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4167 | "I am not aware of any place that the tax forms ask, ""How many people live in your house?"" They ask how many dependants you have, and not everyone who lives in your house is your dependant. There are very specific rules about that. If your girlfriend is being claimed as a dependent on her parents' tax return, then she cannot also be claimed on anyone else's return, and there's no need to investigate further. To claim someone as a dependent, they have to meet a number of conditions. I am not a lawyer. See IRS Publication 17. But the gist of it is that they must, (a) either be a relative (there's a list of what sorts of relatives qualify) or live with you all year; (b) Living with you must not violate local law; (c) Must make less than $4000 per year; and (d) You must provide over half of their support. Your girlfriend may meet the ""live with you all year"" or maybe not. But the real stumper is likely to be (d). Unless your parents are paying her tuition, they almost certainly don't meet this test." |
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4168 | "For ""smaller trades"", I'm not sure you can beat FXCM.com, a large, dedicated FX trading shop with extremely tight spreads, and a ""Micro"" account that you can open for as little as $25(US). Their ""main"" offering has a minimum account size of $2k (US), but recommends an account size of $10k or more. But they also have a ""micro"" account, which can be opened for as little as $25, with a $500 or higher recommended size. I haven't used them personally, but they're well known in the discount FX space. One strong positive indicator, in my opinion, is that they sell an online FX training course for $19.99. Why is that positive? It means that their margins on your activity are small, and they're not trying to get you ""hooked"". If that were not the case, they'd give the course away, since they'd be able to afford to, and they would expect to make so much of your subsequent activity. They do have some free online materials, too, but not the video stuff. Another plus is that they encourage you to use less leverage than they allow. This does potentially serve their interests, by getting more of your deposits with them, but a lot of FX shops advertise the leverage to appeal to users' hope to make more faster, which isn't a great sign, in my opinion. Note that the micro account has no human support; you can only get support via email. On the other hand, the cost to test them out is close to nil; you can literally open an account for $25." |
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4171 | "It has semantic value (because we culturally believe gold is valuable). There is a very important point here. Gold and many other coin metals. This ""semantic value"" is enshrined in law through the special tax status of coin metals. You can buy a kilo of gold and not pay sales tax. You can't buy a kilo of iron or tin and do the same. This is the important part because investors shouldn't care about semantics. I read that the taxable status varies by state or nation, so you need to be very careful. It's possible to evade taxes without realizing it. It also doesn't necessarily exempt you from the form of gold. An ingot should be tax exempt. A collector's coin may or may not be, depending on your local laws and the difference between the value of the weight of the gold, and the value of the form of the coin." |
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4180 | "I don't understand the worker mentality of accepting to be part of pension plans. The downside risk to you is ridiculously high -- you're basically making an investment that the next 30 years of corporate management and the company as a whole are going to be good. Pension plans are among the first to go.. employees that retired 20-30 years ago add no current value to the company, unless you consider that current employees are motivated by the idea of a pension or working for a company that ""takes care"" of its employees. Also, part of the reason pension funds are blowing up is that the risk-free return rate is less than 1%. I don't know who to blame or thank for that, but with government bonds now trading at negative yields in real and sometimes even absolute terms (see: Swiss yields), what else are you supposed to do?" |
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4181 | "As other responders said, you can certainly roll over multiple 401(k) into a single account. An added benefit of such rollover (besides the ease of tracking) is that you can shop around for your Rollover IRA provider and find the one that gives you the specific mutual funds that you want to invest in, the lowest expenses, etc. - in short, find the best fit to your priorities. There are also ""lemon"" 401(k) plans and if you are in one of them, get out! And rollover is the way out. There is also one possibility to keep an eye on as it happens rarely, but it does happen - rolling a 401(k) over into another 401(k). I've done it once when I started a job at a company that had a great 401(k) with a good selection of low-cost mutual funds. I rolled the 401(k) from one previous job in to this 401(k) to take advantage of it. At the same time I kept a Rollover IRA, combining the 401(k) from all other jobs; it had more investment options and provided some flexibility." |
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4188 | "You will make a profit in nominal dollars (or nominal units of whatever currency you used to buy the token). Whether you'll make a profit in real dollars depends on inflation, and in practice whether it would be possible to sell your existing tokens to someone else for the new price. Suppose when the price was 50 U (50 ""units"", since you didn't specify a currency), you bought one token. Today you can either spend 52 U for a token, and get a liter of milk, or you can spend your existing token (for which you paid 50 U) and get a liter of milk. It looks like you are making a profit of 2 U by spending your token. However, whether that profit is real or illusory depends on what else you could do with the token. For instance, suppose that, since the price of a token is now 52 U, you will have no trouble finding someone who wants to buy your token from you for 52 U. If you sell your token for 52 U, you'll still only be able to buy 1 L of milk. So if you measure your wealth in milk, you have made no profit: in the past you had a token representing 1 L of milk, and today you still have a token representing 1 L of milk. Suppose now that in the past, when a token cost 50 U, a hamburger also cost 50 U. Suppose further that a hamburger now costs 52 U. So you can sell your token for 52 U, but that 52 U will still only buy you one hamburger. So, again, if you measure your wealth in hamburgers, your have made no profit. In the past, you could have sold your token and bought a hamburger; today, you can still sell your token and buy a hamburger, and you'll have nothing left over, so you have gained nothing. If, on the other hand, the price of a hamburger today is still 50 U, then you call sell your token for 52 U, buy a hamburger for 50 U, and still have 2 U left over. You have made a profit. What this all goes to show is that, in practice, the idea of ""profit"" depends on the overall economy, and whether you could exchange the currency units you have in your possession for a greater quantity of goods than you could in the past. Whether this is possible depends on the relative changes in price of various goods. In other words, if you get your money by selling Product A, and later you buy Product B, you may or may not make a profit depending on how the prices of the two products moved relative to one another. Also, in your hypothetical setup, the ""currency"" (the token) is directly linked to the value of a single good, so you can always at least get 1 L of milk for your token. Most real currency is not bound to specific goods like your milk token, so it is possible for your currency to lose value in an absolute sense. For instance, suppose you sell a book for $5. The $5 is not a ""book token"" and you cannot rely on being able to exchange it for a book in the future; in the future, all books may cost $10, and the prices of all goods may rise similarly, so your currency will actually be worth less no matter how you try to use it. This could happen with the milk token if the milkman announces that henceforth 1 L of milk will cost 2 tokens; your existing token suddenly loses half its value. In sum, it is easy to calculate whether you made a profit in currency units. What is harder is to calculate whether you made a profit in ""real terms"" (often referred to as ""real dollars"" or ""inflation-adjusted dollars"", or the equivalent in your favorite currency). The reason this is hard is because the idea of ""real dollars"" is fundamentally linked to the possibility of exchanging currency for goods (and services), and so it depends what goods you're buying. Inflation statistics published by governments and the like use a ""basket"" of goods to approximate the overall price movements in the economy as a whole." |
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4208 | Raising money from real property is an ancient tradition which is prevalent throughout the world even today. Delaware, situated in the north- eastern region of USA is no exception to this. Delaware has a lot of good mortgage lenders and the one firm that tops the list is definitely highlands mortgage. They not only tell you what the best mortgage rates are today but also carry out a number of functions. |
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4223 | If the biggest flaw in the review is that one of the characters is probably made up and the book should therefore be considered fiction instead of nonfiction, then this is an incomplete review. The author points out many good items about the book and the only negative he states is the nonexistence of a character, and then he states that the book has flaws (implying multiple, not single). |
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4239 | They did. This was a tech company. Turnover's high especially for strong employees. Management expects this so that doesn't really change their approach. One of the layoffs was open ended. They just announced there would be layoffs throughout the company. Usually there was a single day when everyone was cut. This one dragged on and on. If your group wasn't hit yet, everyone was stressed wondering when it was coming. If your group was already hit, the manager would say you still weren't safe cuz it could come around again (which did happen to some groups). Managers either didn't know when the layoff was over or weren't allowed to tell. After a few months we were sure it was over but then another nearby group would get hit. It was horrible. Productivity was way down. Finally after about 3 months, they announced the layoffs were over. (And then had another layoff later that year). So, yeah, it sucked. |
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4241 | Inspectors, permits, poor planning, and a lack of incentives/consequences. If inspectors are needed for so much bs, local government needs to hire more of them. Permits need to be processed in a timely manner. Engineers and committees need to make decisions quicker. Liquidated damages for missing completion dates and early completion bonuses work! |
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4247 | This is the exact reason why I think we will have self driving cars really soon. I would love to just surf the internet on my way to work and not have to drive. Of course I only work 6 blocks away, but I know many people have a 30+ minute commute. |
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4269 | It's safe to say that for mature companies, with profits that have been steady, and steadily growing, that a multiple of earnings can come into play. It's not identical between companies or even industries, but for consumer staples, for instance, you'll see a clustering around a certain P/E. On the other hand, there are companies like FaceBook, 18 months ago, trading at 20, now at 70 with a 110 P/E. Did the guys valuing the stock simply get it wrong then or is it wrong now? Contrast this with KO (Coca-cola) a 20 P/E and 3.2% dividend, PG (Proctor and Gamble) 21 P/E, 3% dividend. Funny though, a $1M valuation for $50K in profit may be Shark ridiculous, but a $1B valuation on a $50M company with great prospects, i.e. a pipeline of new products in growing markets, is a steal. Disclosure I have no positions in the mentioned stocks. |
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4290 | P/E is the number of years it would take for the company to earn its share price. You take share price divided by annual earnings per share. You can take the current reported quarterly earnings per share times 4, you can take the sum of the past four actual quarters earnings per share or you can take some projected earnings per share. It has little to do with a company's actual finances apart from the earnings per share. It doesn't say much about the health of a company's balance sheet, and is definitely not an indicator for bankruptcy. It's mostly a measure of the market's assumptions of the company's ability to grow earnings or maintain it's current earnings growth. A share price of $40 trading for a P/E ratio of 10 means it will take the company 10 years to earn $40 per share, it means there's current annual earnings per share of $4. A different company may also be earning $4 per share but trade at 100 times earnings for a share price of $400. By this measure alone neither company is more or less healthy than the other. One just commands more faith in the future growth from the market. To circle back to your question regarding a negative P/E, a negative P/E ratio means the company is reporting negative earnings (running at a loss). Again, this may or may not indicate an imminent bankruptcy. Increasing balance sheet debt with decreasing revenue and or earnings and or balance sheet assets will be a better way to assess bankruptcy risk. |
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4296 | I tried Aldi the other day...hated it. Very little brand selection (everything is Aldi-owned brands) and meat prices were about the same as Kroger's. I bought the Aldi-owned brands of foods I normally get at Walmart/Kroger and was not happy with the tastes of many of them. I much prefer the branded options at Walmart and Kroger for my grocery shopping. |
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4312 | Your point is that 20k is very common as bonus *at what level*? With ~6 or more years experience at Accenture it's also a common bonus, just not at entry-level. The data on glassdoor.com for Accenture partners is all over the place, see: http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Accenture-Salaries-E4138.htm?sort.sortType=BP&sort.ascending=false No way in hell any partner is getting paid 60k or even 160k, for example. The top figure looks sort of accurate but there are so few data points, collected in no verifiable way, with such huge variance, that I can't consider it reliable. |
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4331 | Typically tax treaties will cover double taxation (taxes paid in one jurisdiction are deducted in the other jurisdiction so there is no double tax). You'll need an accountant and attorney with experience in international business setups to confirm and determine which jurisdiction gets first priority of tax payment. In short, this is the wrong place to get a good answer. Talk to (and pay for) professionals to get you properly set up. |
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4340 | Contact AmEx. They are the only ones who might have a current list. |
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4375 | "From the Cato Institute: > Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says that Congress shall have the power ""to establish Post Offices and post Roads."" Thus, the Constitution allows the government to get involved in postal services, but that doesn’t mean that the government has to be involved, let alone be granted a monopoly over mail. Doesn't say they can't privatize it here, but that's the only thing I've found so far. [This also says it CAN be done]( http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/why-u-k-privatize-postal-u-t-195031232.html)." |
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4379 | Yeah, the Ford F-150 has been the top selling vehicle for over 30 years. Fun fact, farmers who receive money from the government usually burn excess cash in December. A lot of them just replace their fleets each year. |
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4392 | Italy on its own cannot decide to turn to money printing, only the European Central Bank (ECB) can make this decision. I'm assuming that the ECB will not turn to printing money for this. Italy will have to get the 5 Billion euros from its own budget somewhere, but the amount is low enough that they should be able to do that without much problems. |
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4397 | "For a lot of small beef farmers (""hobby"" farms like ours) the price of fertilizer is already high enough that it's proving effective in maintaining or possibly reducing costs. The most successful examples I've seen have equal or higher carrying capacity (cattle per acre) for less monetary cost by moving to ""older"" methods of grazing. The tradeoff is that rotation takes more time to do than open field & hay grazing. There's also lower capital equipment costs; tractor, mower, and bailer are the major equipment for a small producer so being able to do without or use smaller ones is good. And less maintenance on that equipment. We're not experts by any means, and our farm isn't anywhere near its maximum carry capacity, but every large/full-time farmer I know that has done it has had good results." |
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4404 | I love when my professors would shit on greedy bankers during the housing market crash. One time, I made analogy of greedy banks to greedy education and the next bubble to pop which will crash the economy will be because of education costs and my professor flipped out! He told me college was a great investment and when I told him people said the same about homes he threw me out of class...never did get a refund either! |
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4412 | If you can pay it then there's no need to involve a credit counselor. After all, their main role when you use them is to negotiate payments with creditors so you can pay off your debts. In this case you have the funds to pay, so why make it any more complicated than it needs to be? To be honest, a 597 score is going to make it tough for you to find auto financing. Whatever options you find, they'll charge pretty steep interest rates and have high payments because they'll keep you on as short a payment term as your finances will allow. I would strongly suggest that you work on improving your score for awhile before trying to buy a car. If you can, buy a car for cash. You might not get much, but it will solve your transportation problem while you work on resolving your credit issues. Using a credit counselor won't have any impact on your credit score as far as the debts are concerned. What will make a difference is not having them show as open collections, which is pretty bad. You'll still take a hit for having gone to collections in the first place, but paying them off will mitigate at least some of the effect. I hope this helps. Good luck! |
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4414 | For example, the apartment complex could’ve relied on a water source heat pump system which can provide both warm and cool air at the same time. As the name implies, this system relies on water held between 60 to 90°F, which is then pumped throughout the complex and into individual compressor units in each room. |
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4416 | There is no answer to Global warming, unless you would like to quadruple energy prices, abolish air travel and international shipping. Obama's EPA estimates 700 trillion dollars to lower earth's temp one degree. Good thing global warming is a tax hoax. The only thing to fear about global warming is it's remedies, which will do nothing but increase energy prices, demolish economies and jobs and kill third world poor by restricting access to food and medicine. |
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4429 | This is a purely numerical statement that you should be able to check (and you CPA friend should be able to prove, if true). The general advice, I think, is that you should not use your retirement funds this way, but general advice does not apply equally well to everyone. You didn't give enough information for us to compute the answer, so you're on your own there. If you do this (or have the CPA do it), make sure that it accounts for all pluses and minuses that you'll have. On the minus side, you get any direct penalties in addition to potential loss of right to contribute for a period of time, so make sure you consider both aspects, especially to any degree that you would lose an employer contribution or match. Also consider the fact that the money already in is tax advantaged, and you won't be able to replace that amount later. So there will be a compounding effect to what was lost. (This may or may not be balanced by a mortgage interest deduction down the road - My guess is that it will not, but, again, the details of your situation may dictate a different path. The mortgage interest deduction decreases each year as you pay more principal whereas the compounding from being tax deferred tends to increase each year.) |
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4444 | "I'd answer it this way: What do you want to do? I'd say any amount is acceptable from as low as $100. When you look at the specific ""tree"" of investing paying $5 for a $100 seems unacceptable. However when observing the ""forest"" what does it matter if you ""waste"" $5 on a commission? Your friends (and maybe you) probably waste more than $5 multiple times per day. For them buying a latte might empower them, if buying another share of HD, for a similar cost, empowers you than do it. In the end who will be better off? Studies show that the more important part of building a significant investment portfolio is actually doing it. Rate of return and the cost of investing pales in comparison to actually doing it. How many of your peers are doing similar things? You are probably in very rare company. If it makes you happy, it is a wonderful way to spend your money." |
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4451 | "> If an individual wants insurance My argument is that this is the wrong way of looking at the issue. It isn't a question of wanting insurance. Instead, the question should be *""if an individual wishes to remain healthy...""* or ""*if an individual wants access to healthcare...""* Who doesn't? Ensuring good health is a national good, just as providing an education, police and fire services, and national defense are. Full stop." |
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4457 | From WePay (GoFundMe's payment processor) support. I received only gifts and donations. Will I receive a Form 1099-K? As of 2015, the IRS has clarified that WePay is not required to send a Form 1099-K with respect to payments that are made solely as gifts or donations. The purpose of Form 1099-K is to report payments for the provision of goods or services, which may be subject to tax. Gifts and donations typically are not reported as income by recipients, so it is not necessary to send them a Form 1099-K. https://support.wepay.com/hc/en-us/articles/203609483-Tax-Reporting |
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4462 | Yeah, but he got a lot of karma as well. If a lot of people go read an article and like it some will give an upvote. Someone told me that only about one out of ten page views give a vote, ie, if you got 5 upvotes and 5 downvotes then probably 100 people clicked on your link. So if he had a karma of 150k, he'd produced a million and half page views. But I'm sorry The Atlantic got involved in this because I always liked them and used to subscribe. I'm disappointed they would get involved in cheating. If they did they need to be banned. |
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4495 | Up to RS50,000 is exempt from gift taxes. In the US, if one provides more than half the expenses for a relative, they may be a dependent. I don't know the India rules. |
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4539 | Minor blip for Snap but their investors should take note that SNS services different than devices. Snap might find a niche device to supplement their media model but careful before betting to much on it. Snap probably lose a few million $ but will hopefully prevent a larger debacle later. |
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4541 | That's what I have been trying to do. I do every practice test after each chapter and if I do great then on tot he next. If not, back to reading it again. What I have been seeing a lot on the new CSC test's is less math and more memorization. So IIROC mandate questions, derivatives, define a foreign bond etc. |
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4602 | This is why I have gone back to broadcast TV, because cable TV costs a lot of money for something that is no better. It doesn't seem that long ago that there were no commercials on cable channels. Now there are MORE commercials on cable channels than on broadcast TV. Remember when the scifi channel was full of science fiction instead of...wrestling? Remember when MTV was about music? When Discovery was full of science programming, when A&E was about arts and education and the History channel was about more than Nazis, UFOs and imaginary animals? Now it's all just crap and why pay for that? |
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4604 | This person could buy another car at any moment without any money problems, so I don't really see any point in insuring, especially with such a ridiculously high price compared to the extremely low risk. Convenience. If you self-insure, then an accident means that you have to make arrangements to get the car towed, fixed, evaluated, etc. If you buy insurance, your insurer would prefer to do all that. They argue with the mechanic over prices, the lawyer over liability, etc. And of course, rich people need more liability insurance than other people, not less. So part of that $1400 is probably money that your friend would have to pay regardless. |
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4611 | I know exactly what you are talking about. You may like |
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4612 | A few thoughts off the top of my head: Advantages of more than 20% down: Disadvantages of more than 20% down: |
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4645 | If glass steagall had minimal impact on bank behaviour, that means the great recession was unavoidable. What sort of legislation would it take to ensure shitfests like this *will* be avoidable in the future? Outlaw predatory loans? Lynch all bankers and start over from scratch? |
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4666 | @sharam - big question. I am going to answer part of it, but not as directly as you might like. You mention 4-6 cents per unit per month, but fail to give a unit price, so it is hard to tell how much return you are really looking for. Given the amount you have to invest, depending on your time horizon, you will do much better outside of mutual funds. Many funds in this category have fees in the 2% range. You actually have enough money to have a diversified portfolio on your own, without recourse to funds. If you want to use a fund-like product, I encourage you to look at well established ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). They are basically like mutual funds that trade on the open stock market. One good example in this category is iShares XDV Good Luck |
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4673 | I would consider it a personal decision based on your individual situation. When I was younger and short on cash tipping sucked. On a 6 figure income with no kids, I can leave 25% regularly without an issue. But everyone's got a different situation. I think 15% should be minimum but life isn't that black and white. Do what you think is fair and good. |
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4687 | Yes, he has done a few companies over the course of his career and done fairly well, at the time of his teaching the course he had two companies operating under him and would also consult (for free) for another few that started up as a result of the course. He was pretty wealthy but he did say that he really wanted to some day buy himself a brand new aston martin so not wealthy enough to do that yet hahah. The other profs in the entrepreneurship stream of commerce at my school were all quite successful in their ventures. The program expects students to have launched a company by the time they graduate with ~1 million in revenue (not profit). But that's a soft target. I only took a couple of the courses as electives out of personal interest. It was pretty interesting and the main value i got from the courses was that it really shows you how to think about new ideas and how viable they may be. They really get your mind working a bit differently in those classes. But yeah I totally agree with you, when there's profs teaching something they have zero practical experience in, especially a subject that really demands it like entrepreneurship, it's wack. My program overall was quite good for that though. I was in the accounting stream and I think almost all of my accounting profs didnt even have masters, but they did have accounting designations and a lot of experience in private firms and public administration a lot of the time so they knew their shit really well. |
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4697 | I mentioned in other posts that it's not unreasonable that prices might rise slightly. Demand would go up and some labor costs would as well. To your point, I can say that prices would not go up 1:1, that's an absurd hypothesis that doesn't stand up to even a sniff test. |
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4734 | First let's define some terms. Your accrued benefit is a monthly benefit payable at your normal retirement age (usually 65). It is usually a life-only benefit but may have a number of years guaranteed or may have a survivor piece. It is defined by a plan formula (ie, it is a defined benefit). A lump sum is how much that accrued benefit is worth right now. Lump sums are based on applicable interest rates and mortality tables specified by the IRS (interest rates are released monthly, mortality annually). Your plan can either use the same interest rates for a whole year, or they can use new ones each month. Affecting your lump sum is whether your accrued benefit is payable now (immediately, you are age 65), or later (deferred, you are now age 30). For example, instead of being paid an annuity assume you are paid just one payment of $1,000 on your 65th birthday. The lump sum of that for a 65 year old would be $1,000 since there would be no interest discount, and no chance of dying before payment. For a 30 year old, at 4% interest the lump sum would be about $237 (including mortality discount). At age 36 the lump sum is $246. So the lump sum will get bigger just because you get older. Very important is the interest discount. At age 30 in the example, 2% interest would produce a $467 lump sum. And at 6% $122. The bigger the rate, the smaller the lump sum because interest helps an amount now grow bigger in the future. To complicate things, since 2008 the IRS bases lump sums on 3 different interest rates. The monthy annuity payments made within 5 years of the lump sum date use the 1st rate, past 5 and within 20 years use the 2nd rate, and past that use the 3rd rate. Since you are age 30, all of your monthly annuity payments would be made after 20 years, so that makes it simple since we'll only have to look at the 3rd rate. When you reach age 45 the 2nd rate will kick in. Here is the table of interest rates published by the IRS: http://www.irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/Minimum-Present-Value-Segment-Rates You'll find your rates above on the 2013 line for Aug-12. That means your lump sum is being made in 2013 and it is being based on the month August 2012. Most likely your plan will use the same rates for its entire plan year. But what is your plan year? If it is the calendar year, then you would have a 5 month lookback for the rates. But if is a September to August plan year with a 1 month lookback, the rates would have changed between August and September. Your August lump sum would be based on 4.52%, your September on would be based on 5.58% (see the All line for Aug-13). For comparison, a 30 year old with a $100 annuity payable at age 65 would have a lump sum value of $3,011 at 4.52%, but a lump sum value of $1,931 at 5.58%. The change in your accrued benefit by month will obviously have some impact on the lump sum value, but not as much as the change in interest rates if there is one. The amount they actually contribute to the plan has nothing to do with the value of the lump sum though. |
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4735 | "I keep spreadsheets that verify each $ distribution versus the rate times number of shares owned. For mutual funds, I would use Yahoo's historical data, but sometimes shows up late (a few days, a week?) and it isn't always quite accurate enough. A while back I discovered that MSN had excellent data when using their market price chart with dividends ""turned on,"" HOWEVER very recently they have revamped their site and the trusty URLs I have previously used no longer work AND after considerable browsing, I can no longer find this level of detail anywhere on their site !=( Happily, the note above led me to the Google business site, and it looks like I am ""back in business""... THANKS!" |
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4737 | Well, I'm sorry that you're so thin-skinned. Here's a simple logical relation that I think absolutely holds true: hard work is neither necessary nor sufficient for success. It's certainly to be valued, but not as a form of cult worship. There are so many people who are smarter, more tenacious and work harder than anyone you've ever known -- and they were cut down by malaria, murder, or a god damned piano falling on their heads. Them are the breaks. For every billionaire/famous person out there, there're at least 100 also-rans with analogous talent and prospects (at one point). Chance rules us all, and it takes NOTHING away from the hard-working to admit that. |
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4739 | "Some pros and cons to renting vs buying: Some advantages of buying: When you rent, the money you pay is gone. When you buy, assuming you don't have the cash to buy outright but get a mortgage, some of the payment goes to interest, but you are building equity. Ultimately you pay off the mortgage and you can then live rent-free. When you buy, you can alter your home to your liking. You can paint in the colors you like, put in the carpet or flooring you like, heck, tear down walls and alter the floor plan (subject to building codes and safety consideration, of course). If you rent, you are usually sharply limited in what alterations you can make. In the U.S., mortgage interest is tax deductible. Rent is not. Property taxes are deductible from your federal income tax. So if you have, say, $1000 mortgage vs $1000 rent, the mortgage is actually cheaper. Advantages of renting: There are a lot of transaction costs involved in buying a house. You have to pay a realtor's commission, various legal fees, usually ""loan origination fees"" to the bank, etc. Plus the way mortgages are designed, your total payment is the same throughout the life of the loan. But for the first payment you owe interest on the total balance of the loan, while the last payment you only owe interest on a small amount. So early payments are mostly interest. This leads to the conventional advice that you should not buy unless you plan to live in the house for some reasonably long period of time, exact amount varying with whose giving the advice, but I think 3 to 5 years is common. One mitigating factor: Bear in mind that if you buy a house, and then after 2 years sell it, and you discover that the sale price minus purchase price minus closing costs ends up a net minus, say, $20,000, it's not entirely fair to say ""zounds! I lost $20,000 by buying"". If you had not bought this house, presumably you would have been renting. So the fair comparison is, mortgage payments plus losses on the resale compared to likely rental payments for the same period." |
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4766 | While that's more true, I find as a person you're going to be much more happy and successful if you find a way to work without allowing another to be the block over you. I do not expect it of myself and do not expect it of others. You can function as your own block outside the pyramid. |
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4772 | "I'm not an expert by any means, but pretty much every source I've seen says that one year is far too short for any sort of real ""investment"". Most guides suggest that anything less than 3-5 years should stay in no-risk accounts like savings or CDs. If you need to be sure you get all of the money back after just one year, any sort of market-based investment (e.g., stocks or bonds) is too risky. One option is to buy I-bonds. You can buy up to $10,000 worth in a calendar year, and 12 months is the minimum holding period. The advantage of I bonds is that the interest rate is indexed to inflation, so that (roughly speaking) they cannot lose value in real dollars. Right now they pay 1.94% per year, which is substantially better than you're likely to get with a savings account or 12-month CD. This would come to $194 if you buy $10k of I Bonds. If you sell before holding them for five years (which you will under your plan) you forfeit the last 3 months' worth of interest. Even so, your effective rate will likely be better than a savings account or CD. (Also you could get 12 months' worth of interest if you're able to buy them slightly early and/or postpone your sabbatical slightly so that you hold them for 15 months.) Your other option is to find the best rate you can in a CD or savings account. Nerdwallet for instance suggests you could get between 1% and 1.1% for a $10k deposit in a 1-year CD, which would be about $100. As you can see, either way your money is not going to grow that much. You'll be gaining somewhere in the ballpark of a couple hundred dollars at most. There just isn't a way to earn more than that in one year without some risk of losing principal. (I'm assuming based on your Texas flag pic that you live in the USA. :-) To buy I Bonds you must be a US citizen, resident, or government employee.)" |
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4780 | "Most of the consumer products that you buy at retail these days are commodity priced, and have been for a long time. Margins are thin, so if there are retail salespeople milling about, their compensation isn't coming from the TV or computer with a 6% gross margin. It comes from the extended warranty programs (which are not insurance and do not have regulated underwriting standards), which are typically sold at a 65-95% gross margin. So that $200 warranty most likely costs the retailer $50. The salesman gets $15-25. I paid for my college education working at a CompUSA selling these things, along with other high margin items that paid commission. In most cases, you aren't getting much coverage anyway. Most products carry a 1 year warranty, and using most ""gold"" or ""platinum"" credit cards doubles a manufacturer's warranty by up to 1 year. So with most transactions, you are already walking away with a 2 year warranty. Warranties or service plans make sense for durable goods that cost alot and are expected to last a long time and/or require regular maintenance. I think they especially make sense if your budget is really tight -- a fixed maintenance cost can be an asset to some people because they can plan around it. Examples of this include: service plans for a furnace, boiler or water heater or a car if you're buying a manufacturer-endorsed service/maintenance plan from a dealer." |
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4783 | How do I withdraw a large sum from my bank and give it to a money management firm? Either write a check to the Money Management firm or wire transfer the funds to the account mentioned. |
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4789 | I can't think of anyone who seriously uses LinkedIn as a definitive source to find personnel. Maybe some bottom feeding firms in India, but that's about it. Judging by the downvotes LinkedIn is used by the Bangladesh Buttholes. |
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4790 | "The fact is that the annual debt expenses to annual revenue is the key figure at any point in time (as well as a model of how these change dynamically). Since optimal annual tax revenue is roughly proportional to GDP and since annual debt expenses are proportional (a function of yield and changes over time) to debt level ... the debt/GDP ratio has been used for a long time as a reasonable yardstick. > Also, keep in mind that by borrowing in it's sovereign currency, the US has an enormous amount of monetary tools to handle the debt if it ever became a problem. Most of those tricks come with increased yields (the ""currency risk"" portion of the yield on sovereign debt) ... and, so, don't actually help in the case of a death spiral. Ask Brazil or dozens of other countries. That thinking is also part of why LTCM failed (LTCM assumed Russia would print money to pay off debt instead of defaulting). [Also note that the only reason Greece short-sightedly increased their debt was because, for once, the ""currency risk"" component was small. Thus, while their debt expense / income level was reasonable with low yields ... as their debt/GDP increased, their yields increased to reflect the greater sovereign default risk. It's why debt/GDP would have been a *better* measure for Greece that a flow based measure.] IMO, the only reason the US isn't already in deep shit ... is because the US dollar is the de facto reserve currency. This is probably keeping the US yields 50bp-100bp lower than they would otherwise be (... in which case our debt payments would be closer to 20% of government revenue)." |
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4794 | Yes When exercising a stock option you will be buying the stock at the strike price so you will be putting up your money, if you lose that money you can declare it as a loss like any other transaction. So if the stock is worth $1 and you have 10 options with a strike at $0.50 you will spend $500 when you exercise your options. If you hold those shares and the company is then worth $0 you lost $500. I have not verified my answer so this is solely from my understanding of accounting and finance. Please verify with your accountant to be sure. |
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4799 | Of fucking course you do. It's a model. Your trying to develop an equation that represents the distribution of data for a stochastic process. I have a random source, assuming data samples are stationary how can I develop a model of the distribution of those samples? One way is to take N samples from that process and fit it to a particular distribution, e.g. Poisson, Gaussian, etc. Now I have a mechanism to predict further samples from my random process. Next step, look at the next M samples. Do the N+M samples faithfully fit my model? No, well then I have a problem with my model. It's not Gaussian, or poisson, or whatever. This is undergrad stuff... And the model was clearly wrong. He was off by many percentage points in key swing states. The cognitive dissonance is trying to bend the world to fit your failed model. What they tried to do was cook the data with a purposely flawed model which used likely voter models from the first Obama election even in the face of continually mounting evidence that the methodology was flawed. |
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4807 | They are one of the bigger companies pushing for more 10G gear as well as lower power consumption; they have the size, cash, and the need for better, faster and cheaper software and hardware. But don't take my word for it: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4958/facebooks-open-compute-server-tested (one of many such articles). As much as I hate facebook, the reality is that there is quite a bit of drive on the technical side. |
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4810 | "There is no equation. Only data that would help you come to the decision that's right for you. Assuming the 401(k) is invested in a stock fund of one sort or another, the choice is nearly the same as if you had $5K cash to either invest or pay debt. Since stock returns are not fixed, but are a random distribution that somewhat resembles a bell curve, median about 10%, standard deviation about 14%. It's the age old question of ""getting a guaranteed X% (paying the debt) or a shot at 8-10% or so in the market."" This come up frequently in the decision to pre-pay mortgages at 4-5% versus invest. Many people will take the guaranteed 4% return vs the risk that comes with the market. For your decision, the 401(k) loan, note that the loan is due if you separate from the company for whatever reason. This adds an additional layer of risk and another data point to the mix. For your exact numbers, the savings is barely $50. I'd probably not do it. If the cards were 18%, I'd lean toward the loan, but only if I knew I could raise the cash to pay it back to not default." |
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4829 | "But WhatsApp started up after FB and Google owned chat. They just saw an untapped market in crappy hand held devices and went after it. I suspect their plan all along was for acquisition and they executed that marvelously. They were not ""worth"" $19B, but FB was willing to pay that much to prevent Google from grabbing half a billion sets of eyeballs. So... no monopoly." |
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4830 | Yes, you could avoid capital gains tax altogether, however, capital gains are used in determining your tax bracket even though they are not taxed at that rate. This would only work in situations where your total capital gains and ordinary income kept you in the 0% longterm capital gains bracket. You can't realize a million dollars in capital gains and have no tax burden due to lack of ordinary income. You can potentially save some money by realizing capital gains strategically. Giving up income in an attempt to save on taxes rarely makes sense. |
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4845 | This is a Short Diagonal Calender Put Spread Generally, you're writing that long dated one at the money, and buying the short dated one out of the money. The maximum amount that can be made is if the stock breaks out strongly to the upside, and you keep the upfront credit minus whatever small amount it took to buy the April puts back. You can also make money if it breaks strongly to the downside, but only if the credit when you opened your positions was more than $10. Example: Now say the stock falls to $500 by the time of that march expiration. You'd make $90/share on the march put, and lose $100/share on the April put (or a little more; but that deep in the money, there won't be much premium on it). That's a loss of $10/share, or -$1000. So: I make a point of pointing this out because in that article I linked to the fact that your upfront credit needs to be greater than the strike spread in order to profit to the downside is not clearly mentioned. |
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4854 | Nominal. What you say is true, but I'm guessing it would be too complicated to modelate. Plus, a shareholder of a very large company would not necessarily experience said loss if he/she sells the stock in small chunks at a time. |
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4863 | If they really believed in their product, the juice, they should have just reorganized their structure to idk repackage it slightly. So then we can buy the squeezables in gas stations or something. Sounds pretty ready if people found out you could just squeeze em out. That's how you cut manufacture prices down and still reliever the MAIN product, the juice. You can build the best machine in the world but if the product your selling doesn't need the machine, well you've just made a mechanical baby. Beautiful, expensive, and sure as hell don't make you money. |
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4877 | The issue here is not that Sears is taking money from the pension. The pension is underfunded and Sear is asking to not make additional payments towards the underfunding. Pensioners are still getting screwed. At least in the US, there are lots of controls on what companies can do with pension money. Way beyond just having separation of assets. |
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4883 | Retail brokers and are generally not members of exchanges and would generally not be members of exchanges unless they are directly routing orders to those exchanges. Most retail brokers charging $7 are considered discount brokers and such brokers route order to Market Makers (who are members of the exchanges). All brokers and market makers must be members of FINRA and must pay FINRA registration and licensing fees. Discount brokers also have operational costs which include the cost of their facilities, technology, clearing fees, regulation and human capital. Market makers will have the same costs but the cost of technology is probably much higher. Discount brokers will also have market data fees which they will have to pay to the exchanges for the right to show customer real time quotes. Some of their fees can be offset through payment for order flow (POF) where market makers pay routing brokers a small fee for sending orders to them for execution. The practice of POF has actually allowed retail brokers to keep their costs lower but to to shrinking margins and spread market makers POF has significantly declined over the years. Markets makers generally do not pass along Exchange access fees which are capped at $.003 (not .0035) to routing brokers. Also note that The SEC and FINRA charges transactions fees. SEC fee for sales are generally passed along to customers and noted on trade confirms. FINRA TAF is born by the market makers and often subtracted from POF paid to routing firms. Other (full service brokers) charging higher commissions are charging for the added value of their brokers providing advice and expertise in helping investors with investment strategies. They will generally also have the same fees associated with membership of all the exchanges as they are also market makers subject to some of the list of cost mentioned above. One point of note is that Market Making technology is quite sophisticates and very expensive. It has driven most of wholesale market makers of the 90s into consolidation. Retail routing firm's save a significant amount of money for not having to operate such a system (as well as worry about the regulatory headaches associated with running such a system). This allows them to provide much lower commissions that the (full service) or bulge bracket brokers. |
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4910 | Nowhere does that say PV uses rare earths. It says some thin film cells use tellurium, but that's not a rare earth element. The only substantial use of an uncommon element in silicon PV cells (which comprise 90+% of the market) is silver for front contacts, and that's being replaced for cost reasons. And silver is also not a rare earth element. |
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4913 | Wealth is something that we as a whole need, yet the question is how? Making wealth is not something that is troublesome but rather it is something that you need to think emphatically, as it is said negative considerations can give you negative outcomes. So right off the bat, you should simply begin thinking emphatically and for this, your psyche needs to imagine that way. Wealth is something that can guarantee a superior future. Having a huge amount of wealth is not something you will get in a matter of seconds. This can be a convenient procedure and a great deal of hazard is included in accomplishing it. We, at Wealth Generators, help you in getting your dream of being rich completed in a very professional way. We through proper guidance given by the financial experts, enable you to generate handsome wealth in a very short span of time. Our financial experts will guide you throughout the wealth generation procedures in accordance with the latest market trends and the ups and downs. Our step by step guide will help you in making decisive decisions in a very effective way. We provide financial education through our newsletters either on the weekly, monthly and yearly basis to let the readers understand the insights of the capital market and its derivatives. We use the latest financial technologies and tools to bring the best to the forefront of the readers. Our wealth generator newsletters are the essential guide in this competitive market scenario to help the smart investors or people willing to earn huge profits in real time. |
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4923 | Funny most of those states almost half voted blue. Take the bottom quarter of Florida and go to the Middle red states. More democrats than the entire population combined. Empty land my friend no one gives a shit about empty land. |
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4933 | There are quite a few reasons that a company may choose to pay dividends rather than hold cash [increasing the share value]. Of couse there are equally other set of reasons why a company may not want to give dividends and hold on to cash. Related question here Please explain the relationship between dividend amount, stock price, and option value? |
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4941 | "**Gregory R. Page** Gregory ""Greg"" R. Page (born 1952) is an American businessman. He serves as executive chairman of Cargill, Inc. of Minnetonka, Minnesota. *** ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/business/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.27" |
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4946 | ">the attorneys behind the case plan to ask for ""an award of up to $16,500,000 in attorneys' fees and expenses. Fucking lawyers. They get crazy fees and we get worthless coupons. Lawyers are the only thing *worse* than Ticketmaster. Oh, and guess where that $16.5M will be coming from? *Future* ticket prices. i.e. WE FUCKING LOST, THE LAWYERS FUCKING WON, AND TICKETMASTER CAME OUT EVEN..." |
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4947 | It would only make sense to repay the HBP faster if you knew your marginal tax rate would be increasing in the future. It sounds like that is not the case. By repaying it sooner with borrowed money, you are paying extra interest and potentially increasing your marginal tax rate. Probably not a good plan unless you know your taxable income will increase for other reasons in the next couple years. |
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4966 | "Sovereign immunity is the state's ultimate ""get out of bankruptcy free"" card. After all, the state has a hand in defining what bankruptcy even is in their state. Federal law is a framework, states customize it from there. The state's simplest tactic is to simply not pay you. And leave you scrambling to the courthouse for redress. Is that an automatic win? Not really, the State can plead sovereign immunity, e.g. Hans v. Louisiana, Alden v. Maine. You could try to pierce that sovereign immunity, essentially you'd be in Federal court trying to force the state into bankruptcy. This would pit State authority against Federal authority. The Feds are just as likely to come in on the state's side, and you lose. Best scenario, it's a knock-down drag-out all the way to the Supreme Court. You would have to be one heck of a creditor for the legal fees to be worth your trouble. States don't make a habit of this because if they did, no one would lend money to them, and this would be rather bad for the economy all around. So business and government work really hard to avert it. But it always stands as their ""nuclear option"". And you gotta know that when loaning money to States." |
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4976 | Companies are required BY THE IRS to try to get everybody to contribute minimal amounts to the 401K's. In the past, there were abuses and only the execs could contribute and the low paid workers were starving while the execs contributed huge amounts. On a year-by-year basis, if the low-paid employees don't contribute, the IRS punishes the high paid employees. Therefore, most employers provide a matching program to incentivize low-paid employees to contribute. This 9% limitation could happen in any year and it could have happened even before you got your pay raise, what matters is what the low-paid employees were doing at your company LAST YEAR. |
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4982 | > Nothing quite like having interviews with regional buyers and store managers as a primary source on a paper or project. > Quite frankly, I think Mackey was pretty much just lucky. Most of the people I interacted with while I worked there had zero sense when it came to any sort of long term strategic positioning within the industry Is it normal for Buyers and Store managers to have long-term strategic plan thinking? Those people should be executing the current plan. |
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4992 | Yes, this extra income would be taxed at your marginal rate because it is increasing your total income. This does not necessarily apply to all income, however. Capital gains are taxed at a different rate. Depending on the amount of extra work, you may wish to consider setting up a corporation. Corporations are taxed entirely differently. This would also give you the opportunity to write off far more of your expenses, but be aware of double taxation. Investopedia has a good article on double taxation. The issue is that the corporation must pay taxes on the revenue and then, when you take out the money either as salary or dividends, you personally will pay tax. It may leave you better off, even with the double taxation. Dividends are taxed at a lower rate than your marginal tax rate, generally. And you can write off much more inside a corporation. If considering this, talk to an accountant and discuss your expected revenue from consulting. The accountant should be able to quantify the costs and benefits. |
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5017 | "Yeah, so where are the scholarly articles? I don't see any being referenced in the article. Seems to me like it's just his opinion. Explains why it's an op-ed rather than a research article or something of substance. It sure is easy to say ""don't have a kid before 21,"" but have you considered that a lot of kids don't have access to birth control? Or even sex ed? I've met teens who don't even understand how sex works but they sure are having it. What about marriage? For some kids, it's easier to get married because it gives them access to housing, health care if the spouse has a plan, but even then, the divorce rate is so incredibly high that a lot of them face homelessness and situational poverty when they separate. Have you ever seen someone working 2-3 jobs but they're still poor? I've certainly seen it. I've seen kids choose work over high school because it means they can support their families. A lot of families in poverty depend on every single member of the family to bring in a source of revenue, and even then they can't seem to get by. You said it yourself, you can't support a family on minimum wage. But kids in generational poverty have learned to. Their mothers taught them. ""Getting out"" of poverty just isn't real for most of these kids. That's why the [cycle of poverty](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_poverty) usually spans across three generations in a family. What happens in a child's home life will affect them for the rest of their lives. When they learn how to live in poverty as children, the behaviors they learn are much more likely to carry through to adulthood. It doesn't matter what your political stance is, it's going to take some intervention from the government to create programs for these kids in generational poverty. This issue is much too complicated and pervasive to treat it otherwise" |
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5018 | It could be that the contracts were bought at cheaper prices such as $.01 earlier in the day. What you see there with the bid and ask is the CURRENT bid and CURRENT ask. The high ask price means there is no current liquidity, as someone is quoting a very high ask price just in case someone really wants to trade that price. But as you said, no one would buy this with a better price on a closer strike price. The volume likely occurred at a different price than listed on the current ask. |
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5019 | Many a time even if the tax is deducted and paid by the company it does not reflect as a credit against your PAN for various reasons like, you not submitting it to your employer in time, errors of reconciliation, etc. Its advisable that you inform your company finance officer that you have received such a letter. Q1. The sure shot way of knowing that your company is depositing tax with government is to view your tax credit report. This was set-up in 2004 and gives the details of all credits against your PAN and the tax deducted against your PAN. It shows if the tax was TDS and which employer paid it, or if this was a self assessment, or TCS, etc. To view this report there are 2 options: Register directly at http://www.tin-nsdl.com/panregistration.asp. Follow the one time registration process and keep viewing the tax credits. Note it normally takes 2-3 months to reflect the data. The other alternative is that quite a few leading banks [Citi, SBI, etc] provide a direct access to this report from their internet banking frontend, provided your PAN is associated to your account. Q2. The only details you need to submit are the Form 16. This would have all the details of when the tax was paid and the BSR number required for reconciling. Q3. TDS is the liability of the employer. However if this has not been deducted or too little was deducted based on incorrect/incomplete information give by you, then its your liability. For example if you change jobs in a year, the tax deducted is always less and you have to pay the difference. Q4. If its established that the company was at fault for not deducting the tax or deducting and not paying it to government on time, there are enough provisions to penalize the company including putting the top management team behind bars. |
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5049 | Yes, it is a scam. There is no doubt about it. Never give your bank password to anyone, especially strangers. You will lose your money if you fall for this. |
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5052 | >Sprint's network can support at least 2x their current subscriber base before exhibiting any kind of slowdown. Good thing, because if if their current data speeds were any slower it'd be faster to write it out and put in the the mailbox. |
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5054 | When fundamentals such as P/E make a stock look overpriced, analysts often point to other metrics. The PEG ratio, for example, can be applied to cast growth companies in a better light. Fundamental analysis is highly subjective. For further discussion on the pitfalls of fundamentals, I suggest A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. |
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5057 | Apologies, I agree with Iamchrisbrown209, girlfriend-beating fuckmunch that he may be. Walmart does not tolerate strikes because the majority of Walmart's employees simply don't have enough experience to strike- were I a dock loader, if half my stevedores striked tomorrow I'd simply fire them and hire a bunch of other guys who could lift heavy things in exchange for x amount of money tomorrow. Because in the global (and most local) labour markets at this time and in this global economy, I could. I simply could do that. It's sad, and, I agree, wrong. The reason that the minimum wage exists is because of protectorate and nationalist business practices, nothing more. It may be a *good* thing, and a *right* thing, and I agree that it is, but it isn't because of compassion. It's because at the time that the concept of minimum wage was negotiated and discussed, there wasn't really such a thing as outsourcing. Companies could not outsource their labour to other markets, because for a large time there was no other market to outsource to. The concept of shipping jobs to China, or India, or Brazil, or, in fact, anywhere else, simply didn't exist. The ultimate message is that people don't *deserve* anything; they get what they fight for in reasonable circumstances and what they successfully lobby their government on. Namely, that tends to be popular, fiscally sensible (although not so much in the United States, in some cases) and viable political policies. Nothing more. It's very sad. It's not right. But it is reality, unfortunately. |
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5058 | The most important thing, IMO is to love the business itself. Love what you are doing. Some people in a family business have aptitudes/attitudes better suited for somewhere else, they are just there because they want to help the family. That is a noble mindset but it may translate into sub-par work because you are not doing what you love. So love it, or at least like it a lot. |
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5064 | The Hong Kong Dollar is based on the US dollar. The Hong Kong central bank recognizes the US dollar as its reserve currency. That is, the Hong Kong central bank keeps US dollars as its main reserve. Not long ago the reserve currency of choice would have been gold. Central banks of each country would need to have enough gold to back up any currency they issued. Now central banks use the US dollar instead. This is what is meant when people mention the US dollar being the reserve currency for most countries. From wiki regarding the HK dollar: A bank can issue a Hong Kong dollar only if it has the equivalent exchange in US dollars on deposit. So you're assumption is correct: as the US Federal Reserve prints more money and that money finds its way to Hong Kong banks, the Hong Kong banks will be able to issue more Hong Kong dollars which will have an inflationary affect. What to do? If you look around enough on this site you'll find some suggestions. Here is one. |
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5066 | Clinical infertility can additionally confound the procedure and make additional worry as you attempt to consider, so it's essential to know how to enhance the pregnancy calculator and odds of pregnancy by keeping up perfect conditions for origination. Beneath you will get a more critical take a gander at a portion of the components that can support ripeness in both sound couples and those battling with infertility. |
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5122 | Robinhood does offer premium products that they charge for-I suspect we will see more of that in the future. They do not change the bid/ask spread as some have said because they have to give you the NBBO. |
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5135 | I wouldn't say that this is specific to student loans. I think nowadays debt is just becoming a bigger and bigger thing. Partially due to the increasing wage gap, as the standard of life moves up way faster than wages move up, debt becomes necessary. Also debt is a very appealing thanks to the interest rates people will pay, so more banks want to give them out, and more people want to take them to be able to go to good schools, own a nice house, etc. We've gone from a generation that expected to be able to earn and save up for everything within a reasonable time to one that normalizes debt as something that everybody just gets into to have a normal standard of life. |
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5152 | Essentially, what you're describing is a leveraged investment. As others noted, the question is how confident you can be that (a) the returns on the investment will exceed what you're paying in interest, and (b) that if you lose the bet you'll still be able to pay off the loan without severely injuring yourself. I did essentially this when I bought my house, taking out a larger loan than necessary and leaving more money in my investments, which had been returning more than the mortgage's interest rate. I then got indecently lucky during the recession and was able to refinance down to under 4%, which I am very certain my investment will beat. I actually considered lengthening the term of the loan for that reason, or borrowing a bit more, but decided not to double down on the bet; that was my own risk-comfort threshold. Know exactly what your risks are, including secondary effects of these risks. Run the numbers to see what the likely return is. Decide whether you like the odds enough to go for it. |
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5179 | I've been short the Euro for several months now against the USD (could be various others as well). I got in at 1.42, sold on a bounce up to 1.36, bought back at 1.38 and now will probably ride it out lower. Regardless of whether or not the Eurozone breaks up, I see it breaking through the 1.30 mark in the near-term. After that, I'm not sure how low it goes, but there is certainly potential for it to head towards 1/1. In order to reduce the burden, the ECB needs to devalue the currency. Although Germany really doesn't want this due to their anti-inflationary ideology, if Italy comes crashing down, so does France. When France goes, Germany goes into a deep recession if not a depression. They have to devalue some. As for a collapse, I have no idea. It probably depends on how many (if any) countries retain the currency and who they are. |
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5180 | Your analysis is not comparing apples to apples which is why it looks like investing money in a non-qualified account is better than a 401k (traditional or Roth). For the non-qual you are using post tax dollars (money that has already been taxed). Now on top of that original tax you are also going to pay capital gains tax for any growth plus dividend rates for any dividends it throws off. For the 401k, let's assume for the moment that $10,000 is invested in a traditional and that the marginal tax rate is always 20%. And for growth let's assume 10x. With a traditional your money will grow to $100,000 and then the IRS gets $20,000 as you pull the money out. The result is a net 80,000 for you. For a Roth 401k, it is taxed first so only $8,000 gets invested. This then grows by the same multiplier to $80,000. (Until you consider changing tax rates the Roth and traditional give the same growth of money). Considering the non-qual option, like with the Roth we only have $8,000 to invest. However in this case you will not realize the full 10x growth as you will have to pay taxes on $72,000. These are taxes that the 401ks (and also IRAs) do not pay. There are other reasons to consider non-qual over maxing out your 401k. Liquidity, quality of investments, and fees being some of those. But the capital gains rate vs. ordinary income rate is not one, as the money in the non-qual still has to go through that ordinary income tax first before it is available to even invest. |
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5181 | I dont think the author really understands why or how credit bureaus work, why they exist, and therefore where the blame exists for incorrect data. No credit bureau wants incorrect data, for obvious reasons, but it happens. That's one reason why they let you get access to your credit score, to check it the data is correct and make the 'product' (data about you) better. The source of the data is always to blame for something being incorrect though. That's banks, utilities companies, etc. A credit bureau can't check any more than they do already. But they can improve how they deal with mistakes or badly matched data. Not sure about how that works in the US, but here in EU there are strict rules about how mistakes are corrected, and how long it takes. As for storing it in block chain.. That wouldn't really solve OPs problem with credit bureaus. Someone still needs to collect and match data, and that's arguably harder than securing the data in the first place. |
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5188 | Basically you have 4 options: Use your cash to pay off the student loans. Put your cash in an interest-bearing savings account. Invest your cash, for example in the stock market. Spend your cash on fun stuff you want right now. The more you can avoid #4 the better it will be for you in the long term. But you're apparently wise enough that that wasn't included as an option in your question. To decide between 1, 2, and 3, the key questions are: What interest are you paying on the loan versus what return could you get on savings or investment? How much risk are you willing to take? How much cash do you need to keep on hand for unexpected expenses? What are the tax implications? Basically, if you are paying 2% interest on a loan, and you can get 3% interest on a savings account, then it makes sense to put the cash in a savings account rather than pay off the loan. You'll make more on the interest from the savings account than you'll pay on interest on the loan. If the best return you can get on a savings account is less than 2%, then you are better off to pay off the loan. However, you probably want to keep some cash reserve in case your car breaks down or you have a sudden large medical bill, etc. How much cash you keep depends on your lifestyle and how much risk you are comfortable with. I don't know what country you live in. At least here in the U.S., a savings account is extremely safe: even the bank goes bankrupt your money should be insured. You can probably get a much better return on your money by investing in the stock market, but then your returns are not guaranteed. You may even lose money. Personally I don't have a savings account. I put all my savings into fairly safe stocks, because savings accounts around here tend to pay about 1%, which is hardly worth even bothering. You also should consider tax implications. If you're a new grad maybe your income is low enough that your tax rates are low and this is a minor factor. But if you are in, say, a 25% marginal tax bracket, then the effective interest rate on the student loan would be more like 1.5%. That is, if you pay $20 in interest, the government will then take 25% of that off your taxes, so it's the equivalent of paying $15 in interest. Similarly a place to put your money that gives non-taxable interest -- like municipal bonds -- gives a better real rate of return than something with the same nominal rate but where the interest is taxable. |
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5191 | Credit card fraud protection (by law), credit card cash back programs (provided by most CC issuers), and debit card fees (commonly imposed by the merchant). The crux is that with CC transactions, a small percentage is remitted to the issuing bank. Since the banks are already making money hand over fist on CC's, they incentivize people to use them. CC security is also lax because the merchant is responsible for fraudulent charges instead of the bank. If the merchant fails to check a signature, they are held liable for all charges if the card holder reports a fraudulent transaction. |
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5203 | I have credit card debt of about $5000 That's the answer right there. You told us the 401(b) has no match. The next highest priority would be credit card debt that's costing you interest. You didn't mention the rate on the card, I'm assuming it's 8% or more. As far as your balance sheet (the 'bottom line') is concerned, pay off a 10% debt is the same as earning 10% on your money. If anyone promises you a higher return with a different investment, I'd run the other way. We hope the market, i.e. the US stock market, as measured by a broad index, say the S&P 500, will return 8-10%/yr over the long term, but this isn't guaranteed. Paying off that credit card will save you the interest every year, and free up the payments to invest elsewhere. In response to Marlene's comment - Crazy? No. Human nature and emotion is what it is. I honestly don't know how to address some of it. Years ago, I was in a similar situation with a reader who had a $5000 'emergency' account, yet had $5000 in credit card debt. I had a tough time getting my head around why it wasn't obvious this made no sense. In your case, I might suggest you pay the card down to below $1000 and have the credit line reduced. Paying high interest on $5K makes no sense at any point in one's life. At least a 20-something can dig his way out and learn a lesson. A pre-retiree shouldn't be throwing this money away. |
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5213 | Okay, so? You were arguing that I wouldn't like to be on the receiving end making the sacrifice. Clearly someone who is earning more money but paying a lower percentage is making much less of a sacrifice than someone earning less money but paying a higher percentage in tax. |
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5219 | Most US banks don't allow you the ability to draft a foreign currency check from USD. Though, I know Canadian banks are more workable. For instance, TD allows you to do this from CAD to many other currencies for a small fee. I believe even as a US Citizen you can quite easily open a TD Trust account and you'd be good to go. Also, at one time Zions bank was one of the few which lets US customers do this add-hoc. And there is a fee associated. Even as a business, you can't usually do this without jumping thru hoops and proving your business dealings in foreign countries. Most businesses who do this often will opt to using a payment processor service from a 3rd party which cuts checks in foreign currencies at a monthly and per check base. Your other option, which may be more feasible if you're planning on doing this often, would be to open a British bank account. But this can be difficult if not impossible due to the strict money laundering anti-fraud regulations. Many banks simply won't do it. But, you might try a few of the newer British banks like Tesco, Virgin and Metro. |
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5220 | "No one is quite sure what happened (yet). Speculation includes: The interesting thing is that Procter & Gamble stock got hammered, as did Accenture. Both of which are fairly stable companies, that didn't make any major announcements, and aren't really connected to the current financial instability in Greece. So, there is no reason for there stock prices to have gone crazy like that. This points to some kind of screw up, and not a regular market force. Apparently, the trades involved in this event are going to be canceled. Edit #1: One thing that can contribute to an event like this is automatic selling triggered by stop loss orders. Say someone at Citi makes a mistake and sells too much of a stock. That drives the stock price below a certain threshold. Computers that were pre-programmed to sell at that point start doing their job. Now the price goes even lower. More stop-loss orders get triggered. Things start to snowball. Since it's all done by computer these days something like this can happen in seconds. All the humans are left scratching their heads. (No idea if that's what actually happened.) Edit #2: IEEE Spectrum has a pretty concise article on the topic. It also includes some links to follow. Edit #3 (05/14/2010): Reuters is now reporting that a trader at Waddell & Reed triggered all of this, but not through any wrongdoing. Edit #4 (05/18/2010): Waddell & Reed claims they didn't do it. The House Financial Services Subcommittee investigated, but they couldn't find a ""smoking gun"". I think at this point, people have pretty much given up trying to figure out what happened. Edit #5 (07/14/2010): The SEC still has no idea. I'm giving up. :-)" |
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5224 | If you sell your shares for more than their value at the time you received them (i.e. you make a profit) then you will be liable for capital gains tax - but only if the profit exceeds your annual allowance (£11,100, in tax year 2015-16). This is unrelated to how you came by the shares in the first place. (Note that there are certain exemptions to this, which includes some employer share schemes.) |
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5239 | "I think you're on the right track. Your #2 journal entry is incorrect. It should be (I usually put the debit entry on top, but I followed your formatting) I'm assuming your employer uses an accountable reimbursement plan (reimbursing you when you turn in your payment bill/receipts). This is not salary. Reimbursements under the accountable plan in the US are not taxed as income. If you think about it though, ""phone expense"" isn't really your phone expense. So, instead of #1 entry, you could make an account receivable, or other current asset account, maybe call it Reimbursables - cellphone, and debit this account, and credit your cash account. When you receive the $30 back, you will reverse the entries on the day of payment. If you do it this way, you should be able to see a list of receivables outstanding (I'm not too familiar with GNUCash but I'm sure it has this type of report)." |
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5252 | Ok, but I wasn't trying to validate the Bible, merely pointing out OP's mischaracterization of Christian values in regards to what constitutes charity. It's almost as if you have a bone to pick with religion in general. Talk about dogmatic responses! |