I like many of the answers, but here is a summary of reasons: Almost everyone will retire, and it is almost certain that government or company pensions schemes will not alone give you a lifestyle you would like in retirement. Money invested early is worth much more in retirement than money invested late, thanks to the miracle of compound interest. In some countries there are tax advantages to investing a little bit of money every year, compared with nothing for a few years and then a lump sum later. Much investment advice is given by investment consultants, who profit when you make investments. It's always in their interests to have you invest as early and as often as possible (that doesn't invalidate the first three reasons). Having said that, it isn't always in your best interests to invest in retirement funds very heavily at the start of your career. You might want to consider paying off any debts, or saving for a house, or even having a bit of fun while you are young enough to enjoy it. That back-packing trip to Nepal is going to be a lot easier when you are 23 than when you are 40 with kids.


"The new mission referred to, FTA: ""enabling people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential ... putting you in control of your world, and letting you do things you weren't able to do before""  Well that clears it up."


This just keeps getting weirder.  From the press release: >Oncologists currently prescribe a course of cancer treatment based on the anatomical location of the cancer.  No, treatment is based on anatomic location, morphology, grade, stage, and molecular profile.   >Yet a patient with breast cancer could benefit from the positive results discovered from a patient with lung cancer, if the underlying molecular pathways involving both cancers were the same.   Yes. This is already well known (for at least the past decade), and it's why testing for HER2 mutation is already performed on non small cell lung cancer [proof](http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/1/19.short).   >The inability to utilize genomic sequencing to guide treatment has been due to the inability to convert a patient’s DNA into actionable information in actionable time.   This is not really true. You're still going to need to detect the lesion and obtain tissue (biopsy, resection) in order for sequencing to be done, which takes time.  And you either have to sequence it yourself or send it out for analysis- which is what they're advocating here.  Uploading that information to a central network in no way impacts the time or cost associated with sequencing, except insofar as it saves on postage for sending the results. What this group is trying to do is usurp the business of molecular analysis which is currently performed in a fully satisfactory fashion at individual institutions, and just report that information back to the institution for a huge fee. No institution in their right mind would agree to this, as they would be then paying for something they could in turn bill for by performing themselves.    The only difference seems to be that you'd be getting a full genome instead of just the mutations that we currently know to have prognostic or therapeutic significance. Is this good? No. It's way too much information, and has real ethical-legal implications (what happens when we find other mutations?)  This is a purely business venture that has very little to do with improving medicine.


When they made a counter offer they essentially rejected your offer, and you are no obligation to accept theirs. Nor are you obligated to your original offer. That is the risk a person takes when they make a counter offer. Their agent/representative should have advised them of this risk.  Because time is of the essence in most of these transactions their delay with the extra round also made your original offer void. You were right to keep other properties in play.


JP Morgan wasn't going to go down. The Federal Reserve was coming to them every other day asking them to buy out or bail out another institution. They stashed away a $20 billion fund after their acquisition of Bear Stearns because they were now on the hook for anything BS did, which is where that $13 billion fine came from.


Your question indicates confusion regarding what an Individual Retirement Account (whether Roth or Traditional) is vs. the S&P 500, which is nothing but a list of stocks. IOW, it's perfectly reasonable to open a Roth IRA, put your $3000 in it, and then use that money to buy a mutual fund or ETF which tracks the S&P 500. In fact, it's ridiculously common...  :)


Russia and China is going to be a big contributers to the dollar not being the reserve currency anymore.  You must be rich enough to not need to worry about that and find it amusing to poke fun of the people who care about what the bankers have done to us.


"She may be right.  If she gets the usual thing of half the family assets gained during marriage, she's also entitled to half the car.   Well, not quite. Imagine you had sold the car at the time of divorce.  You would have gotten some cash for it (this is typically shown in the Blue Book). And then you would have had to pay off the loan.  So the cash value at that time, minus the loan owed at that time,  was the equity in the car at that time.  That would be a family asset and she'd have been entitled to half of it.  A lot of auto loans are a ripoff, so this might not be much money. Or could be zero.  Or could even be negative - it's common to owe more on a car than it's worth, especially the first year after you buy it.  In which case she owes you LOL.   The judge already dealt with this, and he did it by saying ""you two get together and try to work it out"", and come back to me with a proposed settlement.""  If you are at loggerheads, you can go back to the judge, but he may not give an answer you like."


"Once again I offer some sage advice - ""Don't let the tax tail wag the investing dog."" Michael offers an excellent method to decide what to do. Note, he doesn't base the decision on the tax implication.  If you are truly indifferent to holding the stock, taxwise, you might consider selling just the profitable shares if that's enough cash. Then sell shares at a loss each year if you have no other gains. That will let you pay the long term gain rate on the shares sold this year, but offset regular income in years to come. But. I'm hard pressed to believe you are indifferent, and I'd use Michel's approach to decide.  Updated - The New Law is simply a rule requiring brokers to track basis. Your situation doesn't change at all. When you sell the shares, you need to identify which shares you want to sell. For older shares, the tracking is your responsibility, that's all."


"You're being scammed.  I'd be willing to bet this 'celebrity' friend is a fake account on Instagram with 20k followers that befriends lonely neckbeards then tries to scam them.  Save your money.    Even if this is a legitimate long term friend whom you trust, you should put a lot more thought into ""investing"" money (that you don't have) into her brothers drug shop."


"That's true.  I think the reason the chains are blaming other factors is that they are thinking ""our food hasn't changed much, so that can't be the problem.""      However, people have more options now.  Plenty of fast casual places make genuinely good food now, so people don't have to choose between a chain or a fast food place.  And knowledge of cooking at home is increasing.      So while they're kind of right in saying ""It's not our fault, we haven't changed, our customers have,"" that's a cop-out, they should say ""Our customers and the competition have changed, so we will too."""


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"First, it's clear from your story that you very likely should be able to receive some financial aid.  That may be in the form of loans or, better, grants in which you just get free money to attend college.  For example, a Pell grant.  You won't get all you'd need for a free ride this way, but you can really make a dent in what you'd pay.  The college may likely also provide financial aid to you.  In order to get any of this, though, you have to fill out a FAFSA.  There are deadlines for this for each state and each college (there you would ask individually).  I'd get looking into that as soon as you can. Do student loans have to be paid monthly?  Any loan is a specific agreement between a lender and a borrower, so any payment terms could apply, such as bimonthly or quarterly.  But monthly seems like the most reasonable assumption.  Generally, you should assume the least favorable (reasonably likely) terms for you, so that you are prepared for a worst-case scenario.  Let's say monthly. Can I just, as I had hoped, borrow large sums of money and only start   paying them after college? Yes.  That is a fair summary of all a student loan is.  Importantly, though, some loans are federal government subsidized loans for which the interest on the loan is paid for you as long as you stay in college + 6 months (although do check that is the current situation).  Unsubsidized loans may accrue interest from the start of the loan period.  If you have the option, obviously try hard to get the subsidized loans as the interest can be significant.  I made a point to only take subsidized loans.   WARNING: Student loans currently enjoy a (nearly?) unique status in America as being one of the only loan types that are not forgivable in bankruptcy.  This means that if you leave college with $100,000 in debt that begins accruing interest, there is no way for you to get out of it short of fleeing the country or existence.  And at that point the creditors may come after your mother for the balance.  These loans can balloon into outrageous amounts due to compounding interest.  Please have a healthy fear of student loans.  For more on this, listen to this hour long radio program about this. Would a minimum wage job help,  Of course it will ""help"" but will it ""help enough""?  That depends on how much you work.  If you make $7.50/hr and work 20 hrs/week for all but 3 weeks of the year, after taxes you will be adding about $6,000 to offset your costs.  In 3 years of college (*see below), that's $18,000, which, depending on where you go, is not bad at helping defray costs.  If you are at full-time (40 hrs), then it is $12k/yr or $36k toward defraying costs.  These numbers are nothing to sniff at. Do you have any computer/web/graphics skills?  It's possible you could find ways to make more than minimum wage if you learn some niche IT industry skill.  (If I could go back and re-do those years I wouldn't have wasted much time delivering pizzas and would have learned HTML in the 90s and would have potentially made some significant money.) would college and full-time job be manageable together?  That's highly specific to each situation (which job?  how far a commute to it?  which major? how efficient are you?  how easily do you learn?) but I would say that, for the most part, it's not a good idea, not only for the academic-achievement side of it, but the personal-enrichment aspect of college.  Clubs, sports, relationships, activities, dorm bull sessions, all that good stuff, they deserve their space and time and it'd be a shame to miss out on that because you're on the 2nd shift at Wal-Mart 40hrs/week. How do I find out what scholarships, grants, and financial aid I can apply for?  Are you in a high school with a career or guidance counselor?  If so, go to that person about this as a start.  If not, there are tons of resources out there.  Public libraries should have huge directories of scholarships.  The Federal Student Loan program has a website.  There are also a lot of resources online found by just searching Google for scholarships--though do be careful about any online sources (including this advice!). Sermon: Lastly, please carefully consider the overall cost vs. benefit to you.  College in 2012 is anything but cheap.  A typical price for a textbook is $150 or more.  Tuition and board can range over $40k at private colleges.  There is a recent growing call for Americans to re-think the automatic nature of going to college considering the enormous financial burden it puts many families under.  Charles Murray, for one, has put out a book suggesting that far too many students go to college now, to society's and many individuals' detriment (he's a controversial thinker, but I think some of his points are valid and actually urgent).  With all that said, consider ways to go to college but keep costs down.  Public colleges in your state will almost always be significantly cheaper than private or out-of-state.  Once there, aim for As and Bs--don't cheat yourself out of what you pay for.  And lastly, consider a plan in which you complete college in three years, by attending summer courses.  This website has a number of other options for helping to reduce the cost of college."


Another reason to think it's a scam: fake paypal email notifications are a thing.  I've seen one that was quite convincing (but it wasn't mine to properly analyse or report), so the intial payment may be a fake from another account belonging to the scammer, and you've just transferred money to the scammer. The fake email can include links to log in to a fake paypal website, which can be quite convincing as the mark will give the login details which can be used to scrape data.  Links not going to where they say is the giveaway here.


If I may echo the Roth comment - The Roth is a tax designation, not an end investment, so you still need to research and decide what's appropriate. I recommend the Roth for the long term investments, but keep in mind, even if you feel you may need to tap the Roth sooner than later, all deposits may be withdrawn at any time with no tax or penalty. Roth is great to store the emergency money for many if they aren't 100% sure they have enough cash to save for retirement. As you get further along, and see that you don't need it, change how it's invested to longer term, a mix of stocks (I prefer ETFs that mimic the S&P)


To Rich Seller's point, we live 1/2 gallon of gas and 30 minute round trip from the supermarket.  For the items that are non-perishable, such as bathroom or facial tissue, paper towels, shampoo,soap, toothpaste, etc, there's value in never running out of it.  (@JohnFx - your point is well taken. When my daughter was a toddler, I found her covered in band-aids. One tiny scratch, 9 band-aids. My wife asked why I was concerned, we had hundreds in the pantry. I can see how some items might just encourage over-use)


And this company's business model has been somewhat holding up for 6 years because you're in a minority.  Even when I lived in London, reasonably near the cinema and with free time and disposable income, I think they'd have made money on me some months.  I'm not saying it's a *viable* model in the long run, or that it isn't supplemented by other factors (potential partnerships with cinemas / selling data to advertisers), but that's probably a big factor in their gamble here.


"there is a problem with grouping them all as ""dismantling"" as many are overgrown and are wasteful.  The EPA itself can not get out of it's own way.    I worked on one project recently (2 years ago) where we were designing a counterflow cooling tower (huge AC for power plant) for Goose Creek SC where we were going to add another tower so that they could eventually switch to a close loop system (keeps all water in system, no dumping in river).  the city of Goose Creek went to court because the EPA made a rule that by a certain date a company could no longer use an open system on a cooling tower if it dumped into a waterway.  the city got their wish and they won and the EPA backed off and the town of Goose Creek gets to keep the dirty warm water that was (is) being dumped into the river so that the fishermen would have better catches (no shit, this is how it was and they wanted to keep it) they didn't want to chance losing the warm waters that drew more fish.  Well, jokes on the town as we are now building a crossflow tower in that location that will have an open system to dump into the river.  here's the catch, before it was to be a counterflow tower where the water must be better quality as the media in the tower could foul and impact the thermal rating of the tower, now they are going with a crossflow type tower and the media on those can accept the worst fucking water you can think of and still perform properly.  so now the fishermen will get some nasty water that will be just below the allowable amount set by the EPA so that some lazy people can catch fish easier.  that is what I consider a wasteful government program.  but that is just my opinion, based on an interaction I had with a project where the EPA stuck there big head where they didnt even know what they were doing."


In Canada, there are many stores that take debit (Interac) but don't take Visa or MasterCard. For example, a corner store. In the US the reverse is often true: every tiny place seems to take Visa or MasterCard, but not debit. A Visa debit card looks like a Visa card to the merchant. It therefore has the benefit of being usable at places that only take Visa. (Substitute MasterCard as necessary.) This benefit is very small in Canada, less so elsewhere. Meanwhile the money is actually coming out of your bank account just like a debit card, which therefore has the benefit that you're not borrowing money, can't accidentally overspend, and run no risk of incurring interest charges. It is also a way to get what appears to be a credit card when you can't qualify for credit. If you do the majority of your spending in Canada, you don't need a Visa or MasterCard debit card. Your regular debit card (Interac) will work fine for you. If you have a credit card anyway (from another bank or whatever) then again, you don't need a debit card that can pretend to be a credit card.


">Clearly military screening is far from perfect.  The suicide rate for all members is higher than average.   You make a jump in logic here which is not falsifiable that it is screening practices which lead to higher suicide rates.   >Add transgender in and the likelyhood of a n incident increases disproportionately.  Theres really no ecidence to support this argument as far as I am aware. Please show me how transgender military members have a higher rate of suicide than the general pop of military members.  >And that's an interesting spin: it's barring transgenders from the military that makes them suicidal, not the other way around. Got it.  Yea, turns out discriminating against people at an institutional level increases their rates of suicide. I find it hard to believe youre surprised by this. Being socially ostracized is a huge risk factor for suicide and depression.    >Now factor in the costs of ""sensitivity training"", reassignment surgeries, and the inevitable lawsuits and it's a recipe for disaster.    It hasnt been an issue at all so far. Why would it start now? Youre using the same arguments people have used every time civil rights are increased, every time theyre wrong. Theyre wrong now."


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>Ebola doesn't discriminate by social status.      I'm not so sure about that.  Were a member of my family to die from Ebola, I am going to pay someone to prepare the body and then bury them.  In poor West African communities, Ebola has traditionally been spread by people handling and burying Ebola victims themselves, without the proper preventative methods that would be found in any embalmers lab.      So while Ebola doesn't discriminate, your likelihood of contracting it is definitely related to your social status.


NeatReceipts come up from time to time on woot.com.   You can read up on the discussions which typically include several user testimonials at these past sales:


Actually, Education is where there's no need for humans: videos and recorded lectures, AI teaching at your own level and pace are much better than a class of 30 students at different levels trying to get the attention of one teacher.


Remember that long term appreciation has tax advantages over short-term dividends. If you buy shares of a company, never earn any dividends, and then sell the stock for a profit in 20 years, you've essentially deferred all of the capital gains taxes (and thus your money has compounded faster) for a 20 year period. For this reason, I tend to favor non-dividend stocks, because I want to maximize my long-term gain. Another example, in estate planning, is something called a step-up basis:


Something you might want to consider, instead of going out bargain hunting in hopes of picking something up on the cheap is to start doing you research now for a stock you would like to have in your portfolio and watch it for news that might cause it to go down before picking it up when it is down for a bit. As you pointed out with the BP stock, prior to the incident it was a solid stock that was being held in a number of funds. By identifying solid stocks now you can also make the decision on the basis of the news to if the fundamentals under the stock are severely impacted or if it just a temporary dip in prices. Also, you might want to index funds such as VTI that are tied to the overall market and also pay dividends. When the market tends down for awhile you can buy some shares that you can either hold for dollar-cost averaging or sell off again once the market picks up.


Oh, I see what you mean. It depends which side you look at it from: the company, or the individual investor.  For the individual investor, I guess it doesn't matter. As you said, you only buy the amount of stocks you can afford. What matters afterwards is whether the price of your stocks goes up or down. That's when the company valuation comes into play. If a company is overvalued, the stock prices are going to go down until they reach the [equilibrium point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_equilibrium). Or, rephrasing, stocks go down when more people will want to sell than buy, creating an excess supply, so sellers will be willing to offer lower prices so you buy from them. Stocks go up when the opposite happens, more people will want to buy than sell, so buyers will have to offer more money to convince sellers to sell.  In essence, Facebook was overvalued, and not enough people were buying their shares, creating excess supply, so, sellers had to offer lower prices. Had Facebook been properly valued, people would've felt the stocks were a good price, everyone would've rushed to purchase, and stock prices would've gone up.


You have interpreted the instructions correctly. The issue with two jobs at the same time, is that that second job will be taxed at the highest rate; but the second employer has no idea what the other position is paying you.  If you make enough to be in the 15% tax bracket for your main job that means: some of the money from each paycheck is  taxed zero; some is taxed at 10% and the last dollars are taxed at 15%. But the second job should withhold for taxes to cover all the income at 15%. To avoid problems you should look at the tax form you are filling out this year. Look at the total tax you paid. Not the refund or the amount you owed when you filed but your total tax paid. The government allows a safe harbor if you make sure that in 2016 you have the same amount withheld this calendar year. If that isn't enough, you will owe money in April 2017, but you will not have to pay a penalty. After you have a couple of paycheck from your main employer, check to see that if you work the rest of the year at that same rate that the federal withholding will make the safe harbor. If you will make it,  you don't have to worry about the penalty. If you will fall short, adjust the w-4 accordingly.


Maybe in a large company your points are valid. In a small company with 2-5 employees, someone going on maternity leave (and often only coming back part time after) could be a big problem.   You're also underestimating how much time and money it costs to train a replacement, especially when you'll have to let them go after 8 months.


In finance you are taught that debt financing is cheaper than equity financing.  Also to improve your credit rating, showing that you can carry debt responsibly and pay it off without a hitch sends dog whistle that the corporation is operating well.


There's no standard formula. You can compare the going rates on the market for unsecured LOCs and take that as the starting anchor. Unsecured lines of credit run in the US at about 8-18%. Your risk should be reflected in the rate, and I see no reason why the rate would change throughout the loan. As to the amount of principal changing? Just chose one of the standard compounding options - daily (most precise, but most tedious to calculate), monthly average balance, etc.


"I'm not sure what you mean by ""receive retirement benefits"". If the company had a 401k, that probably is the retirement plan. Few companies have both a 401k and an old-style pension plan, you typically have one or the other. So if your 401k was rolled over into some other account, you have already received your retirement benefits. If you mean that the 401k was rolled over into an IRA and you are asking if you can now start withdrawing from the IRA, see Excel Strategies answer. Short answer: Yes you can, but there's a 10% penalty unless you meet one of the exceptions."


JC Penny keeps sending credit card to my address, without some other dudes name on it.  I call them to tell them the dude dont live here.  Then they bitch me out, like I'm a criminal.  And tell me to cut up the card.  Then about a month later they send another card.  Dumbassess.


Just speaking from personal experience, I see this happening.  My wife and I have cut spending basically as much as possible.  We don't go out to eat, we don't go to the movies, we only buy what we absolutely have to and often that is from thrift stores, we make everything we reasonably can home made, etc.  We just don't have the money.  I blame student loans, the fact that in two years of employment here I haven't gotten any raises even though we normally get one every year (from what I'm told), and her super low paying teaching job.


The power of selling skills. Jonathan convinced him that at 100% it was not truly in the investors best interest because he would lose what made the company grow, him... Example at 100% equity (A buyout) the company would lose its CEO the driving force behind the product. Maybe because of this it only makes a million in sales and value.   But at 35% plus 4% in sales Jonathan will continue to put his heart, soul and passion into the company and in the long term maybe the company becomes worth 10 million. And at 35% this deal is worth 3.5 million to the investor, all because he was convinced of Jonathan's tenacity.  A truly beautiful display of knowing your stuff and sticking to your guns.


yea, and the other half is owned by Berkshire, didn't see op mention that at all.  Also, There is something to be said about zero based budgeting, if the military used it, they wouldn't be buying $30k toilets before their fiscal year ends.  Although, Kraft was spending hundreds of millions with my company when they were bought, and I was working on the Kraft team.  Pretty much anybody over the age of 40 was let go and replaced by the next in line.  I was actually the lowest ranking member on the team and at one point I was put in a meeting to explain 100k worth of spend to the new honcho... that was pretty scary.


> This adds up to $260 million in additional annual earnings within the Wisconsin economy. ...it isn't out of the realm of possibility that attracting this new plant will end up being a worthwhile plan for Wisconsin.  Can you explain how this could be worthwhile? You calculated $260M in annual earnings. Assuming Wisconsin's state income tax is 5% that is $13M in annual state revenue. At that rate, the state makes back its initial tax breaks in... 230 years.


Pay attention to nickel-and-dime charges (atm fees, low balance fees, limit on atm transactions per month, charge for human teller transaction, charge for paper statements or tax records).  Consider that a financial company will spend on the order of $100-500 to sign up a good customer.  Are you getting this in a cash bonus, competitive high interest rate, reasonable other gift, or advertising directed at your eyeballs?  A variation in rates less than 1% easily fits into a marketing cost and there doesn't have to be any other magic to it.


Oh my god. It's a result of regulation and they do target homeowners. Home owners are fined constantly for violating STR regulations. Yet again you're proven wrong and move the goal posts. Just stop. It's embarrassing at this point.


Try downloading a finance app like yahoo finance. Follow a few stocks, read through the articles - look up terms you don’t understand. Search them on YouTube, Investopedia, - note book recommendations. Learn some economics as well.  Even if you’re not interested in trading, this should help you learn the language enough to get an idea of what’s out there - how money is thought of in different time periods, etc.  Finance can be very opaque when you first dip your feet in. You’ll find you only understand 75% - 25% of what you’re reading but that’s ok just keep looking things up. I guarantee your understanding of what “finance” means will slowly evolve as you keep learning.   Expect to spend maybe a few years to a lifetime figuring this stuff out.


That’s what I was worried about. I just didn’t know if they would account for the fact i was married and had extra income to use to pay it back.  (The reason for this loan is for an unexpected car repair )


My family members, particularly my aunt (his daughter), are telling me that when my grandpa dies they are taking my car. Bring this up with Grandpa.  If this is what he wants to have happen, then help him make it happen before you finish paying $12,000 on a car worth only $6,000.  Let the Aunt and other relatives deal with the remaining $12,000. If that isn't what he wants to have happen, then work out how you and he can legally make sure that what he wants to have happen actually happens. If the Aunt or others bring it up, make sure they understand that you still owe $12,000 on the car, and if they get the car they also get the loan.  If they refuse to pay the loan then make sure they know you will cooperate with the bank when they attempt to repossess the car - up to and including providing them with keys and location. This will hurt your credit, and you will be on the hook for the remaining portion of the loan, but you at least won't have to deal with all of it - they'll sell it at auction and your loan amount will fall a little. But the best course of action is to work with Grandpa, and make sure that he understands the family's threats, how that will affect you since you're on the loan, and what options you'd like to pursue.


"I feel like I just read a 1000 word ad for taxi's...  He goes on and on how taxi companies were already heading into uber territory except that they weren't.   It reminds of a quote from the movie The Social Experiment, ""You know, you really don't need a forensics team to get to the bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.""  Just sub in uber for Facebook."


Are you kidding me? Now more than ever there is absolutely incredible TV available. Breaking bad, game of thrones, mad men, curb your enthusiasm, boardwalk empire, the walking dead just off the top of my head. Granted most premium shit is coming from HBO/show time/a&e but still.  I find TV and miniseries to be much more fulfilling than movies, as there is way more time to develop the characters and plot.


The deadline to mail is February 15. However, if the form is being prepared by a middleman (i.e. Wells Fargo) then they have until March 15th (on page 24). Also, if you haven't received your 1099 form by February 14, you may contact the IRS and they will contact and request the missing form on your behalf. I know that's a lot of information, but to answer your question, yes, there are situations where March 15th is the deadline instead of February 15th.


Honestly the thing I find most offensive about the whole thing is that people have to be told by their employers individually like this that Obamas policies will have these consequences. It seems so obvious to me that I almost can't believe that American workers are so gullible that they don't realize this on their own.


"How can I best start a discussion about this topic with SO? I'm guessing your SO is more visual than verbal.  I'd break the ice by presenting an income pie chart and an expenses pie chart, maybe just for 2013 or comparing 2012 and 2013, and then offer your interpretation of an interesting slice or two:  ""I noticed we're saving so much each year that..."" Or, instead of starting with graphically demonstrating your cash flow, start with appropriate graphics demonstrating your savings is growing fast enough that making a few donations wouldn't be a serious impact.  ""See how little we spend compared to our savings?"". In any case, a picture is worth a 1,000 words, so starting with pictures is a good way to start your discussion."


"You probably want to think about pools of money separately if they have separate time horizons or are otherwise not interchangeable. A classic example is your emergency fund (which has a potentially-immediate time horizon) vs. your retirement savings. The emergency fund would be all in cash or very short-term bonds, and would not count in your retirement asset allocation. Since the emergency fund usually has a capped value (a certain amount of money you want to have for emergencies) rather than a percentage of net worth value, this especially makes sense; you have to treat the emergency fund separately or you'd have to keep changing your asset allocation percentages as your net worth rises (hopefully) with respect to the capped emergency amount. Similarly, say you are saving for a car in 3 years; you'd probably invest that money very conservatively. Also, it could not go in tax-deferred retirement accounts, and when you buy the car the account will go to zero. So probably worth treating this separately. On the other hand, say you have some savings in tax-deferred retirement accounts and some in taxable accounts, but in both cases you're expecting to use the money for retirement. In that case, you have the same time horizon and goals, and it can pay to think about the taxable and nontaxable accounts as a whole. In particular you can use ""asset location"" (put less-tax-efficient assets in tax-deferred accounts). In this case maybe you would end up with mostly bonds in the tax-deferred accounts and mostly equities in the taxable accounts, for tax reasons; the asset allocation would only make sense considering all the accounts, since the taxable account would be too equity-heavy and the tax-deferred one too bond-heavy. There can be practical reasons to treat each account separately, too, though. For example if your broker has a convenient automatic rebalancing tool on their website, it probably only works within an account. Treating each account by itself would let you use the automatic rebalancing feature on the website, while a more complicated asset location strategy where you rebalance across multiple accounts might be too hard and in practice you wouldn't get around to it. Getting around to rebalancing could be more important than tax-motivated asset location. You could also take a keep-it-simple attitude: as long as your asset allocation is pretty balanced (say 40% bonds) and includes a cash allocation that would cover emergencies, you could just put all your money in one big portfolio, and think of it as a whole. If you have an emergency, withdraw from the cash allocation and then rebuild it over time; if you have a major purchase, you could redeem some bonds and then rebuild the bond portion over time. (When I say ""over time"" I'm thinking you might start putting new contributions into the now-underallocated assets, or you might dollar-cost-average back into them by selling bits of the now-overallocated assets.) Anyway there's no absolute rule, it depends on what's simple enough to be manageable for you in practice, and what separate shorter-horizon investing goals you have in addition to retirement. You can always make things complex but remember that a simple plan that happens in real life is better than a complex plan you don't keep up with in practice (or a complex plan that takes away from activities you'd enjoy more)."


Yes. Companies increase, decrease, start paying and stop paying dividends when they think it appropriate.  If a company has been going through some problems and makes a loss, or even a large decrease in profits, they can choose to stop paying dividends until things improve. Many companies did this during the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-08.


As has been stated, you don't need to actively bank with a credit union to apply for one of their credit cards. That said, one benefit to having account activity, and significant capital with a CU, is to increase the likelihood of having a larger credit line granted to you, when you do apply. If you are going to use the card sparingly however, then this is a non issue. That said, if you really want to maximize card benefits, then you want to look for cards with large sign up bonuses (e.g. Chase Sapphire, or Ink Bold if you have a business) and sign up exclusively for those bonuses. These cards offer rewards in excessive value of $1000 in travel services (hotels/plane tickets), or $500 cash back if you prefer straight cash back redemptions. If you prefer to keep it really simple, you can sign up for a cash back card, like the Amex Fidelity, which offers 2% cash back everywhere, with no annual fee (albeit the cash back is through their investment account, which you don't actually have to 'invest' with). Personally, I have the Penfed card, and use it exclusively for gas (5% cash back). I also have a Charles Schwab bank account, which I keep funded exclusively for ATM withdrawals (free ATM usage, worldwide, 100% fee reimbursement). I use the accounts exclusively for the benefit they provide me, and no more and have never had an issue. I also have 3 dozen other credit cards which I signed up for exclusively for the sign up bonus, but that's outside the scope of this question. I only mention it because you seem to believe it is difficult to get approved for a new credit line. If your credit is good however, you won't have a problem.  For a small idea, of how to maximize credit card bonus categories, I would advise you read this. As mentioned in the article, its possible to get rewards almost everywhere you shop. In short, anytime you use cash, you are missing out on a multitude of benefits a credit card offers you (e.g. see the benefits of a visa signature card) in addition to points/cash back.


Yes, and such an innovation is highly risky. Tried-and-true yields boring, but usually predictable, profits.  I admire Tesla and Musk, like I admire the namesake of his company, and for that matter, I enjoy watching poker players at high-rolling games. But I diversify my money in mostly boring companies.


He is largely (90%, in fact) correct, so don't be so aggressively rude.   Had you spent 13 seconds Googling, you'd have also seen that of the 5 that do allow it, they all require an apprenticeship, which can be nearly impossible to get: http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/08/02/states_that_allow_bar_exams_without_law_degrees_require_apprenticeships.html  I believe Louisiana was the last state to allow you to do nothing but take the bar. That was one of the sub plots of Catch Me If You Can.


"How does Equifax lose sales after a breech?  Unless their data has been corrupted or falsified, it's still good to sell or charge for each credit pull.    I think it's very different from say, a consumer facing organization like Sony or Target or Anthem.  Although even in all 3 cases, you can argue they didn't lose much market share; all three are above their pre-hack prices.    The goal is to allow the market to set a price on the value of security for the rest of the companies in the industry.  I don't think the penalty should be ""death"" but considering their total assets is $10B, I don't think any fair penalty would allow the organization to survive.  If they were Apple with $820B market cap, then yeah, the $70B would be a harsh and fair, but survivable penalty."


Probably less escape plans for a mass uprising than escape plans for family members and themselves if they fall out of favor in the Party.  I saw an article up somewhere reputable in the last couple of weeks about how many top officials are stealthily moving their families out of the country for insurance against that.


"On a side note, was CNN always this sensationalist? The headline makes a bold statement, which is then pretty much invalidated right in the first paragraph of the article.  I have neither watched nor read CNN a whole lot, but I used to respect them. Until this year, when their reporting on various issues (Fukushima, the Arab spring, recently the Moscow protests) have caused me to put them in the ""do not trust under any circumstances"" category. Is CNN becoming a less funny version of the Onion?"


Thank God.  I mean, I like having some kind of spending power... But not at the expense of my taxes being used to bombs kids in countries who's leaders try to reject the dollar.  Unfortunately, the international banking cartels are invested in Yen and Rubbles, so they win and we all lose no matter what.  If only the people of all three nations were able to see past nationalism and devise a system that doesn't rely on competition for currency dominance....


"None of that is filtered my way as a ""part owner"". Sure it is, it's just not always obvious. When a company makes money it either: Other then the fourth option, the first three all increase the total value of the company.  If you owned 1% of a company that was worth X, and is now worth X+1, the value of that 1% ownership should go up as well. One model of the value of a share of stock is the present value of all future cash flows that the company produces for its shareholders, which would be either through dividends, earnings (provided that they are invested back into the company) or through liquidation (sale).  So as earnings increase (or more accurately as projected future earnings increase), so does the value of a share of the company. Also note that the payment of dividends causes the price of a stock to go down when the dividend is paid, since that's equity (cash) that's leaving the company, reducing the value of the company by an equivalent amount. Of course, there's also something to be said for the behavioral aspect of investing, meaning that people sometimes invest in companies that they like, and sell stock of companies that they don't like or disagree with (e.g. Nordstrom's)."


The tips shared are really useful and helpful. Real estate agents and other property professionals will surely appreciate reading this post. I have a friend who is a realtor and I have share this link with her. I'm sure she'll get a lot of great ideas from this post.


Probably means next to zero chance of having decent rates on savings accounts for the near future - who needs your money if banks can have government money for free? Probably no short-term effects on you besides that.


I was starting at 16 (i'm from Russia). Just don't listen to anyone and work hard with your ideas (doesn't matter good or bad). After 2-3 years you gonna have huge skill set for make fortune. Mark and Bill was at your place and make it like I wrote. Doesn't repeat my mistakes plz. I was going to university and fell on love.... Huge mistakes. Just work hard and believe in your self.


Ở đây, bạn có thể mong đợi nhiều hơn từ thạch cao SMY, chúng tôi sản xuất vật liệu nhất cho mái nhà trông bên trong nội thất đẹp. Nếu bạn có cảm giác rằng nhà riêng của bạn xuất hiện trước đó, chúng tôi sẽ cải tạo nó cho bạn và lắp đặt các hình thức rèm, sơn và trần. Chúng tôi đang ở tuyến đầu của availing sự phân chia tuyệt vời mà tran thach cao có thể đảm bảo hoạt động kinh doanh dễ dàng, bổ sung giá trị và tăng cường tính riêng tư. Đội ngũ nhân viên của chúng tôi sẽ ủng hộ bạn ở nhiều lựa chọn thay thế có sẵn theo ý của bạn và bạn sẽ hoàn toàn được thông báo thêm và am hiểu.


"For a retail investor who isn't a Physics or Math major, the ""Beta"" of the stock is probably the best way to quantify risk.  Examples: A Beta of 1 means that a stock moves in line with the market. Over 1 means that you would expect the stock to move up or down faster than the market as a whole. Under 1 means that you would expect the stock to move slower than the market as a whole."


At retirement age, your life priorities are somewhat different, and two key items come to mind.  Your social circle, community and extended family contacts are highly related with your lifespan at retirement age. Loneliness kills, literally. Long distance relocation would weaken those ties exactly at the time when you most need and want them. You are also likely to need at least occasional physical assistance at random times, so living in a spot where none your friends&family can visit at a day's notice is hard. Cheaper living locations tend to have worse healthcare. Again, this doesn't matter much for a 25 year old expat, but at an age where you likely have one or multiple chronic diseases, general frailty and a very frequent need for healthcare this is a priority. This might work if you can do it as a family. I met a retired British couple in southern India, and they had a nice system where they were living in UK during the (UK) summer, and in India for the rest of the year. However, the above concerns don't disappear - when at a later time their health deterioates and one of them dies, then it would probably be better for the widow[er] to stay in UK permanently closer to their extended family and with the local healthcare system.


Well, it was a 3 wheeler and looked too funky for current tastes and without mandates or complete revolution in infrastructure and so forth it's sad to say it won't work here. And again, you can buy many cars that get 40+ MPG without being hybrid....when I look at the Volt I ask, why, if the avg. MPG is 42....build something more like an Accord or Civic that gets 40+ mpg...  I'm looking ahead when battery technology will make the breakthroughs for mass scale, much more durable, longer charge and life times such as this, in maybe 2017;  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15735478  We just need to be patient, make heavy investment in R&D...and focus it on the areas that will make and break us.


I would always suggest rolling over 401(k) plans to traditional IRAs when possible.  Particularly, assuming there is enough money in them that you can get a fee-free account at somewhere like Fidelity or Vanguard.  This is for a couple of reasons. First off, it opens up your investment choices significantly and can allow you significantly reduced expenses related to the account.  You may be able to find a superior offering from Vanguard or Fidelity to what your employer's 401(k) plan allows; typically they only allow a small selection of funds to choose from.  You also may be able to reduce the overhead fees, as many 401(k) plans charge you an administrative fee for being in the plan separate from the funds' costs. Second, it allows you to condense 401(k)s over time; each time you change employers, you can rollover your 401(k) to your regular IRA and not have to deal with a bunch of different accounts with different passwords and such.  Even if they're all at the same provider, odds are you will have to use separate accounts. Third, it avoids issues if your employer goes out of business.  While 401(k) plans are generally fully funded (particularly for former employers who you don't have match or vesting concerns with), it can be a pain sometimes when the plan is terminated to access your funds - they may be locked for months while the bankruptcy court works things out. Finally, employers sometimes make it expensive for you to stay in - particularly if you do have a very small amount.  Don't assume you're allowed to stay in the former employer's 401(k) plan fee-free; the plan will have specific instructions for what to do if you change employers, and it may include being required to leave the plan - or more often, it could increase the fees associated with the plan if you stay in.  Getting out sometimes will save you significantly, even with a low-cost plan.


To issue corporate grade bonds the approval process very nearly matches that for issuing corporate equity. You must register with the sec, and then generally there is a initial debt offering similar to an IPO. (I say similar in terms of the process itself, but the actual sale of bonds is nothing like that for equities). It would be rare for a partnership to be that large as to issue debt in the form of bonds (although there are some that are pretty big), but I suppose it is possible as long as they want to file with the sec.   Beyond that a business could privately place bonds with a large investor but there is still registration requirements with the sec.  All that being said, it is also pretty rare for public bonds to be issued by a company that doesn't already have public equity. And the amounts we are talking about here are huge. The most common trade in corporate debt is a round lot of 100,000. So this isn't something a small corporation would have access to or have a need for. Generally financing for a smaller business comes from a bank.


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There are so many patents because solving the problem is a multi-billion dollar idea.  IFAIK, no one has announced a storage system that can replace the grid during peak usage. I understand storing energy as potential energy is a simple concept, but if we're talking about GW of electricity, systems like [this train](https://www.wired.com/2016/05/forget-elons-batteries-fix-grid-rock-filled-train-hill/) which has a fairly large space requirement can produce 50MW for 15 minutes. If you had 20 of them you'd be approaching the power of a nuclear plant (a very small one), and you would exhaust yourself in 15 minutes.  I know someone who was working on compressing fluids to store potential energy and that seemed fairly promising.  But the fact is it's not a solved problem. Everyone is trying to solve it because it's the holy grail.


"No.  The more legs you add onto your trade, the more commissions you will pay entering and exiting the trade and the more opportunity for slippage.  So lets head the other direction.   Can we make a simple, risk-free option trade, with as few legs as possible? The (not really) surprising answer is ""yes"", but there is no free lunch, as you will see.  According to financial theory any riskless position will earn the risk free rate, which right now is almost nothing, nada, 0%.   Let's test this out with a little example. In theory, a riskless position can be constructed from buying a stock, selling a call option, and buying a put option.  This combination should earn the risk free rate. Selling the call option means you get money now but agree to let someone else have the stock at an agreed contract price if the price goes up.  Buying the put option means you pay money now but can sell the stock to someone at a pre-agreed contract price if you want to do so, which would only be when the price declines below the contract price.  To start our risk free trade, buy Google stock, GOOG, at the Oct 3 Close:   495.52 x 100sh = $49,552 The example has 100 shares for compatibility with the options contracts which require 100 share blocks. we will sell a call and buy a put @ contract price of $500 for Jan 19,2013.   Therefore we will receive $50,000 for certain on Jan 19,2013, unless the options clearing system fails, because of say, global financial collapse, or war with Aztec spacecraft. According to google finance, if we had sold a call today at the close we would receive the bid, which is 89.00/share, or $8,900 total.  And if we had bought a put today at the close we would pay the ask, which is 91.90/share, or $9190 total. So, to receive $50,000 for certain on Jan 19,2013 we could pay $49,552 for the GOOG stock, minus $8,900 for the money we received selling the call option, plus a payment of $9190 for the put option we need to protect the value.  The total is $49,842.   If we pay $49,842 today, plus execute the option strategy shown, we would have $50,000 on Jan 19,2013.  This is a profit of $158, the options commissions are going to be around $20-$30, so in total the profit is around $120 after commissions.   On the other hand, ~$50,000 in a bank CD for 12 months at 1.1% will yield $550 in similarly risk-free interest.   Given that it is difficult to actually make these trades simultaneously, in practice, with the prices jumping all around, I would say if you really want a low risk option trade then a bank CD looks like the safer bet.  This isn't to say you can't find another combination of stock and contract price that does better than a bank CD -- but I doubt it will ever be better by very much and still difficult to monitor and align the trades in practice."


You'll own whatever fraction you bought. To own the company (as in, boolean - yes or no) you need to buy 100% of the outstanding stock. RE controlling the company, in general the answer is yes - although the mechanism for this might not be so straight forward (ie. you may have to appoint board members and may only be able to do so at pre-set intervals) and there may be conditions in the company charter designed to stop this happening. Depending on your jurisdiction certain ownership percentages can also trigger the need to do certain things so you may not be able to just buy 50% - in Australia when you reach 20% ownership you have to launch a formal takeover bid.


"Learn something new every day... I found this interesting and thought I'd throw my 2c in. Good description (I hope) from Short Selling: What is Short Selling First, let's describe what short selling means when you purchase shares of stock. In purchasing stocks, you buy a piece of ownership in the company. You buy/sell stock to gain/sell ownership of a company. When an investor goes long on an investment, it means that he or she has bought a stock believing its price will rise in the future. Conversely, when an investor goes short, he or she is anticipating a decrease in share price. Short selling is the selling of a stock that the seller doesn't own. More specifically, a short sale is the sale of a security that isn't owned by the seller, but that is promised to be delivered.  Still with us? Here's the skinny: when you short sell a stock, your broker will lend it to you. The stock will come from the brokerage's own inventory, from another one of the firm's customers, or from another brokerage firm. The shares are sold and the proceeds are credited to your account. Sooner or later, you must ""close"" the short by buying back the same number of shares (called covering) and returning them to your broker. If the price drops, you can buy back the stock at the lower price and make a profit on the difference. If the price of the stock rises, you have to buy it back at the higher price, and you lose money. So what happened? The Plan The Reality Lesson I never understood what ""Shorting a stock"" meant until today. Seems a bit risky for my blood, but I would assume this is an extreme example of what can go wrong. This guy literally chose the wrong time to short a stock that was, in all visible aspects, on the decline.  How often does a Large Company or Individual buy stock on the decline... and send that stock soaring? How often does a stock go up 100% in 24 hours? 600%?  Another example is recently when Oprah bought 10% of Weight Watchers and caused the stock to soar %105 in 24 hours. You would have rued the day you shorted that stock - on that particular day - if you believed enough to ""gamble"" on it going down in price."


I don't see this article being about the merit of the customers claim but rather the condition of sale:  > You agree not to file any complaint, chargeback, claim, dispute, or make any public forum post, review, Better Business Bureau complaint, social media post, or any public statement regarding the order, our website, or any issue regarding your order, for any reason, within this 90 day period, or to threaten to do so within the 90 day period, or it is a breach of the terms of sale, creating liability for damages in the amount of $250, plus any additional fees, damages - both consequential and incidental, calculated on an ongoing basis.  I'm happy to rally my pitchfork against any company that includes these conditions.


A non-cash transaction will not be a problem. The bank will have to fill out federal paperwork if there are large amounts of cash involved.  This is to stop the underground economy.  This can even extend to non-banks. If you were to walk into a car dealer or some other stores and hand them a bag  of cash they will also report it. You can do what you propose without having to transfer any money between accounts. Your girlfriend can put the furniture and landscaping on her credit card, or write checks to the stores or companies. Based on the number of questions on this site regarding how to transfer funds between banks and accounts, the mechanics of the transfer is the hard part. Resist the urge to use cash to make the transfer. That will require paperwork. Many people find that the old standard of using checks to transfer funds is easy, safe and quick.


"There are a few of ways to do this: Ask the seller if they will hold a Vendor Take-Back Mortgage or VTB. They essentially hold a second mortgage on the property for a shorter amortization (1 - 5 years) with a higher interest rate than the bank-held mortgage. The upside for the seller is he makes a little money on the second mortgage. The downsides for the seller are that he doesn't get the entire purchase price of the property up-front, and that if the buyer goes bankrupt, the vendor will be second in line behind the bank to get any money from the property when it's sold for amounts owing. Look for a seller that is willing to put together a lease-to-own deal. The buyer and seller agree to a purchase price set 5 years in the future. A monthly rent is calculated such that paying it for 5 years equals a 20% down payment. At the 5 year mark you decide if you want to buy or not. If you do not, the deal is nulled. If you do, the rent you paid is counted as the down payment for the property and the sale moves forward. Find a private lender for the down payment. This is known as a ""hard money"" lender for a reason: they know you can't get it anywhere else. Expect to pay higher rates than a VTB. Ask your mortgage broker and your real estate agent about these options."


would you say [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJyWY2Fzzr8) is at the right place at the right time?  I'm supporting your argument because I do think shits (events) do happened when they align. I mean that guy in the video is doing his normal routine job and shit just happened. After watching that clip, I'm starting to believe there is a power in cosmos that does sort of control our lives.


So basically india, but an asian versian.  The point was these places have entire under classes of their population that are allowed to literally die in the street.   I would say if that's your vision of a well run society you should move there.


I have been in this situation and I essentially went for the truthful answer.  I first explained that co-signing for a loan wasn't just vouching for the person, which I certainly would do, but it was putting my name on the loan and making me the person they loan company would go after if a payment was ever missed. Then I explained that even within married couples, money can be a major source of strife and fights, it would be even worse for someone not quite as close like a family member or friend. Essentially I wouldn't want to risk my relationship with a good friend or family member over some financial matter.


Well, it's all very nice, but if you had really done the research you'd have found that ads ends up being the way to go, maybe with a paid option to get rid of them.  Maybe it's not fair or right, but as things stand 'free' wins out from a monetisation standpoint. That goes double for a simple app that others can quickly rip off.


"If I were in your shoes (and one time I was), I would not talk ""about what I am doing"" unless I am specifically asked or if it's something that could possibly help the C-level exec... instead I would talk about what HE is doing. Ask him what problems he is currently facing (in the organization). This will give you insight as to what's currently on his mind and the challenges he's currently trying to overcome -- it will help you in your efforts at the company, if you keep it in the back of your mind that this is what is trying to be achieved by the big guys. Ask him where he sees the company in the long term. This will help reinforce and clear up the ideas you're keeping in the back of your head from the previous question you asked. Ask him why he hasn't gotten to that point already if the goal he mentioned seems like something that isn't that difficult to accomplish. This will pose as a difficult question for himself to formulate an answer to, where he will have to self-evaluate whether or not he is behind the curve or ahead of the game. Mention things you have done well in the past that play into any of the troubles he's currently facing or about to be facing soon -- so he knows he can directly call on you if he needs that particular something done (bonus points if it's a specialization). Don't waste your time on pleasantries and basic discussion. If you do talk about pleasantries because he brought it up, find out his interests and see if you have any in common by location, subject or any shared contacts. The C-level exec you are going to be sitting with, has limited time, but he has chosen to sit with you (and possibly others) when he could be doing other things. Use it to your advantage and ask him questions about why certain things are being done the way they are, especially if you think they're inefficient. You never know, you might just get directly put in charge of fixing those inefficiencies, which, since it's more responsibility, would be a great addition to your resume. Also, research current news involving the company, and mention it (if appropriate, not just out of nowhere). It shows you're on top of the game, maybe not in rank, but definitely in understanding."


It's important to note that the US is also the country that taxes its expats when they live abroad, and forces foreign banks to disclose assets of US citizens.  Americans are literally the property of their government. America is a tax farm and its citizens can't leave the farm. Wherever you go, you are owned.  And that now appears to be true of your Bitcoin as well. Even if you spend 50 years outside the USA, your masters want a piece of what you earn.  Land of the Free.


"Why it is good to be risky The reason why it is good to be risky is because risky investments can result in higher returns on your money. The problem with being risky, is there is a chance you can lose money. However, in the long term you can usually benefit from higher returns even if you have a few slip ups. Let me show you an example:  These two lines are based off of placing $2,000 in a retirement fund at age of 20 and then at age of 25 start investing $6,500 a year (based off of a salary of $65,000 with a company that will 1 to 1 match up to 5% IRA contribution, presumably someone with a Master's should be able to get this) and then being able to increase your contribution amount by $150 a year as your salary begins to increase as well. The blue line assumes that all of this money that you are putting in a retirement account has a fixed 3% interest (compounded yearly for simplicity sake) every year until you retire. The red line is earning a 12% interest rate while you are 20 years old and then decreasing by 0.5% per year until you retire. Since this is using more risky investments when you are younger, I have even gone ahead and included losing 20% of your money when you are 24, another 20% when you are 29, and then again another 20% when you are 34. As you can see, even with losing 20% of your money 3 different times, you still end up with more money then you would have had if you stuck with a more conservative investment plan. If I change this to 50% each 3 times, you will still come out about equal to a more conservative investment. Now, I do have these 3 loses placed at a younger age when there is less to lose, but this is to be expected since you are being more risky when you are young. When you are closer to retirement you have less of a chance of losing money since you will be investing more conservatively. Why it is OK to be risky when you are young but not old Lets say you loose 20% of your $2,000 when you are young, you have 30-40 years to make that back. That's roughly $1 a month extra that you are having to come up with. So, if you have a risky investment go bad when you are young, you have plenty of time to account for it before you retire.  Now lets say you have $1,000,000 when you are 5 years from retiring and loose 20% of it, you have to come up with an extra $3,333 a month if you want to retire on time. So, if you have a risky investment go bad when you are close to retiring, you will most likely have to work for many more years just to be able to recover from your loses. What to invest in This is a little bit more difficult question to answer. If there was one ""right"" way to invest your money, every one would be doing that one ""right"" way and would result in it not turning out to be that good of investment. What you need to do is come up with a plan for yourself. My biggest advice that I can give is to be careful with fees. Some places will charge a fixed dollar amount per trade, while others might charge a fixed dollar amount per month, while even others might charge a percentage of your investment. With only having $2,000 to invest, a large fee might make it difficult to make money."


"Some people believe that inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply when the banks engage in fractional reserve lending. Is this correct? You are referring to the Austrian school of thought. The Austrians define inflation in terms of money supply. In other words, inflation is defined as an increase in the aggregate money supply, even if prices stay the same of fall. This is not the only definition of inflation. The mainstream defines inflation as a general increase in the prices of consumer goods. Based on the first definition, then your supposition is correct by definition. Based on the second definition, you can make a case that money supply affects prices. But keep in mind, it's just one factor affecting prices. Furthermore, economics is resistant to experimentation, so it is difficult to establish causality. Austrian economists tend to approach the problem of ""proof"" using a 2-pronged tactic: establish plausibility by explaining the mechanism, then look for historical evidence to back up that explanation. As I understand it, when there is more available money in the market, the price of goods will increase. But will a normal merchant acknowledge the increase of money supply and raise prices immediately? I posit that, in the short run, merchants won't increase prices in response to increased money supply. So, why does increased money supply lead to price inflation? The simple answer, in the Austrian school of thought, is that you have more money chasing the same amount of goods. In other words, printing money doesn't actually increase the number of widgets made. I believe the Austrian school is consistent with your supposition that prices don't increase in the short run. In other words, producers don't increase prices immediately after observing an increase in the money supply. Specifically, after the banks print more notes, where will the money be distributed first?  The Austrian story goes as follows: Imagine that the first borrower is a home constructor, and he is borrowing freshly ""printed"" money to build new homes. This constructor will need to buy materials and hire labor to build homes, and in doing so he will bid against other home constructors. The increased demand for lumber, nails, tools, carpentry, etc. will ever so slightly increase the market prices for these goods and services. So the money goes first to the borrower, but then flows also to the people selling to the borrower, and the people selling to the sellers, etc. It has a ripple effect. Who will be the first one to have a need to rise their price? These producers won't need to increase their price, but they will choose to do so if the believe that demand outstrips supply. In other words if you have more orders than you can fill, then you may post higher prices because you think consumers will tolerate the higher price.  You might object that competition deters any one producer from unilaterally raising prices, but in fact if all producers are failing to keep up with demand, then you can unilaterally raise prices because other producers don't have any excess inventory to undercut you with."


"Paying for a good home inspection, from a person you choose.  Mine was $500 and the guy gave me a nice print out with a bunch of little problems that I knew had to be fixed.  It was easy to determine my fix-up cost, which was separate from my ""I want to change this"" cost.  He was working for me, not the agents or the seller, so I felt more trusting of his advice. If you end up shopping hard and looking seriously at several houses, you might end up paying this more than once. (A bad report would be a good contingency for cancelling your offer.)"


You can still be nice, yet command authority. In fact, being a D-bag boss will often negatively affect the company's culture, which is very important. If you make a brash change people will notice and give you less respect. Just be straight with what needs to get done, and why. But at the same time, don't be afraid to kick ass if it's need.


We've been in this situation for about 10 years now.  We don't have to send money back to Canada very often, but when we do, we typically just write a US$ check/cheque and send it to a relative back home to cash for us.  We've found that the Canadian banks are much more familiar with US currency than vice versa, and typically have better exchange rates than many of the other options.  That said, we haven't done an exhaustive search for the best deal. If you haven't left Canada yet, you might consider opening up a US funds account at the same bank as your Canadian funds account if the bank will allow you to transfer money between the accounts.  I haven't priced out that option, so I don't know what the exchange rate would look like there. Also, you didn't ask about this, but if you have any RRSP accounts in Canada, make sure they're with a broker that is licensed to accept trades from US-based customers.  Otherwise, you won't be able to move your money around to different investments within the RRSP. Once you're resident in the US, you will no longer be able to open any new accounts in Canada, but you will be able to maintain the ones you already have.


Just sticking to equities: If you are investing directly in a share/stock, depending on various factors, you may have picked up a winner or to your dismay a loser. Say you just have Rs 10,000/- to invest, which stock would you buy?   If you don't know, then it’s better to buy a Mutual Fund. Now if you say you would buy a few of everything, then even to purchase say Rs 5000/- worth of each stock in the NIFTY Index [50 companies] you would require at least an investment of 250,000/-. When you are investing directly you always have to buy in whole numbers, i.e. you can't buy 1/2 share or 1.6 share of some stock.   The way Mutual funds work is they take 10,000 from 250 people and invest in all the stocks. There are fund managers who's job is to pick good stocks, however even they cannot predict winners all the time. Normally a few of the picks become great winners, most are average, and a few are losers; this means that overall your returns are average VS if you had picked the winning stock. The essential difference between you investing on your own and via mutual funds are:   It is good to begin with a Mutual Fund, and once you start understanding the stocks better you can invest directly into the equities. The same logic holds true for Debt as well.


It's an interesting question, and one that has a few tentacles. A few thoughts come to mind: There's nothing wrong per se with these arrangements. I think it's a matter of doing what feels comfortable. Hopefully someone on here will have a personal experience to share.


I have lower back issues so a 20-30 min break every 3 hrs would still be ideal ha. True about the chargers but there are more and more now and any long distance highway trip in the US would be easy.


"The difference it that the headline I suggested removes the editorialization of the news. It is one thing to not have space for all the info. It is another to edit your headline to alter the meaning of your point.  Someone dismissing a headline because it lacks a source is one thing (and with the words ""survey"" you at least expect to find the source in the article). Someone walking away from a headline wrongly assuming that ALL of the CEO's in the US got at least a 27% raise last year is another.  I mean, this is the HuffPo. They ALL CAPS at least one word in every headline that is an action as a not so subtle demand on what you should do."


"If you are going to finance a used car, it is frequently best to arrange financing before you even pick out the car.    The easiest way I recommend is to talk to a local credit union or two.   They'll be able to tell you your interest rate and terms without having to talk to the dealer at all.  Most likely, they'll be significantly better than the dealer at getting a good interest rate. As far ""what is a good rate?"", check out bankrate for average loan rates: http://www.bankrate.com/auto.aspx Today's numbers look like 2.87% is the average for a 48-month used car loan.   That means if the bank comes back with something ridiculous like 9% or 10% you know they are way overcharging you.   I know someone who got a first-time-buyer rate from Ford and ended up with a 19.99% rate.   I could literally buy the car on my credit card and end up in a better spot. Honestly though, if you are 18 and have $5500 to put towards a car, I'd buy a $4500 car and save $1000 for repairs and maintenance.   After you have the car, put $250 every month for a ""car payment"" into a savings account for your next car."


I don't know where the money comes from. I do know flood Insurance is through the National Government.   I worked an internship for Horace Mann insurance, and all I know is that I would hate to be working their the next month and a half.


"Your CHMC insurance is payable to the lender not to you if you default. So technically you get nothing from it. However the likelihood is that you could not have got this loan, or got it only at an extremely high interest rate, without this insurance. The Canadian government has a page on CHMC, including a link to a page called ""What's in it for you?""."


1) Document that you held the bitcoins for more than one year. This should not be particularly difficult. Since you haven't moved the bitcoins, you hold the key to an address that has held them for more than one year. While this isn't absolute proof, it should be sufficient. 2) Since you can't document how you bought them easily, you can just assume a tax basis of zero. This will mean you will pay microscopically more in taxes, but don't worry about it. 3) Sign up with an exchange that can handle your sales. Coinbase will work if you want to sell it slowly. Gemini will work if you want to sell more quickly. 4) Get a decent, secure bitcoin wallet. Transfer the bitcoins to the exchange only as you're selling them. Make you first sale fairly small just in case something goes wrong. 5) Keep meticulous notes about each sale -- the date of the sale, the number of bitcoins you sold, and the number of dollars you got. 6) Make sure to keep enough money for taxes. In Michigan, 24.3% would be the highest possible tax rate you might have to pay if you sold a lot or had high income otherwise. 7) Either get a professional to file your taxes for you or learn how to correctly report long-term capital gains. You must report each individual sale. You may get audited or investigated, but there's nothing to find. The bitcoins have been in stasis for a long time, and it's completely plausible that you bought them and held them. If you can find any proof you bought them (such as a transfer to an exchange) that would be great, but it's not essential. Many people have this same story and unless you're connected to something illegal, you probably don't have anything to worry about. Congratulations! So thats my question, what steps do I need to take to declare this money and obtain it without getting arrested / investigated? There's nothing special you need to do other than keep very good documentation. When you file your taxes, you will need to declare each sale. (This answer assumes that you didn't have a lot of income last year and significantly less income this year. If that's the case, you may have to pay estimated taxes to avoid a penalty. But that penalty is very small and will be calculated by the IRS for you automatically. So I wouldn't worry about it.) You may wish to read up on gift taxes to understand how they work. You won't owe any, but you may need to file paperwork with the IRS if you give large gifts (over $14,000) to people and you will use up some of your lifetime exemption. Keep records of any gifts you give.


"Your first question has been answered quite well already. To answer your second question: ""If you pay extra, do you want the extra to go toward the interest or   toward the principal?"" This gives the consumer some flexibility to decide how additional payments are applied. It might seem like a no-brainer to always apply extra payments towards principal - that way, the interest amounts on future payments will be lower and (if you're billed a fixed amount each month) more of each regular payment will then be applied to principal, shortening the term of the loan. However, while it would mean spending more over the life of the loan, there are certain advantages to applying extra payments towards interest†. The main advantage is that it pays your account ahead and means you don't have to make another payment as soon. You could use this strategy to give yourself a buffer of several months, so that if you should ever run into financial hardship you can stop making mortgage payments for a while without the risk of foreclosure. † Note, in most cases it's more likely that you are simply paying more without specifying to the lender that it should be used as principal curtailment. I haven't seen cases where you can explicitly ask the extra to be ""applied toward interest"". In this situation the funds would be held until you've provided enough to cover one or more monthly payments in full, at which point your ""next payment due"" date will simply be extended.  Another advantage is that the funds that are being held (not due yet, not allocated toward any specific payment, maybe held in escrow) may be refundable to you, upon request. This would depend on the lender's policy. Some will permit refunds of credit balances that go beyond what is necessary to cover the current month's bill. Whether you apply extra payments towards principal or not, it makes little difference to the bank. Any additional payments received increase their immediate cash flow. The cash can be reinvested immediately by them into whatever they are currently focusing on."


Data is a funny thing. There are many different ways of constructing data sets. Keep in mind, the cite you linked is fine, I follow this kind of site when I am data mining. They got their data from the Government, and there's no reason to doubt its validity. Keep in mind, it's a survey. They extrapolate from a survey of a small population - In the 2016 survey, 6,254 families were interviewed, and in the 2013   survey, 6,026 were interviewed. 1) Let's set that aside, and look at the numbers as if they were gospel. $10.37M net worth to be top 1%. That's people at all different ages, and not the wealth cutoff for those dying, else the estate tax would hit closer to the 1%. Given the limited data set, I'd only hypothesize, if we graphed the age (along the bottom, X axis) vs number of people, the curve would peek in mid to late 60's, as people retire. With 20 years for the couple to spend and gift, it's not tough to imagine that by the time they pass away, the taxable estate $11M couple falls to just .2%.  2) When the estate tax impacted estates over just $600K, and my daughter was born, we set up a trust. Out net worth was barely positive, but insurance alone would have created enough wealth to have our orphaned child be subject to the tax of our estate before she received a dime. We also used the trust to fund her college. As a completed gift, had we made some bad decisions and lost it all, at least that money would be protected. Keep in mind, there are different flavors of trusts, but it's safe to say that in a survey to collect data, the million dollar+ trusts are considered family wealth. Not tough to imagine a good fraction of those families over $10M have a nice chunk already protected this way.  3) Last - For any illiquid assets, there's a discount that gets applied, typically 30%. I own a ranch, and want to start gifting it to the kids, the process involves creating stock, with restrictions, as a way to transfer the fractions required to gift the $14K/yr per person combination. (That is, a couple can gift 14x4 = $56K to a child with a spouse. 4 kids, all married, and the gifting is $224K/yr, $320K at full valuation. Again, these gifts may be to irrevocable trusts, and still thought of as their wealth.


Granted, currencies don't have intrinsic value.   Cryptocurrency is worse than government currencies in a few ways:   - it costs real resources to produce   - no institution keeps values stable   - values are volatile in practice  In those respects, crypto is more similar to a precious metal than a currency. Except it's worse than precious metals too, as metals have some intrinsic value.  Crypto won't be able to overcome these disadvantages to compete with government-issued currencies in the long term. It might compete with gold long term. There are a lot of nuts and gold bugs in the world, and crypto might live on in that fringe space.


"the ""how"" all depends on your level of computer savvy. Are you an Excel spreadsheet user or can you write in programming languages such as python? Either approach have math functions that make the calculation of ROI and Volatility trivial. If you're a python coder, then look up ""pandas"" (http://pandas.pydata.org/) - it handles a lot of the book-keeping and downloading of end of day equities data. With a dozen lines of code, you can compute ROI and volatility."


TIL, thanks for the pricing ballpark.  Yeah, auto-freeze would piss of their customers, but the alternative is entire cohorts of consumers *learning* to ramp down credit utilization *and teaching their children* because the consumer credit industry can't get its data management act together and the PITA factor rises so high consumers start to get taught by the breaches and their expenses and time to repair it on their end is not worth the credit: that's a secular long term trend that would piss off shareholders.


I like Obama and hate Trump, but let's be accurate. These rate hikes were planned before Trump got elected, actually started happening before Trump was elected, and they would have continued to happen regardless of who became president in 2017. That's how the business cycle works. Did you expect the rate to stay near 0% forever?


"According to Realtor.com, there are a variety of options to save on closing costs:  A general Google search on ""how to reduce closing costs"" will return a lot of results on other people's experiences, as well as tips and tricks."


Websites like neobudget dot com or mint dot com can help you see where your money is going, especially if you use mostly checks, debit cards, or credit cards for your purchases.  They are less useful if you use cash often.


The main restrictions you see with IRA's involve contributions, and not the actual investments themselves. I would be indifferent to having a single investment across multiple accounts. It might be a bit trickier to manage, especially if your strategy involves some specific asset allocation. Other than account management though, there's no big issue.


Yes, via a margin account, one can trade or transfer on unsettled funds. These are tight regulations that begin with the Federal Reserve, extend to FINRA, and downward. In a cash account, this is not possible. Since speed is a necessity, a margin account can actually be approved nearly instantly.


I think you need to study the history of industrialization.  First of all, these people arent losers. They work honestly, dont commit crime.  Second, minimum wage laws come out of the history of industrialization.  The only reason we have any middle class whatsoever is because of the labor movement. Ill allow you some time to look up, as an example, coal miners strikes, or *The Jungle* by Upton Sinclaire.   Second, please take an econ course above 201. Regulation, yes, brings more business if it is correcting a market failure.  A market failure is when the private market does not produce maximum social benefit. When MPB !=MSB that is a market failure. Pb being private benefit.  Then entire field of economics is dedicated to discovering proper methods to correct market failures,  since most industries have at least some failures, in the most efficient way possible to where MPB=MSB.  Yes, regulation can bring benefit to the economy.   One great and obvious example is the regulation of lemons. Without regulation, there would be no restriction against selling disfunctional products. With widespread sale of dysfunctional products, the economy would suffer as users demand lower prices even for perfectly good products, because they cannot know whether it is a lemon. This is just one example of a regulation against business benefiting the economy.   Once you have done educated yourself, Im happy to continue this discussion on a rational footing.


You decide whether the improvements will result in a net higher price.  You also need to figure on how long the house will be on the market and the cost of carrying the home, unoccupied.  Some people would prefer the quickest sale. Others would wait to get the highest price. If you sell to a known buyer, you avoid using a real estate agent. If you plan to sell on your own and avoid the agent, there's a bit of effort dealing with the public, especially those who just want to look at houses with no real interest in buying. (As an agent, I can tell you, there's nothing like talking for nearly an hour, and then figuring out these people are from 1/2 mile away, but just attend every open house in the area.)


According to pretty well accepted corporate finance principles. They're mature/maturing companies with large durable noncyclical cash flow streams. Increasing their debt load and distributing the proceeds to shareholders would lower their after tax cost of capital and increase the value of their equity. IMO operating with such under levered balance sheets is nonoptimal. It's subjective though.


Yes, my point is some DO stick around. Just like any other business, some stick around, some last only a few years. Given that facebook has done nothing but grow for the last seven years, it's likely to stick around a while longer. Either way, there is lots of money to be made


"For a newly registered business, you'll be using your ""personal"" credit score to get the credit.  You will need to sign for the credit card personally so that if your business goes under, they still get paid. Your idea of opening a business card to increase your credit score is not a sound one. Business plastic might not show up on   your personal credit history. While   some issuers report business accounts   on a consumer's personal credit   history, others don't. This cuts both ways. Some   entrepreneurs want business cards on   their personal reports, believing   those nice high limits and good   payment histories will boost their   scores. Other small business owners,   especially those who keep high running   balances, know that including that   credit line could potentially lower   their personal credit scores even if   they pay off the cards in full every   month. There is one instance in which the   card will show up on your personal   credit history: if you go into   default. You're not entitled to a   positive mark, ""but if you get a   negative mark, it will go on your   personal report,"" Frank says. And some further information related to evaluating a business for a credit card: If an issuer is evaluating you for a   business card, the company should be   asking about your business, says   Frank. In addition, there ""should be   something on the application that   indicates it's for business use,"" he   says. Bottom line: If it's a business   card, expect that the issuer will want   at least some information pertaining   to your business. There is additional underwriting for   small business cards, says Alfonso. In   addition to personal salary and credit   scores, business owners ""can share   financials with us, and we evaluate   the entire business financial   background in order to give them   larger lines,"" she says. Anticipate that the issuer will check   your personal credit, too. ""The vast   majority of business cards are based   on a personal credit score,"" says   Frank. In addition, many issuers ask   entrepreneurs to personally guarantee   the accounts. That means even if the   businesses go bust, the owners promise   to repay the debts. Source"


It will be Atlanta, Austin or Boston.  I don't think any of the other cities has enough of what they need: far enough away from Seattle, diverse and large pool of potential employees, strategic metro area, nexus to concurrent new market growth.


Especially since the 2007 UCS Falcon has been selling for over $1000 on ebay pretty much since it was discontinued.  There's clearly a market and it's not like it's the only falcon in town, the 75105 is $150. I don't understand why people are getting bothered by the price tag of the largest commercially available lego set ever.


I don't even watch things I have access to on Amazon Prime, which I get as incidental to all that free shipping. What makes Disney think I'm going to pay another monthly fee and then actually log in to watch their stuff? Much easier to just pirate it and then double click a file when I'm feeling like it.


[The website you mention](http://managementconsulted.com/consulting-jobs/2012-management-consulting-salaries-undergraduate-post-mba/# ) has starting salaries for those with undergrad degrees at $60,000, and as I mentioned above are not including bonus or 401k match.  My information is 5 years old now and is not too far off. $60k to work 100 hours a week is not worth it, at least not to me. That's why I recommended to get his/her MBA so they can get into the business at a six figure salary.  Source: I've been in the financial industry for 5 years now.


"A much better one is where they pay for peering with comcast and the average quality jumps up from ""comically low"" to  ""about the same as cablevision"": http://img.qz.com/2014/08/screen-shot-2014-08-27-at-11-35_optimized.png?w=826  The most damning evidence isn't in the charts though; it's the story of how three different transit providers (IIRC Level3, Cogent and Tata) all reported that from the moment they inked deals with Netflix, Comcast ceased to increase edge capacity as they had done previously."


The only proven way to lose weight and stay in shape is the combination of a healthy diet and regular, strenuous exercise, just like it always has been. This article is just searching for a way to blame the author's weight issues on anyone but themselves.


I think you should wait to see if he actually gets 80k a year. Also depending on where you live your taxes will vary. With your current expenses, you should be ok as it is under 3K but it doesn't leave too much left over for savings.   If you start a family with his single income. I don't think you'll make it. I'd suggest holding off on starting a family as you are both very young. You have plenty of time to focus on getting your education and him developing a career.


"The trick to using a credit card responsibly is accounting. With your old system, you were paying for everything out of your savings account.  Everytime you had an expense, it was immediately withdrawn from your savings account, and you saw how much money you had left. Now, with a credit card, there isn't any money being withdrawn from your savings account until a month later, when you have a huge credit card bill. The trick is to treat every credit card transaction as if it was a debit card transaction, and subtract the money from your ""available funds"" on paper immediately.  Then you'll know how much money you actually have to spend (not by looking at your bank statement, but by looking at your ""available funds"" number), and when the credit card bill comes, you'll have money sitting there waiting to go to the credit card company. This requires more work than you had with your old system, and if it sounds like too much work, you might be better off with a debit card or cash.  But if you want to continue to use the credit card, you'll find that the right software will make the accounting process easier.  I like YNAB, but there are other software products that work as well.  Just make sure that your system accounts for each credit card transaction as it is spent, deducting the amount from your budget now, so that there is money set aside for the credit card bill.  Software that simply categorizes your spending after the fact is not as useful."


"Stocks are regarded as an inflation hedge because when your money is worth less, everything else is worth more. i.e. Stocks are more expensive (go up) simply because your money is worth less, but not because of better earnings across individual companies. So that general idea can effect sentiment, whereby if everyone believes it then more people buy stocks if they think there will be a lot of inflation. But it doesn't explain actual behavior (whether ""more"" people buy, hold or sell.) It's worth noting that individual companies and stocks also may be adversely affected by inflation, since their own assets or accounting may already be outside of the currency and/or they may already be engaging in their own hedging."