vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
There is also babysitting, dog walking and house sitting.  Depending on their age of course. You should also investigate what is required to get them the ability to setup their own Roth IRA.  I know one of the requirements is you can't put more into the Roth then was earned in income in the year.  They might also have to file an income tax return (not sure about that one).  Just think of how far ahead of the game they will be if they can get a couple of grand or more in a Roth account while in their early teens.
No they do not. From form 1040 instructions, a single, non-blind dependent under age 65 must file if the following are true: You must file a return if any of the following apply.  There is no return required for receipt of a gift.
"As mentioned before - you're over-thinking the hard-pull issue. But do try to make the preapproval as close to the actual bidding as possible - because it costs money. At least from my experience, you'll get charged the application fee for preapproval, while ""pre-qualification"" is usually free. If you're seriously shopping, I find it hard to believe that you can't find a house within 3 months. If you're already in the process and your offer has been accepted and you opened the escrow - I believe the preapproval will be extended if it expires before closing. I've just had a similar case from the other side, as a buyer, and the seller had a short-sale approval that expired before closing. It was extended to make the deal happen, and that's when the bank is actually loosing money. So don't worry about that. If you haven't even started the process and the preapproval expired, you might have to start it all over again from scratch, including all the fees. The credit score is a minor issue (unless you do it every 2-3 months)."
Besides the reason in @rhaskett's answer, it is important to consider that paying off a 30-year mortgage as if it was a 15-year is much more inconvenient than just paying the regular payments of a 15-year mortgage.  When you pay extra on your mortgage, some lenders do not know what to do with the extra payment, and need to be told explicitly that the extra needs to be applied toward the principal.  You might need to do this every month with every payment.  In addition, some lenders won't allow you to set up an automatic payment for more than the mortgage payment, so you might need to explicitly submit your payment with instructions for the lender each month, and then follow up each month to make sure that your payment was credited properly.  Some lenders are better about this type of thing than others, and you won't really know how much of a hassle it will be with your lender until you start making payments. If you intend to pay it off in 15 years, then just get the 15-year mortgage.
"I doubt you will get an answer equal to ""You can't save when you have debt"". Because most mortgages are for decades, very few people would be able to save for retirement if they had to wait to be mortgage free. The difficulty in saving occurs when the interest rate is very high (18% or more) and the interest is not deductible. Such as with credit cards. The minimum payment for your mortgage is 30% of your income. If that doesn't include taxes and homeowners insurance in the 30%, then for the United States that would be considered too large. While the general plan to pay down the mortgage is a good idea, make sure that you are able to handle the minimum payments before starting to increase the payments. Try the minimum for a year or two before getting aggressive The calculation is based on the interest rate of the mortgage, the interest rate of the savings account, and the potential tax deduction of the mortgage and the tax rate on the earned interest. Putting extra money into a mortgage, but missing out on matching retirement money would also have to be figured into the calculation. Make sure you do save for retirement , kids education, and emergencies. Unless your country has a complex system where the money can flow in and out of the mortgage, then once you put extra money into the mortgage you can't get it back when the car dies.  The nice thing about putting extra money into a mortgage is that you can do it either in an organized way, or only when you feel comfortable. So it is not urgent for you to commit to a plan immediately. One thing to avoid is a plan that charges you a fee to add extra money, or charges a fee to switch to a bi-weekly mortgage. While your ideas is good, these plans should never cost any money to start, and may be a scam if a 3rd party gets between you and the lender."
"Your goals are excellent. I really admire your thoughts and plans, and I hold you in high esteem. Good credit is indeed an important thing to have, and starting young is THE smart idea with respect to this. I see that you have as a goal the purchase of a home. Indeed, another fine ambition. (Wow, you are a different breed from what I normally encounter on the internet; that's for sure !) Since this won't happen overnight, I would encourage you to think about another option. At this point in your life you have what few people have: options, and you have lots of them. The option I would like to suggest you consider is the debt free life. This does NOT mean life without a credit card, nor does it mean living with ones parents all their days. In its simplest form, it means that you don't owe anybody anything today. An adapted form of that; with the reality of leases and so on, is that you have more immediate cash in the bank than you have contractual responsibilities to pay others. e.g., if the rent on a place is X, and the lease is 12 months, then you don't sign until you have 12X in the bank. That's the idea. If there is anything good that these past 10 years of recession and financial disasters have provided us as a nation, it is a clear picture presented to our young people that a house is not a guaranteed way to riches. Indeed, I just learned this week of another couple, forced out by foreclosure again. Yes, in the 1970s and 1980s the formula which anyone could follow was to take a mortgage on a single family house; just about any house in any community; and ten years later double your money, while (during those ten years) paying about the same (and in a few years, actually less) amount of money as you would for an apartment with about half the space. Those days were then, not now, and I seriously doubt that I will ever see them again in my lifetime. You might, at your age, one day. In the mean time, I would like to suggest that you think about that word options again; something that you have that I don't.
Take the long term view.  Build up the cash.  Once you have enough cash in the bank, you don't need a credit score.  With 6 months living expenses in the bank after paying 20% down on a small house, he should have no issues getting a reasonably priced mortgage.   However, if he waited just a bit longer he might buy the same house outright with cash. When I ran the computations for myself many years ago, it would have taken me half as long to save the money and pay cash for my home as it did for me to take a mortgage and pay it off.
"Assuming the numbers you gave are forecasted 2013 annual income, you should really use an average and give the lender 1 number, as long as you can provide documentation to back it up. Lenders aren't as sophisticated as considering your monthly income fluctuations into their underwriting algorithm.  If you're not tied down to your existing lender, I highly recommend you to shop around. There isn't an ""universal lending requirement"". You'll be surprised at how flexible they are. Not as a recommendation to get around the rules, but just finding a lender that'll work with your situation. Try personal finance forums such as FatWallet or Slickdeal to find low-cost lenders: http://goo.gl/vIojT"
In the current climate, most good deals are for people looking for a 75% LTV or less. There are mortgages available with ok APRs for up to 90% LTV though. At the moment you would struggle to find a mortgage with greater than a 90% LTV. You can use an online comparison site like Money Supermarket to find a deal. Plugging in the numbers you gave in your question (house price 100K, income 21K) with a few other assumptions (10K deposit for 90% LTV, 300/month other outgoings) gives a number of results at around 6% APR, which isn't great, but the payments would be around £600/month which you may be able to afford.
"The first issue you'll find is that if you aren't going to immediately live in the house as a primary residence, this property counts as a ""second home"" or ""investment property"". You'll generally pay a higher interest rate, have a larger down payment, and qualify for less government-backed programs/incentives/subsidies than you would otherwise. The lending criteria on such properties is always more strict - and generally more costly - than an equivalent primary residence. Lenders won't really care that in 10 years you or your parents plan to move in - you can't be held to that, so they'll generally ignore that plan entirely. On a related note, you should be aware that insurance for the property will also generally cost more, but you'd need to get quotes to determine if that is at all significant in your situation. You'll need to talk with a few potential lenders, but from a first read it sounds like it would be best ""storied"" like so: you and your parents want to buy a 2nd home or vacation home, which you'll share the use of (vacations, etc, and being converted to a primary residence later). It'll need to be clear what plan to use the property for - if you intend to rent out the home in the interim years then instead make that clear and state it will be an investment home; if it is what you are planning it might make it easier, as expected rent for the property will be considered. Saying you want a mortgage for a home no one will live in for a decade probably isn't a good idea, as a general plan anyway. Either way, this can be called a ""joint mortgage"". When I was a loan officer we didn't use that term, but it's basically just a mortgage application with multiple people on it, all of whom are combined together to qualify for the loan. Everyone's income, debts, assets, and credit get included, which can work or one person's situation can cause the whole thing to collapse. From your description I think this could work for you, and one option is to set it up where only one of the parents is on the application if the other parent has problematic credit situation.
Why not get her a credit card of her own, while she is still in the US? My experience with Canadian banks is that they were delighted to issue credit cards to I-turned-18-yesterday with no income. We did not cosign these applications. You can then give her a budget and pay up to that amount of her credit card bill each month (you should be able to do this online.) Should she overspend, she may have to scrimp for a while until your payments bring the balance back to zero. Don't delay on this though: I doubt any UK bank will issue her a card with no credit history and having only just moved to the country. And get a chip and pin if you can, they work everywhere in Europe.
A common rule of thumb is the 28/36 ratio. It's described here. In your case, with a gross (?) salary of £50,000, that means that you should spend no more than 28% of it, or £1,167 per month on housing. You may be able to swing a bit more because you have no debts and a modest amount in your savings. The 36% part comes in as the amount you can spend servicing all your debt, including mortgage. In your case, based on a gross (?) salary of £50,000, that'd be £1,500 per month. Again, that is to cover your housing costs and any additional debt you are servicing. So, you need to figure out how much you could bring in through rent to make up the rest. As at least one other person has commented, the rule of thumb is that your mortgage should be no more than 2.5 - 3 times your income. I personally think you are not a good candidate for a mortgage of the size you are discussing. That said, I no longer live in England. If you could feel fairly secure getting someone to pay you enough in rent to bring down your total mortgage and loan repayment amounts to £1,500 or so a month, you may want to consider it. Remember, though, that it may not always be easy to find renters.
You don't say how long your mortgage has to go until it's paid off, but presumably it's only five or ten years. Hopefully that means your payments now represent a smaller fraction of your income than they did ten years ago. That means your risk level may have changed. How bad would it be for you if your mortgage payments went up by 50%? Would it be disastrous, or could you survive by some means. If higher mortgage payments wouldn't break you, now may be the time to look at a variable rate mortgage. Variable rates are typically than fixed rates on average, because you are assuming some of the risk. Rates are probably going up over the next five years, but they are probably going to be less than 4.75% on average - otherwise the banks wouldn't be offering 4.75% 5 year fixed rates. The downside is that rates MIGHT go up to much more than 4.75%. So you need to be in a position where you can take the worst the markets might throw at you - but if you can, then on average you will come out ahead.
Here's the issue with LTC and, really, underwritten insurance in general; no one has a crystal ball.   Based on today's available rates where's the sweet spot to buy LTC? Probably right around the mid-60s, because you probably won't pay much in before you start gutting the carrier (assuming you can make it through underwriting in your mid-60s). The issue is, what happens when some life event changes your underwriting status?  Would you rather buy prematurely or be excluded entirely?  Those are generally your two options when it comes to individual LTC.  The underwriting eligibility window on LTC is very  narrow.  There's a very very small space between the best possible underwriting and being flatly declined.   Look for an LTC agent in your area.  Likely someone in your circle of friends and family will know a reputable/knowledgeable insurance agent who can run up some quotes at various underwriting classes.  Try to avoid looking at quotes for your age + 10 years to see what the quote will look like 10 years from now.  10 years from now the rate tables will be significantly different. Whether or not you should buy LTC now rather than waiting will depend on a whole host of other criteria.  Personally, if I was 50 and my biggest health concern was improving my run time and LTC is on my mind, I'd just pick up a policy now while I will likely be in a preferred underwriting class rather than waiting and hoping my health doesn't betray me. Obviously I'm a stranger on the internet and none of this is actual advice.  You should find an agent local to you and talk about your options and situation.
There are two different ages, one where you can start withdrawing from the account, and a higher age where you must start withdrawing (at a minimum rate).  The withdrawals are treated like regular income, so they get taxed according to the same rates, and with the same deductions, as a salary.
http://www.myretirementblog.com/average-retirement-savings-by-age.html For ages 25-34: Obviously that's a huge range, and a 26 year old would at the very low end, but I would say anywhere near $25,000 is a ton.
Here's the rub: Once you decide to withdraw money from your RRSP, the entire amount withdrawn is considered regular income in the year in which you make the withdrawal. Thus, your withdrawals are subject to income tax, and yes, at your marginal rate. This is always the case, whether before or after retirement. You mentioned two special programs: The Home Buyers' Plan (HBP), and the Lifelong Learning Plan (LLP). Neither the HBP nor the LLP permit tax-free withdrawals. Rather, each of these programs are special kinds of loans that you can borrow from your own RRSP. HBP and LLP loan money isn't taxed when you get it because you are required to pay it back, and you pay it back into your own RRSP: You always pay income tax at your marginal rate on your RRSP withdrawals.** * Above, I said a precise meaning for ""retirement"" with respect to RRSPs is largely irrelevant. Yet, there are ages that matter: By the end of the year in which you turn 71, you are required to convert your RRSP to a RRIF. It's similar, but you can no longer contribute, and you must withdraw a minimum amount each year. Other circumstances related to age may qualify for minor tax relief intended for retirees, such as the Age Amount or the Pension Income Credit. Generally, such measures don't significantly change the fact that you pay income tax on RRSP withdrawals at your marginal rate – these measures raise the minimum you can take out without attracting tax, but most do nothing at the margin.** ** Exception: One might split eligible pension income with a spouse or common-law partner, which may reduce tax at the margin."
"So, let's take a mortgage loan that allows prepayment without penalty. Say I have a 30 year mortgage and I have paid it for 15 years. By the 16th year almost all the interest on the 30 year loan has been paid to the bank This is incorrect thinking.  On a 30 year loan, at year 15 about 2/3's of the total interest to be paid has been paid, and the principal is about 1/3 lower than the original loan amount.  You may want to play with some amortization calculators that are freely available to see this in action.   If you were to pay off the balance, at that point, you would avoid paying the remaining 1/3 of interest.   Consider a 100K 30 year mortgage at 4.5% In month two the payment breaks down with $132 going to principal, and $374 going to interest.  If, in month one, you had an extra $132 and directed it to principal, you would save $374 in interest.  That is a great ROI and why it is wonderful to get out of debt as soon as possible.   The trouble with this is of course, is that most people can barely afford the mortgage payment when it is new so lets look at the same situation in year 15. Here, $271 would go to principal, and $235 to interest.  So you would have to come up with more money to save less interest.  It is still a great ROI, but less dramatic.   If you understand the ""magic"" of compounding interest, then you can understand loans.  It is just compounding interest in reverse.  It works against you."
Here's another way to think about.  Let's assume it is 2011 and we have a married couple who are 25 and make a combined salary of $50,000/yr net.  A suitable first house in their area is $300,000, six times their annual net salary.  Assuming they could scrimp so that 1/2 of take-home went toward saving for their home, they could save enough to buy the house using cash in 12 years, at the age of 37.  Onerous, but they could do it. But now let's allow salaries to increase by 3% a year and homes at 10%/yr, as in your question, and let's run things out for 20 years. Now a 25 year old couple at the same sort of jobs would be making $87,675/yr.  But the houses in that town would be worth not $300k but $1,834,772.  Instead of six times their salary, a house is now nearly 21 times their salary.  This means that if they saved 1/2 of take-home to save up for a house, they could afford to buy the house using cash when they were 67 years old. It gets worse quickly.  If you run it out for just ten more years, to 30 years, a couple would be able to buy the house -- at $4.8 million or 40x a year's salary -- in cash when they were 105 years old.  (Let's hope they ate brown rice). Mortgages can't save them, since even if they could put down ten years' worth of savings on the 2041 house (that'd be 14% down), they'd still carry a $4.1 million mortgage with a $118k annual net salary.
For this rollover, there are no restrictions of age/income/etc.  You need to know - the transfer must be direct, i.e. if you get a physical check, it should be payable not to you, but to the new custodian (broker) for your benefit. Direct is preferable and faster. The assets may not be transferable 'in kind.' This phrase simply means that you may move the value, but if the assets are not shares that are held by the public, but special 401(k) class shares, they must be liquidated before moving, and moved as cash. This is a risk people with large accounts take should the market move dramatically during the time they are liquidated, and why, for them, I suggest doing it piecemeal.
They are looking at your work history to see that you have maintained a similar level of income for a period of time, and that you have a reasonable expectation to continue that for the foreseeable future. They are looking to make a commitment for 15-30 years. They see the short term contract, and have no confidence in making a guess to your ability to pay. Before the real estate bubble burst, you would have had a chance with a no documentation loan. These were setup for people who earned fluctuating incomes, mostly due to being commissioned based. They were easily abused, and lenders have gotten away from them becasue they were burned too often. Just like building your credit rating over time, and your down payment over time, you might have to wait to build a work history.
If you get there within less than 15 years that would also leave some air in case you change opinion with regard to kids and then leaves a reasonable amount of time to put together your pension. Consider your psychology about saving towards the house. Even if both of you know that you want it really hard, it may be good to enter a building savings contract (15 years should be reasonable for that way) which will enforce you to keep up the savings rate and also does not allow you to divert money for other purposes. However, I'd say that 6 months into the first job it may be a bit early to fix such savings rates. Maybe for the beginning a savings account that includes some hassle to get the money out again (set low limit and allow any outgoing money to go only to another account of yours) with an automatic savings deposit every month is a way how to safely determine the savings rate you can manage. Maybe you can use this to first put together your new emergency savings which should be first priority anyways. If you want to cut expenses in order to save, look at the recommendations for people who try to get out of debt: budget your expenses, cook yourself and enjoy this (maybe taking a cooking class together with your girlfriend is a lot of fun, leads to food that may even be more to your taste than restaurant stuff - and is much cheaper), keep book, pay in cash (not by card) and so on. If you're not a DIY person, try whether you could enjoy becoming one - no magic involved there. I guess the most important point is to find out how much you want the house and then how hard you are willing to save. This is something only you and your girlfriend can decide (together!). IMHO you really don't need to invest (unless you drop the house plan), you need to save towards your goals. You may decide to invest a small part of the money while saving in order to learn slowly how that works, but if the house goal is already kind of fixed in time, you don't want to find yourself in the situation that you have to get out of investments at a bad time in order to be able to buy the house.
Answering my own questions here after doing a bit more reading: If my account grew $100 last month, do I have to wait five years to withdraw that $100 for a first-time home purchase? No, as long as the account is at least five years old. Do I have to pay taxes on that $100? No.