vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
You could classify the mortgage as a different assets class and then create automated additions and deductions to the account as deems fit. other than that quickbooks online is a bit fishy so it seems.
So this works very well (this is just the guts, you have to add all the who, what, where, signature block, formalities etc.): 1 Company and Customer absolutely disagree as to whether Customer owes Company this debt: (explicitly named debt with numbers and amount) 2 But Company and Customer both eagerly agree that the expense, time, and stress of research, negotiation, and litigation is burdensome for both of us. We both strongly desire a quick, final and no-fault solution. Therefore: 3 Parties agree Customer shall pay Company (acceptable fraction here). Payment within 30 days. To be acknowledged in writing by Company. 4 This shall be absolute and final resolution. 5 NO-FAULT. Parties agree this settlement resolves the matter in good faith. Parties agree this settlement is done for practical reasons, this bill has not been established as a valid debt, and any difference between billed and settled amount is not a canceled nor forgiven debt. 6 Neither party nor its assigns will make any adverse statements to third parties relating to this bill or agreement. Parties agree they have a continuous duty to remove adverse statements, and agree to do so within seven days of request. 7 Parties specifically agree no adverse mark nor any mark of any kind shall be placed on Customer's credit report; and in the event such a mark appears, Parties will disavow it continuously. Parties agree that a good credit report has a monetary value and specific impacts on a customer's life. 8 Jurisdiction of law shall be where the effects are felt, and that shall be (place of service) regarding the amounts of the bill proper. Severable, inseparable, counterparts, witness, signature lines blah blah. A collector is gonna sign this because it's free money and it's not tricky. What does this do? 1, 2 and 5 alter history to make the debt never have existed in the first place. To do this, it must formally answer the question of why the heck would you pay a debt that isn't real and you don't owe: out of sheer practicality; it's cheaper than Rogaine. This is your ""get out of jail free"" card both with the credit bureaus and the IRS.
"I've tried Mint, and I've tried Quicken. Now, I think Quicken is an annoying, crashy little piece of software, but it is also quite capable; overall I think it has the features you want. You can enter your bills, broken down by category, in advance. You can enter your paychecks, broken down by category (gross income, federal income tax, state income tax, social security, SDI, transfers to tax-protected 401(k) account, etc) in advance. You can enter in your stock trades and it can tell you how much you'll need to end up paying in capital gains taxes. You can even enter in your stock option vesting schedule in advance (it's a royal pain because you can't go back and change anything without deleting everything, but you can do it). It'll forecast your bank account balance in all of your bank accounts in advance with a shiny chart. It'll even model your loans, if you set it up right. I didn't do too much with the ""budgeting"" tools per se, but the account-balances-daily features sound like the closest thing to what you're looking for that's likely to exist. The only thing that's a trifle tricky is that transfers from one account to another may take multiple days (hello, ACH) and you'll have to decide whether to record them at departure or arrival."
CreditCards.com has maintained a fairly comprehensive list of offers for many years now.  I don't see any straight 2% offers there right now.
Yes you did opt into it. When you applied and were approved for any loan or credit card the terms stated they would give your payment details to credit bureaus.   You didn’t explicitly give an okay to Experian but by getting that credit card or loan, well, you pretty much did opt in.
"That would not count as income since you would essentially be transferring money ""between accounts"", though I believe that would also be against your credit card provider and/or Square's Terms of Service. Edit: As has been mentioned, Square may report this to the IRS as income for you, however more importantly: This is 100% against Square's ToS: User Agreement which you are required to accept in creating an account Restricted Use ... You also may not use the Services to process cash advances. You may not use the invoices feature of the Services to send invoices to yourself or in any other manner for which the invoices feature is not intended. Commercial Entity Agreement At Visa/Mastercard's discression, you may be required to agree to this as well for the acceptance of card payments that are “Commercial Entities” as defined by Visa, Inc. and MasterCard International, Inc. (collectively, the “Card Brands”) (aka if you use it to accept Visa or MasterCard). Relevant portion: Cash Advances. Seller shall not disburse or advance any cash to a Customer (except as > authorized by the Card Brand Rules) or to itself or any of its representatives, agents, or employees in connection with a Transaction, nor shall Seller accept payment for effecting credits or issuing refunds to a Customer. This is a form of what is known as Credit card kiting"
"&gt; Or just remember how much you spent. The purpose of my comment was to say the online balance isn't a true balance, not that I had trouble balancing a book.   Except that you rather obviously *don't* comprehend what the meaning of ""true balance"" is.  The balance the bank shows on it's online system (or it's statements) is very much a ""true balance"" **of the transactions the BANK is aware of** (i.e. the ones that have been processed).  That you think the bank should somehow be ""magically aware"" of the fact that you just signed a credit card transaction -- or that you wrote a check and mailed it off to someone -- demonstrate that you lack a fundamental comprehension of the system.  And the ""just remember how much you spent"" as an excuse for not properly (independently) **recording (and mathematically subtracting)** what you have spent...  Is demonstrative of both ignorance AND laziness."
"My broker (thinkorswim) offers this from the platform's trade tab.  I believe this feature isn't crippled in the PaperMoney version which is effectively a ""free online service."""
Which banks? What about those that don't have the same products/rates/services? There's only a handful of institues that could match, even just closely, to what WF provides.  Customers wouldn't have much real choice, and it'd look like the gov't stepping in and taking one business' money and giving it to another.   For the receiving bank, they would take a hit too likely, as the term for which they'd have the new funds wouldn't be long enough to see returns on anything before they had to turn the money back over. Meaning they'd be eating all the normal cost of their services without getting the normal return.  Fines work well because they hit companies where it impacts only them-net income. You want better compliance, create bigger and more persistent fines. You don't like WF, move your money somewhere else.
"I live in Canada and have a BMO mastercard. I called them and asked them and their answer was ""of course!"". I have put thousands of dollars on my mastercard from my bank account to pay for rare, large purchases. The money I put on appears differently on my online mastercard account though.  EX:  account balance: $6,000.00 CR  available credit: $3,000.00  This confused me at first, but when I called and asked them, they said my available credit doesn't  change (ie: how much BMO lends me), but when I add my available credit + what I've put on my card (my account balance, which is CR (meaning my balance has a surplus of money)), then my spending limit is $9,000.00 So, I don't increase my ""credit"" limit, but I do increase my spending limit. It just comes down to terminology. I assume it is like this for other credit cards, but I would recommend calling and asking, just to be on the safe side. Heath"
In the former, the customer has ""ownership"" of an asset (the credits), which cannot be taken from him (although it might be unusable). In the latter, the holder of the debit card is technically an unsecured creditor of the company - and is last in line if the company's assets are liquidated for repayment. Consider also the case where the cost of the ""credits"" is increased part-way through the year (say, from $10 per credit to $20 per credit) or if a discount promotion is applied (buy 5 credits, get one free). The customer has a ""tangible"" item (one credit) which gets the same functionality regardless of price. This would be different if instead of ""credits"" you instead maintain an ""account"" where the user deposited $1000 and was billed for usage; in this case you fall back to the ""gift card"" scenario (but usage is charged at the current rate) and revenue is booked when the usage is purchased; similarly, tax is collected on the purchase of the service. For this model to work, the ""credit"" would likely have to be refundable, and could not expire (see gift cards, above), and must be usable on a variety of ""services"". You may have particular responsibility in the handling of this ""deposit"" as well."
Debt is evil according to Dave, but investing in companies that profit from debt is never shunned.  In fact, he loves broad basket ETFs and mutual funds.  How many industries would grind to a halt without the liquidity provided by consumer credit?
In such cases, it has a EIN, like any business would. Even absent the rent you suggest, the condo should have reserve funds, similar to an individual's emergency account, only more codified as to level and flows. These funds should be earning interest.
I would presume this goes entirely through the credit card network rather than the banking network. I am guessing that it's essentially the same operation as if you had returned something purchased on a card to the store for credit, but I'm not sure whether it really looks like a vendor credit to the network or if it is marked as a different type of transaction.
Update: Here is a Google Docs spreadsheet that is actively maintained and editable. It contains a list of EMV credit cards. With a few exceptions (UN, existing BMO Diners Club cardholders, employees of the state of North Carolina), it still looks like the Travelex card is the best option for most people. Original answer: The premise of the question may now be outdated. I have found internet articles claiming 4 US banks will now issue Chip and PIN cards. Specifically: The Chase link is for their British Airways card, which multiple sources say is really Chip and Signature (leaving it there so no one else suggests it). The Citi link is to specific chip and PIN information. I could not find specific information for the other two. I have a question into my bank (US Bank) and will update when they get back to me. In looking into this, some of the chip and PIN links I followed ended up being chip and signature, so as always, be careful.
Some accounts, such as my electric, and payments to the tax collector charge a significant enough fee that is counter productive to use a rewards card.  One example of this is Alligent Air.  They give you a $6 discount if you pay with a debit card which was about 5% of the ticket price. Anytime you borrow money, even as well intentioned and thought out as you plan to do so, you are increasing risk.  By managing it carefully you can certainly mitigate it.  The question becomes, does that time spent in management worth the $600/year? I did the costco amex deal for about 12 years earning about $300-$400 per year and only once getting hit with a late/finance charge.  Despite the success, I opted to end this for a few different reasons.  First off people using credit tend to spend more.  Secondly, I felt it was not worth my time in management.  Thirdly, I did not want the risk. Despite the boasts of many, the reality is that few people actually pay off their card each month.  By your post, it seems to me that you will be one of the rare few.  However, if you are expending 5K per month, your income must be above the US national average.  Is $600 really worth it? Perhaps budgeting for Christmas would be a better option.
"I wrote a little program one time to try to do this.  I think I wrote it in Python or something. The idea was to have a list of ""projected expenses"" where each one would have things like the amount, the date of the next transaction, the frequency of the transaction, and so on.  The program would then simulate time, determining when the next transaction would be, updating balances, and so on.  You can actually do a very similar thing with a spreadsheet where you basically have a list of expenses that you manually paste in for each month in advance.  Simply keep a running balance of each row, and make sure you don't forget any transactions that should be happening. This works great for fixed expenses, or expenses that you know how much they are going to be for the next month.  If you don't know, you can estimate, for instance you can make an educated guess at how much your electric bill will be the next month (if you haven't gotten the bill yet) and you can estimate how much you will spend on fuel based on reviewing previous months and some idea of whether your usage will differ in the next month.  For variable expenses I would always err on the side of a larger amount than I expected to spend.  It isn't going to be possible to budget to the exact penny unless you lead a very simple life, but the extra you allocate is important to cushion unexpected and unavoidable overruns. Once you have this done for expenses against your bank account, you can see what your ""low water mark"" is for the month, or whatever time period you project out to.  If this is above your minimum, then you can see how much you can safely allocate to, e.g. paying off debt.  Throwing a credit card into the mix can make things a bit more predictable in the current month, especially for unpredictable amounts, but it is a bit more complicated as now you have a second account that you have to track that has to get deducted from your first account when it becomes due in the following month.  I am assuming a typical card where you have something like a 25 day grace period to pay without interest along with up to 30 days after the expense before the grace period starts, depending on the relationship between your cut-off date and when the actual expense occurs."
tl;dr: I think you can find a much better deal. Doing a strait refi will cost you some amount of money.  However, a 2.5% fee ont top of closing costs seems really high.  You can get a quote from Quicken loans pretty quick and compare their fee.  Also I would check with a local bank, preferably one you already do business with.  The 2.5% is probably their commission for originating the loan.  If you are in the Southeast I have had great luck with Regions bank.  They are large enough, but also small enough.  Please know that I have no affiliation with either company. BTW the rate also seems high.  Doing a quick search of Bank Rate, it seems you can get 3.25% with zero fee as of this writing.  The worse deal they show is 3.46 with a .75% fee, much better than you were quoted. If you can afford it I would also encourage you to think outside the box.  A client of mine was able to obtain a Home Equity Loan (not line of credit) to replace their mortgage.  They went for a 7 year pay off, with the loan in first position, at a rate about .75 below the then current 15 year rate.  The key was there was zero closing costs.  It saved them quite a bit of money. Also look at a 10 year fixed.  It might not be much more than you are paying now.
"Just an add-on that I would argue CDO's were created much earlier, in the late 1960's, by newly created Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae, and eventually Freddie MAc in some of the original mortgage bundling programs.  There were no private-label MBS's at the time, but the practice had already started well before the 80's.  Not trying to be a dick, but I think it's historically significant.  edit: To maybe double back a bit, I know that they were passing through mortgages, but I'm actually not sure how the securitization actually worked, (if they were technically ""collaterialized."")."
When in doubt, call (the card issuer) and ask. Ask if you overpay your current bill if the overpayment becomes available credit and tell them why you are asking. It can go either way.
It is true that this is possible, however, it's very remote in the case of the large and reputable fund companies such as Vanguard. FDIC insurance protects against precisely this for bank accounts, but mutual funds and ETFs do not have an equivalent to FDIC insurance. One thing that does help you in the case of a mutual fund or ETF is that you indirectly (through the fund) own actual assets. In a cash account at a bank, you have a promise from the bank to pay, and then the bank can go off and use your money to make loans. You don't in any sense own the bank's loans. With a fund, the fund company cannot (legally) take your money out of the fund, except to pay the expense ratio. They have to use your money to buy stocks, bonds, or whatever the fund invests in. Those assets are then owned by the fund. Legally, a mutual fund is a special kind of company defined in the Investment Company Act of 1940, and is a separate company from the investment advisor (such as Vanguard): http://www.sec.gov/answers/mfinvco.htm Funds have their own boards, and in principle a fund board can even fire the company advising the fund, though this is not likely since boards aren't usually independent. (a quick google found this article for more, maybe someone can find a better one: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/mutual-fund-independent-board-rule-all-but-dead) If Vanguard goes under, the funds could continue to exist and get a new adviser, or could be liquidated with investors receiving whatever the assets are worth. Of course, all this legal stuff doesn't help you with outright fraud. If a fund's adviser says it bought the S&P 500, but really some guy bought himself a yacht, Madoff-style, then you have a problem. But a huge well-known ETF has auditors, tons of different employees, lots of brokerage and exchange traffic, etc. so to me at least it's tough to imagine a risk here. With a small fund company with just a few people - and there are lots of these!
That's up to you. If you instruct your broker to sell shares purchased in specific lots, they can do that -- but doing so requires that you and/or they track specific fractional lots forever afterwards so you know what is still there to be sold. FIFO simplifies the bookkeeping. And I am not convinced selecting specific lots makes much difference; the government gets its share of your profits sooner or later.
I use MoneyStrands.com to manage my spending. It's a lot like Mint, but provides support for more banks, and works with most Canadian financial institutions. I can't really compare them fairly though, since I didn't bother with Mint after learning that they don't care about Canadians. If your bank isn't supported by MoneyStrands, or you don't want to trust an online webiste with your account login, you can create accounts for manually uploaded files. It just means you have to log into your bank yourself, download the transactions as QFX, OFX, CSV or other supported formats, and then upload the files to the appropriate account in MoneyStrands. I love the expense tracking and reporting that MoneyStrands offers, but like Mint, their budgeting feature is seriously lacking. Fortunately I don't need to budget month-to-month, I just use it to see how much I spend on various categories, to help create annual budgets and decide how much I can invest or use for a vacation.
Question: at what point, if any, am i free to use this money? Never. It's not your money.
"I'm not convinced this is completely possible without additional data.  I'm categorizing my purchases now, and I keep running into things like ""was this hardware store purchase for home repair, hobby tools and supplies, cookware, ..."" Ditto for department stores, ditto for cash purchases which appear only as an ATM withdrawal. Sometimes I remember, sometimes I guess, sometimes I just give up. In the end, this budget tracking isn't critical for me so that's good enough. If you really want accuracy, though, I think you are stuck with keeping all your receipts, of taking notes, so you can resolve these gaps."
You could try looking for a UK implementation of http://www.yodlee.com/ : Google tells me that http://www.lovemoney.com/ ( http://www.yodlee.com/2010_1_20.html ) is one such service. I use ANZ money manager - an Australian implementation of Yodlee and find it very useful.  I wouldn't use Yodlee directly though (http://money-watch.co.uk/7197/uk-pfm-tool-review-yodlee-moneycenter) those T&Cs don't sound great.
Lived in same situation for 8 years. I walked into a BMO - told them what I needed to do and they set me right up - no U.S. accounts necessary. My account allowed me to pay bills in USD or CDN. Doesn't get any simpler than that.
The short answer is that there are no great personal finance programs out there any more. In the past, I found Microsoft Money to be slick and feature rich but unfortunately it has been discontinued a few years ago. Your choices now are Quicken and Mint along with the several open-source programs that have been listed by others. In the past, I found the open source programs to be both clunky and not feature-complete for my every day use. It's possible they have improved significantly since I had last looked at them. The biggest limitation I saw with them is weakness of integration with financial service providers (banks, credit card companies, brokerage accounts, etc.) Let's start with Mint. Mint is a web-based tool (owned by the same company as Quicken) whose main feature is its ability to connect to nearly every financial institution you're likely to use. Mint aggregates that data for you and presents it on the homepage. This makes it very easy to see your net worth and changes to it over time, spending trends, track your progress on budgets and long-term goals, etc. Mint allows you to do all of this with little or no data entry. It has support for your investments but does not allow for deep analysis of them. Quicken is a desktop program. It is extremely feature rich in terms of supporting different types of accounts, transactions, reports, reconciliation, etc. One could use Quicken to do everything that I just described about Mint, but the power of Quicken is in its more manual features. For example, while Mint is centred on showing you your status, Quicken allows you to enter transactions in real-time (as you're writing a check, initiating a transfer, etc) and later reconciles them with data from your financial institutions. Link Mint, Quicken has good integration with financial companies so you can generally get away with as little or as much data entry as you want. For example, you can manually enter large checks and transfers (and later match to automatically-downloaded data) but allow small entries like credit card purchases to download automatically. Bottom line, if you're just looking to keep track of where you are at, try Mint. It's very simple and free.
Might I interest you in /r/kiva (Kiva.org) as well? Particularly if you have excess cash lying around that you are wondering how to put to use productively while waiting for the markets to cycle, and/or are interested in /r/churning. Let me know if you have any questions about it.