ACH, Paypal, Amazon Pay are all other options that can be used.  ACH is cheapest for the merchant but it is a bit of a pain for the customer to setup (aka adds friction to our sales process, which is *very* bad).  Paypal and Amazon Pay both cost a bit more than regular credit cards for the merchant.  Google Wallet is free but not available unless you are a sole proprietor or an individual, which is is useless for businesses.  So yeah, other options are either difficult or more expensive.


$500 for just 32gigs. Little saddened by that. So want one though! Food or Nexus 10...food or Nexus 10...Maybe I'll get lucky and find one someone 'lost' at a bar ;) That's the 'hip' way to give away tech these days!


One interpretation of the above is that Pound (alongside US Dollar, Euro and other major curriencies), which forms the Forex basket of countries has dropped to less than 10% weightage in case of China's Forex holding. Now the question is where did this money go, this money probably have gone into Forex market to buy Yuan against Pound/Dollar etc. to bolster or strengthen Yuan. The currency reserve management is the 'wealth' management part and the 'currency' management part is what is known as 'central bank intervention' to stabilize the currency.


If your requirements are hard (must have $1000/month, must have the same or bigger in capital at the end), stocks are a poor choice of investment. However, in many cases, people are willing to tolerate some level of risk to achieve the expected returns. You also do not mention inflation, which can take quite a lot out of your portfolio over the course of ten years. If we make some simplifying assumptions, you want to generate $12,000 a year. You can realistically expect the (whole) stock market, long term (i.e. over time periods substantially longer than 10 years), to return approximately 4 - 5% after factoring in inflation. That means an investment of $240,000 - $300,000 (the math is simplified somewhat here). If you don't care about inflation, you can up the percentage rather somewhat. According to this article, the S&P 500 returned an average of 11.31% from 1928 through 2010 (not factoring in inflation), which would require an investment of approximately $106,100. But! This opens you up to substantial risk. The stock market may go down 30% this year! According to the above article, the S&P returned only 3.54% from 2001 to 2010. Long-term, it goes up, but your investment case is really unsuited to investing in an index to the entire stock market given your requirements. You may be better suited investing primarily in stable bonds, or perhaps a mix of bonds and stocks. Alternatively, you may want to consider even more stable investments such as treasury notes. Treasury notes are all but guaranteed, but with a lousy rate of return. Heck, you could consider a GIC (that may be Canada-only) or even a savings account. There's also the possibility of purchasing an annuity, though almost everyone will advise against such. Personally, I'd go for a mutual fund which invested approximately 70% bonds and the rest in stocks over such a time period. Something like ING Direct's Streetwise Balanced Income Portfolio, if you were in Canada. It substantially lowers your expected return but also lowers your risk. I can't honestly say what the expected return there is; at this point, it's returned 4% per year (before inflation), but has been around only since the beginning of 2008. And to be clear, this is absolutely not free of risk.


I don't have any specific situation on the situation in Austria, but in general there are a few things that you should keep in mind. First of all, the official website of the Austrian tax authorities appears to be this one: https://www.bmf.gv.at/steuern/startseite-steuern.html. There is an English page there, but it is mainly aimed at international businesses. The part about tax treaties may be relevant, though. The general procedure is outlined here: https://www.bmf.gv.at/steuern/startseite-steuern.html. Like I said in my comment, most information is likely only available in German. I would strongly advise to ask help from someone who speaks German and is familiar with the tax system in Austria. The main thing that you would have to do first is to check of which country you are a resident for tax purposes. This is usually the country in which you lived for more than 183 days in the past year. If you moved during the year, and had income from more than one country, you may have to file tax returns in both countries. There are tax treaties between Austria and the UK (and most other countries), so you would have to check those treaties to find out what gets taxed where. In principle you get taxed only once, but usually you would have to declare all income. The last important thing is of course to make sure you submit before the relevant deadlines.


"Yep, I would have this conversation repeatedly with customers at a previous job.   ""Sir / Ma'am, I understand your frustration as you run your business from your home. However, you explicitly signed up for the residential service even after being reminded that it does not have any SLA's or guaranteed time to contact / time to restore.""  It was very common that they would penny pinch on the connection and then raise holy hell when it inevitably went down. Then, they'd try to upgrade for a month and roll back, forcing us to begin signing them to contracts.   From a business standpoint, we'd have to have additional staff as well as higher skilled staff to deal with their issues. More staff as you need to have someone able to immediately / short time dispatch. Higher skilled to deal with issues like VPNs, static IPs, bridging, and small to medium business type issues, along with the increased communication and presentation for the business clientele. Those additional resources also come at higher than usual pay."


The fees with trading CFDs are usually lower than standard share trading. There is usually no joining fee to join a broker and start trading with them, you must be talking about the minimum required to fund your account to trade with.  What country are you in? Because if you are in the USA I believe CFD trading is not allowed there. Also there is no margin fee associated with trading CFDs. The margin is what you put in to buy or sell the CFD when you open a position. For example if you were to open a position in a share CFD where the underlying share had a price of $10 and you were looking to buy 1000 units. To buy the shares outright your outlay would be $10000 plus brokerage. If the CFD provider had a 10% margin on these share, then your initial margin to open a CFD position would be 10% of $10000 or $1000. If the price of the shares went up to $11 and you sold the shares you would get $11000 ($1000 profit), if you sold the CFDs you would get $2000 ($1000 profit). If on the other hand the shares went down to $9 and you sold the shares you would get $9000 ($1000 loss), if you sold the CFDs you would get $0 ($1000 loss). You have to be careful with margin, it is a two edged sword - it can multiply your gains as well as multiply your losses. The only fees you should be charged with CFDs is brokerage (which should be less than for share trading), and overnight financing costs. This is charged for everyday you hold a long position overnight. You should not be charge any overnight financing cost for holding short positions overnight, and if interest rates were higher you might actually get paid an overnight financing for holding short positions overnight. You may have been closed out of your bitcoin position because you didn't have enough funds in your trading account to open the size trade that you opened. From your question it seems like you are not ready to trade CFDs, you should really learn more about CFDs and the trading platform/s you plan to use before trading with your valuable money. You could probably open up a simulation account whilst you are learning the ropes and become more familiar with the trading platform and with CFDs. And if you are not sure about something ask your broker, they usually have training videos and seminars.


Check out this recent Planet Money podcast on taxes & incentives via allowance for your children.  It might not directly answer your question, but it brings up some interesting things to consider when setting up an allowance for your children.


"If you only have to pay 23k federal taxes on 100k, that means you are in the long term capital gains tax rate, which is the lower of the tax rates available. First you get your federal income tax marginal tax rate, and then find the matching long term capital gains tax rate. For example, if your marginal federal income tax rate is 28%, your capital gains tax rate would be 15%. Or rather, if the amount of the gain would put you in the 28% rate, then your long term capital gains tax rate is 15%. You can reduce that by having more losses. If you have anything else invested anywhere that is taking a loss, then you can sell that this year and it will offset the other gains you have realized. The only note is that your losses have to be long term capital losses too. Tax loss harvesting takes this to an extreme where you sell something at a loss to lock in the tax loss, but you didn't really want to get rid of that investment, so then you buy a nearly identical investment. ie. if you owned shares of ""Direxion Tech Sector ETF"" and it was at a loss, you would sell that and then immediately buy ""ProShares Tech Sector ETF"", the competing product that does the exact same thing. Then there is charity. This still requires spending money and you not having it any longer. If you feel that a cause can use the money more directly than the US government, you can donate an appreciated asset to the charity - not report a gain and also take a charitable deduction."


Something not in answers so far:  define your goals.  What is important to you? My goals, if I were in your shoes, would include a debt-free home, passive (investment) income so I would not have to work, and have health insurance covered.  I could think of many more details, and already have, but you get the idea. To help determine which investment information to learn first, consider how much risk you can tolerate.  I know that's vague at this point, but if you're looking for safe investments first, you could learn about mutual funds, and then index funds specifically.  At the risky extreme, you could learn about stock options, but I would not recommend such risk.


Makes perfect sense in two ways. Staying private allows companies to focus on long term strategy rather than quarterly results, and some of the companies mentioned raised lots of money very quickly but might not have the most stable strategy over the long term which would turn off public investors.


"The first loan looks like it did not have its interest subsidized while you were in school, so interest was accruing eventhough you didn't have to start making payments on it yet. With the $73 payment you made, the bank is allocating the funds in a pre-determined split that is in their best interest - NOT yours! While you do need to pay them down (and eventually off), at the current rate it will take ~169 months (with no more interest accruing) to do so. Most likely, with interest continuing to accrue, you're looking more in the neighborhood of 17 years, rather than 14 (these are back-of-the-envelope numbers). The payoff balance listed is the current principle plus interest that will accrue before the next processing date - so it is usually a little higher than the ""actual"" balance, because the interest is accruing daily (albeit in very small percentages (1/365 of the loan's percentage))."


You could slip and fall in the shower tonight.  Or you might never need it. Insurance is a hedge against risk.  If the event has already occurred, you're uninsurable. If you and others would suffer if you have a bad accident and can't work, get it now.


Yes, you can do everything that Fidelity promises with the cash management account.  Your benefits are: The downsides?  They don't have branches everywhere, so if you do need to see a person, you may not be able to do so.  Likewise, you won't be able to do cash deposits.   Before anyone says it's too good to be true, brokerages like Schwab and Fidelity offer this because the hope is that you'll end up establishing or using other services they offer, so they do have ways to profit from this.  Still, compared to the joke that is many other banks, it's a good deal provide you're aware of the two downsides listed above this.


I'll go a step further: I think he did it not only out of investing acumen, but literally because he believed it was the right thing to do for his country. He understood how much misery could come from the collapse of such a creditor, and the risk he took was offset somewhat by the knowledge that his actions were, at worst, delaying the implosion of the US banking system, and at best preventing it.  It bled furiously for a few months, and the healing took several years, but his efforts quite literally single-handedly reduced the pain and duration of the Great Recession. It could have ended like the Great Depression, with over a decade of rebuilding, endless soup lines, and taken a greater toll than it did (which was heavy enough).


Maryland treats income from pensions and annuities in the same manner that the federal government treats such income. Consequently, pensions and annuities can be subject to Maryland's income tax. The resident booklet for Maryland income tax filers states on page 4: Line 1d. Enter on line 1d the total amount of pension, IRA,   and annuities reported as income on lines 15b and 16b of your   federal Form 1040, or lines 11b and 12b of your federal Form   1040A. Line 1 of Maryland's tax return represents total taxable income, before deductions, exemptions, and adjustments. Line 16b of federal Form 1040 represents the taxable portion of your FERS annuity. Consequently, the federally taxable portion of your FERS annuity is also subject to Maryland's state income tax. The taxable portion of FERS annuities should be recorded on the 1099-R you receive. If it's not, IRS pub 721 records how to calculate the taxable portion of FERS annuities. Maryland does, however, allow filers to exclude up to $29,200 of the taxable portion of their pension income in 2015 from taxable income if: a. You were 65 or over or totally disabled, or your spouse was   totally disabled, on the last day of the tax year, AND b. You included on your federal return taxable income received   as a pension, annuity or endowment from an “employee   retirement system” qualified under Sections 401(a), 403 or   457(b) of the Internal Revenue Code. [A traditional IRA, a   Roth IRA, a simplified employee plan (SEP), a Keogh plan, an   ineligible deferred compensation plan or foreign retirement   income does not qualify.] You mention receiving SS disability, so you may be eligible for that exclusion. Regarding what kinds of disabilities qualifies for those exclusions, Maryland states that: To be considered totally disabled, you must have a mental or physical impairment which prevents you from engaging in substantial gainful activity. You must expect the impairment to  be of long, continued or indefinite duration or to result in your death. You must attach to your return a certification from a qualified physician stating the nature of your impairment and that you are totally disabled. If you have previously submitted a physician’s certification, attach your own statement that you are still totally disabled and that a physician’s certification was submitted before. If you feel you would qualify for that exclusion (and have the required supporting evidence), fill out the relevant table and include the result on line 10 of your Maryland tax return. In the future, to avoid a large state tax bill due to inadequate withholding on pension funds, OPM provides a web service which allows you to specify state tax withholding amounts on pension distributions.


>They collected my license plate info via a reader at the stall and already tied it to my account.  That's bit unsettling.  More from a privacy standpoint.  As if someone hacks into or gets Amazon's user database (as lets face it its only a matter of time that happens), they will know what car you drive among other things.


It's pure BS. I guarantee that any of the H1-B visa people they hire will be paid less than an American. How many good programmers has Microsoft lost to other companies due to their wacky HR policies?   http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/03/the-terrible-management-technique-that-cost-microsoft-its-creativity/


First, your references are only tangentially related to your claim.  > If you have twice the generation capacity in renewables (wind/solar) and can store 20% of your yearly consumption, then you are fine.  Right. If you do that, you're fine to run your hospital off-grid with no backup generators without significant risk of the life support systems going offline.  The requirements for a grid-connected single family home are much lower. Generating 100% of your power needs and having one powerwall (for half a day of storage) will drastically reduce your electricity demand.   Home solar doesn't need to completely replace grid power - a 70% reduction in demand would be sufficient to reduce generation requirements to only existing hydro / wind / nuclear plants.


Despite what the article discusses, I personally have gone to McDonald's less and less because their service and quality seems to be getting worse.  I think they need to retrain their staff.  How is it I order two double cheese burgers and I get a McNuggets and a fish sandwich?  Or I order a chocolate milkshake and get a vanilla one with one swirl of chocolate in it.  :(


Since you are using the percentage method to determine the home/business use split, I would think that under most circumstances the distance driven to get your car from the dealership to home, and from home to mechanic and back would be less than 1% of the total miles driven. This is an acceptable rounding error. When refueling, I typically do that on my way to another destination and therefore it's not something I count separately.  If your miles driven to attend to repair/refueling tasks are more than 1% of the total miles driven, split them as you feel comfortable in your above examples. I'd calculate the B/P percentages as total miles less maintenance miles, then apply that split to maintenance miles as well.


Is this a USA bank to a USA bank transaction?  If so, it will clear in one to two business days.  Once cleared, the landlord cannot stop pay it.  He can, however, dishonestly claim it was a fraudulent check and attempt a chargeback. If you want absolute certainty the money will not be recalled, go to the landlord's bank and cash the check as a non-customer.  You will have to pay a small fee, but you will walk out with cash.  I suggest you take a photocopy of the check, and staple your receipt to it as evidence that the check was cashed for any impending legal proceedings.


It was a requirement that they call my current employer. It wasn't reference necessarily, but for background check purposes. I'm assuming they're calling to verify I work there and what my salary is. Still gonna put me in an awkward spot.   Edit grammar


Best advice I've ever gotten from anyone that has helped my career tremendously is this; no one cares. No one cares if you're tired, or hungry, or busy, or bored. Just get your job done.   Mistakes are binary. Either you made one or you didn't. If you fuck up early, it'll hurt you immeasurably. Develop a reputation for being early, staying late and doing solid work.   You'll be fine.


The difference is that Yahoo is showing the unadjusted price that the security traded for on that date, while google is adjusting for price splits. This means that Google is showing how much you would have had to pay to get what is now one share. Since 1979, JNJ has split 3-for-1 once, and 2-for-1 four times. 3x2x2x2x2 = 48. If you bought 1 share at that time, you would now have 48 shares today. Yahoo is showing a price of $66 for what was then 1 share. $66/48 = 1.375, which Google rounds to 1.38. You can see this if you get the prices from May 14-21, 1981. The stock split 3-for-1, and the price dropped from 108 to 36.38. Yahoo's adjusted close column has not been accurate since they re-wrote the Finance website. It now just represents the closing price. The other relevant field on Yahoo is the Adj. Close. This adjusts for splits, but also adjusts for dividends. Hence why this doesn't match either the Google or Yahoo numbers.


I get this argument for the citizenship thing too. It's being unpatriotic that I shouldn't want to file or pay taxes on money I earn oustide of the USA that stays in banks outside of the USA and won't be spent in the USA or even ever converted to dollars.  Even if you don't owe anything, it's pretty much impossible to file without professional help once you get assets involved (I'm talking like a retirment account, a house, stocks, etc... Not super rich people stuff) so no matter what you have to pay an accountant that specializes in international taxes and that's not all that cheap either.  If I weren't emotionally attached to my citizenship and identity, I would have renounced already and it looks like it's getting worse with all kinds of FATCA nonsense. Thanks for the public education, US but it looks like I may have to self exclude myself from ever mvoing back because of stupid bullshit.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/7/15753510/kansas-brownback-tax-reform) reduced by 94%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Kansas is struggling to balance its budget Moderate Republican lawmakers in Kansas are now in open rebellion, scrambling to find ways to roll back the tax cuts as the state looks for ways to balance its budget.  > Republicans have signaled that they plan to pass tax reform through the budget reconciliation process, which means the tax cuts can&#039;t add to the deficit after 10 years.  > Both were the architects of the Kansas tax experiment, and both helped Trump craft the tax plan he touted during his campaign.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6gadek/httpswwwvoxcompolicyandpolitics20176715753510kansa/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~140377 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **tax**^#1 **cut**^#2 **taxes**^#3 **state**^#4 **Brownback**^#5"


"In general the consensus is that a small amount of inflation (usually 1.5-2% per year) is desirable.  That is why the Federal Reserve sets its inflation target in that range.  The reasons why are quite complex though. One reason is ""wage stickiness"" - ie., the observed phenomenon that employers don't like to cut wages.  Having a small rate of inflation means that when wages are steady in nominal terms, they are actually falling in real terms.  This gives employers more flexibility."


What you posted didn't disagree though, as far as I could tell. Maybe I'm just tired and I'm missing something.  Until recently, I worked construction. Now I have a part time job while I learn computer programming.  Why do you ask?


The biggest issue with Yahoo Finance is the recent change to the API in May. The data is good quality, includes both dividend/split adjusted and raw prices, but it's much more difficult to pull the data with packages like R quantmod than before.  Google is fine as well, but there are some missing data points and you can't unadjust the prices (or is it that they're all unadjusted and you can't get adjusted? I can't recall). I use Google at home, when I can't pull from Bloomberg directly and when I'm not too concerned with accuracy.  Quandl seems quite good but I haven't tried them. There's also a newer website called www.alphavantage.co, I haven't tried them yet either but their data seems to be pretty good quality from what I've heard.


Have you talked with her about this? On the one hand you have a point.  Given the prenuptial agreements why should you invest in something that you can never have interest in.  However, you also live in the property.  You did not go into the arrangements but presumably you should be contributing to the upkeep of the home as otherwise you would live there for free. Additionally you did not mention it but it sounds like the prenuptial does not cover your assets.  In the event of divorce she, presumably, would own half of your 400K.  Correct? The key here is a conversation.  What is right for the two of you?  While some might be very uncomfortable with the situation, as is, you two seem to be okay with it.  Go from there, build on it.  Come up with something that is equitable for both parties and your heirs.


"I love how you're being downvoted even though you're providing a very basic answer that is easy to look up and see that you are correct, no the majority of people Linhares just listed aren't ""economists"" - but then again redditors vote based on they feel, irregardless of the facts. I also love how everyone now feels as though the financial crisis was easy to spot - I bet if we went back and asked them in 2007 they would have all foreseen it as well. Yes, a few exceptionally intelligent people (Roubini, Shiller, Grantham etc.) foresaw it, but then again thousands of intelligent people make forecasts on financial markets every day and the majority fail to outperform it. The survivor bias in action I guess."


"In general,  if you think something even MIGHT be a scam, the answer is""yes""."


Your credit report is composed of different factors and each has a different weight. Payment history has the biggest weight, at 35%, while length of credit history is 15%. So together, these two factors make up 50% - there are 5 factors total. Given that your card is your oldest card, and assuming you've made on time payments on that card, it does have an influence on your credit report/score. I would not close the card, and use it to make occasional purchases. I have a card like that where I only use it to make iTunes purchases - at most a couple bucks every few months.


See thats just plain wrong.  Minimum wage increases will not increase the total costs of living that puts it on par with the minimum wage.  So many studies have been done on this exact question.  This mentality is like saying in china that people should only make cents an hour because if they make anymore the cost of living will go up as well.  Here are some good reads for you :)  http://letjusticeroll.org/news/001185-raising-minimum-wage-does-not-increase-unemployment  http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5650&updaterx=2010-10-08+11:40:17  http://www.dadychery.org/fr/2012/01/03/eight-states-raise-minimum-wage/  So many studies prove your statement wrong.


In general, insurance is a net good for you when it covers catastrophic losses that you would otherwise be unable to properly pay for yourself. See more here: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/77570/44232. Of course, insurance is more valuable when the catastrophic event becomes more likely. The list of possible outcomes for this combination of expense + likelihood is below: 1) Unlikely event; minimal loss: Insurance has no value here; you will simply be giving money to the insurance company and never getting anything worthwhile in return. Example: insuring your car in Florida against hail damage. 2) Unlikely event; catastrophic loss: Insurance has some value; it is likely cheap to acquire due to unlikelihood of occurrence, and could reduce the possibility of unfortunate incidences from becoming life-altering. Example: insuring your car for an extra $1M liability insurance against possible medical expenses of those in an accident. 3) Likely event; minimal loss: Insurance has no value here - you will over the course of your life suffer many of these small losses, and by constantly paying insurance, you are on average losing money to the insurance companies. Example: insuring your toaster. 4) Likely event; catastrophic loss: While insurance would be valuable here, it is also going to be quite expensive. A better option may be to simply not participate in that activity. Example: insurance for participating in an unlicensed MMA fight. Your specific question refers to what I would classify as #2 above - an unlikely event, but a catastrophic loss. This implies that insurance may be worthwhile, depending on the price and payout. The price itself seems small in relation to the cost of a ticket, and the payout seems high in relation to the cost of the premium.  But does the payout actually mean to you? It is perhaps not wise to consider life insurance as a 'windfall payment'. Instead, consider life insurance as coverage for the financial realities of death - funeral expenses, and perhaps money to provide grieving time for your family before they resume or take on work [Again, insurance is coverage against catastrophic loss, not a lottery ticket to provide a windfall when the unfortunate happens]. If you are the sole provider for your family, you may also want your insurance payout to be enough to resolve any outstanding debts you have outstanding [such as a mortgage], and/or substantially cover living expenses for your family for an extended period of time. A $20k payout would likely be far more than enough to cover funeral expenses, but may not be enough to set up your family to subsist without you as a sole provider. Also consider that the chance for an accident may not seem particularly concerning while you are on the train in comparison to when you are jaywalking, or smoking the odd cigar, eating red meat, having a glass of red wine. What I mean is that there are many things in life which add some level of risk; not all of them are as obvious as a train ride, but there is always a chance of something unfortunate happening, even if you take reasonable precautions. What these two considerations imply is that perhaps instead of insuring against this very specific incident, you instead purchase overall life insurance. Rather than taking a flat payout amount, take enough of a policy only to cover the specific needs you expect - for many people, this is defined by the amount needed to cover funeral expenses only + possibly their outstanding mortgage balance. If you take the train often, your annual insurance premiums for a full insurance plan may be similar to your 'train only' insurance, while covering you in a wider variety of circumstances. Many people hesitate to think about purchasing not only life insurance not only because of the cost, but also because they do not wish to dwell on their mortality. But facing the subject head on may provide you with both financial and emotional peace of mind.  [And write up a will, while you're at it!]


The bank will sell your debt to a collection agency, that will then follow you everywhere you go and demand payment. They will put a negative notice on your credit report preventing you from getting any new credit, and might sue you in court and take over some or all of your assets through court judgement.


Sure, just outsource everything that doesn't justify a $70k salary - book keeping, it help desk, janitorial, etc.  Hell, outsource software development if you can maybe only employ a senior architect and outsource the rest.  Be in b2b Sales so you don't need any front line b2c customer service needs.  Make sure your goods are digital so you don't need warehouse or logistics staff.  Make sure your revenue is recurring and drafted from the customer automatically so you don't need any accounts receivable staff.  Sure, you can use this model - it works great for something like a credit card payment processor, just like it would work well for a boutique financial services firm or a SaaS software company.


I don't even know where you got the news that MJ isn't selling his shoes to Republicans and all that, but the facts are that corruption in American politcs rn is way better espicially since in 1896 JP Morgan, Rockefeller, and Carnegie bought Mckinnely and got him into office. Read it here https://studygrowknowblog.com/2012/11/16/buying-a-president/ And if your talking about the social aspect of it, I agree. Republicans espicailly, but also a lot of Democrats aren't willing to even talk to each other, but they weren't close friends either during Lincoln and the civil war times either.


Yes. But this should only apply in the case where workers consider the market clearing wage to be too low, rather than the issue in question where it appears clear that employers consider the market clearing wage too high.  Caveat: there should be some allowance for subsidy / protection of industries critical to national security and infant industries that face innovation costs, as well as a robust social safety net for workers who find their individual skills mismatched to the market.


(do I need to get a W9 from our suppliers)? Will PayPal or Shopify send me a 1099k or something? Do not assume that you'll get paperwork from anyone.  Do assume that you have to generate your own paperwork.  Ideally you should print out some kind of record of each transaction.  Note that it can be hard to view older transactions in PayPal, so start now.  If you can't document something, write up a piece of paper showing the state of the world to the best of your knowledge.   Do assume that you need separate receipts for each expenditure.  The PayPal receipt might be enough (but print it in case the IRS wants to see it).  A receipt from the vendor would be better (again, print it if it is online now).   A CPA is not strictly necessary.  A CPA is certified (the C in CPA) to formally audit the books of a corporation.  In your case, any accountant would be legally sufficient.  You still may want to use a CPA, as the certification, while technically unnecessary, still demonstrates knowledge.  You may otherwise not be in a position to evaluate an accountant.  A compromise option is to go to a firm that includes a CPA and then let them assign you to someone else to process the actual taxes.   You are going to have to fill out some business tax forms.  In particular, I would expect a schedule C.  That's where you would show revenues and expenses.  You may well have to file other forms as well.


"I seem not to be able to comment on the first answer due to reputation, so I'll aim to enhanced the first answer which is generally good but with these caveats: 1) Dividends are not ""guaranteed"" to preferred shareholders.  Rather, preferred shareholders are normally in line ahead (i.e. in preference to or ""preferred"") of common shareholders in terms of dividend payment.  This is an extremely important distinction, because unlike investments that we generally consider ""guaranteed"" such as CDs (known as GICs in Canada), a company's board can suspend the dividend at anytime for long periods of time without significant repercussions -- whereas a missed payment to a bank or secured bondholder can often push a company into bankruptcy very quickly. 2) Due to point 1), it is extremely important to know the ""convenants"" or rules sorrounding both the preferred shares you are buying and the other more senior creditors of that issuing company (i.e. taxes (almost always come first), banks loans, leases, bonds etc.).  It is also important to know if a particular preferred share has ""cumulative"" dividends.  You generally only want to buy preferred's that have ""cumulative"" dividends, since that means that anytime the company misses a payment, they must pay those dividends first before any other dividends at the same or lower priority in the future. 3) Unlike a common stock, your upside on a preferred stock is relatively fixed: you get a fixed share of the company's profit and that's it, whereas a common shareholder gets everything that's left over after interest and preferred dividends are paid. So if the company does really well you will theoretically do much better with common stock over time. For the above reasons, it is generally advisable to think of preferred shares as being more similar to really risky bonds in the same company, rather than similar to common stock.   Of course, if you are an advanced investor there are a lot more variables in play such as tax considerations and whether the preferred have special options attached to them such conversion into common shares."


Not sure I understand your question correctly, but you could use ACH to transfer funds between banks without a fee (most banks don't charge, the big ones might, for outgoing).  The downside of course is that an ACH takes 2 to 5 days depending on both the originating and receiving banks. A wire is instantaneous but there is always a fee.


So, the market thinks the value of Wholefoods to Amazon is about $19billion. Who cares? It's not about what Amazon gets, its about what Wholefood shareholders can get instead. What's they're alternative to this deal? Who will pay that much? Anyone? Just because it's a good deal for Amazon, doesn't mean it's a bad deal for Whole Food shareholders


Digital photographs are the primary material to work with in relation to [free digital scrapbooking](http://www.scrapgirls.com/), yet tasks could be almost not possible to carry out without using unique personal computer programs and graphic software’s. Electronic scrapbooking is dependent upon this kind of tools for creating layouts, including graphic textures, embellishing and also which includes text messages.


Here at Burpengary Dental Professionals we believe in providing an anxiety free, professional and affordable dental experience to all our patients. As the regions leading dentist we can handle all of your oral health needs including check ups, teeth cleaning, fillings, root canals, and much more. For professional service, great prices and a perfect smile, call us today.


"This is largely a cultural issue. I would be appalled at the very idea that my parents would charge me interest for lending me money. Just as they would be appalled if I were to do so if lending them money. I find the idea of attempting to make money off of your children fundamentally wrong.  I realize that you only want to do this to teach them, that you have their best interests in mind and not your own profit. Nevertheless, what will actually happen were you to charge them interest is that you would accrue a monetary gain at the expense of your children. Is that really something you would be comfortable with? Now, as I stated at the beginning, this is clearly a cultural issue. Based on the other answers here, many cultures, probably including your own, find nothing wrong with this. I've even heard of people charging their adult children rent when they come home for the holidays, something that is completely baffling to me.  The point I am trying to make is that asking other people's opinions on whether you should do this is not very useful unless those people share your own cultural background. My family and culture are such that the idea of charging interest to one's family members seems downright immoral to me. Given that you are asking here, it seems like you might be on the fence about it yourself. However, I freely admit that my answer is colored by my own cultural prejudices and may very well not be applicable to you.  Still, ask yourself, is a relatively small amount of money in the grand scheme of things—or, for that matter, an entire fortune—worth jeopardizing your relationship with your children? Do you really believe that having their parents retroactively charge them interest for a loan will somehow teach them something about the ""real world"" that your already adult children don't know? One of the main reasons they came to you and didn't go to a bank is precisely that they expected the loan to be interest free.  So, sure, tell them that you won't lend any more until they repay what they owe. Even better, sit them down and have an honest, adult conversation, explaining that the absence of the money they owe is making itself felt in your household and work out a way they can repay you.  What, in my opinion, you most certainly shouldn't do is treat your relationship with your children as a regular business transaction. It isn't and I am sure you don't want it to be."


There are no particular restrictions in the UK on sending money abroad, so if you can get the loan in the first place you can send the money abroad. The main potential issue will be that many (maybe all) unsecured personal loan providers will want some indication of the purpose of the loan, and you will need to be honest with them about this or it would be fraud. As with all financial transactions with friends and family, you should think very carefully about the risks both of not getting the money back and of the impact on your relationship. Can you definitely repay the loan even if your parents don't repay you? Who will take the exchange rate risk; will your parents repay you the GBP you borrowed or the EUR you lend them? Depending on the rules in your parents' country, they will likely need to declare the source of these funds to the mortgage provider, and the mortgage provider will always have first priority in getting repaid.


DannyInternets considers MF Global and John Corzine to be the same thing. His monkeysphere is not big enough to fit all of MF Global's employees, so he thinks that John Corzine physically lost the money.  This is bad, it leads to scapegoating, if that 'fucker' went to prison there'd be a whole bunch of people who are more guilty getting away with everything.


After-hours trading and alternate venues allow one to trade outside of regular market hours. However there are a few reasons why you would not want to: The purpose of an exchange is to improve liquidity by gathering all buyers and sellers in the same place at the same time. If trading was 24/7, not all market participants would be trading at the same time. Some markets (including NASDAQ) depend on market makers or specialists to help liquidity. These exchanges are able to mandate that the market maker actively make a market in a security during a meaningful percentage of the trading day. Requiring 24/7 active market making may not be reasonable. Trading systems, meaning both exchange infrastructure and market participant infrastructure, need maintenance time. It's nice to have the evenings and weekends for scheduled work. Post-trade clearing and settlement procedures are still somewhat manual at times. You need staff around to handle these processes.


I do know that a blank check has all the information they need for the electronic transfer. They probably add it as a customer service to streamline future payments. Though I don't think automatically adding it makes good business sense. It is possible that the form used to submit the check included a line to added the account to the list of authorized accounts.  He might have been lucky he didn't set up a recurring payment.  I would check the website to see if there is a tool to remove the account info from the list of payment options. There has to be a way to edit the list so that if you change banks you can update the information, yet not keep the old accounts on the list. Talk to customer service if the website doesn't have a way of removing the account. Tell them that you have to edit the account information. And give them your info. If they balk at the change tell them that they could be committing fraud if the money is pulled from an unauthorized account.


Updating this question with a report from Clark Howard: http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/clark-howard/homes-real-estate/home-warranties-not-worth-paper-theyre-written/nDYMR/ Of course everybody is right so far... Home warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on, but that   hasn't stopped homeowners from buying them by the millions. Nor does   it negate their effectiveness as a tool you can use to sweeten the pot   if you have to sell your home in a tough market. The Chicago Tribune reports that 3 million homeowners bought home   warranties last year. Yet at the same time, for six years running,   home warranty companies have led a list of the most complained about   companies in America out of 500 different categories tracked by   AngiesList.com. Basically the point he is trying to make is that home warranties aren't worth it (by and large) for the average home owner.  However, if you are selling a home, offering to pay for a warranty for one year for the new home buyer is a sweet incentive for selling your house.   At first, there seems to be a contradiction, but not in actuality.  If you expect a home warranty to serve you, statistically it probably won't.  There are success stories; there are just more horror stories.  But just like any sort of advertising cost or other sunk cost when selling your house, having a warranty to give to your new buyer will perhaps help you sell the home faster and for more money.   It doesn't mean you believe in the quality of the warranty, but for your buyer, if they never use it; meh.  If the use it and it works; hooray!  If they use it and it doesn't work; oh well, at least it didn't cost them anything. Offering it to your buyer is akin to offering them a free piece of art.  Maybe they like it, maybe they don't, but it was free!


Investing in NPS is a good stratergy for long term keeping in mind your retirement plans. However, the amount deposited in NPS gets locked till you are sixty. So, it depends on you wheather you want to pay few bucks to the government to enjoy the remaining money as you wish or you want to save the money till you are in your sixties. I hope the answer is useful.


"Do you think that you had previously been over-saving for retirement? If so, then the first time home buyers exemption might be a good opportunity for you to reverse that error. On the other hand, if you think you have been saving the right amount, or too little, for retirement, then why would you undo that savings?  ""Because I can, under existing tax law"" seems like an inadequate answer. Remember that if you are anticipate to be maxing out your tax advantaged accounts in the near future, then such a distribution is a permanent loss of opportunity.  You can't get the money back in. Are you thinking more clearly now, or were you thinking more clearly back when you decided to contribute to an IRA rather than build up a down-payment fund in the first place?"


> The company also emphasizes its green credentials, pointing out traveling in all-electric vehicles does not emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  [Popular Mechanics](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a3259/electric-cars-pollute-more-than-gasoline-cars-17535339/) as well as [Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric-cars-are-not-necessarily-clean/) among many others disagree  also, if the traffic is hell if you drive your car, how is it better if a Tesla is the vehicle?  > Given the notorious traffic conditions on I-5


I asked how often grocery purchases are made in a comment, but I'm going to assume weekly for simplicity. If a roommate is present during the week following a grocery purchase, then they owe a share according to their preferences as you outlined them above. You will have to track the grocery cost by category for that week and calculate the balance owed by the person for that week. If there is a partial week where most expect to leave for a holiday or otherwise, then fewer groceries should be purchased for that week, and the cost of shares will decrease accordingly. One need only indicate preferences once, and weekly attendance thereafter. The only issue remaining is to determine how to record shares. If a normal person consumes 3 shares of milk, and .5 shares of butter, and so on, you simply add up all of the milk shares for the week and divide the milk bill by those shares. Same with the butter. The downside of this method is that you have to predict consumption in advance, so you may instead calculate by consumption after the fact with a deposit paid by all to create the initial grocery supply which will be refunded when that person leaves the grocery purchase co-op, and shares are calculated by who participated in the week prior to the grocery purchase. This also allows for a mid-week refresh if any commodity incurs higher than expected consumption, with the mid-week bill being added to the end of week refresh trip.


Can you expand on your second point about how banks are now structuring these products to account for greater defaults and losses? Is it just that the securities are being correctly rated this time around as opposed to the MBS's back in the last crisis?


I would pay down the mortgage first.  It leaves you with more money in the end.  If you focused on the student loans first, you'd have one debt gone, which emotionally is nice, but you'd have accumulated much more interest on the mortgage while you were busy paying down your student loans.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-13/long-awaited-fed-balance-sheet-taper-begins-today-with-mortgages) reduced by 54%. (I'm a bot) ***** > After months of debate and conjecture about what&#039;s become known as the Federal Reserve&#039;s balance-sheet taper, the New York branch will announce at 3 p.m. its purchase schedule for a $4 billion per month roll off in the central bank&#039;s holdings.  > The amount allowed to roll off will rise to $8 billion a month in January, to $12 billion a month in April and then ramp up in stages until it reaches a maximum of $20 billion in October 2018.  > In the last schedule which ran from Sept. 28 to Oct. 13, 30-year 3.5s made up 52 percent of all the $14.75 billion of Fed purchases.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/769hn5/the_longawaited_fed_balance_sheet_taper_begins/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~227934 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **billion**^#1 **month**^#2 **purchase**^#3 **off**^#4 **Fed**^#5"


"Wow! You really really did not get it.  So, I will explain slllloooowwwwllly: Politifact confirms that, indeed, Trump reduced the debt more than any other president for this short period of time.  But, then, Politifact says ""but...."" so the claim about Trump is ""mostly false"".  Got it? Or do you need more elaborate and slower explanations?"


They are not? McKesson basically holds independent pharmacies who do business with them at gun point. Contracts are structured in such a way which states a pharmacy must spend 90 - 95% of their monthly drug expenses on McKesson. Meaning, they are free to inflate the prices as much as they want and the pharmacies can't do anything about it as they are contractually obligated to buy from them.  Furthermore, the savings incentives they offer independent pharmacies are through rebate spend, and they introduce really convoluted rebates. Further masking their actual price for cost of goods and also discouraging spending outside their website. Often the pharmacist does not have the time to keep track of what is on rebate and shopping around may put them in serious risk of loosing out on money or fines.  You may wonder why pharmacies sign such unfavorable contracts. The answer is there aren't many players in the industry who can provide all the drugs required to run a pharmacy. The much cheaper alternate suppliers do not have the inventory and drug selection. A pharmacy can shop around, and there are some that do, but the vast majority do not have the manpower to do so. I will state, I am no pharmacist, but being around pharmacy owners, they blame the wholesalers for how corrupt the system is.


Scale Manager provides the best water conditioning service in the United Kingdom. Water is an important part of each living thing. If the water entering your building is unclean in any way, let our team diagnosticate the issue and implement a practicable treatment solution. We provide the best Electronic descaler. This system makes an electrical charge in your water that holds the scale in the water and makes it all the more impossible that the mineral will be deserted on surfaces, for example, your bath, sink or shower divider.


>As an employer, why would I not want to hire someone who is philosophically similar to me?  Because this isn't an issue that should come up in the work place at all, it's extremely unprofessional. It also leads down a very dangerous road of employers demanding religious and political affiliation in a time when people will claim to share that just to get a job.  Unless someone's a zealot you're unlikely to know what their exact position on many issues is and you may be surprised to find how many people with different opinions you actually gel well with and work productively, though I completely understand where you're coming from I don't think the link between having the same opinion and having productive chemistry is as strong as you believe.


"To buy a house, you need: At least 2 years tax returns (shows a steady income history; even if you're making 50k right now, you probably weren't when you were 16, and you might not be when you're 20; as they say, easy come, easy go). A 20% down payment.  These days, that easily means writing a $50k check.  You make $50k a year, great, but try this math: how long will it take you to save 100% of your annual salary?  If you're saving 15% of your income (which puts you above many Americans), it'll still take 7 years.  So no house for you for 7 years. While your attitude of ""I've got the money, so why not"" is certainly acceptable, the reality is that you don't have a lot of financial experience yet.  There could easily be lean times ahead when you aren't making much (many people since 2008 have gone 18 months or more without any income at all). Save as much money as possible.  Once you get $10k in a liquid savings account, speak to a CPA or an investment advisor at your local bank to set up tax deferred accounts such as an IRA.  And don't wait to start investing; starting now versus waiting until you're 25 could mean a 100% difference in your net worth at any given time (that's not just a random number, either; an additional 7 years compounding time could literally mean another doubling of your worth)."


Article is typical monetarist bs. Like Trump.  IMO,  money and wealth are not equal, and all debt is not bad. Find out how Hamilton took the Revolutionary War debt,  and used it as  an asset to  issue credit from the  Bank of the US. The real question today is, where is the growth of the real  economy?


I have always assumed that there is a regulation that either prohibits, or makes noncompetitive, internet bank business accounts.  All of the 1%+ savings accounts offered at the banks listed are internet only.  If you broaden the search to include other internet only banks like Capital One 360, American Express Savings, Goldman Sachs Savings, Discover Savings, you'll find they all also only offer accounts to individuals (some may allow a trust to own the account) not businesses.


Hi, I am 20,  pursuing majors in Petroleum Eng. I have almost zero knowledge of finance or trading. I want to shift my career to finance (preferably algo-trading ). So I've started with learning python. What else do you suggest I can start with?


> Walmart, home depot, and Costco will always have their place. I still buy a number of items in stores because Amazon can't compete with a 5 gallon bucket for 3 dollars, food prices/quality they haven't even begun to fathom how they will compete with, and general items like furniture that they can't ship for cheap.  You might be right, but Amazon's stated strategy *is* to compete with all those stores, and in all those markets. Most recently the purchase of wholefoods being part of their 'food prices/quality' strategy.


"Convenience, and of course money. In case of an event, you'll have to spend the full worth of money to fix/replace, while if you're insured - you get the insurance to pay for it. It is up to you to decide, if the money saved on the lower premiums worth the risk of paying much more in case of an event. Of course, the cheaper the car the more it makes sense not to pay the premiums. Many people do that. Regarding the bargaining power, I actually think that you would pay less if it is not going through insurance than the bill the insurance pays. I fixed a nasty dent for like $300  at one shop, while at the other they said ""It's $1200, but what do you care, your insurance will cover it"" (I had $500 deductible, so in the end it was cheaper for me to pay $300 without the insurance at all)."


Are the amounts in those boxes taxes that have already been removed? Yes. If they are, how do I report these totals? When I entered the information from the 1099-MISC, it only asked for the total, and didn't ask for (what I thought were) the taxes already taken out. It should appear on your 1040 line 64 (and similar line on your State tax return). If the program doesn't ask for all the 1099 fields (which is stupid), you can add it as additional taxes paid in the Credits section, somewhere in the area where they ask about estimated payments etc.


Maybe the prices aren't better always but there's a perceived higher quality. When you shop there, it feels like you're getting a better value. Who can forget two buck Chuck? And lots of their goods are repackaged. It's an open secret that some of the goods you buy there is name brand with a new box. TJ cultivates this image of being the place where they stuff expensive food into a new box and sell it half off. Shopping there feels like winning the lottery.  They could only do this by limiting their variety. A shame that the article points it out as if a failing, like they pay employees more despite this. It's just the opposite.


"Anyone can walk into a bank, say ""Hi, I'm a messenger, I have an endorsed check and a filled out deposit slip for Joe Blow who has an account here, please deposit this check for him, as he is incapacitated. Straight deposit.""  They'll fiddle on their computer, to see if they can identify the deposit account definitively, and if they can, and the check looks legit, ""thanks for taking care of our customer sir.""  Of course, getting a balance or cashback is out of the question since you are not authenticated as the customer. I have done the same with balance transfer paperwork, in that case the bank knew the customer and the balance transfer was his usual. If the friend does not have an account there, then s/he should maybe open an account at an ""online bank"" that allows deposit by snapping photos on a phone, or phone up a branch, describe her/his situation and see if they have any options.  Alternately, s/he could get a PayPal account.  Or get one of those ""credit card swipe on your phone"" deals like Square or PayPal Here, which have fees very close to nil, normally cards are swiped but you can hand-enter the numbers.   Those are fairly easy to get even if you have troubles with creditworthiness.  S/he would need to return the check to the payer and ask the payer to pay her/him one of those ways.  The payer may not be able to, e.g. if they are a large corporation. A last possibility is if the check is from a large corporation with whom s/he continues to do business with.  For instance, the electric company cashiers out your account after you terminate service at your old location. But then you provision service at a new location and get a new bill, you can send their check right back to them and say ""Please apply this to my new account"". If s/he is unable to get any of those because of more serious problems like being in the country illegally, then, lawful behavior has its privileges, sorry. There are lots of unbanked people, and they pay through the nose for banking services at those ghastly check-cashing places, at least in America.  I don't have a good answer for how to get a check cashed in that situation."


Nothing really tangible is lost when bits of paper or shiny rocks disappear.  Economies are built on raw materials, equipment, production facilities, and people doing work.  Compared to that, any medium of exchange can easily be replaced.


The _again_ part is the part that pisses me off. We best say no. Once and done, and we did it once. They should have learned their lesson, and they did not.  If we do it again, they'll never pay taxes again. Why, when a free repatriation is just around the corner!


If IQ correlates directly with intelligence regardless of race or culture then African Americans are on average a full standard deviation stupider than white people.  They specifically say that is not true, there is no genetic explanation. Therefore there's an issue with the test. How exactly is that hard to understand.  One of those two things has to be true. Blacks(and for that matter every other race) are stupider than whites or IQ doesn't measure intelligence.


"Getting pretty tired of this.  Rabble: ""There's no shortage! Just offer $500k a year, you'll have plenty of workers!""  Tech companies: ""That's not economical for us. Wrecks our margins and business model. We offer **very good salaries** for good software engineers, and still can't find them.""  Rabble: ""Evil corporations! Greedy!""  Best solution for long-term American economic advancement and global technological dominance: offer H1B visas for every highly qualified engineer who wants to come here. Bring 'em on!"


> hire a cashier for 31k/yr when they can spend the same to buy a ordering kiosk that will be faster, not mess up orders, never be late or sick, not have an attitude, won't quit, doesn't need Healthcare, doesn't need unemployment tax, and will maybe need a repair every now and then?   There's a reason that self checkout stations are becoming more and more popular at places like Lowe's, Walmart, and local grocery stores. If you can hire a single employee to watch over the 4-8 registers, instead of hiring 4-8 workers, you're cutting back on a lot of expenses (salary, taxes, benefits, etc.). I imagine there's a higher level of shoplifting with those stations, but it's probably more than made up for in the $100,000+ in savings each year you don't have to pay someone to run a register.


I'd pile up as much cash as you can in a savings account - you will need money for the move (even if it's just gas money) and it's going to be hard to predict where house prices are going so you might or might not be underwater when it comes time to sell the house. Or you might be so deep underwater by then that the extra money doesn't make much of a difference anymore anyway. Once you're actually in the process of selling the house, you can figure out if you can (or need to) use the savings to cover the shortfall, closing costs or if you just built up a little wealth during the time you put the money aside.


You have to think on the margin. While you will always seek work in order to survive, as wages fall, the opportunity cost of leisure falls (and likewise the opportunity cost of working rises), and rational people will, on the margin, substitute toward leisure. Nothing to do with bad parenting. Just simple economics.


> Do you know what the Bahamian fiscal policies are?  Yes.  Yet are a no income, estate, and wealth tax country.  They have payroll tax that amount to almost 4%, and that us what funds their social services and infrastructure.  However, only 10% off their GDP comes from manufacturing, so they have vey little need for strong infrastructure. That would change drastically if countries stopped bringing money into the country from tourism and banking.  They are basically living off of and depending on the income of wealthy, tax strong nations.


It's a good idea to keep them, just until your statement arrives. As a programmer you know its supposed to be automatic, but glitches do happen. Keeping the receipt till your statement is probably not necessary 99.999999% of the time, but it might save your butt one time, which would be worth it.


Well, in a perfect world, those goals are not conflicting with each other. Workers should be paid as much as their productivity allows. Unfortunately, the bargaining power of companies is much stronger against that of any individual. Esp. in such a buyers' market (for labor) like now.


As mentioned by others, dollar cost averaging is just a fancy term for how many shares your individual purchases get when you are initially adding money to your investment accounts.  Once the money is invested, annual or quarterly rebalancing serves the purpose of taking advantage of higher rates of growth in particular market sectors. You define the asset allocation based on your risk profile, time to retirement, etc., then you periodically sell the shares of the investments that have grown faster than the rest and buy more shares of the investments that are relatively cheaper.


Where will you buy a computer with the ability to run Linux?   Hardware will signed.  Think about that 1st day you tried an open source OS on an older Win/Mac. It was easy to download and free to use.   If it isn't easy from day one with hardware they already own, many people will never try it again.


"He has a point. He didn't say prices would remain the same, just that they'd be ""reasonable"". I'm sure some restaurants would sacrifice profit margins in order to undercut their competition. Without data, its hard to predict what amounts of price changes we would see."


Why doesn't the paper industry step up and take on the printer industry's exorbitant ink prices?  Blank paper is most useful for printing on, but if that's too expensive, then that's less paper used.    The post office could offer an e-mail-to-delivered-print option, especially for people with (esp. elderly) customers that don't have internet (ie, you e-mail the USPS, they print and deliver the bills/records, just like I believe they already have a similar thing for advertisers).    Paper isn't dead, but the best thing the paper industry can do is push for paper where it makes sense, push for a hybrid of tech and paper where that's better, and not try to shove paper down anyone's throat.


"I am a numbers guy, the math is great. Instead of ""jane was twice her son's age when he married, and is now 1.5 times his age....."" questions in math class, I think the math problems should mostly have dollar/pound signs in front of them.  In general, I like the idea of relating to the kids' situations as much as possible. When my daughter (14) makes a purchase, I'd ask her to be aware of how many hours she had to work to make the money she plans to spend. Was it worth 4 hours babysitting to buy an iPad case? Was it worth 2 to buy lunch that we could have made you at home?  (Note, the 'convert price to hours worked' is a concept that works great when teaching budgeting to anyone, not just kids.)  The math of tax and discounts for comparison shopping works great as well so long as they understand value. A $400 sweatshirt at 50% off isn't really a bargain, in my opinion.   Next, the math of balancing a checkbook should be high on the list. Accounting for the checks that didn't clear but are outstanding is beyond many people, amazing enough.  For the sport fan, there are unlimited math problem one can create for game scores, stats for the season, etc. Young boys who will fall asleep during a stats class will pay attention if instead of abstract numbers, you add 'goals' 'home runs' etc, after the numbers.  (Note - this question is probably outside the scope of the board, no right or wrong answer. But I love it as a question in general, and if not here, I hope it finds a good home.)"


I would suggest your local credit union or local bank for security and liquidity.  Liquidity is probably the most important issue for a emergency fund.


Let me get this straight. I would stand my ground. Your son negotiated in good faith. Either they messed up, or they are dishonest. Either way your son wasn't the one supposed to know all the internal rules. I don't think it matters if they cashed the check or not. I would tell them if they have cashed it, that is even more evidence the deal was finalized. But even if they they didn't cash it, it only proves they are very disorganized. If for some reason your son feels forced to redo the deal, have him start the negotiations way below the price that was agreed to.  If the deal for some strange reason gets voided don't let him agree to some sort of restocking fee.


Assuming the funds are being transferred for his treatment, Yes it should be added to your income and taxed at the bracket you fall into. This is same as a person walking into your clinic and paying you cash/cheque/credit card to get treated.


The benefit is that your earnings in the 401k are not subject to income tax until you make withdrawals. This allows you to grow your money faster than if you made equivalent investments in a taxable account and had to pay taxes on dividends and capital gains along the way. Also, the theory is that you will be in a lower tax bracket in retirement and thus you will pay lower taxes overall. If this is not true (especially if you will be in a higher tax bracket in retirement), then there may not be any advantage for you to contribute to a 401k. One advantage over the Traditional IRA is the higher contribution limit. Some 401k plans also allow you to take loans from the plan, I don't think this is possible with a Traditional IRA. An alternative to both the 401k and Traditional IRA is the Roth version of either plan. With a Roth, you pay taxes up front, but your withdrawals during retirement are tax free.


I can't tell if your serious or not.  There are emissions taxes worked into each gallon of gas. We are all surviving just fine with the laws that are in place right now.  Its places like China who have emission problems.


"I've found that once people ""fall in love"" with a home or the idea of a home, there's little chance they will chance course.    I'd implore you to do some reading about individuals and families trapped in an underwater mortgage and having lost a job -- now they can't move for work, and they can't refinance or sell.  In short, they are trapped and will be foreclosed upon (or, at best, will short-sell).  If you want to play knife-catcher (e.g., trying to buy an asset while its value is falling) then at least don't go in blind or kid yourself about the risks.  Of course, many folks believe the housing market has bottomed - if that's true then there's no harm in waiting 6 or 12 months and verifying that premise.  At most, you'll lose a couple of points in equity.    On the other hand, you may well discover that all is not well, and suddenly you can ""afford"" even ""more"" house.  It is not hyperbole to say that the housing market in the USA has financially destroyed millions of people -- be careful out there especially as Europe comes unglued."


JS Group is a money related administrations gather in Pakistan. JS Group controls and works money related administrations organizations in Pakistan.Money related administrations of JS Group incorporate resource administration, business managing an account, organization inquire about, protection, venture keeping money, miniaturized scale fund and stock business. JS Group additionally has speculations all through Pakistan's economy, in the modern part, innovation and media segments, business land, vitality and characteristic assets. JS Group has its headquarter in Karachi.


I couldn't tell you because I'm not American, so I've only experienced different countries during short trips.  What I can say with reasonable confidence however, is that while coverage is pretty reasonable (Japan is a pretty easy country to cover with very high urban populations crammed into relatively compact spaces) speeds aren't that amazing.    Where Japan excels is regular internet.  Optical fiber connections of between 300 Mb to 1 Gigabit are widely available.  I regularly achieve speeds of over 20 mega**bytes** per second when downloading.  I think people naturally assume that this automatically translates into super fast mobile networks, but in fact Japan isn't that much better than many other countries, particularly Europe, partly because they've hung onto their old, well established, outdated networks for too long.


I'm no expert on AI but I did take a few classes on it during my CS degree.  One of the first things we learned was that Neuroscience, or Cognitive Neuroscience, is an intrinsic part of AI and has been since the early days.  So the part of this article that implies this is a new idea seems incorrect.  If you're going to build an AI, you won't make it very far without a definition for intelligence or what it is to *think* (this turns out to be hard.)


The rule that I know is six months of income, stored in readily accessible savings (e.g. a savings or money market account).   Others have argued that it should be six months of expenses, which is of course easier to achieve.  I would recommend against that, partially because it is easier to achieve.  The other issue is that people are more prone to underestimate their expenses than their income.  Finally, if you base it on your current expenses, then budget for savings and have money left over, you often increase your expenses.  Sometimes obviously (e.g. a new car) and sometimes not (e.g. more restaurants or clubs).  Income increases are rarer and easier to see.   Either way, you can make that six months shorter or longer.  Six months is both feasible and capable of handling difficult emergencies.  Six years wouldn't be feasible.  One month wouldn't get you through a major emergency.   Examples of emergencies:   Your savings can be in any of multiple forms.  For example, someone was talking about buying real estate and renting it.  That's a form of savings, but it can be difficult to do withdrawals.  Stocks and bonds are better, but what if your emergency happens when the market is down?  Part of how emergency funds operate is that they are readily accessible.   Another issue is that a main goal of savings is to cover retirement.  So people put them in tax privileged retirement accounts.  The downside of that is that the money is not then available for emergencies without paying penalties.  You get benefits from retirement accounts but that's in exchange for limitations.   It's much easier to spend money than to save it.  There are many options and the world makes it easy to do.  Emergency funds make people really think about that portion of savings.  And thinking about saving before spending helps avoid situations where you shortchange savings.   Let's pretend that retirement accounts don't exist (perhaps they don't in your country).  Your savings is some mix of stocks and bonds.  You have a mortgaged house.  You've budgeted enough into stocks and bonds to cover retirement.  Now you have a major emergency.   As I understand your proposal, you would then take that money out of the stocks and bonds for retirement.  But then you no longer have enough for retirement.  Going forward, you will have to scrimp to get back on track.   An emergency fund says that you should do that scrimping early.  Because if you're used to spending any level of money, cutting that is painful.  But if you've only ever spent a certain level, not increasing it is much easier.  The longer you delay optional expenses, the less important they seem.   Scrimping beforehand also helps avoid the situation where the emergency happens at the end of your career.  It's one thing to scrimp for fifteen years at fifty.  What's your plan if you would have an emergency at sixty-five?  Or later?  Then you're reducing your living standard at retirement.   Now, maybe you save more than necessary.  It's not unknown.  But it's not typical either.  It is far more common to encounter someone who isn't saving enough than too much.


London has done the world a service. Uber is nothing more than the biggest payday loan scam the world has ever seen. BUT, you borrow the money from your future self, and pay 25% of it to Uber.  Average net profit for an Uber driver is less than 7 cents a mile. That means having to drive 14 miles to make a whole dollar. Anything above this rate ignores the cost of gas, and the maintenance costs of operating a vehicle.  You're much better off selling shit to a pawn shop, if you are short of money this week.


A Muslim perspective...  >Shaikh Saadi says:  >Translation: If rizq (sustenance) was dependant on intelligence, the stupid would die of hunger. But observations are this, that sometimes, nay moreso, the ignorant attain so much wealth that it astounds the intelligent. The pious are contented with this distribution. They say:  >Translation: “We are contented with this distribution of the Jabbar (omnipotent), that for us there is knowledge and for the ignorant wealth. Wealth will soon diminish and knowledge remains and never vanishes. – Huquq wa Faraaidh, Page 749.  It is all by Divine Providence, there is no luck in it. From the Qur'an, this:  >*Do they distribute the mercy of your Lord? It is We who have apportioned among them their livelihood in the life of this world and have raised some of them above others in degrees [of rank] that they may make use of one another for service. But the mercy of your Lord is better than whatever they accumulate.* —Qur'an 43:32


Math time.  24 means 2 years out of college, or 6 years out of highschool, the latter being much more plausible given the poster's content quality.  $100k / 6 = $16.7k/year  16.7k / 52 weeks = $321/week  $321 / (11/hr * (1 - 15% taxes)) = 34 hours per week.  So he worked 34 hours per week, without fail, for 6 years, with NO expenses of any kind whatsoever.   OR, much more likely, he managed to save only $10k, not $100k in 6 years.


Based on your comment that you do not itemize your deductions, I think that's probably the next step for you to consider. Many of the suggestions that we would give require that you itemize. If you are not familiar with the potential deductions it would probably be worth your while to visit with a local tax professional and discuss your expenses including what changes you could make to minimize your tax bill.  Ultimately becoming eligible for the 401(k) if possible will allow you access to the biggest avenue for reducing tax liability. It sounds like you are already prioritizing and saving for retirement through your IRA, but most earners in the 25% bracket can't put the recommended 15% into savings (with tax advantages) through an IRA.


If your mortgage interest is tax-deductible, it's generally a bad idea to pay down the principal on the mortgage because you'd be losing the tax deduction. You could instead invest it in a tax-free municipal bond fund, especially if you're in a high tax bracket (including state and local marginal tax rates). For example, if you have a 5% rate mortgage on your home, you could invest in a 3.5% municipal bond and still come out ahead when you apply the tax deduction to your income at a 44% (33% federal + 7% state + 4% city in NYC) marginal tax rate.


"Tough spot. I'm guessing the credit cards are a personal line of credit in their name and not the company's (the fact that the business can be liquidated separately from your parents means they did at least set up an LLC or similar business entity). Using personal debt to save a company that could have just been dissolved at little cost to their personal credit and finances was, indeed, a very bad move. The best possible end to this scenario for you and your parents would be if your parents could get the debt transferred to the LLC before dissolving it. At this point, with the company in such a long-standing negative situation, I would doubt that any creditor would give the business a loan (which was probably why your parents threw their own good money after bad with personal CCs). They might, in the right circumstances, be able to convince a judge to effectively transfer the debt to the corporate entity before liquidating it. That puts the debt where it should have been in the first place, and the CC companies will have to get in line. That means, in turn, that the card issuers will fight any such motion or decision tooth and nail, as long as there's any other option that gives them more hope of recovering their money. Your parents' only prayer for this to happen is if the CCs were used for the sole purpose of business expenses. If they were living off the CCs as well as using them to pay business debts, a judge, best-case, would only relieve the debts directly related to keeping the business afloat, and they'd be on the hook for what they had been living on. Bankruptcy is definitely an option. They will ""re-affirm"" their commitment to paying the mortgage and any other debts they can, and under a Chapter 13 the judge will then remand negotiations over what total portion of each card's balance is paid, over what time, and at what rate, to a mediator. Chapter 13 bankruptcy is the less damaging form to your parent's credit; they are at least attempting to make good on the debt.  A Chapter 7 would wipe it away completely, but your parents would have to prove that they cannot pay the debt, by any means, and have no hope of ever paying the debt by any means. If they have any retirement savings, anything in their name for grandchildren's college funds, etc, the judge and CC issuers will point to it like a bird dog. Apart from that, their house is safe due to Florida's ""homestead"" laws, but furniture, appliances, clothing, jewelry, cars and other vehicles, pretty much anything of value that your parents cannot defend as being necessary for life, health, or the performance of whatever jobs they end up taking to dig themselves out of this, are all subject to seizure and auction. They may end up just selling the house anyway because it's too big for what they have left (or will ever have again). I do not, under any circumstance, recommend you putting your own finances at risk in this. You may gift money to help, or provide them a place to live while they get back on their feet, but do not ""give till it hurts"" for this. It sounds heartless, but if you remove your safety net to save your parents, then what happens if you need it? Your parents aren't going to be able to bail you out, and as a contractor, if you're effectively ""doing business as"" Reverend Gonzo Contracting, you don't have the debt shield your parents had. It looks like housing's faltering again due to the news that the Fed's going to start backing off; you could need that money to weather a ""double-dip"" in the housing sector over the next few months, and you may need it soon."


> whiny  lol, I'd love to point out the irony of your comment right here.  You're a real gem.  If you'd like to not get downvoted, maybe you'd like to start contributing.  It's fun, you should try it sometime.


Sooner or later though, don't you think Janet Yellen will decide to raise the rates? I think its becoming a bit too ridiculous at this stage.   If we keep the rates as low as they currently are, don't you think we're putting ourselves at risk for another recession, assuming that a large proportion of home buyers today are buying with mortgages (not paying full amounts), and using borrowed money? After all, folks who use borrowed money to put down a mortgage are very likely to default.


I know I came a little late to this discussion but let me give you my opinion. I think that purchasing the BMW is a terrible investment for obvious reasons. Once you drive the car off the dealer's lot the car loses anywhere from 5-10k in value immediately. Its a terrible investment and something that you will regret in the future. However, whether you buy it now or you hold off we all know you are eventually still going to get it. I graduated college and was in a similar situation as the one you are now. I started making 60k after college and leased a brand new BMW. Like I said it was a terrible investment, but I do not regret it for one day. Ive had so much fun in that car that I can't even begin to explain. We only live once and you don't want to be one of those guys that looks back and says I should've this I should've that, JUST DO IT. We all know it won't be possible when you have a wife and kids so just splurge now and be responsible later LOL.


Hi guys,  This is an app I've been working on over the summer. It's my belief that a lot of people want to learn about the stock market but in the end can't because they're turned off by long walls of text you get when you Google about them/read a textbook.   I know there are other simplified solutions out there but they're not widely adopted yet and I don't think there are any (?) that were made app first.  Anyway, check it out if you can. Appreciate all feedback/comments.


I've heard many times that large corporations have their accounting departments do all sorts of crazy things to get their tax rate drastically lowered. I'm no accountant, and this is not something I have done a ton of research into, but I did find [this paper](http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/sorrystateofcorptaxes.php#Executive Summary) that states that between 2008 and 2012 the 288 Fortune 500 companies the study looked at only paid an effective tax rate of 19.4%.   Note that the 288 companies selected were selected because of their consistent profitability over that time period.  I am open to the possibility of this study being flawed, but I didn't see anything that jumped out at me.


Are you still here? Fuck off. What you just said is more of your stupid bullshit. Go away.  FYI: Not having a religion, is a religion. You can still be (and are) an intolerant, ignorant moron who is incapable of rational thought. Everything you said yesterday was wrong, and everything you say today will be wrong as well. Bring your trash somewhere else, you dumb, ignorant fuck.


That's true for the tax return.  The T1135 has some late penalties.  These only apply if you had to file one, some/most people don't. http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/cmmn/frgn/pnlts_grd-eng.html


"This. I see this problem all the time at work (big company). We don't use internal billing, so development is essentially seen as zero cost (already paid for, right?) so the result is... development can provide infinite resources!   We get asked to do way too much, in too little time, for the amount of people we have. Obviously more often than not, nobody is happy with results.  We've been trying to implement internal billing in my department but higher ups don't see it, they just want to continue with a ""proper management"" philosophy with no tools to quantify it -- which has not been working."


Google doesn't make money from their browser, they make money from searches, advertising, and their ability to catalogue data. As long as Firefox is open, it's in Google's interest to have it around, even if it costs them a small amount. Better Chrome + Firefox than a market dominated by Microsoft or Apple or Facebook versus Chrome alone. At least for now.


"The definition I use for financial independence is 99% confidence that, at a specific estimated spending rate per year (allowing for estimated inflation, and budgeting for likely medical emergencies, and taxes on taxable investments), the money will outlast me. This translates to needing an average annual return on investment which covers the average yearly spending. For my purposes, that works out to my relying on being able to draw only a 4% income from the money each year, which should give me good odds of the money not just being sufficient but being able to deliver that rate ""forever"". (Historically, average US stock market rate if return is around 8%.) That is overkill, if course, I could plan on the money just barely lasting past my 120th birthday or something of that sort, but the goal us to be pretty sure not only that I won't run out but that I will have some cash unexpected needs. Which in turn means that I estimate I need investments 1/.04 times the yearly spending estimate to declare the ""forever"" independence/retirement, or 25x the yearly. From that, I can calculate how much longer, at a given savings rate and rate of return, it'll take for me to reach that target.  Obviously you need to adjust all these numbers to reflect your opinions/understanding if the market, your own needs, your priorities and expected maximum age, and the phase of Saturn's moons. But that's the basic rationale. Or you can pay a financial planner to give you this number, and a strategy for getting there, based on the numbers you give him or her plus some statistical analysis of the market's overall history."


Make the memorable party or events with our great escapist team. It is a one the most happiness events and it can also good adventure for you in Broward County escape rooms, here you can get full relax with our activity.  The Escape Rooms South Florida is an amusement place in USA, we have a great escapist team that support in your entertainment or in special girls night out Fort Lauderdale. Basically, you have reached the right place to get the full fun and meet new people here.  We have a good expert team of escape rooms that always help in getting the entertainment to play.


"The piece is a little misguided at best and poor journalism at worst. The problem lies in the difference between what's deductible for individuals and what's deductible for corporations. The short version of the story is that corporations can deduct a hell of a lot more things than individuals can. Individual deductions are spelled out in the Internal Revenue Code. Stuff like medical expenses (above 7.5% of your AGI), certain educational things, etc.  For corporations, the basic rule is that they can deduct any ""ordinary and necessary"" business expenses. That includes operating, travel, interest, employee, etc.  I wish that the article had cited specific sections of the Code if this was some kind of loophole or something, but alas, it appears that they didn't. That leads me to believe that these companies are deducting the portion not paid to the government as a business expense.   ~~For what it's worth, I don't believe that a company can deduct those expenses for tax purposes unless it's to ""protect their business interests."" My assumption (I don't have the time or desire to search case law right now) is that settlements with the US Government are considered to fall under that definition.~~  **EDIT** - See my comment [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/11dbzu/federal_regulators_have_lauded_a_series_of/c6ll7ez) for the relevant Treasury Regulation dealing with this."


"708M loss narrowed from 991M loss last quarter, still growing at almost 20% over last quarter which is pretty ridiculous.  Obviously this is a private company giving a glimpse into their ""best"" metrics though, so you've got to be careful there."


"It should. It is a very nasty feedback loop. There is no ownership of the reviews. If you bring something back in store you have to have guys to prove that it was wrong. On eBay, you can just bitch and get it ""corrected""."


To round out something that @Chris W. Rea pointed out, the business that a REIT is in will be either A) Equity REIT... property management, B) mortgage REIT... lending, or C) hybrid REIT (both).  A very key point about why REITs broadly have been struggling lately, (and this would show up in the REIT indices/ETFs you've linked to,) is linked to the REIT business models.  For an Equity REIT, they borrow money at the going rate (let's say ~4.5% for commercial-scale loans), and use that to take out mortgages on physical properties. If a property rents for $15K per month, and they can take out a $1.8 million loan at $9,000 per month, then their business is around managing maintenance, operating expenses, and taxes on that $6,000 per month margin. For a mortgage REIT, they borrow funds as a highly qualified borrower, (again let's say ~4.5%), and lend those funds back out at a higher rate. The basic concept is that if you borrow $10 million at 4.5% for 30 years, you need to pay it back at $50,668 per month. If you can lend it out reliably at 5%, you collect $53,682 per month... a handy $3,000 per month. The cheaper you can get money at (below 4.5%) and the higher you can lend it at (above 5%), the better your margin is.  The worry is that both REIT business models are very highly dependent on the cost of borrowing money. With the US Fed changing its bond-buying/QE/stimulus activity, the prevailing interest rates are likely to go up. While this has its benefits (inflation), it also will make it more expensive for these types of companies to do business.


I have a free account on http://optionshouse.com/ that allows me to invest fake money into different stocks and test their tracking software. It is free and easy to do, just create an account there and they give you $4000 (fake) to invest in the stock market. They do this so that you can test their tracking and other assorted tools, in hopes that you'll choose to invest your real hard earned money with them.


that is because there is not a pure news site and communication site that I can turn to.  If Steam has taught me nothing else, it's that when technology gives people easy, pure, direct connections to what they want when they want it, without bullshit, they will prefer it over all alternatives.   I would not be here, I would be at the better interface, the one that I say needs to be built


"Good, though I don't expect the Republican Congress to let this get implemented. Mandatory arbitration and ""tort reform"" are basically just ways for companies to legal-Houdini their way out of taking responsibility for their actions. The fact that the self-declared ""party of personal responsibility"" supports things like that is the height of hypocrisy.  Class-action lawsuits are not without problems. The people who were wronged often recover only a small portion of the damages they deserve, but when the government abdicates its responsibility to enforce the law, class-action lawsuits are often the only way to hold companies accountable for their misdeeds."


Article marketing is, surprisingly, one of the most effective SEO techniques available for enhancing your search ranking and building a good customer base. Do not avoid article marketing as a business tactic. Study the information that follows, and put it to work for your enterprise today.


Exec Insiders have to file with the SEC and some sites like secform4.com track it. But many insiders have selling programs where the sell the same amount every month or quarter so you would have to do your homework to determine if there are real signals in the activity.


The article said it was [gross income, not net income](http://smallbusiness.chron.com/gross-profit-vs-net-profit-4024.html), so her take-home pay was most likely much, much less. A plant nursery business probably doesn't have a big profit margin, especially considering that virtually every big construction retailer (Lowe's, Home Depot, etc) have their own nursery sections.


Former Boeing manufacturing / industrial engineer here.  I worked in the Seattle metro area, mostly on widebody aircraft assembly.  absoluteskeptic raises an excellent point.  Trade offsets are a major driver for commercial aviation sales.  It's pretty simple; if you want to sell into Japan or China or a lot of other markets, you have to bring aircraft work into the country. Of course you used to be able to just have fabrication work done, but nowadays the capabilities are more sophisticated and the ante is constantly being raised.  In that sort of environment it's not surprising that sr. management felt a lot of pressure to go in the direction of more outsourcing, with bigger and bigger chunks of the airplane involved.  That being said, it wasn't hard to see these types of problems coming.  Especially when attempting to bring in major new technology (e.g. major structural elements made from composite).  Boeing never seemed particularly strong at risk mitigation.


Let us look at some real life scenarios where we use batteries. In the energy field, you might be having an off-grid system, and you require several batteries to power it up constantly. An energy off grid system requires some batteries to run, but when most batteries start losing their power, thinking about the cost of replacing the number of batteries can make you brain dead.  https://howtoreconditionoldbatteries.com/ez-battery-reconditioning-review/


"Headline is false.  The gas came from a cracked pipe; it did not permeate all the way up through the bedrock from the gas resevoir.  Edit: Okay, I misread that.  Let me try again.  Methane leaked into the watertable in Dimock, Pennsylvania.  That is known to be the result of a cracked pipe.  So in that case, neither gas nor fracking fluid ""permeated through bedrock"" into the water table.  Now, they found methane leaked into the watertable in Pavillion, Wyoming.  THE CAUSE OF THIS IS UNKNOWN.  HOWEVER, THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT THE GAS ""PERMEATED THROUGH BEDROCK"" INTO THE WATER TABLE.  So, again, the headline is misleading.  A fracking operator may have improperly contaminated the water table, but this is far different from the fracking process itself contaminating the water table."


"This isn't new. Even before silver hit $50 in 1980, silver coins were worth 3-4X face value for 'junk' silver.  There were people writing articles on how one could sell their house and specify a lower price, but paid in silver coins. Since silver coins have a face value, it was suggested that this was a legitimate process.  These people also suggested that if you paid your tax bill in silver coins, the IRS won't credit you for for than face value, ergo, the deal was legit.  As littleadv responded, it's barter. And barter is taxable. And once again, ""if it quacks like a duck...."""


On a company level ROCE over WACC would be more meaningful in my view but the end result should be be pretty much the same. This concept is closely related to value creation. Value can only be created when a company's ROCE is exceeding its cost of funding - WACC. This is also tightly related with the NPV concept. Value is only created when the NPV on a project is >0.  And to directly answer OP. Study in detail WACC. (weighted average cost of capital). Focus on the Modigliani–Miller theorem with taxes and financial distress costs. Good luck.