where you're on the payroll), 1099 is for contractors (where you invoice the entity you provide services to and get paid per contract). Yo... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | When will the 2017 US Federal Tax forms be released? | "It's not quite as bad as the comments indicate. Form 1040ES has been available since January (and IME has been similarly for all past years). It mostly uses the prior year (currently 2016) as the basis, but it does have the updated (2017) figures for items that are automatically adjusted for inflation: bracket points ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Clothing Store Credit Card Account closed but not deleted | You have little chance of getting it deleted. I have the same situation, I closed mine in 2006, and the login still works. Keep the paperwork that you closed it (or print a PDF of the site showing so), and forget about it. If someone is trying to cheat, re-opening it should be the same difficulty as making a new one in... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Cashing a cheque on behalf of someone else | "It's possible to cash cheques by post. When I did this, it involved filling out a ""paying-in slip"" (I had a book of these provided by the bank) and posting the cheque together with the slip to an address provided by the bank. You could also bring the paying-in slip and the cheque to a branch and deposit them there, ... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Can i have NRE accounts without OCI card? | "No, you do not need an OCI card to continue to have an NRE or NRO account. You are now classified as a PIO -- Person of Indian Origin -- (and you don't need to have a PIO card issued by the Government of India to prove it) and are entitled to use NRE and NRO accounts just as you were when you were a NRI (NonResident I... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How should I go about creating an estate plan? | "Yes, an estate plan can be very important. Estate planning - typically attempts to eliminate uncertainties over the administration of a probate and maximize the value of the estate by reducing taxes and other expenses. Guardians are often designated for minor children and beneficiaries in incapacity. In general, your... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | What things are important to consider when investing in one's company stock? | I would pass on their deal if they will only match if you invest in their stock. Think about when/if the company falls on bad times. What happens to the stock of a company when bad times come? The board of directors will reduce or eliminate the dividend payout. Current and potential investors will take notice. Curren... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Credit balance on new credit card | Things are generally fine. A credit balance is not a horrible thing. The argument against maintaining a credit balance is that you are essentially loaning the credit card issuer money at 0% interest. You probably have alternative investments that would pay better interest, so it's usually better to park your money ... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | What is the future of 401(k) in terms of stability and reliability? | "My guess is that the point is that yields on bonds and cash equivalents is so low that inflation will cause the inflation-adjusted returns to be negative. There is something to be said for how much inflation can eat out of investment returns. At the same time, I would note the occupation of the person making that post... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Would I ever need credit card if my debit card is issued by MasterCard/Visa? | "The credit card may have advantages in at least two cases: In some instances (at least in the US), a merchant will put a ""hold"" on a credit card without charging it. This happens a lot at hotels, for example, which use the hold as collateral against damages and incidental charges. On a credit card this temporarily... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | A debt collector will not allow me to pay a debt, what steps should I take? | This may not apply in your particular situation, but I think it's important to mention: When a debt collector doesn't act like a debt collector, it may be because they aren't actually a debt collector. It's certainly strange that someone called you to collect money from you, and when you asked for a simple document, th... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | At what point do index funds become unreliable? | "A great deal of analysis on this question relies on misunderstandings of the market or noticing trends that happened at the same time but were not caused by each other. Without knowing your view, I'll just give the basic idea. The amount of active management is self-correcting. The reason people have moved out of ac... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Should I finance a new home theater at 0% even though I have the cash for it? | "Be very careful with this. When we tried this with furniture, they charged an ""administrative"" fee to setup the account. I believe it was about $75. So if you defer interest for one year on a $1000 purchase and pay a $75 administrative fee, it's 7.5% interest. Also, they don't always send you a bill when it's due... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Trading : how to deal with crashes (small or big) | caveat: remember that complex derivatives can be very bad for your wealth (even if you FULLY understand them). |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Starting with Stocks or Forex? | Stick with stocks, if you are not well versed in forex you will get fleeced or in over your head quickly. The leverage can be too much for the uninitiated. That said, do what you want, you can make money in forex, it's just more common for people to not do so well. In a related story, My friend (let's call him Mike ... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Are multiple hard inquiries for a specific loan type okay? | "Assuming I don't need any other new lines of credit, can I get pre-qualified repeatedly (and with different banks) with impunity? Yes, but only for a limited period. FICO says: Hard inquiries are inquiries where a potential lender is reviewing your credit because you've applied for credit with them. These include cred... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Problems with Enterprise Value and better valuation techniques | This is a tough question SFun28. Let's try and debug the metric. First, let's expand upon the notion share price is determined in an efficient market where prospective buyers and sellers have access to info on an enterprises' cash balance and they may weigh that into their decision making. Therefore, a desirable/unde... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | I have a million dollars of disposable income. What should I do to best benefit the economy? | "At first, I thought this might be too broad. There are of course thousands of things that you can do with your money to ""help the economy"". But I think that there is room to discuss some broad strokes without trying to list a thousand details. Regular investing (as you are now) helps the economy in that companie... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What should we consider when withdrawing a large amount of money from a bank account? | "withdraw in cash - bank reports it to IRS no matter what. Would this affect my tax filing in the coming year? No, and no. The bank doesn't report to the IRS. In the US - the bank will probably report to FinCEN. It has nothing to do with your tax return. withdraw in check - bank does not seem to report it. Is this co... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Tax On Unsold Mined Bitcoin | Based on my research, the answer is both. You would pay taxes on the bitcoin you mine as income, and then capital gains tax when you sell them for a profit (or capital loss if you lose value on the sale). You can write off a portion of your electricity bill and hardware purchased for the use of mining as a business ex... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Is it common in the US not to pay medical bills? | "Is it common in the US not to pay medical bills? Certainly not. What some might do, however, is not pay them immediately, with the intent to negotiate them down or get them written off. You can also see if there's a discount for paying immediately - I've had moderate success with this, but it was during a time where... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | How do public-company buyouts work? | "Thanks for your question Dai. The circumstances under which these buyouts can occur is based on the US takeover code and related legislation, as well as the laws of the state in which the company is incorporated. It's not actually the case that a company such as Dell needs to entice or force every shareholder to sell.... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Why is it rational to pay out a dividend? | The main reason, as far as I can see, is that the dividends are payments with which the shareholders may do what they want. Capital that the company has no use for does not make a significant positive return on investment, as you pointed out, yes the company could accrue interest, but that is not going to make the comp... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What exactly is a “bad,” “standard,” or “good” annual raise? If I am told a hard percentage and don't get it, should I look elsewhere? | "TLDR: You will probably need to move to a different employer to get the raise you want/need/deserve. Some employers, in the US, punish longevity through a number of practices. My wife worked as a nurse for about 20 years. During that time she had many employers, leveraging raises with job changes. She quit nursing... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Profiting from the PWC Money Tree | "The hardest part seems to be knowing exactly when to sell the stock. Well yes, that's the problem with all stock investing. Reports come out all the time, sometimes even from very smart people with no motivation to lie, about expected earnings for this company, or for that industry. Whether those predictions come tru... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How much do large sell orders affect stock price? | In general, how does a large open market stock sale affect prices? A very general answer, all other things being equal, the price will move down. However there is nothing general. It depends on total number of shares in market and total turn over for that specific shares. The order book for the day etc. What is the max... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How to deal with the credit card debt from family member that has passed away? | Don't pay it, see a lawyer. Given your comment, it will depend on the jurisdiction on the passing of the house and the presence of a will or lack thereof. In some states all the assets will be inherited by your mom. Debts cannot be inherited; however, assets can be made to stand for debts. This is a tricky situatio... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | $65000/year or $2500 every two weeks: If I claim 3 exemptions instead of zero, how much would my take home pay be? | "Take a look at IRS Publication 15. This is your employer's ""bible"" for withholding the correct amount of taxes from your paycheck. Most payroll systems use what this publication defines as the ""Percentage Method"", because it requires less data to be entered into the system in order to correctly compute the amount ... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Is it worth investing in Index Fund, Bond Index Fund and Gold at the same time? | "Index funds can be a very good way to get into the stock market. It's a lot easier, and cheaper, to buy a few shares of an index fund than it is to buy a few shares in hundreds of different companies. An index fund will also generally charge lower fees than an ""actively managed"" mutual fund, where the manager tries ... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Car insurance (UK) excludes commute to and from work, will not pay on claim during non-commute | "Having worked in insurance, I can give you a few pointers. Firstly, state that you ""may have to complain"". Insurers hate complaints because they really complicate matters, are loads of work and must be tracked. I would advise not actually escalating it to a complaint until later as this may cause a delay as the actu... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Student loan payments and opportunity costs | Ponder this. Suppose that a reputable company or government were to come out and say hey, we are going to issue some 10 year bonds at 6.4%. Anyone interested in buying some? Assume that the company or government is financially solid and there is zero chance that they will go bankrupt. Think those bonds would sell? Woul... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Is it true that more than 99% of active traders cannot beat the index? | What decision are you trying to make? Are you interested day trading stocks to make it rich? Or are you looking at your investment options and trying to decide between an actively managed mutual fund and an ETF? If the former, then precise statistics are hard to come by, but I believe that 99% of day traders would do ... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Switching Roth IRA ( from American Funds to Vanguard) | "You can have as many IRA accounts as you want (whether Roth or Traditional), so you can have a Roth IRA with American Funds and another Roth IRA with Vanguard if you like. One disadvantage of having too many IRA accounts with small balances in each is that most custodians (including Vanguard) charge an annual fee fo... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | What is “financial literacy” and how does one become “financially literate”? | Wikipedia has a nice definition of financial literacy (emphasis below is mine): [...] refers to an individual's ability to make informed judgments and effective decisions about the use and management of their money. Raising interest in personal finance is now a focus of state-run programs in countries inclu... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Equation to determine if a stock is oversold and by how much? | There are those who would suggest that due to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, stocks are always fairly valued. Consider, if non-professional posters on SE (here) had a method that worked beyond random chance, everyone seeking such a method would soon know it. If everyone used that method, it would lose its advantage. ... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Are low commission trading sites safe? | "Generally, yes. Rather than ask, ""why are these guys so cheap?"", you should be asking why the big names are so expensive. :) Marketing spend plays a big role there. Getting babies to shill for your company during the super bowl requires a heck of a lot of commissions. Due to the difficulties involved in setting up ... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | How to get started with the stock market? [duplicate] | "There's several approaches to the stock market. The first thing you need to do is decide which you're going to take. The first is the case of the standard investor saving money for retirement (or some other long-term goal). He already has a job. He's not really interested in another job. He doesn't want to spend thous... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | As a US Permanent Resident, how much money I can send from the US to India in my NRE account per year? | I assume that you are a citizen of India, and are what Indian law calls a NRI (NonResident Indian) and thus entitled to operate an NRE (NonResident External) account in India. You can deposit US dollars into the NRE account, but the money is converted to Indian Rupees (INR) and held as INR. You can withdraw the money... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Should I pay off my 50K of student loans as quickly as possible, or steadily? Why? | The definitive answer is: It Depends. What are your goals? First and foremost, you need to have at least 3 months expenses in cash or equivalent. (i.e. an investment that you can withdraw from quickly, and without penalty). The good news is that you don't have to come up with it instantly. Set a time frame - one year... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | Is house swapping possible? | You would have to find someone in the other state who wanted to swap. This is conceivable but difficult if you want the houses to be the same value. How do you find the one person who lives in the right place now and wants to move to the right area? The normal way this situation is handled is to simply put your hou... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Is it normal to think of money in different “contexts”? | The psychology around money is the subject of a lifetime of study. Your observations are not uncommon. The market daily fluctuation is out of our control. Hopefully, by the time the 1% volatility impacts you by say $1,000, you'll have grown accustomed to it, so when the 1% is then $10,000, you won't lose sleep. The d... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | OTC Stocks - HUGE gains? | "Changing my answer based on clarification in comments. It appears that some of the securities you mentioned, including GEAPP, are traded on what is colloquially known as the Grey Market. Grey Sheets, and also known as the ""Gray Market"" is another category of OTC stocks that is completely separate from Pink Sheets an... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Are there any rules against penalizing consumers for requesting accurate credit reporting? | I think you're off base here. The bureaus only remove information if the creditor cannot verify any dispute within 30 days, or if the information's super old. If the creditor can provide corrected information, then the credit bureau is required to apply it to its own database. A dispute can be about the entire accou... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | Where do traders take their prices data from? How can it be different from their brokers'? | "This is a complicated subject, because professional traders don't rely on brokers for stock quotes. They have access to market data using Level II terminals, which show them all of the prices (buy and sell) for a given stock. Every publicly traded stock (at least in the U.S.) relies on firms called ""market makers"... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Non-qualified Savings Plan vs. 401(k) for Highly Compensated Employee | "401k plans are required to not discriminate against the non-HCE participants, and one way they achieve this is by limiting the percentage of wages that HCEs can contribute to the plan to the average annual percentage contribution by the non-HCE participants or 3% whichever is higher. If most non-HCE employees contrib... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Can a dealer keep my deposit (on a non-existant car) if my loan is not approved? | Without the contract it's hard to say for sure, but Consumer Reports indicates that it's pretty easy to lose these deposits; they're not as well protected as other deposits or purchases (depending on your state and other details). You should make an effort to comply with all of the requests from the financing arm prom... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Received an unexpected cashiers check for over $2K from another state - is this some scam? | "It is likely a scam. In fact the whole mystery shopping ""job"" may be a scam. There is a Snopes page about cashier's check scams, as well as a US government page which specifically mentions mystery shopping as a scam angle. As for how the scam works, from the occ.gov site I just linked: However, cashier’s checks la... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How can I help others plan their finances, without being a “conventional” financial planner? | "In the UK there is a non-profit called the Citizen's Advice Bureau which provides free advice to people on a wide range of subjects, but including debt and budgeting. Consumer Credit Counselling Service provides explicit help but again, in the UK. A search for ""volunteer debt counsellor"" reveals a whole host of orga... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How do wire transfers get settled? | Wire transfers normally run through either the Fedwire system or the Clearing House Interbank Payments System (CHIPS). The process generally works like this: You approach a bank or other financial institution and ask to transfer money. You give the bank a certain code, either an international bank account number or one... |
Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. | How does one value Facebook stock as a potential investment? | In the long term, a P/E of 15-25 is the more 'normal' range. With a 90 P/E, Facebook has to quadruple its earnings to get to normal. It this possible? Yes. Likely? I don't know. I am not a stock analyst, but I love numbers and try to get to logical conclusions. I've seen data that worldwide advertising is about $400B,... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | I cosigned for a friend who is not paying the payment | "Cosigning is explicitly a promise that you will make the payments if the primary signer can not. Don't do it unless you are able to handle the cost and trust the other party will ""make you whole"" when they can... which means don't do it for anyone you would not lend your money to, since it comes out to about the sam... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | Why don't more people run up their credit cards and skip the country? | It's harder than you think. Once card companies start seeing your debt to credit line ratios climb, they will slash your credit lines quickly. Also, cash credit lines are always much smaller, so in reality, such a scheme would require you to buy goods that can be converted to cash, which dilutes your gains and makes i... |
Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. | When one pays Quarterly Estimated Self Employment Taxes, exactly what are they paying? | "From the IRS page on Estimated Taxes (emphasis added): Taxes must be paid as you earn or receive income during the year, either through withholding or estimated tax payments. If the amount of income tax withheld from your salary or pension is not enough, or if you receive income such as interest, dividends, alimony, s... |
Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject. | Where can I lookup accurate current exchange rates for consumers? | What you see on XE, is the rate at which it is being traded in the market. What you receive from a broker is the rate minus a fee, for the service being provided. You can check what rates are available for visa and mastercard on the following websites. Visa rates Mastercard rates I want to shop in the currency that wi... |
Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. | Can landlord/property change unit after approval and payment of fees? | "Without the specifics of the contract, as well as the specifics of the country/state/city you're moving to, it's hard to say what's legal. But this also isn't law.se, so I'll answer this from the point of view of personal finance, and what you can/should do as next steps. Whenever paying an application fee or a depos... |
Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. | How to get rid of someone else's debt collector? | "Sue the debt collectors in small claims court. There are several example stories around the internet, but this is a well written one from the consumerist. If your phone is a cell phone: ""it is against the law for a company to leave a pre-recorded message on your cell phone."" In fact, the call frequency increase... |
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