vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
I wouldn't go into a stock market related investment if you plan on buying a house in 4-5 years, you really need to tie money up in stocks for 10 years plus to be confident of a good return.  Of course, you might do well in stocks over 4-5 years but historically it's unlikely. I'd look for a safe place to save some money for the deposit, the more deposit you can get the better as this will lower your loan to valuation (LTV) and therefore you may find you get a better interest rate for your mortgage. Regards the pension, are you paying the maximum you can into the company scheme?  If not then top that up as much as you can, company schemes tend to be good as they have low charges, but check the documentation about that and make sure that is the case. Failing that stakeholder pension schemes can also have very low charges, have a look at what's available.
"You are wrong on the L1 visa with respect to ""no limit""... there is an overall limit of 7 years max for L1a and 5 yrs for L1b.  Also, it is only limited to companies who have offices in foreign countries where that worker must have worked at least 1 year in a managerial, Executive or special skill set capacity; so not every company would qualify to bring in L1 visa workers... you are right about no required minimum with respect to salary but it would throw an unnecessary attention if a Manager you brought into the US getting paid peanuts so, that, in itself is a ""self regulator"" if you will."
Note that after 15 years, the tax exemption is €36800 per person, which includes both the principal you desposited and the accumulated interest.  It's possible that you will have a higher balance than this in your savings account at this point and would still owe tax on the interest accumulated above the exempted amount.  After 20 years, you get the full tax exemption, the lesser of your portion of the mortgage debt and €162000 per person. In direct answer to your questions: I'm not aware of any exceptions to the 15 year rule for allowing the accumulated interest to be tax free when selling your house.  If your accumulated interest is low enough, you might consider just paying the tax on it as it would give you the most flexibility in choosing a new mortgage.  This is why I asked about more details about your interest rate and how long the mortgage has been running. It may, however, possible to couple the savings account to a new ABN AMRO Bankspaar mortgage when you buy a new house.  You should check your mortgage terms and conditions.  For example, Section 23.12 in ABN AMRO's terms and conditions from 2010 describes this.  See here.  It is probably best, however, to speak directly with either your mortgage broker or with a mortgage adviser with ABN AMRO.  If your mortgage broker still worked on commission (aflsuitprovisie) when you closed your mortgage, then they are obligated to assist you with this type of question. In order to qualify for the tax exemption, you must use the saved value to pay off debt on your primary residence (eigenwoningschuld).  Decoupling the savings account entirely from a mortgage will disqualify you from the tax advantages.  You will owe tax on all accumulated interest.
"From the comments, it sounds like you have a technical background. So I'm going to suggest you think of this as a technical problem: it's an optimization problem, where the variable you're trying to optimize for is total interest paid over the lifetime of the loans. Step 1 is making sure you're using the credit available to you most efficiently. If there's room in the credit limit for card #1 to move more of your debt there, then definitely move your balances from the higher-interest cards. However, be careful; some cards will have different interest rates for balance transfers or cash advances. And definitely don't move any principal from Card #3 until the 0% interest rate expires. Pursuing a bank loan as part of step 1 is valid as well. You could start with the bank you use for your checking account today. Credit unions can be a good source of lower-interest loans as well. Ensure that you fully understand the terms and interest rates, particularly if they change. Just be careful about applying for them; too many rejections can affect your credit rating negatively. You also mention in the comments that you're paying ""her"" mortgage. I don't know how the ownership is set up there, but either refinancing or taking out a home equity loan can be a way to consolidate debt. The interest rate on a home loan will almost assuredly be less than on your higher rate cards, especially taking the tax deduction into account. Step 2 is paying down the debt efficiently. The rule here is simple: Pay the minimum payment on all cards except for the one with the highest interest rate; any money you have above the minimum payments should go into paying down the principal on that one. In your case, that's Card #2.  Good luck!"
It would be worthwhile reading into 'guarantor mortgages' or 'family offset mortgages' to achieve the same outcome. Ideally you are wanting the wealth of your parents to help make a mortgage more accessible to you. The first thought is to merely transfer money physically. However, for the reasons listed in the other posts, this carries potential problems. A guarantor mortgage will mean your parents agree to pay the portion about 75% LTV if you stop paying. You may take out a 95% LTV mortgage and therefore only have to find 5% deposit but benefit from the interest rates of a 75% loan. (Personally the chances of causing a family rift if things go pear-shaped would steer me away from this one. Each to their own though.) A family offset mortgage involves money rather than a guarantee. It will allow for the parents to dedicate some of their money to a third-party (ie. the bank or building society) so that you can achieve a mortgage. In practice, parents deposit money in a dedicated savings account. The bank adds that amount to whatever deposit you may have, and the combined amount is treated as the deposit towards the mortgage. Once your LTV reduces over time (by repayments and house value rises), your parents have their money returned and you carry on as normal. Here's an independent Which article: http://www.which.co.uk/money/mortgages-and-property/guides/first-time-buyer-mortgages/parent-mortgages/ I'd also read a couple of provider's pages to get a feel for the idea: https://www.barclays.co.uk/Mortgages/FamilySpringboardMortgage/P1242627640100 or http://www.scottishbs.co.uk/mortgages/guarantor-mortgage-for-first-time-buyers.html or http://www.mhbs.co.uk/family_deposit_mortgage_1_50_discount_for_term.aspx Not endorsements obviously, just a way to understand the concept and get a feel for the language they use. In short, using the money indirectly is much cleaner than your parents actually just giving you such a large sum and then you having to pay it back.
Danger. The affidavit is a legal document. Understand the risk of getting caught. If you are planning on using the condo to generate income the chances that you default on the loan are higher than an owner occupied property. That is why they demand more down payment (20%+) and charge a higher rate.  The document isn't about making sure you spend 183+ nights a year in the property, it is making sure that it isn't a business, and you aren't letting a 3rd party live in the property.  If you within the first year tell the mortgage company to send the bill to a new address, or you change how the property is insured, they will suspect that it is now a rental property.  What can they do? Undo the loan; ask for penalty fee; limit your ability to get a mortgage in the future; or a percentage of the profits How likely is it? The exact penalty will be in the packet of documents you receive. It will depend on which government agency is involved in the loan, and the lenders plan to sell it on the secondary market.  It can also depend on the program involved in the sale of the property. HUD and sister agencies lock out investors  during the initial selling period, They don't want somebody to represent themselves as homeowner, but is actually an investor. Note: some local governments are interested not just in non-investors but in properties being occupied. Therefore they may offer tax discounts to residents living in their homes. Then they will be looking at the number of nights that you occupy the house in a year. If they detect that you aren't really a resident living in the house, that has tax penalties. Suggestion: If you don't want to wait a year buy the condo and let the loan officer know what your plan is. You will have to meet the down payment and interest rate requirements for an investment property. Your question implies that you will have enough money to pay the required 20% down payment. Then when you are ready buy the bigger house and move in. If you try and buy the condo with a non-investment loan you will have to wait a year. If you try and pay cash now, and then get a home equity loan later you will have to admit it is a rental. And still have to meet the investor requirements.
It's pretty simple. The 10% is any savings for retirement.  Preferably, it's in a retirement account, but that's not mandatory. It's great that you save for a vacation, computer, house deposit,etc, but that's not what these articles are referencing.  Edit (in response to the running comments on @BrenBarn's answer) The mortgage issue is worth further discussion. I'm saving toward a home purchase, it may be $50K saved. But that's not money for retirement, the house savings never is. I get the $200K mortgage, my balance sheet is net neutral (less fees, closing costs, of course) but my retirement savings again is unchanged. I put $10K toward principal, the balance sheet again is $10K better, but retirement account, unchanged. Last, I pay off the mortgage. Retirement account unchanged. But, my retirement budget requirement is $1000/mo less (The mortgage payment), and my 'number' drops by $300K or so. (This is based on the 4% rule. To withdraw $1000/mo requires $300K in retirement assets.) It may seem pedantic, but there's an important distinction to be made here. It's easy to distinguish retirement savings from all other wise financial transactions. Paying debt off is wise but not retirement savings. Any actions that reduce your ongoing expenses? Clearly, wise. And it reduces the number needed to cover your retirement budget, but it's distinct from 'retirement savings.' For those that enjoy the intellectual exercise of insisting there's always a grey area, I'll give it to you. The family with 3 kids, in the $1.2M 5 bedroom house. The parents know they will move into their paid off summer house upon retiring, and sell this family house. In his wisdom, hubby has planned for the mortgage to be paid in full well ahead of retirement, and for purposes of planning, only view the house as worth $900K. The house does have a relationship to the retirement savings. But the action of planning for Alice's retirement (the maid they will no longer need once they move) is not savings, but rather, an adjustment down in their retirement budget.  I think you'll find most conflicts regarding this issue resolved by understanding this distinction.
"I can just get the exact same mortgage in a 30-year version, and just pay it off within whatever year window I choose This is an assumption which often does not come true. The ""advantage"" of a 15 year mortgage is you hopefully never decide you want more toys or to go out to eat and suddenly your mortgage takes 30 years to pay off instead of 15. Plus, if I get a 30-year mortgage then I have a cushion in case I run into major financial hardship. That same cushion can turn into other luxuries. Maybe you want new furniture. ""I won't pay extra on the mortgage this year."" Suddenly it's year 22. This is not a 100% guarantee by any means, but it is something which is relatively likely. Yet everywhere I look I see people online going on about how unwise 30-year mortgages are I read a lot of online financial resources and almost never see this claim."
You are expecting, that if you pay off a 30 mortgage after 16 years, you should be charged the same amount of interest as someone who had a 16 year mortgage for the same amount and with the same interest rate. This isn't correct, and here's why: the person with the 16 year mortgage paid it off faster than you. They paid more each month and the size of their loan shrunk faster than yours. After 15 years they had paid off a LOT more than you. You paid a lump sum after 16 years, but at this point, the extra money which they had paid had been in the banks hands for a long time. You caught up with them then, but you had been behind them for all of the previous years. On the other hand, you owed the same amount in each of those years as the person who took out a 30 year mortgage and didn't prepay. Therefore you paid the same amount of interest as this person, not the first person. If you could arrange in advance a loan where you made the same payment as you did for 16 years, then paid the balance in a lump sum, then you would have paid exactly what you did.
"Welcome to Money.SE. I will say upfront, Personal Finance is just that, personal, and you are likely to get multiple, perhaps conflicting, answers. Are you sure the PMI will drop off after 2 years? The rules are specific, and for PMI, when prepayments put you at that 78/80% LTV, your bank can require an appraisal, not automatically drop it. Talk to the banks, get confirmation, and depending what they say, keep hacking away at the mortgage.  After this, I suggest jumping on Roth IRAs. You are in the 15% bracket, and the Roth will let you deposit $5500 for each you and your wife. A great way to kickstart a higher level of retirement savings.  After this, I'm not comfortable with the emergency savings level. If you lose your job tomorrow (Funny story, my wife and I lost our's on the same day 3 years ago) and don't have enough savings (Our retirement accounts were good to just retire that day) you can easily run out of money and be late on the mortgage. It's great to prepay the mortgage to get rid of that PMI, but once there, I'd do the Roth and then focus on savings. 6 months expenses minimum.  We have a great Q&A here titled Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing in which I go in to more detail, as do 4 other members.  I am not getting on the ""investments will return more than your mortgage cost"" soapbox. A well-funded emergency fund is a very conservative bit of advice. With no matched 401(k), I suggest a balance of the Roth savings and prepayments.  From another great post, Ideal net worth by age X? Need comparison references you should have nearly 1 year's salary (90K) saved toward retirement.  Any question on my advice, add a comment and I will edit in more details."
To a mortgage lender, it appears that you have a temporary contract (perhaps extending for nine more months) with a agency that supplies workers to companies that need temporary help. You have been placed currently with a company and are making good money, but that job might disappear soon and then you will have no income while your recruiter tries to find you another assignment. How will you make your mortgage payments then? The recruiter agency's contract with your current company probably has clauses to the effect that the company agrees to not offer you a permanent job unless it pays a head-hunter's fee to the recruiter agency. Your contract with the recruiter agency also likely has clauses to the effect that if the company where you have been placed offers you a permanent job, you must pay the recruiter company a fee (typically one or two months of salary) to the recruiter agency as compensation for releasing you from your current contract (unless the company hiring you pays the head-hunter's fee). This is why the company where you are working right now wants to wait until after your contract with the recruiter company ends before making you an offer of permanent employment. Be aware that sometimes such clauses extend out to three months after the ending date of your contract with the recruiter company. As far as the condo is concerned, unless there is a specific one that you absolutely must have because it has an ocean view or other desirable properties, you may well find that another condo in the same complex is available some months from now. If you are lucky, it may well have an acceptable ocean view. If you are even luckier, it may be the condo that you absolutely must have which has remained unsold all that time -- as you said, the economy is crappy -- and you will be able to buy it for a lower price from an owner getting desperate to make a sale. To answer your question: is there any way around this? My recommendation is to simply wait out the end of your recruiter agency contract and get a permanent job with the company where you have been placed. Then there are no issues. If not, get your company to make a written offer of a permanent job starting nine months from now and hope that this (together with your current employment) impresses your bank into lending you money. This might not work, though.
That seems a very bad offer, it borders on fraud. In the current US economy, you should be able to get between 3 and 4 % APR (and that number is what you should look at). That means that for $300,000 over 30 years, you'd pay $1,265 to $1,432 per month. If you are able to pay more than that monthly rate, you should go for less than 30 years - 20, 15, 10, whatever you can afford - but don't overextend yourself. Google 'mortgage calculator' to do your own calculations.
A better idea if applicable is to borrow 50K (max allowed) to buy a house and pay interest to yourself instead of a bank. And none of that origination and closing fees lost to the lender
Mostly true. Very few plans allow for in-service withdrawal options. In most cases plans that do, only allow pure after tax sources to be withdrawn prior to age 59.5. The other case would be if you had rolled money from another k plan into your current plan. In almost all plans that money is always accessible.  Otherwise you generally will have to wait to request a distribution until you turn 59.5 years of age.
So if you put £150K into drawdown initially, and it's grown to £200K by age 75, then another £50K will crystallise under BCE 5A. I think that if you put £150K into drawdown initially and it grows by £50K, but you take that out as income so that only £150K (or less) remains at age 75, then the amount crystallising under BCE 5A is nil. Also, when money is in drawdown, you can choose to use it to buy an annuity. BCE 4 is applied at this point (if before age 75), but as with BCE 5A, this is reduced by anything that was previously crystallised under BCE 1. If you only use some of it to buy an annuity, the reduction is pro-rataed, e.g. if you started out with £150K moved into drawdown, and later it has grown to £200K and you use £100K to buy an annuity, then the reduction is £75K so £25K is considered to have crystallised under BCE 4. Once you reach age 75, as well as any money that's still in drawdown, anything you haven't yet crystallised at all gets tested against the LTA under BCE 5B. Broadly, once you go over the LTA, the charges are simple: There's never any explanation given for these two rates, but I think it's all based on trying to at least cancel out the benefit you got from using your pension, on the assumption that: So with the 25% charge + 20% income tax, if you take out £100, you'll end up with £75 gross income, so £60 net income - just the same as if you'd originally paid 40% tax. (This ignores the effect of investment growth, but if you would have saved the £60 in an ISA, the end result is the same: if you had growth of say 50% over the time the money was in your pension, it'll be the same effect if you had £100 growing to £150 and now received 60% of it, or if you had £60 growing to £90 untaxed in an ISA.)
Apply for a secured credit card (several financial institutions provide these, including most banks. WalletHub gives you a way to search/filter for these cards quite easily).  You will need to deposit funds to cover your credit limit.  Deposit as much as they allow, I believe it is 500.00.  Pay for EVERYTHING with the card.  Monitor your balance due and keep paying it off, to bring the balance due down so you can continue using your card. I know you mentioned your area requires you to be 19, not sure if that still applies if you are applying online, in another state. Also, there's no real reason to get a card with an annual fee in this case. The main reason for an annual fee would be a lower interest charge - simply don't get charged interest, and you'll be better off with not having to pay for a card annually. Good luck.
When I was 18 in 1983, someone making $3.35 minimum wage full-time also could not afford a 2-bedroom apartment in any state. This is why most young people making minimum wage get roommates or live in some sort of communal housing or just live at home with their parents. If you are in your 40s and still making minimum wage, then there are other problems at play.
"The gift issue, as explained to me by the mortgage officer at our credit union, is that they look at the average balance of your checking/savings accounts of the 3-6 months prior to mortgage issuance date. They look at the average balance to make sure you are financially stable beyond what your income and credit score indicate. With an average balance of $2500, the bank will (reasonably) presume you CANNOT make a $10k down payment. By not ""using"" the $10k gift-from-dad, you're showing the bank that you're more financially stable than if it came in and went right back out: that looks like you're a free spender, and it will cast doubt on your willingness/ability to repay the loan. Presuming your average balances are already ""ok"", the best way to utilize the gift-from-dad is in one of the following manners, in my opinion:"
Borrowing against your retirement is borrowing against your future -- you shouldn't do it expect for the most serious financial crises. The market is down, and 12% is a pretty darn good down payment. You'll hit the threshold where they waive PMI in a few years when you hit 80% LTV, or when you get the house appraised when the market heats up again. Another option is to find a lender that doesn't do PMI. A few local banks and credit unions do this... I managed to find one in my area that doesn't require PMI or escrowed tax/insurance!
The bars have moved over time, if you were born in 1960's you are now considered to be a gen X, the first boom came very quickly after the war so they would be 24 in 1970. Since fewer people went to college, they were buying homes, but the recession put a damper on the home buying. The 1970's are famous for stagflation with high inflation and high jobless rates! High interest rates were common in the late 1970's and 1980's