vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
One way to analyze the opportunity cost of using a 401K loan would be to calculate your net worth after using a 401K loan.  If your net worth increases then the 401K loan would be advisable.  Note that the calculations provided below do not take into account tax considerations. A net worth calculation is where you add all your assets and then subtract all your liabilities.  The resulting number is your net worth. First, calculate the net worth of not taking the loan and simply paying the credit card interest.  This means you only pay the interest on the credit card.  In addition to the parameters identified in your question, two additional parameters will need to be considered: Cash and the market rate of return on the 401K. Scenario 1 (only pay credit card interest): After 12 months all you have paid is the interest on the credit card.  The 401K balance is untouched so it will hopefully grow.  The balance on the credit card remains at the end of 12 months. Scenario 2 (use 401K loan to pay credit card balance): You borrow $5,000 from your 401K to pay the credit card balance.  You will have to pay $5,000 plus the 401K interest rate back into your 401K account. Use the following equation to determine when Scenario 2 increases your net worth more than scenario 1: Thus, if your credit card interest rate is greater than the rate you can earn on your 401K then use the 401K loan to pay off the credit card balance. Another scenario that should be considered: borrow money from somewhere else to pay off the credit card balance. Scenario 3 (external loan to pay credit card balance): You borrow $5,000 from somewhere besides your 401K to pay off the credit card balance. The following is used to determine if you should use an external loan over the 401K loan: This means you should use an external loan if you can obtain an interest rate less than the rate of return you can earn on your 401K.  The same methodology can be used to compare Scenario 3 to Scenario 1.
As Chris pointed out: If your expenses are covered by the income exactly, as you have said to assume, then you are basically starting with a $40K asset (your starting equity), and ending with a $200K asset (a paid for home, at the same value since you have said to ignore any appreciation). So, to determine what you have earned on the $40K you leveraged 5x, wouldn't it be a matter of computing a CAGR that gets you from $40K to $200K in 30 years? The result would be a nominal return, not a real return. So, if I set up the problem correctly, it should be: $40,000 * (1 + Return)^30 = $200,000 Then solve for Return. It works out to be about 5.51% or so.
"Some details in case you are interested: Being a defined benefit kind of pension plan, the formula for your Social Security benefits isn't tied directly to FICA contributions, and I'm not aware of any calculator that performs an ROI based on FICA contributions. Rather, how much you'll get in retirement is based on your average indexed monthly earnings.  Here's some information on the Social Security calculation from the Social Security Administration - Primary Insurance Amount (PIA): For an individual who first becomes eligible for old-age insurance   benefits or disability insurance benefits in 2013, or who dies in 2013   before becoming eligible for benefits, his/her PIA will be the sum of:       (a) 90 percent of the first $791 of his/her average indexed monthly earnings, plus       (b) 32 percent of his/her average indexed monthly earnings over $791 and through $4,768, plus       (c) 15 percent of his/her average indexed monthly earnings over $4,768. Here's an example.  Of course, to calculate a benefit in the future, you'll need to calculate projected average indexed monthly earnings; more details here.  You'll also need to make assumptions about what those bend points might be in the future.  The average wage indexing values for calculating the AIME are available from the Social Security Administration's site, but future indexing values will also need to be projected based on an assumption about their inflation.  You'll also need to project the Contribution and Benefit Base which limits the earnings used to calculate contributions and benefits. Also, the PIA calculation assumes benefits are taken at the normal retirement age.  Calculating an early or late retirement factor is required to adjust benefits for another age.  Then, whatever benefits you get will increase each year, because the benefit is increased based on annual changes in the cost of living. Performing the series of calculations by hand isn't my idea of fun, but implementing it as a spreadsheet (or a web page) and adding in some ""ROI based on FICA contributions"" calculations might be an interesting exercise if you are so inclined? For completeness sake, I'll mention that the SSA also provides source code for a Social Security Benefit Calculator."
"The answer to almost all questions of this type is to draw a diagram.  This will show you in graphical fashion the timing of all payments out and payments received.  Then, if all these payments are brought to the same date and set equal to each other (using the desired rate of return), the equation to be solved is generated. In this case, taking the start of the bond's life as the point of reference, the various amounts are: Pay out = X Received = a series of 15 annual payments of $70, the first coming in 1 year.  This can be brought to the reference date using the formula for the present value of an ordinary annuity. PLUS Received = A single payment of $1000, made 15 years in the future.  This can be brought to the reference date using the simple interest formula. Set the pay-out equal to the present value of the payments received and solve for X I am unaware of the difference, if any, between ""current rate"" and ""rate to maturity"" Finding the rate for such a series of payments would start out the same as above, but solving the resulting equation for the interest rate would be a daunting task..."
This calculation arrives at the correct answer.  However, it uses the formula for an annuity due.  This means the payments are made at the beginning of the month and the last month of the 10 year period has interest accrued. See the section, Calculating the Future Value of an Annuity Due. The rate is given as an effective rate. with  In Excel, =FV((1+0.12)^(1/12)-1,120,3500,0,1)
This was my exact thought when I first heard. It just sounds like inflation to me &amp; I don't understand the logic. If everyone on average gets say...a ~3% boost on their score, why wouldn't banks just adjust their standards by 3%?
The Money Chimp site lets you choose two points in time to see the return. i.e. you give it the time (two dates) and it tells you the return.  One can create a spreadsheet to look at multiple time periods and answer your question that way, but I've not seen it laid out that way in advance. For what it's worth, I am halfway to my retirement number. I can tell you, for example that at X%, I hit my number in Y years. 8.73% gets me 8/25/17 (kid off to college) 3.68% gets me 8/25/21 (kid graduates), so in a sense, we're after the same type of info. With the long term return being in the 10% range, you're going to get 3 years or so as average, but with a skewed bellish curve when run over time.
"It means that at the end of each month, the APY, divided by 365 (366 for leap years) is multiplied by your account's ending balance on each day of that month, then those interest amounts are summed up and paid out. It's exactly equivalent to the ""Average Daily Balance"" method; at the end of each month, the balance of your account on each day is summed, divided by the number of days in the month, then that number is multiplied by the APY / 365 * (number of days in the month). If you write out all these terms and simplify, you'll find the two boil down to exactly the same calculation being performed in different order (possibly with differing potential for rounding error). The only difference between them is whether the daily interest percentage is distributed to each daily balance or applied to the sum, and whether there's an additional redundant pair of steps of dividing and then multiplying by the number of days in the month."
"There is a very simple calculation that will answer the question: Is the expected ROI of the 401K including the match greater than the interest rate of your credit card? Some assumptions that don't affect the calculation, but do help illustrate the points. You have 30 years until you can pull out the 401K. Your credit card interest rate is 20% compounded annually. The minimum payoffs are being disregarded, because that would legally just force a certain percentage to credit card. You only have $1000. You can either pay off your credit card or invest, but not both. For most people, this isn't the case. Ideally, you would simply forego $1000 worth of spending, AND DO BOTH Worked Example: Pay $1000 in Credit Card Debt, at 20% interest. After 1 year, if you pay off that debt, you no longer owe $1200. ROI = 20% (Duh!) After 30 years, you no longer owe (and this is pretty amazing) $237,376.31. ROI = 23,638% In all cases, the ROI is GUARANTEED. Invest $1000 in matching 401k, with expected ROI of 5%. 2a. For illustration purposes, let's assume no match After 1 year, you have $1050 ($1000 principal, $0 match, 5% interest) - but you can't take it out. ROI = 5% After 30 years, you have $4321.94, ROI of 332% - assuming away all risk. 2b. Then, we'll assume a 50% match. After 1 year, you have $1575 ($1000 principle, $500 match, 5% interest) - but you can't take it out. ROI = 57% - but you are stuck for a bit After 30 years, you have $6482.91, ROI of 548% - assuming away all risk. 2c. Finally, a full match After 1 year, you have $2100 ($1000 principle, $1000 match, 5% interest) - but you can't take it out. ROI = 110% - but again, you are stuck.
Some personal finance packages can track basis cost of individual purchase lots or fractions thereof. I believe Quicken does, for example. And the mutual funds I'm invested in tell me this when I redeem shares. I can't vouch for who/what would make this visible at times other than sale; I've never had that need. For that matter I'm not sure what value the info would have unless you're going to try to explicitly sell specific lots rather than doing FIFO or Average accounting.
"H.R. basically consults Publication 15 (this is the link to 2015) to determine how much to hold, based on filing status, exemptions, and pay amount. What's described here is a form of estimation, or, in other words, H.R. withholds what would be your actual taxes, dividing across the number of paychecks you receive. Assuming your gross pay and exemptions do not change, this usually results in a zero-sum for taxes owed (you will receive nothing, and owe nothing). As you can see from the charts, the year is basically broken down into equal tax units that reflect how much you would owe if you worked at that bracket all year. This estimation works best when you have steady hours from check to check. In other words, your taxes are based on the estimate of what you'd make if you earned that much all year, scaled down to the time frame (e.g. 1/52 if you are paid weekly, or 1/26 if you paid biweekly). They do not go ""up"" near the end of the year, because they're estimated in advance. You don't move up a tax bracket, but are instead taxed at a particular bracket every paycheck. There's also other forms of estimation mentioned there, but basically follow the same scheme. Note that all estimation forms are just that-- estimates. It's best to use a calculator and compare your current taxes whenever a significant change occurs-- a raise, a new child, getting married or divorced, etc. You'll want to be able to alter your exemptions so that enough taxes are coming out. That's also the reason for the ""withhold extra"" box, so that you can avoid owing. For example, if you're making $44 a week for the first 26 weeks, and then you make $764 a week for the second 26 weeks of the year, you'll end up with an actual tax liability of $2,576.6, but end up paying only $2,345.20. You would owe $231.40.
"Actually, the other answer isn't strictly correct.  It's an estimate, giving a lower bound that gets less accurate as income increases.  Consider: U.S. income tax is based on a progressive tax system where there are income bracket levels with increasing tax rates. Example: Given U.S. 2009 federal tax rates for an individual filing as ""single"": Imagine somebody making $100000.  Assuming no other credits, deductions, or taxes, then income tax based on the above brackets & rates would be calculated as follows: Meaning the average tax rate for the single individual earning $100,000 is 21.72%. However, a pre-tax deduction from that income actually comes off at the top marginal tax rate.  Consider the same calculation but with taxable income reduced to $99,000 instead (i.e. simulating a pre-tax $1000 deduction): That's a difference of $280, which is more than the $217.20 savings that would have been estimated if just using the average tax rate method. Consequently, when trying to determine how much money would be saved by a tax deduction, it makes better sense to estimate using the marginal tax rate, which in this case was 28%.  It gets a little trickier if the deduction crosses a bracket boundary.  (Left as an exercise to the reader :-) Finally, in the case of the deduction being discussed, it also looks like payroll FICA taxes paid by the employee (Social Security's 6.2%, and Medicare's 1.45%) would be avoided as well; so add that to the marginal tax rate savings. The surest way to know how much would be saved, though, would be to do one's income tax return calculation without the deduction, and then with, and compare the numbers.  Tax software can make this very easy to do."
The monthly repayments of the initial $ 300,000 loan can be calculated using this formula:  source: Finance Formulas The monthly payment is It is not readily apparent how the formula works, but it is derived by induction from this summation, in which the sum of the discounted future payments are set equal to the present value of the loan:  For the second part of the question, reinvestments are stopped after 9 months, after four investments of $ 26,374.77 * 3 = $ 79,124.31.  And presumably each loan is repaid in 3 years, since 45 - 9 = 36 months. Calculating the repayments for these loans: The total returned for all four loans is:
You really can't. Credit rating is determined by financial history, and until your kids are old enough to legally sign a contract they have essentially no financial history. Interesting out-of-the-box thought, but not workable.
There is one basic principle to apply here:  to compare money paid at different times, all the amounts must be compounded or discounted to the same point in time. In this case, the moment of the initial  $225,000 loan is convenient. At that moment, you get $225,000 You then make 30 payments on the 40% mortgage.  The amount of these payments has to be calculated;  they're paying off a $90,000 mortgage with 30 monthly payments at a monthly rate of 0.5% Finally, you make 30 payments of an amount X, starting one month after the 40% mortgage ends. So far we've just listed the amount and time of all the payments back and forth. A time-line type diagram is a huge help here. Finally, use compound interest and annuity formulas to bring all the payments to the starting point, using an interest rate of 1% a month! Equate money in with money out and solve for X
For example, say the loan officer decides he and his branch are going to earn one point. When you call and ask for a rate quote, he will add one point to the cost of the loan and quote you that rate. According to the rate sheet above, seven percent will cost you zero points. Six and three-quarters percent will cost you one point. In our example, at 7.125% the loan officer and branch would earn one point and have some money left over. This could be used to pay some of the fees (processing, documents, etc), which is how you get a ""no fees -no points"" mortgage. You just pay a higher interest rate. Where this scoring helps you is in credit card interest rates and auto loan and personal loan rates, which have different rate structures. My personal opinion is to avoid the use of the credit cards. Playing games to try to maximize your score in this situation won't help you when you are talking about 20 points potentially. If you were at the bottom level and were trying to meet a minimum score to qualify, then I would recommend you try to game this scoring system. Take the extra money you would put on a credit card and save it for housing expenses. Taking the Dave Ramsey approach, you should have at least $1000 in emergency funds as most problems you encounter will be less than $1000. That advice rings true."
Thanks for the answer/comments! The time-based method was something we mooted and something I almost went with. But just to wrap this up, the method we settled on was this: Every time there is an entry or exit into the fund, we divvy out any unrealised market profits/losses according to each person's profit share (based on % of the asset purchased at buy-in) JUST BEFORE the entry/exit. These realised profits are then locked in for those particpants, and then the unrealised profits/loss counter starts at zero, we do a fresh recalculation of shareholding after the entry/exit, and then we start again. Hope this helps anyone with the same issue!
"It can be pretty hard to compute the right number. What you need to know for your actual return is called the dollar-weighted return. This is the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_rate_of_return computed for your actual cash flows. So if you add $100 per month or whatever, that has to be factored in. If you have a separate account then hopefully your investment manager is computing this. If you just have mutual funds at a brokerage or fund company, computing it may be a bunch of manual labor, unless the brokerage does it for you. A site like Morningstar will show a couple of return numbers on say an S&P500 index fund. The first is ""time weighted"" and is just the raw return if you invested all money at time A and took it all out at time B. They also show ""investor return"" which is the average dollar-weighted return for everyone who invested in the fund; so if people sold the fund during a market crash, that would lower the investor return. This investor return shows actual returns for the average person, which makes it more relevant in one way (these were returns people actually received) but less relevant in another (the return is often lower because people are on average doing dumb stuff, such as selling at market bottoms). You could compare yourself to the time-weighted return to see how you did vs. if you'd bought and held with a big lump sum. And you can compare yourself to the investor return to see how you did vs. actual irrational people. .02, it isn't clear that either comparison matters so much; after all, the idea is to make adequate returns to meet your goals with minimum risk of not meeting your goals. You can't spend ""beating the market"" (or ""matching the market"" or anything else benchmarked to the market) in retirement, you can only spend cash. So beating a terrible market return won't make you feel better, and beating a great market return isn't necessary. I think it's bad that many investment books and advisors frame things in terms of a market benchmark.
That's also the reason for the ""withhold extra"" box, so that you can avoid owing. For example, if you're making $44 a week for the first 26 weeks, and then you make $764 a week for the second 26 weeks of the year, you'll end up with an actual tax liability of $2,576.6, but end up paying only $2,345.20. You would owe $231.40. Of course, the actual math is a lot more complicated if you're an employee paid by the minute, for example, or you have a child, go to college, etc. Paychecks that vary wildly, like $10,000 one week and $2,000 the next tend to have the hardest-to-predict estimates (e.g. jobs with big commission payouts). You should avoid living check-to-check with jobs that pay this way, because you'll probably end up owing taxes. Conversely, if you've done your estimates right and you're paid salary or exactly the same number of hours every week, you'll find that the taxes are much easier to predict and you can usually easily create a refund situation simply by having the correct exemptions on your check. So, in summation, if your check falls in the 25% category (which is, of course, 25% above the tax bracket break point), you're already paying the correct amount, and no further drop in your check would be expected."
A couple ideas: Use excel - it has an IRR (internal rate of return) that can handle a table of inputs as you describe, along with dates deposited to give you a precise number.  Go simple - track total deposits over the year, assume half of that was present in January. So, for example, your account started the year with $10k, ended with $15k, but you deposited $4k over the year. It should be clear the return (gain) is $1k, right? But it's not 10%, as you added during the year. I'd divide $1k/$12k for an 8.3% return. Not knowing how your deposits were structured, the true number lies between the 10% and 6.7% as extremes. You'll find as you get older and have a higher balance, this fast method gaining accuracy, as your deposits are a tinier fraction of your account and likely spread out pretty smoothly over the year anyway.
This is a really easy problem. If you're genuinely having trouble, maybe don't be a finance major? All you need to do is know the formulas for the ratios and plug in the variables. Simple and clean.  However, if you're lazy and trying to get free answers off of reddit, then you could have saved the time you took to post this question and actually do the problem. You probably would have gotten the answer all by yourself without much help.
"I really does depend on the bank. Here is a fairly typical page on interest calculations. The key phrase is: Interest is calculated on each day's final balance and paid monthly.  So at the end of each day the amount of interest is calculated for that day, based on how much is in the account. At the end of the month the amount of interest for each day is totalled, and added to the account balance. That calculation is extremely similar to duffbeer703's ""compound monthly using the average balance for the month"", provided the account doesn't have tiered interest rates and the balance doesn't go negative. The software that banks use is easily sophisticated enough to handle that kind of calculation. Your bank should be able to give you a statement of exactly how the interest is calculated."
"19500 - The balance isn't held all month. It's held on average for half a month (assuming the days money was spent was randomly distributed).  260/(1.5% - 4%/(24))  Edit: That answer only works if they pay off their balance at the end of the month - 260/(1.5% - 4%*(3/24)) gives 26000 if the average balance is held for a month and a half. But either way, leaving out the ""half a month"" results in a messy number."
It's really boring and you should automate it. Most front office guys worth their salt have built something that will normally calculate what they should have in their portfolios.  Basically we own X units of stock K, stock K pays dividend D on date M, you check on date M that we have received X*D for all K's.  When trades are made you also need to verify that the dollar amounts are correct, for equity its usually automatic but for fixed income and OTC products you can build a tool to check it.