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[ "You have figured out most of the answers for yourself and there is not much more that can be said. From a lender's viewpoint, non-immigrant students applying for car loans are not very good risks because they are going to graduate in a short time (maybe less than the loan duration which is typically three years or more) and thus may well be leaving the country before the loan is fully paid off. In your case, the issue is exacerbated by the fact that your OPT status is due to expire in about one year's time. So the issue is not whether you are a citizen, but whether the lender can be reasonably sure that you will be gainfully employed and able to make the loan payments until the loan is fully paid off. Yes, lenders care about work history and credt scores but they also care (perhaps even care more) about the prospects for steady employment and ability to make the payments until the loan is paid off. Yes, you plan on applying for a H1-B visa but that is still in the future and whether the visa status will be adjusted is still a matter with uncertain outcome. Also, these are not matters that can be explained easily in an on-line application, or in a paper application submitted by mail to a distant bank whose name you obtained from some list of \"lenders who have a reliable track record of extending auto loans to non-permanent residents.\" For this reason, I suggested in a comment that you consider applying at a credit union, especially if there is an Employees' Credit Union for those working for your employer. If you go this route, go talk to a loan officer in person rather than trying to do this on the phone. Similarly, a local bank,and especially one where you currently have an account (hopefully in good standing), is more likely to be willing to work with you. Failing all this, there is always the auto dealer's own loan offers of financing. Finally, one possibility that you might want to consider is whether a one-year lease might work for you instead of an outright purchase, and you can buy a car after your visa issue has been settled." ]

[ "What you are describing is called a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC). While the strategy you are describing is not impossible it would raise the amount of debt in your name and reduce your borrowing potential. A recent HELOC used to finance the down payment on a second property risks sending a signal of bad financial position to credit analysts and may further reduce your chances to obtain the credit approval.", "Just so I'm clear- the end result is a long call, and you think the stock is going up. There is nothing wrong with that fundamentally. Be aware though: That's a negative theta trade. This means if your stock doesn't increase in price during the remaining time to expiration of your call option, the option will lose some of its value every day. It may still lose some of its value every day, depending on how much the stock price increases. The value of the call option just goes down and down as it approaches maturity, even if the stock price stays about the same. Being long a call (or a put) is a tough way to make money in the options market. I would suggest using an out-of-the-money butterfly spread. The potential returns are a bit less. However, this is a cheap positive theta trade so you avoid time decay on the value of the option.", "I think to answer this question it is best for you to learn more about why people diversify through asset allocation. Look at related questions involving Asset Allocation here. I've asked a couple questions about asset allocation - I think you'll find the top rated answer on this post useful.", "If you're wealthy why do you think they wouldn't sue you for the money you owed?? And, as sunk818 says, credit scores can influence insurance costs. While you could self-insure your home you generally can't self-insure when it comes to liability coverage on a car.", "It's incredibly difficult to beat the market, especially after you're paying out significant fees for managed funds. The Bogleheads have some good things going for them on their low cost Vanguard style funds. The biggest winners in the financial markets are the people collecting fees from churn or setting up the deals which take advantage of less sophisticated/connected players. Buy, Hold and Forget has been shown as a loser as well in this recession. Diversifying and re-balancing however takes advantage of market swings by cashing out winners and buying beaten down stocks. If you take advantages of general market highs and lows (without worrying about strict timing) every few months to re-balance, you buy some protection from crashes in any given sector. One common guideline is to use your age as the percentage of your holdings that are in cash equivalents, rather than stocks. At age 28, at least 28% of my account should be in bonds, real estate, commodities, etc. This should help guide your allocation and re-balancing strategy. Finally, focusing on Growth and Income funds may give you a better shot at above S&P returns, but it's wise to hold a small percentage in the S&P 500 as well.", "529 plans. They accumulate earnings over time and by the time your child goes to college you will be able to withdraw funds for college TAX FREE. The best part about 529s is that there are several different options you can choose from, and you aren't limited to the plans sponsored by your state, you can use whichever plan works best for you. For example, I live in South Carolina and use Utah's Educational Savings Plan because it has no minimum amount to open one up and it has low fees. Hope this helped. Good luck with your search!", "In Memphis, Tn., rents were stabilized from falling in the recession because all the foreclosed on home owners added to the rental market, increasing demand and thus stabilizing pricing.", "As soon as you specify FDIC you immediately eliminate what most people would call investing. The word you use in the title \"Parking\" is really appropriate. You want to preserve the value. Therefore bank or credit union deposits into either a high yield account or a Certificate of Deposit are the way to go. Because you are not planning on a lot of transactions you should also look at some of the online only banks, of course only those with FDIC coverage. The money may need to be available over the next 2-5 years to cover college tuition If needing it for college tuition is a high probability you could consider putting some of the money in your state's 529 plan. Many states give you a tax deduction for contributions. You need to check how much is the maximum you can contribute in a year. There may be a maximum for your state. Also gift tax provisions have to be considered. You will also want to understand what is the amount you will need to cover tuition and other eligible expenses. There is a big difference between living at home and going to a state school, and going out of state. The good news is that if you have gains and you use the money for permissible expenses, the gains are tax free. Most states have a plan that becomes more conservative as the child gets closer to college, therefore the chance of losses will be low. The plan is trying to avoid having a large drop in value just a the kid hits their late teens, exactly what you are looking for.", "An employee costs the company in four ways: Salary, taxes, benefits, and capital. Salary: The obvious one, what they pay you. Taxes: There are several taxes that an employer has to pay for the privilege of hiring someone, including social security taxes (which goes to your retirement), unemployment insurance tax (your unemployment benefits if they lay you off), and workers compensation tax (pays if you are injured on the job). (There may be other taxes that I'm not thinking of, but in any case those are the main ones.) Benefits: In the U.S. employers often pay for medical insurance, sometimes for dental, life, and disability. There's usually some sort of retirement plan. They expect to give you some number of vacation days, holidays, and sick days where they pay you even though you're not working. Companies sometimes offer other benefits, like discounts on buying company products, membership in health clubs, etc. Capital: Often the company has to provide you with some sort of equipment, like a computer; furniture, like a chair and desk; etc. As far as the company is concerned, all of the above are part of the cost of having you as an employee. If they would pay a domestic employee $60,000 in salary and $20,000 in taxes, then assuming the same benefits and capital investment, if a foreign employee would cost them $0 in taxes they should logically be willing to pay $80,000. Any big company will have accountants who figure out the total cost of a new employee in excruciating detail, and they will likely be totally rational about this. A smaller company might think, \"well, taxes don't really count ...\" This is irrational but people are not always rational. I don't know what benefits they are offering you, if any, and what equipment they will provide you with, if any. I also don't know what taxes, if any, a U.S. company has to pay when hiring a remote employee in a foreign country. If anybody on here knows the answer to that, please chime in. Balanced against that, the company likely sees disadvantages to hiring a foreign remote employee, too. Communication will be more difficult, which may result in inefficiency. My previous employer used some contractors in India and while there were certainly advantages, the language and time zone issues caused difficulties. There are almost certainly some international bureaucratic inconveniences they will have to deal with. Etc. So while you should certainly calculate what it would cost them to have a domestic employee doing the same job, that's not necessarily the end of the story. And ultimately it all comes down to negotiations. Even if the company knows that by the time they add in taxes and benefits and whatever, a domestic employee will cost them $100,000 a year, if they are absolutely convinced that they should be able to hire an Austrian for $60,000 a year, that might be the best offer you will get. You can point out the cost savings, and maybe they will concede the point and maybe not.", "Just as with any other service provider - vote with your wallet. Do not go back to that doctor's office, and make sure they know why. It's unheard of that a service provider will not disclose the anticipated charges ahead of time. A service provider saying \"we won't tell you how much we charge\" is a huge red flag, and you shouldn't have been dealing with them to begin with. Now you know. how can we ever get health care costs under control if there's so little transparency? I'm assuming you're in the US. This is not going to change, since there's no profit in not screwing the customers. As long as health-care is a for-profit industry, you should expect everyone in it being busy figuring out a way for money to move from your wallet to their. That's what capitalism is about." ]

[ "Like most forms of insurance, health insurance is regulated at the state level. So what is available to you will depend greatly upon which state you live in. You can probably find a list of insurance companies from your state's official website. Many states now provide \"insurance of last resort\" for individuals who can't get insurance through private insurance companies. You can try looking into professional and trade associations. Some offer group insurance plans comparable with COBRA coverage, meaning you'd get a group discount and benefits but without the benefit of an employer paying 30-80% of your premiums. As a software developer you may qualify for membership in the IEEE or ACM, which both offer several forms of insurance to members. The ASP also offers insurance, though they don't provide much information about it on the public portions of their website. These organization offer other benefits besides insurance so you may want to take that in to consideration. The National Federation of Independent Business also offers insurance to members. You may find other associations in your specific area. Credit Unions, Coops and the local chamber of commerce are all possible avenues of finding lower cost insurance options. If you are religious there are even some faith based non-insurance organizations that provide medical cost sharing services. They depend upon the generosity and sense of fairness and obligation of their members to share the burden of medical expenses so their definitely not for everyone." ]

[ "The thing to recall here is that auto-pay is a convenience, not a guarantee. Auto-pay withdrawals, notices that a bill is due, all of these are niceties that the lender uses to try to make sure you consistently pay your bill on time, as all businesses enjoy steady cash flows. Now, what all of these \"quality of life\" features don't do is mitigate your responsibility, as outlined when you first took out the loan, to pay it back in a timely manner and according to the terms and conditions of the loan. If your original contract for the loan states you shall make \"a payment of $X.XX each calendar month\", then you are required to make that payment one way or another. If auto-pay fails, you are still obligated to monitor that and correct the payment to ensure you meet your contractual obligation. It's less than pleasant that they didn't notify you, but you were already aware you had an obligation to pay back the loan, and knew what the terms of the loan were. Any forgiveness of interest or penalties for late fees is entirely up to the CSR and the company's internal policies, not the law.", "In simplest terms, when a company creates new shares and sells them, it's true that existing shareholders now own a smaller percentage of the company. However, as the company is now more valuable (since it made money by selling the new shares), the real dollar value of the previous shares is unchanged. That said, the decision to issue new shares can be interpreted by investors as a signal of the company's strategy and thereby alter the market price; this may well affect the real dollar value of the previous shares. But the simple act of creating new shares does not alter the value in and of itself.", "Lets do the math (assuming a lot of stuff, like your interest rates and that you make the contribution at the beginning of the year, also your tax bracket at the withdrawal time frame.) 1.) Beginning of year 1 Roth Option $5k contribution Non Roth Option $5k contribution 2.) Beginning of year 2 Roth Option $5000 + $150 interest + 5K contribution = $10150 Non Roth Option $5000 + $75 interest + 5K contribution = $10075 3.) End of year 2 Buy a house! yay! Roth Option---before withdrawal account value = 10150+10150*.03=10454.5 after withdrawl (assuming 38% tax on earnings withdrawal (10%penalty + 28% income tax estimate.) = 10327.17 Non Roth Option = 10 226.125 So you are talking about a significant amount of paperwork to either 1.) Net yourself $100 toward the purchase 2.) Cost yourself $226 on the purchase but have $454.50 in your roth ira. I am not sure I would do that, but it might be worth it.", "I don't believe from reading the responses above that Questrade is doing anything 'original' or 'different' much less 'bad'. In RRSPs you are not allowed to go into debt. So the costs of all trades must be covered. If there is not enough USD to pay the bill then enough CAD is converted to do so. What else would anyone expect? How margin accounts work depends on whether the broker sets up different accounts for different currencies. Some do, some don't. The whole point of using 'margin' is to buy securities when you don't have the cash to cover the cost. The result is a 'short' position in the cash. Short positions accrue interest expense which is added to the balance once a month. Every broker does this. If you buy a US stock in a USD account without the cash to cover it, you will end up with USD margin debt. If you buy US stock in an account that co-mingles both USD and CAD assets and cash, then there will be options during the trade asking if you want to settle in USD or CAD. If you settle in CAD then obviously the broker will convert the necessary CAD funds to pay for it. If you settle in US funds, but there is no USD cash in the account, then again, you have created a short position in USD.", "The broker that is issuing the moneys after vesting is more than likely deducting a notional amount of tax and NI based on UK income tax laws. If you are not a UK resident, then you should pay income tax on those stock options based on your own tax residency. Best thing to do is speak directly with the broker to explain the situation, ask them to not deduct anything from your stock options - but keep in mind that you will need to declare these earnings yourself and pay the correct rate of tax. From my own personal experience, the UK employer more than likely receives the net value (after the notional tax and NI have been deducted) and in usual circumstances create a tax liability on your payslip (if you were working and had earnings). If of course this deduction is being made by the employer, then you can simply ask them to correct this (most UK payroll software will automatically deduct tax and NI for payments after leaving unless manually intervened, so they probably aren't aware if it is them doing so).", "The most likely explanation is that the calls are being bought as a part of a spread trade. It doesn't have to be a super complex trade with a bunch of buys or sells. In fact, I bought a far out of the money option this morning in YHOO as a part of a simple vertical spread. Like you said, it wouldn't make sense and wouldn't be worth it to buy that option by itself.", "Extrinsic value is not a factor with respect to gold. Intrinsic value by definition is the natural value of a commodity set by the market -- extrinsic value is externally set. The \"extrinsic\" value of gold in the United States is $50/oz. If the market value of gold fell below $50/oz, a US American Eagle coin would be worth $50 in the US. If you take away the attributes that make a commodity valuable, the value drops. Substitutes of equal or better quality for most industrial or other uses of gold exist, so if if the popularity of gold declines, or if the hoarders of gold have to liquidate, it's value will diminish. I have no idea what that value would be, but it would set by the market demand for gold jewelry and other valuable industrial uses.", "Question One: Question Two: Your best reference for this would be a brokerage account with data privileges in the markets you wish to trade. Failing that, I would reference the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group (CME Group) website. Question Three: Considering future tuition costs and being Canadian, you are eligible to open a Registered Education Savings Plan (RESP). While contributions to this plan are not tax deductible, any taxes on income earned through investments within the fund are deferred until the beneficiary withdraws the funds. Since the beneficiary will likely be in a lower tax bracket at such a time, the sum will likely be taxed at a lower rate, assuming that the beneficiary enrolls in a qualifying post secondary institution. The Canadian government also offers the Canada Education Savings Grant (CESG) in which the federal government will match 20% of the first $2500 of your annual RESP contribution up to a maximum of $500.", "The way to invest money in a company is to buy its shares, or derivatives of its shares. However, it seems you're way in over your head. Don't buy what you don't understand. There is plenty of material to teach you about stock investing on the internet. However, a book may be the fastest way to learn what you need to know. And yes, there is a \"for dummies\" book about that: Stock Investing ForDummies. I just found it by Googling, I'm sure you can find even more interesting books out there. (Note, the link is to the \"cheat sheet\" in the back of the book. The full book is worth reading.)", "You can either borrow money... credit card, line of credit, re-finance your home, home equity line of credit, loan, mortgage, etc. Or you have other invest in your company as equity. They will contribute $X to get Y% of your company and get Z% of the profits. Note amount of profits does not necessarily have to equate to percentage owned. This makes sense if they are a passive investor, where they just come up with the money and you do all the work. Also voting rights in a company does not have to equate to percentage owned either. You can also have a combination of equity and debt. If you have investors, you would need to figure out whether the investor will personally guarantee the debt of your company - recourse vs non-recourse. If they have more risk, they will want more of a return. One last way to do it is crowdfunding, similar to what people do on Kickstarter. Supporters/customers come up with the money, then you deliver the product. Consulting practices do something similar with the concept of retainers. Best of luck." ]

[ "Awesome, you are a math guy. Very good for you. In theory, what you are proposing, should work out great as the math works out great. However have you taken a economics or finance coursework? The math that they do in these class will leave a most math guys uncomfortable with the imprecision even when one is comfortable with chaos theory. Personal finance is worse. If it were about math things like reverse mortgages, payday lenders, and advances on one income tax returns would not exist. The risk derived from the situation you describe is one born out of behavior. Sometimes it is beyond control of the person attempting your scheme. Suppose one of these happen: In my opinion the market is risky enough without borrowing money in order to invest. Its one thing to not pay extra principle to a mortgage in order to put that money in play in the market, it is another thing to do what you are suggesting. While their may be late fees associated with a mortgage payment, a fixed rate mortgage will not change if you late on payment(s). On these balance transfer CC schemes they will jack your rate up for any excuse possible. I read an article that the most common way to end up with a 23%+ credit card was to start out with a 0% balance transfer. One thing that is often overlooked is that the transfer fee paid jacks up the stated rate of the card. In the end, get out of consumer debt, have an emergency fund, then start investing. Building a firm financial foundation is the best way to go about it. Without one it will be difficult to make headway. With one your net worth will increase faster then you imagined possible." ]

[ "My question is, how do you rebuild a home, without the money to rebuild the home? I ignorantly thought that was why we paid for insurance. The reason that you have insurance is so as to keep the mortgage lender from losing money. That's why you buy the insurance through the mortgage lender and they get paid. Without the insurance, you'd have no home but still have a mortgage. You'd either have to pay off a mortgage with no house or have to declare bankruptcy to shed the mortgage. You essentially have two paths. If you (or the builder/suppliers) can afford to float the cost, you can rebuild the original house. You'll eventually get the $161,000 and can pay off the builder and suppliers. This may involve taking out a construction mortgage to refinance the original mortgage. Presumably the construction mortgage would be with a different lender. The other path is that you can sell the existing property as is, and use the insurance and proceeds to pay off the existing mortgage. Then you'd have no house and no mortgage. You start over and buy a house with a mortgage. It's possible that your insurance payoff isn't enough to pursue either path. Then your option is to get the insurer to make a bigger payoff. This may involve suing them. Note that you may be able to talk the government into suing the insurer for you. They do have regulators who can review things. If you can't get government action, there are lawyers who will do the suing and take their fees out of their winnings.", "Since you mention the religion restriction, you should probably look into the stock market or funds investing in it. Owning stock basically means you own a part of a company and benefit from any increase in value the company may have (and 'loose' on decreases, provided you sell your stock) and you also earn dividends over the company's profit. If you do your research properly and buy into stable companies you shouldn't need to bother about temporary market movements or crashes (do pay attention to deterioration on the businesses you own though). When buying stocks you should be aiming for the very long run. As mentioned by Victor, do your research, I recommend you start it by looking into 'value stocks' should you choose that path.", "Because someone smarter than you by 50 IQ points (a quant) will depart their larger position long before you have a chance to see it coming. Your stop losses are useless as the market will open with the issue below your sell price. Your trade even if place at the same mine would settle after theirs. don't piss in the tall grass with the big dogs. If they are wrong or right does not matter you will be haircut or whipsawed.", "This is also an opinion, the iPhone makes up too much of the company's total revenue. Last quarter results were very well received because of the somewhat dramatic increase in service revenue indicating that maybe the company can shift from relying so heavily on the iPhone. As it stands, Apple is a single product company and that hinders long term prospects, hence the relatively low multiple. And the company has missed estimates, in fact one of those large dips was an earnings miss. Additionally, if you're looking at the charts another one of the recent dips was likely caused by the brexit vote because everything was clobbered for a couple of days after that.", "Sure! Anything that affects the balance of supply and demand could cause rent prices to fall. I'll betcha rent prices in Wilmington, Ohio collapsed when the biggest employer, DHL, shut down. An economic depression of any sort would cause people to substitute expensive rentals for cheaper ones, putting downward pressure on rents. It would also cause people to double up or move in with family, decreasing demand for rentals. Anything that makes buying a house cheaper will actually make rents lower, too, because more people will buy houses when houses get cheaper... those people are moving out of rentals, thus decreasing demand for rentals.", "A house is a funny kind of investment. Normally when you invest, you do it to make money. The return on a house, though, isn't principally real money, it's the imputed rent - money that you would have needed to pay to rent the house. The thing about this imputed rent is that you consume it right away. Getting a bigger house and putting more money into it doesn't save you any money, it's just a way to consume more \"house\" - so, unlike regular investing, it's not really responsible and doesn't contribute to your financial well-being.", "For the purpose of personal finance, treating $500 as Interest Expense is sufficient. For business accounting, it involves making the $500 a contra-liability and amortizing it as interest expense over the course of life of the loan.", "In general, you are allowed to deduct up to $50/month per student (see page 4), but only if you aren't reimbursed. In your case, since you are receiving a stipend, the full $2000 will be treated as taxable income. But the question of \"is it worth it\" really depends on how much you will actually spend (and also what you'll get from the experience). Suppose you actually spend $1000/month to host them, and if your combined tax rate is 35%, you'll pay $700 in additional taxes each month, but you'll still profit $300 each month. If your primary motivation for hosting students is to make a profit, you could consider creating a business out of it. If you do that you will be able to deduct all of your legitimate business expenses which, in the above example, would be $1000/month. Keeping with that example, you would now pay taxes on $1000 instead of $2000, which would be $350, meaning your profit would now be $650/month. (Increasing your profit by $350/month.) You will only need to keep spending records if you plan to go the business route. My advice: assume you won't be going the business route, and then figure out what your break even point is based on your tax rate (Fed+state+FICA). The formula is: Max you can spend per month without losing money = 2000 - (2000 * T) e.g. if T = 35%, the break even point is $1300. Side note: My family hosted 5 students in 5 years and it was always a fantastic experience. But it is also a very big commitment. Teenagers eat a lot, and they drive cars, and go on dates, and play sports, and need help with their homework (especially English papers), and they don't seem to like bed times or curfews. IMHO it's totally worth it, even without the stipend...", "Note that if 1) The stock prices are continuously differentiable (they aren't) 2) You rebalance continuously in the absence of trading fees and taxes then the return fraction (future price / original price) will be the geometric mean of the return fractions for each investment. If you don't rebalance then the return fraction will be the arithmetic mean. But the arithmetic mean is ALWAYS greater than or equal to the geometric mean, so continuous rebalancing in the case of continuously differentiable prices will always hurt you, even abscent trading costs/taxes. Any argument in favor of blind rebalancing which does not somehow fail in the continuously differentiable case is simply wrong. See https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38536036/to%20karim.pdf -JT", "Let's start with a definition: A Collar is a protective strategy for a position in the underlying instrument created by purchasing a put and selling a call to partially pay for the put option purchased or vice versa. Based on that definition, there are two different types of collars. Each is a combination of two simpler strategies: References Multi-Leg Options Orders" ]

[ "The experience I have with wire transfers is from Australia to the US. These transfers can take up to 5 business dates (i.e. a whole week including the non-business days of the weekend). I would have thought intra-European transfers would be quicker, given how behind most US (regional) banks are in their electronic transfers. However, I don't think you should be worried just yet." ]

[ "As others have mentioned yes it is taxable. Whether it goes through payroll and has FICA taken out is your issue in terms that you need to report it and you will an extra 7.5% self employment taxes that would normally be covered by your employer. Your employer may have problems but that isn't your issue. Contrary to what other users are saying chances are there won't be any penalties for you. Best case you have already paid 100% of last years tax liability and you can file your normal tax return with no issues. Worst case you need to pay quarterly taxes on that amount in the current quarter. IRS quarters are a little weird but I think you need to pay by Jan 15th for a December payment. You don't have to calculate your entire liability you can just fill out the very short form and attach a check for about what you will owe. There is a form you can fill out to show what quarter you received the money and you paid in it is a bit more complex but will avoid the penalty. For penalties quarterly taxes count in the quarter received where as payroll deductions count as if they were paid in the first quarter of the year. From the IRS The United States income tax is a pay-as-you-go tax, which means that tax must be paid as you earn or receive your income during the year. You can either do this through withholding or by making estimated tax payments. If you do not pay your tax through withholding, or do not pay enough tax that way, you might also have to pay estimated taxes. If you did not pay enough tax throughout the year, either through withholding or by making estimated tax payments, you may have to pay a penalty for underpayment of estimated tax. Generally, most taxpayers will avoid this penalty if they owe less than $1,000 in tax after subtracting their withholdings and credits, or if they paid at least 90% of the tax for the current year, or 100% of the tax shown on the return for the prior year, whichever is smaller.", "Their interest expense was $17M. Where you see $5.14/sh in Key Statistics, any daily interest received is more than canceled out by the expense paid at the same time. I understand your concern, but this company is not \"sitting on cash\" as are Apple, Google, etc. Short term rates are well below 1%, 1yr tbill looks like about .2%. So strictly speaking, each share might have 1 cent interest you need to concern yourself with. Disclaimer to other readers - This has nothing to do with taxes. OP is asking about a specific part of the company cash flow. His worst case is $1 per 100 shares.", "There is also babysitting, dog walking and house sitting. Depending on their age of course. You should also investigate what is required to get them the ability to setup their own Roth IRA. I know one of the requirements is you can't put more into the Roth then was earned in income in the year. They might also have to file an income tax return (not sure about that one). Just think of how far ahead of the game they will be if they can get a couple of grand or more in a Roth account while in their early teens.", "I err on the side of saving all of mine for a while. Just toss them in a box at least. A years' worth is about the size of a shoebox. I started doing this because one year, about a week after I tossed my receipts for the year, I realized that I had a fair bit of allotment left on my flexible savings account to use up. I could have used those to substantiate over-the-counter medicines I purchased. Even if you don't use them for tax purposes, you can use them for budget-tracking purposes.", "In my business (estate planning law practice), probably 60-70% of my income is in the form of checks, with the balance as credit/debit cards. I prefer to get paid by check so I don't have to pay the approx 2.5% merchant fee, but I don't push clients to choose one method over the other. I offer direct deposit to my employees but most of them choose to be paid by check. Also, check processing is becoming more and more electronic - when I get paid by check, I scan the checks in a dedicated desktop scanner, and upload the check images to the bank at the end of the day, and the checks are processed very quickly. I also make deposits to my personal credit union account by scanning checks and uploading the images. So, yes, there's technically a paper check, but I (as the merchant/recipient/depositor) keep the check for a few months to make sure there's no problem with the deposit/payment, then shred them. The bank never sees the actual paper check.", "I am a flight attendant on a private jet and I hear a bank CEO discussing a merger or a buyout. I proceed to purchase that stock before the announcement. The CEO did not tell me to buy it, I just overheard him. If you are a flight attendant on a private jet that is operated by one of the principals, probably including a bank, attorney, consultant, broker, etc., in the merger or buyout, then you probably have a fiduciary duty to safeguard the information and are prohibited from trading. Please see: http://www.kiplinger.com/article/investing/T052-C008-S001-would-you-be-guilty-of-insider-trading.html You’re a janitor at a major company. You hear members of the company’s board convening outside the room you’re cleaning and decide to hide in the closet. The board okays a deal to sell the company for a fat premium to the current share price. You load up on the shares. Illegal insider trading? Definitely. This is not a public place, and \"you’d be in a position to understand that confidential information was being disclosed, which changes the calculus,\" says Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago-based securities lawyer. Also see: http://meyersandheim.com/how-to-win-an-insider-trading-case/ However, between these two extremes of a bystander with no duty to the corporation and a corporate officer with a clear duty to the corporation stood a whole group of people such as printers, lawyers and others who were involved in non-public transactions that did not necessarily have a duty to the company whose securities they traded. To address this group of people the courts developed the misappropriation theory. The misappropriation theory covers people who posses inside information and who are prohibited from trading on such information because they owe a duty to a third party and not the corporation whose securities are traded. Yours is the perfect example. You owe a duty to your employer to operate in its best interests. As for the broader, more common example, where you overhear information in an elevator, restaurant, in line at the coffee shop, etc., trading on such information was found not to be insider trading in SEC v. Switzer: http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/590/756/2247092/ In this case, Mr. Switzer overheard information at a track meet and traded on it with profits. The court found: The information was inadvertently overheard by Switzer at the track meet. Rule 10b-5 does not bar trading on the basis of information inadvertently revealed by an insider. On the basis of the above findings of fact and conclusions of law, the court orders judgment in favor of defendants.", "No, there isn't. There are a number of reasons that institutions buy these bonds but as an individual you're likely better off in a low-yield cash account. By contrast, there would be a reason to hold a low-yield (non-zero) bond rather than an alternative low-yield product.", "Yes. It's called executive hedging, and it's a lot more common than most people know. As long as it's properly disclosed and the decision is based on publicly available information, there's technically nothing wrong with it. Krispy Kreme, Enron, MCI, and ImClone are the most notable companies that had executives do it on a large scale, but almost every company has or had executives execute a complex form of hedging known as a prepaid variable forward (PVF). In a PVF, the executive gives his shares to an investment bank in exchange for a percentage of cash up front. The bank then uses the executive shares to hedge in both directions for them. This provides a proxy that technically isn't the executive that needs to disclose. There's talk about it needing to be more public at the SEC right now. http://www.sec.gov/news/statement/020915-ps-claa.html", "I'm in the \"big mortgage\" camp. Or, to put this another way - what would you be happier to have in 15 years? A house that is worth $300,000, or $50,000 of equity in a house and $225,000 in the bank? I would much rather have the latter; it gives me so many more options. (the numbers are rough; you can figure it out yourself based on the current interest rate you can get on investments vs the cost of mortgage interest (which may be less if you can deduct the mortgage interest)).", "An operating margin will not compare with ROE. If a company has even a small margin on a large turnover and has a comparative lower shareholder equity, it ROE will be much higher. One ratio alone can not analyse a company. You need a full set of ratios and figures." ]

[ "Stock acquired through a (non-taxable) stock dividend has the same holding period as the stock on which the dividend was paid." ]

[ "They don't have to track each other, it could just be listed on more than one exchange. The price on one exchange does not have to match or track the price on the other exchange. This is actually quite common, as many companies are listed on two or more exchanges around the world.", "You could use a Credit or Debit Card running in US $, drawing from your US$ account, and pay everything with it. If you pick a company with free foreign conversions, you would get the standard interbank exchange ratio every time you pay, with no fee. For the small payments where credit cards are not accpeted or useful you can convert some cash once every some month - all significant amounts should work with credit or debit card.", "Short Answer: Go to the bank and ask them about your options for opening a business account. Talk to an attorney about the paperwork and company structure and taxes. Long Answer: You and your buddies jointly own an unincorporated business. This is called a partnership. Yes, there is paperwork involved in doing it properly and the fact that you guys are minors might complicate that paperwork a little bit. In terms of what type of account to open: A business account! Running a business through a personal account (joint or otherwise) is a sure way to get that account shut down. Your bank will want to know the structure of the business, and will require documentation to support that. For a partnership, they will probably want a copy of the partnership agreement. For an LLC, they'll probably want a copy of the filing with Ohio Secretary of State as well as the operating agreement etc. That said, pop into a local bank and ask a business banker directly what you should do. They deal with new businesses all the time, and would probably be best qualified to help you figure out the bank account aspect of it. Regarding business structure... this really impacts a lot more than just the type of bank account to open and how you file your taxes. It is something you guys should really discuss with an attorney. What happens if down the road one of you quits? What happens if you want to bring in a new partner later? What if there is a disagreement about something? These are all things that the attorney can help you address ahead of time - which is a heck of a lot easier (and cheaper) than trying to figure it out later. You're brining in enough that you should certainly be able to buy a couple hours of a lawyer's time. Getting the formation stuff right could save all of you a lot of money and heartache later.", "Another reason to think it's a scam: fake paypal email notifications are a thing. I've seen one that was quite convincing (but it wasn't mine to properly analyse or report), so the intial payment may be a fake from another account belonging to the scammer, and you've just transferred money to the scammer. The fake email can include links to log in to a fake paypal website, which can be quite convincing as the mark will give the login details which can be used to scrape data. Links not going to where they say is the giveaway here.", "The change is generally known as the Options Symbology Initiative (or \"OSI\") and there is a highly comprehensive guide to what occurred here. The basic gist of what occurred was a shift FROM: A coded system in which a shorter (3 to 5 letter symbol) could be used, but the symbols required a data source to determine what they meant. MSQ AD used to be a MSFT Jan 20 option, but you had to look up MSQ in a table to know that. TO: A system in which much longer symbols are needed, but they contain all the information required to identify a unique option: DELL 4.000 C 5/16/2010 isn't easy to type, but once you know how to read it, it's easy to see that it's an option on DELL, expiring on May 16th 2010, is a call (rather than a put,) and has a strike price of 4. As to why they did it, there are a number of benefits, but most important reason is this one: they were running out of symbols. The number of permutations of 3-5 letter symbols had been exceeded by the number of options that had been listed, resulting in the need to \"recycle\" symbols. This meant that a current option symbol would be the same as an old one, in some cases on a different stock, which was wreaking havoc on historical data.", "What is a 403b? A 403(b) plan is a tax-advantaged retirement savings plan available for public education organizations, some non-profit employers (only US Tax Code 501(c)(3) organizations), cooperative hospital service organizations and self-employed ministers in the United States. Kind of a rare thing. A bit more here: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/teacheroptions.htm under investment options Equity Indexed Annuities are a special type of contract between you and an insurance company. During the accumulation period — when you make either a lump sum payment or a series of payments — the insurance company credits you with a return that is based on changes in an equity index, such as the S&P 500 Composite Stock Price Index. The insurance company typically guarantees a minimum return. Guaranteed minimum return rates vary. After the accumulation period, the insurance company will make periodic payments to you under the terms of your contract, unless you choose to receive your contract value in a lump sum. For more information, please see our \"Fast Answer\" on Equity Indexed Annuities, and read FINRA's investor alert entitled Equity-Indexed Annuitiies — A Complex Choice. So perhaps \"equity indexed annuities\" is the more correct thing to search for and not \"insurance funds\"?", "Liquidity on dual listed equities is rarely the same on both exchanges. More liquidity means you would typically get a better price assuming you execute the trades using the same order types. It's recommended to trade where the liquidity is greater unless your trading method benefits somehow from it being lower. It's important to remember that some ADRs (some European companies listed in US) have ADR fees which vary. USD/EUR transaction fees are low when using a decent broker but you're obviously participating in the currency risk.", "The IPO price is set between the underwriters and the specialist in the NASDAQ. There are a lot of complexities on how to get to this price, everyone is trying to pull to their own side. In the Facebook example, the price was $38 for all IPO participants. Then, once the IPO went to the secondary market, the bid/ask drove the pricing. At the secondary market the price is driven by the demand and offer of the stock. That is, people who wanted to buy right after the IPO likely drove the initial price up.", "Create an account called, say, \"Paycheck\". When you get paid, create an entry with your gross income as a deposit. For each deduction in your paycheck, create a minus (or expense) entry. After doing that, what will be left in the Paycheck account will be your net income. Simply transfer this amount to the real account your paycheck goes into (your checking account, probably). Almost all the time, the value of your Paycheck account will be 0. It will be nonzero only for a moment every two weeks (or however often you get paid). I don't know if this is the standard way of doing it (in the professional accounting world). It's a way I developed on my own and it works well, I think. I think it's better than just adding a deposit entry in your checking account for your net income as it lets you keep track of all your deductions. (I use Quicken for the Mac. Before they added a Paycheck feature, I used this method. Then they removed the Paycheck feature from the latest version of Quicken for the Mac and I now use this method again.)", "Are you sure you're using the same date range? If you're using Max, then you're not, as ^FTMC goes back to 12/1/1985 while ^GDAXI only goes back to 11/1/1990. If I enter a custom date range of 11/1/1990 through 10/24/2015, I get: and: which, other than the dates it chose to use as labels on the x-axes, look identical. (I tried to add the URLs of the charts, but it looks like the Yahoo! URLs don't include the comparison symbol, which makes them useless for this answer. They're easy enough to construct though, just add the secondary symbol using the Comparison button and set the date range using the calendar button.) On your PS, I don't know, as you can see by my charts it even chose different labels when the date ranges were identical (although at least it didn't scale different dates differently), so maybe it's trying to be \"smart\" and choose dates based on the total amount of data available for the primary symbol, which is different in the two cases." ]

[ "I once called Amex to cancel a card with an annual fee. Instead, they were able to give me a different card with no fee. They were happy to do it. Of course, Amex has fantastic customer service, while Capital One is not known for it. But, its worth a five minute call, and you will retain your good score." ]

[ "Dave Ramsey would tell you to pay the smallest debt off first, regardless of interest rate, to build momentum for your debt snowball. Doing so also gives you some \"wins\" sooner than later in the goal of becoming debt free.", "I've been in a very similar situation to yours in the past. Since the company is reimbursing you at a flat rate (I assume you don't need to provide documentation/receipts in order to be paid the per diem), it's not directly connected to the $90 in expenses that you mention. Unless they were taking taxes out that would need to be reimbursed, the separate category for Assets:Reimbursable:Gotham City serves no real purpose, other than to categorize the expenses. Since there is no direct relationship between your expenses and the reimbursement, I would list them as completely separate transactions: Later, if you needed to locate all of the associated expenses with the Gotham trip, gnucash lets you search on memo text for \"Gotham\" and will display all of the related transactions. This is a lot cleaner than having to determine what piece of the per diem goes to which expenses, or having to create a new Asset account every time you go on a trip.", "Whether or not you use a real estate agent, at some stage most people use a lawyer to do the actual buying and selling and set up the agreements. If you've never dealt with a lawyer directly before it's probably because your agent has acted as a front-person for the lawyer. If you go to a lawyer and tell them what you want to do they will sort it out, and should tell you in advance how much it will cost. You and your friend will probably need one each.", "Buy term and invest the difference is certainly the standard recommendation, and for good reason. When you start looking at some sample numbers the \"buy term and invest the difference\" strategy starts to look very good. Here are the rates I found (27 yr old in Texas with good health, non-smoker, etc): $200k term life: $21/month $200k whole life: $177/month If you were to invest the difference in a retirement account for 40 years, assuming a 7% rate of return (many retirement planning estimates use 10%) you would have $411,859 at the end of that period. (If you use 10% that figure jumps to over $994k.) Needless to say, $400k in a retirement account is better than a $200k death benefit. Especially since you can't get the death benefit AND the cash value. Certainly one big difficulty is making sure you invest that difference. The best way to handle that is to set up a direct deposit that goes straight from your paycheck to the retirement account before it even touches your bank account. The next best thing would be an automatic transfer from your bank account. You may wonder 'What if I can no longer afford to invest that money?' First off, take a second and third look at your finances before you start eating into that. But if financial crisis comes and you truly can't afford to fund your own life insurance / retirement account then perhaps it will be a good thing you're not locked into a life insurance policy that forces you to pay those premiums. That extra freedom is another benefit of the \"buy term and invest the difference\" strategy. It is great that you are asking this question now while you are young. Because it is much easier to put this strategy into play now while you are young. As far as using a cash value policy to help diversify your portfolio: I am no expert in how to allocate long term investments after maxing out my IRA and 401k. (My IRA maxes out at $5k/year, another $5k for my wife's, another $16.5k for my 401k.) Before I maxed that out I would have my house paid for and kid's education saved for. And by then it would make sense to pay a financial adviser to help you manage all those investments. They would be the one to ask about using a cash value policy similar to @lux lux's description. I believe you should NEVER PUT YOUR MONEY INTO SOMETHING YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. Cash value policies are complex and I don't fully understand them. I should add that of course my calculations are subject to the standard disclaimer that those investment returns aren't guaranteed. As with any financial decision you must be willing to accept some level of risk and the question is not whether to accept risk, but how much is acceptable. That's why I used 7% in my calculation instead of just 10%. I wanted to demonstrate that you could still beat out whole life if you wanted to reduce your risk and/or if the stock market performs poorly.", "Law is a mass of special cases, informed by but not driven by some general principles. Tax law likewise. Don't try to make it make sense; you will only confuse yourself. Not all \"necessities\" are deductable, only those which someone has explicitly passed a law to make deductable.", "Those are the three books that were considered fundamental at my university: Investments - Zvi Bodie (Author), Alex Kane (Author), Alan Marcus (Author), Stylianos Perrakis (Author), Peter Ryan (Author) This book covers the basics of financial markets. It explains how markets work, general investing principles, basic risk notions, various types of financial instruments and their characteristics and portfolio management principles. Futures and Options markets - John C. Hull This book goes more in depth into derivatives valuation and the less common / more complex instruments. The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities This books covers fixed income securities. In all cases, they are not specifically math-oriented but they do not shy away from it when it is called for. I have read the first and the other two were recommended by professors / friends now working in financial markets.", "In an \"efficient\" investment market the amount of risk premium would EXACTLY offset the likelihood of loss, such that over long time frames the expected return on investment would be equal for all investment options. In practice, we usually see that riskier investments yield a higher long-term return because the risk premium is larger than that \"efficient\" amount. This is because many investors don't have a long-term time horizon, and the pain of loss is greater than the reward of gain (\"asymmetric preferences\"). It's also important to think about the risk-reward interaction as being PERCEIVED risk to EXPECTED reward. If I'm lending money to somebody who is likely not to pay me back, I'd want a better deal than if I were lending to somebody who is certain to pay. I think that addresses your confusion, but if I misinterpreted what's puzzling you, please let me know and I", "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.", "They are basically asking for the name of the legal entity that they should write on the check. You, as a person, are a legal entity, and so you can have them pay you directly, by name. This is in effect a \"sole proprietorship\" arrangement and it is the situation of most independent contractors; you're working for yourself, and you get all the money, but you also have all the responsibility. You can also set up a legal alias, or a \"Doing Business As\" (DBA) name. The only thing that changes versus using your own name is... well... that you aren't using your own name, to be honest. You pay some trivial fee for the paperwork to the county clerk or other office of record, and you're now not only John Doe, you're \"Zolani Enterprises\", and your business checks can be written out to that name and the bank (who will want a copy of the DBA paperwork to file when you set the name up as a payable entity on the account) will cash them for you. An LLC, since it was mentioned, is a \"Limited Liability Company\". It is a legal entity, incorporeal, that is your \"avatar\" in the business world. It, not you, is the entity that primarily faces anyone else in that world. You become, for legal purposes, an agent of that company, authorized to make decisions on its behalf. You can do all the same things, make all the same money, but if things go pear-shaped, the company is the one liable, not you. Sounds great, right? Well, there's a downside, and that's taxes and the increased complexity thereof. Depending on the exact structure of the company, the IRS will treat the LLC either as a corporation, a partnership, or as a \"disregarded entity\". Most one-man LLCs are typically \"disregarded\", meaning that for tax purposes, all the money the company makes is treated as if it were made by you as a sole proprietor, as in the above cases (and with the associated increased FICA and lack of tax deductions that an \"employee\" would get). Nothing can be \"retained\" by the company, because as far as the IRS is concerned it doesn't exist, so whether the money from the profits of the company actually made it into your personal checking account or not, it has to be reported by you on the Schedule C. You can elect, if you wish, to have the LLC treated as a corporation; this allows the corporation to retain earnings (and thus to \"own\" liquid assets like cash, as opposed to only fixed assets like land, cars etc). It also allows you to be an \"employee\" of your own company, and pay yourself a true \"salary\", with all the applicable tax rules including pre-tax healthcare, employer-paid FICA, etc. However, the downside here is that some money is subject to double taxation; any monies \"retained\" by the company, or paid out to members as \"dividends\", is \"profit\" of the company for which the company is taxed at the corporate rate. Then, the money from that dividend you receive from the company is taxed again at the capital gains rate on your own 1040 return. This also means that you have to file taxes twice; once for the corporation, once for you as the individual. You can't, of course, have it both ways with an LLC; you can't pay yourself a true \"salary\" and get the associated tax breaks, then receive leftover profits as a \"distribution\" and avoid double taxation. It takes multiple \"members\" (owners) to have the LLC treated like a partnership, and there are specific types of LLCs set up to handle investments, where some of what I've said above doesn't apply. I won't get into that because the question inferred a single-owner situation, but the tax rules in these additional situations are again different.", "Yes, there are times when co-signing is the right choice. One is when you know more about the person than the loan issuer does. Consider a young person who has just started working in a volatile field, the kind of job where you can be told on Friday that you only get one shift next week but things might pick up the week after, and who makes maybe $12 an hour in that job. You've done the math and with 40 hour weeks they can easily afford the loan. Furthermore, you know this person well and you know that after a few weeks of not enough shifts, they've got the gumption to go out and find a second job or a different job that will give them 40 hours or more a week. And you know that they have some savings they could use to ensure that no payments will be missed even on low-wage weeks. You can cosign for this person, say for a car loan to get them a car they can drive to that job, knowing that they aren't going to walk away and just stop making the payments. The loan issuer doesn't know any of that. Or consider a young person with poor credit but good income who has recently decided to get smart about money, has written out a budget and a plan to rehabilitate their credit, and who you know will work passionately to make every payment and get the credit score up to a place where they can buy a house or whatever their goal is. Again, you can cosign for this person to make that happen, because you know something the lender doesn't. Or consider a middle aged person who's had some very hard knocks: laid off in a plant closing perhaps, marriage failure, lost all their house equity when the market collapsed, that sort of thing. They have a chance to start over again somewhere else and you have a chance to help. Again you know this isn't someone who is going to mismanage their money and walk away from the payments and leave you holding the bag. If you would give the person the money anyway (say, a car for your newly graduated child) then cosigning instead gives them more of a sense of accomplishment, since they paid for it, and gives them a great credit rating too. If you would not give the person the entire loan amount, but would make their payments for many months or even a year (say, your brother's mortgage for the house where he lives with a sick wife and 3 small children), then cosigning is only making official what you would have done anyway. Arrange with the borrower that if they can't make their payments any more, you will backstop them AND the item (car, house, whatever) is going up for sale to cover your losses. If you don't think you could enforce that just from the strength of the relationship, reconsider co-signing. Then sign what you need to sign and step away from it. It's their loan, not yours. You want them to pay it and to manage it and to leave you out of it until it's all paid off and they thank you for your help. If things go south, you will have to pay, and it may take a while for you to sell the item or otherwise stop the paying, so you do need to be very confident that the borrower is going to make every single payment on time. My point is just that you can have that confidence, based on personal knowledge of character, employment situation, savings and other resources, in a way that a lender really cannot." ]

[ "Short Answer: Length of Time invested and risk should be correlated. From what I am hearing this is pretty good game plan for your age. Minutia: Once you get closer to retirement lets say in 20 years. You might want to treat two lumps of money with different risk. For me at 49 I have a lump of money for 55-70 that carries a lot less risk then another lump of money for when I hit 80. This way I can wait and take Social Security at 70 when it pays the most per month. Then I'll have another pile of money for when my care costs start being very expensive. Or I think most people would benefit from making sure you have the funds you need for the next 5 years in items with extremely low risk and funds you need 6 years out or more you can have some risk tolerance there. Best laid plans though." ]

[ "Having someone else paying you rent is always going to be the better deal financially. The question is, what does $450k buy in the neighborhood in which you want to live, vs $800k? I'm going to assume you can afford either option (buying a $450k home and not selling, or an $800k home and selling your current one) whether someone's paying you rent or not. Let's make up some numbers here; a $450k home, financed 80/20 (360k principal) at 4% for 30 years will cost you about $1720 in P&I payments per year (plus escrows such as RE taxes, PMI, and homeowners insurance where applicable). An $800k home financed 80/20 (640k principal) at 4% for 30yr will give you payments of about $3,055/mo before taxes and insurance. So, the worst case overall is that you buy a 450k home in the new neighborhood and are not, at any given time, collecting rent on the old property. That would (assuming the mortgage terms on both home loans were comparable) cost you $3440/mo and you'd be living in a $450k home in a neighborhood where 450k may not buy a home as nice as the one you moved out of. The question as I stated above is this; assuming you had a reliable tenant in your home for the entire remaining life of the loan on your current home, which is more acceptable to you: buying $450k of home (which might be a downgrade in sqft or amenities) and paying $2020 in P&I, or paying about a grand more ($3055/mo) for a much nicer home in the new location? Strictly from a money perspective, the renter is going to be the best option, IF you get reliable tenancy for the entire life of the mortgage on that house; you'll be paying $2020/mo for 30 years, which is $727,200, to end up with $950k of total home value (plus adjustments for actual home value appreciation/depreciation). That's the only way you'll come out ahead on any mortgage; have someone else pay most of it for you. If you don't rent, the $800k home will cost you $1,099,800, while two $450k homes will cost you $1,454,400. The percentage of home value over total payments for the 800k home would be 72% (you will have paid 137% of the value of the home), while you will have paid 153% of the value of two 450k homes.", "Check out the bulk stores like BJs, Sam's Club or whatever else is available to you. You can definitely save money shopping there but you also need to keep your wits about you as well. Example, if you're buying in bulk only to let food go to waste, obviously that's not good either...", "How can I calculate my currency risk exposure? You own securities that are priced in dollars, so your currency risk is the amount (all else being equal) that your portfolio drops if the dollar depreciates relative to the Euro between now and the time that you plan to cash out your investments. Not all stocks, though, have a high correlation relative to the dollar. Many US companies (e.g. Apple) do a lot of business in foreign countries and do not necessarily move in line with the Dollar. Calculate the correlation (using Excel or other statistical programs) between the returns of your portfolio and the change in FX rate between the Dollar and Euro to see how well your portfolio correlated with that FX rate. That would tell you how much risk you need to mitigate. how can I hedge against it? There are various Currency ETFs that will track the USD/EUR exchange rate, so one option could be to buy some of those to offset your currency risk calculated above. Note that ETFs do have fees associated with them, although they should be fairly small (one I looked at had a 0.4% fee, which isn't terrible but isn't nothing). Also note that there are ETFs that employ currency risk mitigation internally - including one on the Nasdaq 100 . Note that this is NOT a recommendation for this ETF - just letting you know about alternative products that MIGHT meet your needs.", "I understand that if I have multiple health insurance policies, I can only make claim from only one of them if ever I incur medical expenses (I'm from the Philippines). In the US, you cannot simultaneously submit a claim for payment of a medical bill, or request reimbursement for a bill already paid, to multiple insurance companies, but if you are covered by more than one policy, then any part of a claim not paid by one company can be submitted to another company that is also covering you. In fact, if you have employer-paid or employer-provided coverage, most insurance companies will want your employer-provided insurance company to be billed first, and will cover whatever is not paid by the employer coverage. For example, if the employer coverage pays 80% of your doctor's bill, the private insurance will pay the remaining 20%. But, the private insurance policies are also quite expensive. Some professional groups in the US offer major medical coverage to their US members, and might be offering this to non-US members as well (though I suspect not). These policies have large deductibles so that coverage kicks in only when the total medical expenses in that year (whether wholly or partially reimbursed, or not reimbursed at all) exceed the large deductible. These types of policies actually pay out to only a few people - if you have more than, say, $20,000 of medical expenses in a year, you have been quite ill, and thus the premiums are usually much smaller than full-fledged coverage insurance policies which pay out much more frequently because of much smaller deductibles.", "Government default doesn't mean that all US money is immediately worthless. First, the bondholders will get stiffed. Following that, interest rates will shoot up (because the US is a bad credit risk at this point) and the government will monetize its ongoing expenses -- i.e., fire up the printing presses. If you're concerned about not having access to your money, start pulling out a little extra when you get cash at an ATM. Build it up over time until you have enough currency to weather through whatever emergency you envision with your bank account.", "Have you tried calling a Forex broker and asking them if you can take delivery on currency? Their spreads are likely to be much lower than banks/ATMs.", "Haven't there been examples of governments defaulting, delaying payment and imposing haircuts on investors? Greece and Argentina come to mind. Quite a few Govt have defaulted in the past or were very of default or crisis. Most 3rd world countries or developing countries have under gone stress at some point. Greece was amongst the first example of Developed country going bankrupt. am I not better off if the fund invests solely in AAA corporate bonds, avoiding government bonds? Well that depends. Corporate bonds are not safer than Government Bonds. There have been instances of Corporate bonds not giving the required returns.", "Start at Investopedia. Get basic clarification on all financial terms and in some cases in detail. But get a book. One recommendation would be Hull. It is a basic book, but quite informative. Likewise you can get loads of material targeted at programmers. Wilmott's Forum is a fine place to find coders as well as finance guys.", "I'll answer this question: \"Why do intraday traders close their position at then end of day while most gains can be done overnight (buy just before the market close and sell just after it opens). Is this observation true for other companies or is it specific to apple ?\" Intraday traders often trade shares of a company using intraday leverage provided by their firm. For every $5000 dollars they actually have, they may be trading with $100,000, 20:1 leverage as an example. Since a stock can also decrease in value, substantially, while the markets are closed, intraday traders are not allowed to keep their highly leveraged positions opened. Probabilities fail in a random walk scenario, and only one failure can bankrupt you and the firm.", "Like everybody else I'm picking up on the school loans - you're mother isn't exactly earning a massive amount of money given her cost of living, why is she taking out student loans that benefit you and your sister? I'm not trying to be offensive but it's fairly obvious that she can't afford it. As a first step I think you should at least take over paying your own student loans (you sound like you're out of college already and if you have $8k to \"lend\" to your mother you probably have enough money to pay the student loans that benefited you, after all) or as someone else also recommended, assume your loans. As to your sister, maybe it's time for her to get (another) job to pay for the tuition so her mother doesn't have to go further into debt. Again, I'm not trying to be mean here but your mother is digging herself deeper and deeper into a hole because of the tuition. Something's gotta give, and delivering pizza or getting a paper round is a small sacrifice here. Next, the car - unless she has a managed to work herself out of some of this mess, I would consider getting a much cheaper car instead. This is provided that she isn't upside down on the loan. Personally I wouldn't trade in a vehicle with an upside down loan, if anything that's another bad financial decision. Assuming that she isn't upside down on the loan and has some equity in the car, I would seriously consider selling the car and using the equity to buy something small and cheap. That should also hopefully reduce the cost of gas and maybe insurance somewhat. I think these points are probably the quickest steps that can be taken towards recovering this situation. You already mentioned the longer term plans like downsizing the apartment, but TBH I'm not sure that this is really necessary. The big elephant in the room are the college costs and removing those from the equation would give her a serious amount of breathing room." ]

[ "In almost every circumstance high expense ratios are a bad idea. I would say every circumstance, but I don't want backlash from anyone. There are many other investment companies out there that offer mutual funds for FAR less than 1.5% ratio. I couldn't even imagine paying a 1% expense ratio for a mutual fund. Vanguard offers mutual funds that are significantly lower, on average, than the industry. Certainly MUCH lower than 1.5%, but then again I'm not sure what mutual funds you have, stock, bonds, etc. Here is a list of all Vanguard's mutual funds. I honestly like the company a lot, many people haven't heard of them because they don't spend nearly as much money on advertisements or a flashy website - but they have extremely low expense ratios. You can buy into many of their mutual funds with a 0.10%-0.20% expense ratio. Some are higher, but certainly not even close to 1.5%. I don't believe any of them are even half of that. Also, if you were referring to ETF's when you mentioned Index Fund (assuming that since you have ETFs in your tag), then 0.20% for ETF's is steep, check out some identical ETFs on Vanguard. I am not a Vanguard employee soliciting their service to you. I'm just trying to pass on good information to another investor. I believe you can buy vanguard funds through other investment companies, like Fidelity, for a good price, but I prefer to go through them." ]

[ "You could try this experiment: pay for an Ad/banner on Facebook for 1 month. The Ad/banner should link to your ecommerce site. Then see if the Ad/banner does or does not convert into ecommerce orders (\"converting\" means that people coming to your eccomerce site from Facebook after having clicked on your Ad/banner really buy something on your site). If it does convert, you will go on paying for Ads/banners and other people will do the same for their sites, so FB might make cash in next years. But if it does NOT convert you and everybody else will soon discover and stop paying for Ads/banners, thus it will be hard for Facebook to make money with Advertising, thus Facebook might be just a big bubble (unless they find other ways of making money). I did the experiment I suggested above and the conversion rate was an absoulte ZERO!!! (Instead Google Adwords converted well for the same site). So IMHO I would stay away from FB. But remember that stock market is emotional (at least on short periods of time), so it might be that even if FB wil never become a cash cow, for the 1st few months people (expecially small investors tempeted by the brand) might go crazy for the stocks and buy buy buy, making the price go up up up. EDIT in reply to some comments below arguing that my answer was boiled down to one single experiment: General Motors said Tuesday that it will stop paid advertising on Facebook...the social media paid ads simply weren't delivering the hoped-for buyers... (CNN May/15/2012) A donkey can not fly either when it's me (with a single experiment) trying to make it fly or the entire GM workforce.", "I would contact your loan servicing company explain the situation and see if you can renegotiate terms. They may be able to drop the interest rate or lengthen the schedule to reduce the payment amount. I wouldn't default on the loan as that would likely hinder coming to/working in the US in the future. Not knowing your financial situation or country, could you attempt to obtain financing in your own country in order to pay off the US based loan? I would at least attempt to make some sort of payment while you attempt renegotiation, refinancing or pursue a job in the US, even if it technically puts or keeps you in default of the loan. Making any payment at least shows the willingness to pay back the loan, and you're not intentionally defaulting on your obligation.", "Something you invest in has the ability to grow in value. So examples of investments would be buying stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities. Buying your house or a piece of real estate can be considered an investment because the house/property will hopefully be worth more as time passes. So the act of paying down a mortgage really isn't an investment.", "Unless your investments are held within a special tax-free account, then every sale transaction is a taxable event, meaning a gain or loss (capital gain/loss or income gain/loss, depending on various circumstances) is calculated at that moment in time. Gains may also accrue on unrealized amounts at year-end, for specific items [in general in the US, gains do not accrue at year-end for most things]. Moving cash that you have received from selling investments, from your brokerage account to your checking account, has no impact from a tax perspective.", "This is the S&P a bit over 20 years. If you've discovered a way to sell at 1400 in 2000, buy at 800 or so in 2003, sell again, well, you get the idea. There's strong evidence the typical investor hears the S&P is making new highs and rushes in. It's this influx that may send stocks higher from here, until the smart money senses 'overbought' and bails. I am not the smart money, but my ability to ignore emotion, and use asset allocation naturally had me selling a bit into each run up, and of course buying during downturns. Not all or none, and not with any perfect timing, just at year end when I'm rebalancing. I am not a fan of short term timing, although I do respect Victor's observations and excellent example of when it's been shown to work.", "Small companies could have growth prospects. Large companies may not have that many. So look at ROE of companies by quatile to determine which companies have better growth.", "It's provincial jurisdiction, so it can vary by province. In Manitoba, it's different when an employee quits vs. being terminated: Quiting: Being terminated: Edit: At least in Manitoba, according to the above link, an employer can't set different notice periods. Effective April 30, 2007, employers cannot have alternate notice policies. A notice policy set under the previous legislation is not valid. The only exclusion is a unionized workplace, where a collective agreement has a probationary period that is one year or less. Ontario, on the other hand doesn't have anything legislated about resignation notice except under a couple very specific circumstances. This leaves it open for contracts to put in place their own requirements. In this case, you can be sued for provable losses (minus the savings from not having to pay you.)", "If it's a legitimate cost of doing business, it's as deductible as any other cost of doing business. (Reminder: be careful about the distinctions between employee and contractor; the IRS gets annoyed if you don't handle this correctly.)", "Edited to add an important one that I forgot, because I don't have a TV myself. You need to: That's really about it, unless you're employing people or running a business turning over more than £81,000 per year (or doing one of a number of relatively unlikely things that require specific paperwork, such as owning a horse or farm animal (but not a dog or cat or similar)). It's not a bureaucratic country. None of those things except the driving licence/car tax/MOT test/car insurance will be a police matter if omitted, but you could be fined for them (although it's vanishingly unlikely that you'd be fined for not registering to vote and for jury service). You don't need to understand the law before being on a jury, because it's the judge's job to ensure that the jury understand the law as it relates to the case in front of them. A few pieces of paperwork jargon for you:", "Instead of saying which one is better, which is too subjective, I think it is more important to understand what these institutions are. They are kind of different animals. Edward Jones pretty much a full service wealth manager. They meet with you in person, advise you on what retirement and savings accounts to get, they talk to you to evaluate your risk preferences. They will talk to you about planning for your kids' college and about your insurance situation. They will probably attend your kids' bar mitzvahs and stuff too. Of course, this isn't free. With Edward Jones you will pay a fixed percentage of your managed wealth to them every year. And they will likely put your money in expensive mutual funds. And those mutual funds will charge a special 12b-1 fee, which is a kickback to the wealth manager. Plan on giving 2% or so of your total wealth to the manager per year, plus whatever the mutual funds charge. I don't have experience with Betterment, but they appear to be a robo advisor. Robo advisors attempt to do the same kinds of things as wealth managers, but rely on computer algorithms and web pages to give you advice whenever possible. This makes some sense because most people aren't actually that special in terms of their financial situation. I don't know their cost structure, but presumably it will be significantly cheaper than Edward Jones. They will almost certainly put you in cheaper funds (index funds and ETF's). Think of it as a cost-conscious alternative to Edward Jones. Vanguard is a discount broker and a mutual fund family. Their funds are among the biggest and cheapest in the world. Fees on many of these funds will be a fraction of the equivalent funds Edward Jones will put you in. They will charge you nothing at all to manage your money. They will give you some assistance and advice if you call them but don't expect any house calls. They aren't particularly in the business of giving advice. If you know what you want to invest in, this is the cheapest way to do it by far. Basically you won't have to pay anything at all except the actual cost of the assets you are investing in. Which is the best? Depends on your own preferences and ability. If you do not want to learn about personal finance and don't particularly care about whether you are getting the best return--if you don't mind paying for a personal touch--Edward Jones might be a good choice. For most people who are comfortable asking this type of question online and interested in learning about finance even a little bit, I'd expect that Betterment or Vanguard will be a better choice. For people who are willing to learn a bit of finance and manage their own affairs, using Vanguard (or a close competitor, like Fidelity) will ultimately result in the most wealth generated (the least given away to the financial industry)." ]

[ "Robinhood seems interesting. Some say it's a gimmicky site with a nice UI not an investing or trading platform. From investopedia: 1. For now, the app stays afloat for mainly two reasons. First, the business itself is extremely lean: no physical locations, a small staff, no massive public relations campaigns and only one operating system platform to maintain. Robinhood also generates interest off of unused cash deposits from user accounts according to the Federal Funds rate. 2. Second, venture capitalists such as Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Social Leverage,and \"many others\" have invested more than $16 million in the app. 3. According to Barron’s, Robinhood plans to implement margin trading in 2015, eventually charging 3.5% interest for the service. E*Trade charges 8.44% for accounts under $25,000. Phone assisted trading will also be available at $10 per trade in the future. 4. Originally, Robinhood planned to make money off of order flows – a common tactic used by discount brokerages in the 1990s to generate revenue. According to the company's FAQ, Robinhood backpedaled on the idea because it executes orders through a clearing partner and, as a result, receives little to no payment for order flow. The company is willing to return to its original plan in the future if it receives order flows directly or begins to generate a lot of revenue from them." ]

[ "As you have indicated, the 1042-S reflects no income or withholding. As such, you are not required to file a US tax return unless you have other income from the US. Gains on stocks are not reported until realized upon sale. FYI, your activity does not fit the requirements of being engaged in a trade or business activity. While the definition is documented in several places of the Code, I have attached Publication 519 which most accurately represents the application to your situation as you have described it. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p519/ch04.html#en_US_2016_publink1000222308", "In the US, the key to understanding the benefits of retirement accounts is to understand capital gains taxes and how they work. Retirement accounts are designed for making investments throughout your career, then after several decades of contributions, withdrawing that money to pay for your needs when your full-time employment has concluded. Normally when you invest money in a brokerage account, if the value of your investment increases, and you sell in less than a year, those investments are considered short-term gains and taxed as ordinary income. If you hold that same investment for over a year, the same investment is taxed at a lower capital gains rate (depending on which tax bracket you are in during that year, the amount due could be up to 20%, but much lower than your regular income tax rate). When you place your money in a retirement account, you are choosing to either pay the tax due on the income when you put it in the account, or put the money in tax free and pay the tax when you withdraw (these are called tax-deferred accounts). When you have money invested several decades, the raw dollar amount increases greatly, but inflation is also reducing the value of those dollars. Imagine you bought some bonds that payed 4% over 40 years, but inflation was 2% during those same years. When you sell those bonds 40 years later, you will owe capital gains on the entire gain even though half of the gain came from inflation. Retirement accounts allow you to buy and sell according to your investment needs and goals without any consideration about whether the gains are short-term or long-term, and they also allow you to pay taxes just once, either when you put it in, or when you take it out, with no worries about whether you're paying taxes on inflated gains.", "I will answer this question broadly for various jurisdictions, and also specifically for the US, given the OP's tax home: Generally, for any tax jurisdiction If your tax system relies on periodic prepayments through the year, and a final top-up/refund at the end of the year (ie: basically every country), you have 3 theoretical goals with how much you pre-pay: Specifically, for the U.S. All information gathered from here: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/estimated-taxes. In short, depending on your circumstance, you may need to pay quarterly estimated tax payments to avoid penalties on April 15th. Even if you won't be penalized, you, may benefit from doing so anyway (to force yourself to save the money necessary by April 15th). I have translated the general goals above, into US-specific advice:", "Your question is very broad. Whole books can and have been written on this topic. The right place to start is for you and your wife to sit down together and figure out your goals. Where do you want to be in 5 years, 25 years, 50 years? To quote Yogi Berra \"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else.\" Let's go backwards. 50 Years I'm guessing the answer is \"retired, living comfortably and not having to worry about money\". You say you work an unskilled government job. Does that job have a pension program? How about other retirement savings options? Will the pension be enough or do you need to start putting money into the other retirement savings options? Career wise, do you want to be working as in unskilled government jobs until you retire, or do you want to retire from something else? If so, how do you get there? Your goals here will affect both your 25 year plan and your 5 year plan. Finally, as you plan for death, which will happen eventually. What do you want to leave for your children? Likely the pension will not be transferred to your children, so if you want to leave them something, you need to start planning ahead. 25 Years At this stage in your life, you are likely talking, college for the children and possibly your wife back at work (could happen much earlier than this, e.g., when the kids are all in school). What do you want for your children in college? Do you want them to have the opportunity to go without having to take on debt? What savings options are there for your children's college? Also, likely with all your children out of the house at college, what do you and your wife want to do? Travel? Give to charity? Own your own home? 5 Years You mention having children and your wife staying at home with them. Can your family live on just your income? Can you do that and still achieve your 50 and 25 year goals? If not, further education or training on your part may be needed. Are you in debt? Would you like to be out of debt in the next 5-10 years? I know I've raised more questions than answers. This is due mostly to the nature of the question you've asked. It is very personal, and I don't know you. What I find most useful is to look at where I want to be in the near, mid and long term and then start to build a plan for how I get there. If you have older friends or family who are where you want to be when you reach their age, talk to them. Ask them how they got there. Also, there are tons of resources out there to help you. I won't suggest any specific books, but look around at the local library or look online. Read reviews of personal finance books. Read many and see how they can give you the advice you need to reach your specific goals. Good luck!", "First of all, never ask a realtor for advice. The realtor represents the SELLER. Blankip's advice above is by far the most accurate of the previous answers. The first step is to estimate the market. Look at past sales in the neighborhood over time, and from them estimate the prospects for the house at different time durations. Based on other sales, how fast do you think the house will sell at a given price? 60 days, 90 days, a year? If a house is high priced, that means the seller is prepared to wait. He is saying \"I am happy to wait a year to find somebody who will pay this.\" Next, who is the owner? Young professional? Retiring couple? Landlord? Flipper? Who is it? The more you know about the owner, the better. Everybody has a time table, you need to find out what that is. Next, what is YOUR timetable? You need the house by the end of the month, or by the end of the year, or never, which is it? Objectively rate the house. Plusses and minuses. Good houses are those which everybody else hates and you love. You will get the best price there. (Assuming you need to find a house in 90 days) Based on these considerations determine the lowest price you think the owner will accept in a 30-day time frame. Make a written offer with an address and email, no phone number. If he comes back with a counter offer, ignore it. If for some reason a realtor has your number and calls you, tell them \"My written offer speaks for itself. I have nothing further to say.\" It is very important not to entertain haggling or counter offers. Don't even pick up the phone. He has your WRITTEN offer. He can email or write you: I accept. If the 30-days elapse, move onto your #2 choice and make a more aggressive offer. If that doesn't work, go to choice #3 and accept the listed price. This strategy may seem counter-intuitive because the natural tendency for people is to want to communicate. Trust me: the way to succeed in a negotiation is to NOT communicate. Make your offer and that is that. That is the pro way to do it, and will produce the best result for a short-term situtation. Long term situation If you are an investor (\"flipper\"), or have a lot of time to wait/spend, you can use a different strategy which involves pressuring the seller. What you do here is find a property you want in which the owner is vulnerable. That means someone who is old, bankrupt, out of work, indicted and on their way to prison or already in prison, etc. Bank owned properties fall into this category. In this case you figure out the 6-month price or however long you are willing to work on it. Then you pester the person. Become their buddy. Visit them in prison. Take the bank officer to lunch. Show up on holidays. Invite them to Thanksgiving. Start a relationship. Every two weeks you pester them. Want to sell yet? Want to sell yet? You basically harass them until they capitulate. Maybe it takes 6 months. Maybe it takes 2 years. Eventually they will give in. By this means you can get a much better deal than in strategy 1 above, but it takes a lot more time and effort and is appropriate more for an investor.", "@Michael Kjörling answered why platinum is in demand like it is. But it missed some of the significant risks so I will address some of them. Platinum is much more rare than gold. But not because there is less platinum than gold just that the known existing platinum veins are smaller and more disbursed. So if a large vein were found it could have a significant impact on the availability and thus reducing price of platinum. New mining technologies are being developed every day. One of these could make exacting platinum from existing not platinum mines easier and more cost effective again increasing the availability and reducing the price of platinum. The vast majority of platinum use today is for emissions controls. There is a lot of money being thrown into research on green energy and technologies. One of these technologies or a side effect of other research could result in much more cost effective ways to combat emissions. Should that happen I would expect the price of platinum to fall through the floor and potentially never recover. I do not think any of these scenarios are imminent. But the risks that they present are so great it is important to consider them before investing.", "NeatReceipts come up from time to time on woot.com. You can read up on the discussions which typically include several user testimonials at these past sales:", "In most cases of purchases the general advice is to save the money and then make the purchase. Paying cash for a car is recommended over paying credit for example. For a house, getting a mortgage is recommended. Says who? These rules of thumb hide the actual equations behind them; they should be understood as heuristics, not as the word of god. The Basics The basic idea is, if you pay for something upfront, you pay some fixed cost, call it X, where as with a loan you need to pay interest payments on X, say %I, as well as at least fixed payments P at timeframe T, resulting in some long term payment IX. Your Assumption To some, this obviously means upfront payments are better than interest payments, as by the time the loan is paid off, you will have paid more than X. This is a good rule of thumb (like Newtonian's equations) at low X, high %I, and moderate T, because all of that serves to make the end result IX > X. Counter Examples Are there circumstances where the opposite is true? Here's a simple but contrived one: you don't pay the full timeframe. Suppose you die, declare bankruptcy, move to another country, or any other event that reduces T in such a way that XI is less than X. This actually is a big concern for older debtors or those who contract terminal illnesses, as you can't squeeze those payments out of the dead. This is basically manipulating the whole concept. Let's try a less contrived example: suppose you can get a return higher than %I. I can currently get a loan at around %3 due to good credit, but index funds in the long run tend to pay %4-%5. Taking a loan and investing it may pay off, and would be better than waiting to have the money, even in some less than ideal markets. This is basically manipulating T to deal with IX. Even less contrived and very real world, suppose you know your cash flow will increase soon; a promotion, an inheritance, a good market return. It may be better to take the loan now, enjoy whatever product you get until that cash flows in, then pay it all off at once; the enjoyment of the product will make the slight additional interest worth it. This isn't so much manipulating any part of the equation, it's just you have different goals than the loan. Home Loan Analysis For long term mortgages, X is high, usually higher than a few years pay; it would be a large burden to save that money for most people. %I is also typically fairly low; P is directly related to %I, and the bank can't afford to raise payments too much, or people will rent instead, meaning P needs to be affordable. This does not apply in very expensive areas, which is why cities are often mostly renters. T is also extremely long; usually mortgages are for 15 or 30 years, though 10 year options are available. Even with these shorter terms, it's basically the longest term loan a human will ever take. This long term means there is plenty of time for the market to have a fluctuation and raise the investments current price above the remainder of the loan and interest accrued, allowing you to sell at a profit. As well, consider the opportunity cost; while saving money for a home, you still need a place to live. This additional cost is comparable to mortgage payments, meaning X has a hidden constant; the cost of renting. Often X + R > IX, making taking a loan a better choice than saving up. Conclusion \"The general advice\" is a good heuristic for most common human payments; we have relatively long life spans compared to most common payments, and the opportunity cost of not having most goods is relatively low. However, certain things have a high opportunity cost; if you can't talk to HR, you can't apply for jobs (phone), if you can't get to work, you can't eat (car), and if you have no where to live, it's hard to keep a job (house). For things with high opportunity costs, the interest payments are more than worth it.", "Stock portfolios have diversifiable risk and undiversifiable risk. The market rewards investors for taking undiversifiable risk (e.g. owning an index of oil producing companies) and does not reward investors for assuming diversifiable risk (e.g. owning a single oil producing company). The market will not provide investors with any extra return for owning a single oil company when they can buy an oil index fund at no additional cost. Similarly, the market will not reward you for owning a small-cap index fund when you can purchase a globally diversified / capitalization diversified index fund at no additional cost. This article provides a more detailed description. The Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund is a much better staring point for an equity portfolio. You will need to make sure that the asset allocation of your overall portfolio (e.g. stocks, bonds, P2P lending, cash) is consistent with your time horizon (5-10 years).", "You could certainly look at the holdings of index funds and choose index funds that meet your qualifications. Funds allow you to see their holdings, and in most cases you can tell from the description whether certain companies would qualify for their fund or not based on that description - particularly if you have a small set of companies that would be problems. You could also pick a fund category that is industry-specific. I invest in part in a Healthcare-focused fund, for example. Pick a few industries that are relatively diverse from each other in terms of topics, but are still specific in terms of industry - a healthcare fund, a commodities fund, an REIT fund. Then you could be confident that they weren't investing in defense contractors or big banks or whatever you object to. However, if you don't feel like you know enough to filter on your own, and want the diversity from non-industry-specific funds, your best option is likely a 'socially screened' fund like VFTSX is likely your best option; given there are many similar funds in that area, you might simply pick the one that is most similar to you in philosophy." ]

[ "My go-to response whenever anyone asks me this is the Monevator table of platform fees. It looks a little complicated at first, but scroll past the table for a couple of paragraphs of useful info to help narrow down your search. The general tone of the page is geared more towards investors in index funds, but the fees on share-dealing are right there in the table too. There are also special notes if there are discounts for frequent traders and that sort of thing, so not too much passive-investor elitism on show!" ]

[ "Your credit card limit is nothing more than a simple number. When you purchase something, the merchant receives a number (i.e. the amount of the transaction) from your card company (e.g. Visa) in their bank account, and that number is subtracted from your limit (added to your balance). The amount is recorded, and isn't changed, so that's how they get the \"exact\" amount you paid. Transferring a number is easier than the retailer having to wait for cash to get from you to your card company to them. Moving numbers around is the basis of the modern financial system. And yes, it is always a risk to let someone else have your credit card number. An untrustworthy company/person may use it to charge you without your permission, or if they have your full details they could use it as if they were you. With a reputable retailer like Amazon, the main risk is data theft: If a security hole is found in Amazon's system, someone could steal your credit card info and misuse it.", "Naturally the advice from JoeTaxpayer and dsimcha is correct, every situation is different. I will get reckless, go nuts and make a recommendation! You are young, childless for the time being. Do the following with your money: ALTERNATE IDEA for #6 Fix yourself up for the long term first, then have a bit of fun, then get out of the house debt. In that order.", "No, they are not recession proof. Assume several companies, that issued bonds in the fund, go bankrupt. Those bonds could be worthless, they could miss principle payments, or they could be restructured. All would mean a decline in value. When the economy shrinks (which is what a recession is) how does the Fed respond? By lowering interest rates. This makes current bonds more valuable as presumably they were issued at a higher rate, thus the recession proof prejudice. However, there is nothing to stop a company (in good financial shape) from issuing more bonds to pay the par value on high-interest bonds, thus refinancing their debt. Sort of like how the bank feels when one refinances the mortgage for a lower rate. The thing that troubles me the most is that rates have been low for a long time. What happens if we have a recession now? How does the Fed fix it? I am not sure exactly what the fallout would be, but it could be significant. If you are troubled, you should look for sectors that would be hurt and helped by a Trump-induced recession. Move money away from those that will be hurt. Typically aggressive growth companies are hurt (during recessions), so you may want to move money away from them. Typically established blue chip companies fare okay in a recession so you may want to move money toward them. Move some money to cash, and perhaps some towards bonds. All that being said, I'd keep some money in things like aggressive growth in case you are wrong.", "The forms get updated every year, and the software providers need to get approved by the IRS every year. \"Form is not yet finalized\" means that this year form hasn't been approved yet. IRS starts accepting returns on January 31st anyway, nothing to be worried about. Why are you nearing a deadline? The deadline for 1120 (corporate tax return) is 2 and 1/2 months after your corp year end, which if you're a calendar year corp is March 15th. If your year end is in November/December - you can use the prior year forms, those are finalized.", "The federal funds rate is one of the risk-free short-term rates in the economy. We often think of fixed income securities as paying this rate plus some premia associated with risk. For a treasury security, we can think this way: (interest rate) = (fed funds rate) + (term premium) The term premium is a bit extra the bond pays because if you hold a long term bond, you are exposed to interest rate risk, which is the risk that rates will generally rise after you buy, making your bond worth less. The relation is more complex if people have expectations of future rate moves, but this is the general idea. Anyway, generally speaking, longer term bonds are exposed to more interest rate risk, so they pay more, on average. For a corporate bond, we think this way: (interest rate) = (fed funds rate) + (term premium) + (default premium) where the default premium is some extra that the bond must pay to compensate the holder for default risk, which is the risk that the bond defaults or loses value as the company's prospects fall. You can see that corporate and government bonds are affected the same way (approximately, this is all hand-waving) by changes in the fed funds rate. Now, that all refers to the rates on new bonds. After a bond is issued, its value falls if rates rise because new bonds are relatively more attractive. Its value rises if rates on new bonds falls. So if there is an unexpected rise in the fed funds rate and you are holding a bond, you will be sad, especially if it is a long term bond (doesn't matter if it's corporate or government). Ask yourself, though, whether an increase in fed funds will be unexpected at this point. If the increase was expected, it will already be priced in. Are you more of an expert than the folks on wall-street at predicting interest rate changes? If not, it might not make sense to make decisions based on your belief about where rates are going. Just saying. Brick points out that treasuries are tax advantaged. That is, you don't have to pay state income tax on them (but you do pay federal). If you live in a state where this is true, this may matter to you a little bit. They also pay unnaturally little because they are convenient for use as a cash substitute in transactions and margining (\"convenience yield\"). In general, treasuries just don't pay much. Young folk like you tend to buy corporate bonds instead, so they can make money on the default and term premia.", "The benefits of pooling your money with others: The drawbacks of pooling your money with others: Practically Speaking - I say go for it. You stand to gain a lot of knowledge about how money works without having too much on the line. Good luck!", "I am not going to discuss legality, because with family members you are able to give a lot of guidance and assistance without running into legal issues. The biggest problem is that when they transfer the funds to you and you invest the money, all the tax rates and tax limits are determined by your situation; plus you have more investments than you should have so you hit those limits and brackets quicker. For example: In the United states a person can put $5,500 or $6,500 into a IRA or Roth IRA each year. If you combine the funds for three with your funds then you are giving up three quarters of the amount that you can invest in that type of account. The decision regarding Roth or not depends on age and income level. But now their decision is related to what is best based on your situation. The ability to even deduct IRA deposits would be based on your situation. Of course for taxable accounts the tax rate is determined by your income, not theirs. If they want you to have the ability to make investment decisions for them, then power of attorney is the way to go. The money is deposited in their name, and all the rules and tax rates are determined by their situation. You make sure they have all the information they need to login and review the accounts, but you make the all the moves within and between accounts.", "Depends on how you measure liquidity. There's papers out there that approach this very question. Measured in order book spreads for a consolidated $100m trade, I'd say the second biggest market is FX swaps, followed or par'd by the money market (government bonds). If you disallow OTC venues, it's most definitely exchange listed government bonds. If, however, you happen to think in terms of sheer volume per time, the most liquid market phase could be considered the NYSE closing auction, as you can move billions in a matter of minutes, or expressed in speed terms: several m$/s (million dollars per second). You should pick a definition and we can provide you with a more accurate list of candidates and actual data.", "No. The full text of the Landlord-Tenant Act (specifically, section 554.614 of Act 348 of the year 1972) makes no mention of this. Searching the law for \"interest\" doesn't yield anything of interest (pardon the pun). Specifically, section 554.604 of the same law states that: (1) The security deposit shall be deposited in a regulated financial institution. A landlord may use the moneys so deposited for any purposes he desires if he deposits with the secretary of state a cash bond or surety bond written by a surety company licensed to do business in this state and acceptable to the attorney general to secure the entire deposits up to $50,000.00 and 25% of any amount exceeding $50,000.00. The attorney general may find a bond unacceptable based only upon reasonable criteria relating to the sufficiency of the bond, and shall notify the landlord in writing of his reasons for the unacceptability of the bond. (2) The bond shall be for the benefit of persons making security deposits with the landlord. A person for whose benefit the bond is written or his legal representative may bring an action in the district, common pleas or municipal court where the landlord resides or does business for collection on the bond. While it does sound like the landlord is required to deposit the money in a bank or other secured form, e.g. the Secretary of State, he/she isn't required to place it in an account that will earn interest.", "short answer: any long term financial planning (~10yrs+). e.g. mortgage and retirement planning. long answer: inflation doesn't really matter in short time frames. on any given day, you might get a rent hike, or a raise, or the grocery store might have a sale. inflation is really only relevant over the long term. annual inflation is tiny (2~4%) compared to large unexpected expenses(5-10%). however, over 10 years, even your \"large unexpected expenses\" will still average out to a small fraction of your spending (5~10%) compared to the impact of compounded inflation (30~40%). inflation is really critical when you are trying to plan for retirement, which you should start doing when you get your first job. when making long-term projections, you need to consider not only your expected nominal rate of investment return (e.g. 7%) but also subtract the expected rate of inflation (e.g. 3%). alternatively, you can add the inflation rate to your projected spending (being sure to compound year-over-year). when projecting your income 10+ years out, you can use inflation to estimate your annual raises. up to age 30, people tend to get raises that exceed inflation. thereafter, they tend to track inflation. if you ever decide to buy a house, you need to consider the impact of inflation when calculating the total cost over a 30-yr mortgage. generally, you can expect your house to appreciate over 30 years in line with inflation (possibly more in an urban area). so a simple mortgage projection needs to account for interest, inflation, maintenance, insurance and closing costs. you could also consider inflation for things like rent and income, but only over several years. generally, rent and income are such large amounts of money it is worth your time to research specific alternatives rather than just guessing what market rates are this year based on average inflation. while it is true that rent and wages go up in line with inflation in the long run, you can make a lot of money in the short run if you keep an eye on market rates every year. over 10-20 years your personal rate of inflation should be very close to the average rate when you consider all your spending (housing, food, energy, clothing, etc.)." ]

[ "You are planning on signing a contract for, likely, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and plan on paying, likely, tens of thousands of dollars in a deposit. For a house that is not built yet. This isn't particularly unusual, lots of people do this. But, you need a lawyer. Now, before you sign anything. Your agent may be able to recommend a lawyer, but beware; your agent may have a conflict of interest here." ]

[ "I would try to avoid mixing business expenditure with personal expenditure so a second credit card might be a good idea. That said, I did get a business credit card for my company in the UK as I didn't want to be personally liable for the money that was spent on the business card (even though I owned 100% of the business) in case things went horribly wrong. As I didn't fancy signing a personal guarantee, this meant that the limit was quite low but it was good enough in most cases.", "Firstly, it isn't so generous. It is a win-win, but the bank doesn't have to mail me a free box of checks with my new account, or offer free printing to compete for my business. They already have the infrastructure to send out checks, so the actual cost for my bank to mail a check on my behalf is pretty minimal. It might even save them some cost and reduce exposure. All the better if they don't actually mail a check at all. Per my bank Individuals and most companies you pay using Send Money will be mailed a paper check. Your check is guaranteed to arrive by the delivery date you choose when you create the payment. ... A select number of companies–very large corporations such as telecoms, utilities, and cable companies–are part of our electronic biller network and will be paid electronically. These payments arrive within two business days... So the answer to your question depend on what kind of bill pay you used. If it was an electronic payment, there isn't a realistic possibility the money isn't cashed. If your bank did mail a paper check, the same rules would apply as if you did it yourself. (I suppose it would be up to the bank. When I checked with my bank's support this was their answer.) Therefore per this answer: Do personal checks expire? [US] It is really up to your bank whether or not they allow the check to be cashed at a later date. If you feel the check isn't cashed quickly enough, you would have to stop payment and contact whoever you were trying to pay and perhaps start again. (Or ask them to hustle and cash the check before you stop it.) Finally, I would bet a dime that your bank doesn't \"pre-fund\" your checks. They are just putting a hold on the equivalent money in your account so you don't overdraw. That is the real favor they do for you. If you stopped the check, your money would be unfrozen and available. EDIT Please read the comment about me losing a dime; seems credible.", "Stock dilution is legal because, in theory, the issuance of new shares shouldn't affect actual shareholder value. The other answers have explained fairly well why this is so. In practice, however, the issuance of new shares can destroy shareholder value. This normally happens when the issuing company: In these cases, the issuance of more shares merely reduces each shareholder's stake in the company without building proportional shareholder value.", "The word you're looking for is usury - the crime of lending money at rates above an amount set by law.", "One thing that has not been pointed out as a disadvantage of using Credit Cards: people tend to spend more. You can see This Study, and this one, plus about 500 others. On average people tend to spend about 17% more with credit cards then with cash. This amount dwarphs any perks one gets by having a credit card. The safest way to use one is to only use them for purchases where you cannot make a decision to spend more. One example would be for utility bills (that don't charge a fee) or at the gas pump. Using them at Amazon might have you upgrade your purchase or add some extra items. Using them at restaurants might encourage you to order an extra drink or two. Using them at the coffee shop might have you super size your coffee or add a pastry. Of course this extra spending could lead you into a debt cycle exacerbating the financial hit many struggle with. Please tread carefully if you decide to use them.", "Suppose I purchase $10,000 worth of a particular share today. If the person(s) I am purchasing the shares from paid $9,000 for those shares, then I replacing their $9,000 investment with my $10,000 investment. This is a net inflow of $1,000 into the market. Similarly, if the person(s) I am purchasing the shares from paid $11,000 for those shares, then their $11,000 investment is being replace by my $10,000 investment. This is a net outflow of $1,000 out of the market. The aggregate of all such inflows and outflows in the net inflow/outflow into the market over a given period of time. (Here we are ignoring the effects of new share issues.)", "Certainly no one knows in advance how much a stock is going to swing around. However, there are measures of how much it has swung around in the past, and there are people who will estimate the probability. First of all, there's a measure of an individual stock's volatility, commonly referred to as \"beta\". A stock with a beta of 1 tends to rise and fall about as much as the market at large. A stock with a beta of 2, in the meantime, would rise 10% when the market is up 5%. These are, of course, historical averages. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(finance) Secondly, you can get an implied measure of volatility expectations by looking at options pricing. If a stock is particularly volatile, the chance of a big price move will be baked into the price of the stock options. (Note also that other things affect options pricing, such as the time value of money.) For an options-based measure of the volatility of the whole market, see the Volatility Index aka the \"Fear Gauge\", VIX. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIX Chart: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%5EVIX Looking at individual stocks as a group (and there's an oxymoron for you), individual stocks are definitely much more likely to have big moves than the market. Besides Netflix, consider the BP oil spill, or the Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima incident (yow!). I don't have any detailed statistics on quantitatively how much, mind you, but in application, a standard piece of advice says not to put more than 5% of your portfolio in a single company's stock. Diversification protects you. (Alternatively, if you're trying to play Mr. Sophisticated Stock-Picker instead of just buying an index fund, you can also buy insurance through stock options: hedging your bets. Naturally, this will eat up part of your returns if your pick was a good one).", "Here's what Investopedia says about payouts for ex-dividend stocks: A stock trades ex-dividend on or after the ex-dividend date (ex-date). At this point, the person who owns the security on the ex-dividend date will be awarded the payment, regardless of who currently holds the stock. After the ex-date has been declared, the stock will usually drop in price by the amount of the expected dividend. Read more: Ex-Dividend Definition | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/ex-dividend.asp#ixzz4Nl4J3s4k I hope this helps. Good luck!", "I think it all boils down to which is your priority. So it all depends. People that want the stock sooOoooo badly will definitely go for the market order.", "If you do this, you own a stock worth $1, with a basis of $2. The loss doesn't get realized until the shares are sold. Of course, we hope you see the stock increase above that price, else, why do this?" ]