vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Personal finance is a fairly broad area.  Which part might you be starting with? From the very basics, make sure you understand your current cashflow: are you bank balances going up or down?  Next, make a budget.  There's plenty of information to get started here, and it doesn't require a fancy piece of software.  This will make sure you have a deeper understanding of where your money is going, and what is it being saved for.  Is it just piling up, or is it allocated for specific purchases (i.e. that new car, house, college tuition, retirement, or even a vacation or a rainy day)? As part of the budgeting/cashflow exercise, make sure you have any outstanding debts covered.  Are your credit card balances under control?  Do you have other outstanding loans (education, auto, mortgage, other)?  Normally, you'd address these in order from highest to lowest interest rate. Your budget should address any immediate mandatory expenses (rent, utilities, food) and long term existing debts.  Then comes discretionary spending and savings (especially until you have a decent emergency fund).  How much can you afford to spend on discretionary purchases?  How much do you want to be able to spend?  If the want is greater than the can, what steps can you take to rememdy that? With savings you can have a whole new set of planning to consider.  How much do you leave in the bank?  Do you keep some amount in a CD ladder?  How much goes into retirement savings accounts (401k, Roth vs. Traditional IRA), college savings accounts, or a plain brokerage account?  How do you balance your overall portfolio (there is a wealth of information on portfolio management)?  What level of risk are you comfortable with?  What level of risk should you consider, given your age and goals?  How involved do you want to be with your portfolio, or do you want someone else to manage it? Silver Dragon's answer contains some good starting points for portfolio management and investing.  Definitely spend some time learning the basics of investing and portfolio management even if you decide to solicit professional expertise; understanding what they're doing can help to determine earlier whether your interests are being treated as a priority.
"Now, my own answer:  If you join and receive equity, do the 1/3 split as a max. Truthfully, if it were my company, I would try to negotiate with you to only give you 15%--20% because as an advisor you're not going to be involved in executing the idea to turn it into a business.  If you contribute capital, do it as a loan. End of story.  You don't own more because you financed growth... you shouldn't. The growth will have come because of the collective performance of the whole team. You should get paid back at a ""fair"" rate for your investment... if the company can handle it, I would argue something like 10% interest is reflective of the risk you're taking with your money.  If the finances are so tight that the interest repayment isn't an option, do the math behind what you should be paid for the loan in interest, and convert that to shares or equity somehow, and get paid back for the invested capital.  If the company can't repay your loan, the business model may not be sound enough, or developed enough, to be investing in to begin with."
I thought this was really thoughtful.  Thanks for sharing.  I work in SV and am pretty disturbed by the culture that is now starting to see the light of day.  I'm glad the light is finally being shone on it.  In my opinion, it is every bit as bad as it seems.
Secondly, should we pay off his student loans before investing? The subsidized loans won't be gaining any interest until he graduates so I was wondering if we should just pay off the unsubsidized loans and keep the subsidized ones for the next two years? From a purely financial standpoint, if the interest you gain on your savings is higher than the interest of the debt, then no. Otherwise, yes. If we were to keep 5,000 in savings and pay of the 3,000 of unsubsidized loans as I described above, that would leave us with about 15,000 dollars that is just lying around in my savings account. How should I invest this? Would you recommend high risk or low risk investments? I'm not from the US so take my answer with caution, but to me $15,000 seems a minimum safety net. Then again, it depends very much on any external help you can get in case of an emergency.
The decline in what kind of house you get for $600k is why a lot of people making $100k don't feel rich. I'm amazed at how many houses in my area go for that much, especially when you consider that only 5% of families have the income to consider that affordable.
&gt;I always thought of it as a starting point before you gain skills to live on your own.  You thought wrong. That's what conservatives have tried to push.  As initially discussed by FDR:  &gt;In his 1933 address following the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, President Franklin D. Roosevelt noted that “no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By ‘business’ I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level — I mean the wages of decent living,” he stated.
"You need to track all of your expenses first, inventarize all of your assets and liabilities, and set financial goals. For example, you need to know your average monthly expenses and exactly what percentages interest each loan charges, and you need to know what to save for (your children, retirement, large purchases, etc). Then you create an emergency fund: keep between 4 to 6 months worth of your monthly expenses in a savings account that you can readily access. Base the size of your emergency fund on your expenses rather than your salary. This also means its size changes over time, for example, it must increase once you have children. You then pay off your loans, starting with the loan charging the highest interest. You do this because e.g. paying off $X of a 7% loan is equivalent to investing $X and getting a guaranteed 7% return. The stock market does generally does not provide guarantees. Starting with the highest interest first is mathematically the most rewarding strategy in the long run. It is not a priori clear whether you should pay off all loans as fast as possible, particularly those with low interest rates, and the mortgage. You need to read up on the subject in order to make an informed decision, this would be too personal advice for us to give. After you've created that emergency fund, and paid of all high interest loans, you can consider investing in vessels that achieve your set financial goals. For example, since you are thinking of having children within five years, you might wish to save for college education. That implies immediately that you should pick an investment vessels that is available after 20 year or so and does not carry too much risk (e.g. perhaps bonds or deposits). These are a few basic advices, and I would recommend to look further on the internet and perhaps read a book on the topic of ""personal finance""."
I have children.  I’m not saving a dime for their college tuition.  With the exception of some technical degrees, I think college is not a great source of education. When I reflect on where I obtained the most knowledge I come up with two major sources: work and my own self education.  I have a Master’s degree but working has, by far, taught me more than any school system.  That includes bagging groceries, baling hay, painting, factory work, engineering, and programming.  Doing something, working with others, making mistakes, and then learning from those mistakes educates more than listening to someone preach in a classroom.  My own interest in history and economics has also expanded my knowledge more than any classroom. If my children learn anything from me I hope it is this: think.  Watch, listen, read, and then think.  Think for yourself.  Don’t let others think for you.  I believe there would be a lot less heavily indebted college graduates if they would have thought for themselves instead of having others think for them. Soapbox = off.
&gt; Taskrabbit is available in London. There were a couple of other startups in the UK before taskrabbit launched but their websites seem to be dead now.   I know it is available, but that is not the same as adapting for a new market. London is not SF. I suspect the employee ruling on uber Wil come down on task rabbit/udesk too.
It sounds like you are in great shape, congratulations! Things I would think about in your position: Consider putting 20% down instead of 30% and find a great house that has a key missing modernization, like a kitchen. Then replace the kitchen, which if done right can instantly add that 10% (or more) right back in equity... or stick to your plan... You have earned the luxury of taking your time and doing what's right for you. Think real carefully about location. Here are some ideas based on my experience.
I don't know if Uber will ever have a profitable business but their growth is pretty substantial too.. $500M increase in net revenue from Q4 2016 to Q1 2017.  I combined a few sources of public data and threw them on a chart;   https://i.imgur.com/MnVrStN.png  If they're still growing at 20+% per quarter, that's incredible.  Startups like to talk in terms of revenue run rate, given their quarterly data, they went from a $4b/year company to a $14b/year company in 12 months!
"I have a mildly exceptional relationship with Social Security. When I was eight years old my father died, leaving nothing but a mountain of debt and an apartment full of trinkets. My mother received Social Security Survivor benefits checks in lieu of his child support payments, which kept me fed and clothed until I graduated high school. She also worked, sometimes multiple jobs, and did what she could to provide health and stability. I consider myself privileged even though we were often financially ... Disadvantaged.   When I graduated high school and the checks from Social Security ended, I went on to college, financed a good portion of it, but also received a lot of scholarships and aid along the way.   As I near 30, I still wear enough student debt equivalent of a new, mid-class sedan, but I am financially solvent, work a good job, and can afford my own rent, child support, actual child costs, and regular living expenses. While I can still ferret away some of my income into my 401(k), I still need to save for my child's education. I still need to save up for a home. I still have to save up for – and often spend for -  a more immediate future.  I do not anticipate Social Security being available to  in any meaningful sense of the word, when I retire. But I ""already got mine"" in a sense, and I consider my SSI deductions to be contributions back into the system that kept me fed, kept me healthy, an kept me teachable.   I preferred the notion that Social Security didn't become available until someone had exceeded their life expectancy. I preferred the notion that Social Security should never need to be used by anyone. I would much rather the safetynet never be depended upon. But the contributions were much appreciated all the same, and I can now appreciate how those contributions need to be a bit more randomized, more spread across the populace.   I am pretty sure this is enough to have people shrieking a me that I'm done kind of socialist. All I know is that I miss that 4% from my paychecks (and I'll miss the full 6% when the ""holiday"" ends) but that it might help someone thrive, like it did me.   My only regret is that the safety net is squandered on old people."
Or perhaps you like feeling superior to people and you forget that you should treat people with some basic respect by default. There's no reason to be openly rude to begin with. Yes my statement was overly general, and I later admitted I didn't know about what I was talking about and should have qualified better. But generally I have had good interactions with most people on reddit even when disagreeing with them. I love conversation and learning things and actually have very little problem with being called wrong. It just rubbed me the wrong way how your comment needed to personally belittle me through direct insults to get a point across when I was stating a general opinion. Your words didn't help to illustrate your point or advance the discussion, only to be insulting a rude.   Yes, this is the Internet and I should post on reddit like I have all the other message in the past and not try to fight the rudeness, hostility, and general rude and abrasive behavior of posters by default, but I've seen so much better here day after day. I try to treat people here with the utmost respect even when disagreeing with them. I just thought I would point out how off putting your comment is, and how unnecessary that attitude would have been because I would have admitted the same thing without your insults.   Also, you may not be a douchebag, but your last response uses the same belittling attitude of your other posts in this thread, and all of your claims about me could be made about yourself (with some minor tweaking).  I would rather just have civil conversations on reddit where I consider everybody friends by default, instead of the rest of the Internet where I consider everybody as savages with alanonymity who attack others for pleasure and lulz.
I believe you're looking for some sort of formula that will determine how changes in savings, investing, and spending will affect economic growth.  If such a formula existed (and worked) then central planning would work since a couple of people could pull some levers to encourage more savings, or more investing, or more spending - depending on what was needed at that particular time.  Unfortunately, no magic formula exists and so no person has enough knowledge to determine what the proper amount of savings, investing, or spending should be at a given time. I found this resource particular helpful in describing the interactions between savings, consumption, and investing.
is it better to give a tax return together with my wife (who was only a girlfriend in 2013 living with me in one household) or to give it separately? It's not possible to do a joint tax filing for the time before your marriage. What you should consider is to apply for a different tax class from now on, if one of you earns significantly more than the other. when separately, do I have to fill her information in my tax return or can I just pretend there is nobody else in my apartment? As far as taxes are concerned, unmarried roommates are treated completely separately with one exception: only one of you can deduct service charges included in your rent. You have to get a Nebenkostenabrechnung from your landlord, and service charges, i.e. janitor, gardener, etc. should be marked separately. But this may not be worth bothering with, usually it results in a tax return of maybe 15 EUR. is there any guide in English that could be of help with filling in the tax return form? I couldn't find anything that looked really useful in a short search."
"The pension is indeed the clear winner and you haven't missed anything. It's easiest to just compare everything in current numbers as you've done and ignore investment opportunities. Given you expect to pay off your student loan in full, you should consider the repayment as a benefit for you too, so the balance is between £580 after tax and £1138 in your pension. As you say under the current tax regime you'd probably end up with £968 in your pocket from the pension. Some harder to value considerations: You might consider there's political risk associated with the pension, as laws may change over the years - but the government has so far not shown any inclination to penalise people who have already saved under one set of assumptions, so hopefully it's reasonably safe (I'm certainly taking that view with my own money!) Paying more towards your student loan or your mortgage is equivalent to investing at that interest rate (guaranteed). If you do the typical thing of investing your pension in the stock market, the investment returns are likely higher but more risky. In today's interest rate environment, you'd struggle to get a ""safe"" return that's anywhere near the mortgage rate. So if you're very risk averse, that would tilt the balance against the pension, but I doubt it would be enough to change the decision. Your pension might eventually hit the lifetime allowance of £1mn, after contributions and investment growth. If that's a possibility, you should think carefully about the plan for your contributions. If you do go over, the penalties are calibrated to cancel out the difference between higher-rate and basic-rate tax - i.e. cancelling out the tax benefits you outlined, but not the national insurance benefits. But if you do go over, the amount of money you'd have mean that you might also find yourself paying higher-rate tax on some of your pension income, at which point you could lose out. The lifetime allowance is really complicated, there's a Q+A about it here if you want to understand more."
Take this from someone who didn't study maths after A-levels (got B - not genius level either) and sat CFA level 1 yesterday... If you don't pick maths or minor in maths after Sixth-form/High-school, you will regret down the line. It really is a massive differentiator in any finance field you decide to progress onto later in life.  If I could go back, I would put my name down for Stat, further maths and anything math-related I could learn even though I might not be able to secure gold-plated grades. The fundamentals of it are far more important than anything you learn in class (if you want to excel in finance, analytics, and even startups), and with strong social skills, you will be a rockstar.
In addition to the issues discussed in BrenBarn's answer, I think you need to consider your medium term saving needs and existing savings. In particular, do you have a sufficient rainy day fund, a fund you will spend if things go wrong? For example, if you are dependent on a vehicle that is not covered by a guarantee or service plan, you should have enough money saved for a couple of major repairs. Depending on how secure your job is, whether it carries sick leave and long term disability, and how easy or difficult it would be to find another job in the event e.g. of your employer going bankrupt due to a downturn in your industry, you should have months to years of minimal living expenses in your rainy day fund. If you don't have those things covered, you should urgently save as much as you can until they are covered. If you do, then the next savings priority is to put money by for retirement. Of course, if all goes well the rainy day fund will ultimately get folded into retirement, but it needs to exist now, in a form you can access quickly.
I spent a year at the Democratic National Convention as an intern. It sucked in more ways than one.  I come from nothing, putting myself through school, management at my coffeeshop and I am still in school. Everyone else was there only because they knew someone in politics and no matter that I should up everyday with a positive attitude, a willingness to work, and going above and beyond. I was interviewed for the position of human resources coordinator and instead it went to the best friend's daughter of the HR director. So yeah. I feel ya. Oh, one last thing. It was all unpaid.   Just stick with it man, you wont always be in a job you like.
This kind of thing is right up my ally. I am based in Australia so suggestions will be Australian based. I was looking at starting up a private consultancy. Basically use neto as your ERM and online website. link in to xero for accounts. Netos predictive inventory module tells you when to restock on raw materials.
"&gt;When you look at principles, whether you're a 'true' socialist, a watered-down SocialistLite or somwhere in between, the ideas are still anti-human.  I suggest you learn about a subject from the prolific authors of that subject, not people who claim to know it and bash it. Your argumentation is offensive, but I'll give you a reply anyway.  I know perfectly well what laissez-faire is, because I am in a way you are not also inclined to read texts of people who I do not agree with. I deliberately do not agree with laissez-faire, even though I believe in personal freedom as I am some variant of anarcho-socialist, but I don't believe in preserving the existing class relations and I don't believe laissez-faire to be fair for this exact reason; introducing it in the world today would only cement existing class differences, class differences brought on by the exploitation of the working class, which is the only way you can get really rich.  I suggest you actually read up on libertarian socialism and stop throwing around words like ""anti-human"", because you're quite honestly offending me, because obviously you're calling me ""anti-human"" as well, so even though I know you think you're playing some kind of enlightenment game by lecturing me on laissez-faire, a system that anyone who passed high school here in Sweden knows about, please stop and have some respect. I don't need to be lectured on the alternatives, I know them and I've chosen my beliefs."
I'm okay if the union sticks up for those only in the Union. If I get a pay raise because of my union affiliation, you don't deserve the same benefits. For what it's worth, in many other countries they've always sided with the Union.   To me this is a a direct attack on the middle class. If it hasn't already eroded enough it's only going to get worse.
Well Company is a small assets company for example it has 450,000,000 shares outstanding and is currently traded at .002. Almost never has a bid price.  Compare it to PI a relative company with 350 million marker cap brokers will buy your shares.  This is why blue chip stock is so much better than small company because it is much more safer. You can in theory make millions with start up / small companies.  You would you rather make stable medium risk investment than extremely high risk with high reward investment  I only invest in medium risk mutual funds and with recent rallies I made 182,973 already in half year period.
&gt; CNC units without touch screens and fancy alignment cameras cost 2k. If they don't sell enough units in time, maybe they'll have to close shop?  They do, but they usually have a very small operating envelope and limited ability to cut through thicker materials.  If you want something which can cut a full sheet of plywood, you need to spend $10K+, and it requires proper installation in a permanent location.   I think the beauty of this product is that it fits between those two extremes. It doesn't provide fully automated cutting, but it does allow you to cut large sheets of plywood that only a machine costing 10x can do.  I think the problem is that the product is very niche.  Most wood workshops who are successful and making lots of furniture will invest in a large format CNC router, and they'll probably keep it running as many hours as possible to get back the investment.  Maybe they'd buy one as a secondary CNC cutter? Instead of setting up the large machine for a small job, they can grab the handheld CNC, and do the cut quickly. It's like a backup tool.  So where does it sit on the novelty vs practicality spectrum?  I think this is very much aimed at the cashed up hobbyist and smaller boutique workshop, maker spaces, schools, etc.  I can afford it, but I'd find it hard to justify because I don't think I'd get enough use out of it.
It would work if there was a facility in place that made penny payments possible, without getting eaten up in fees.  If a news website cost £10/month, I could only justify subscribing to a very small number of sites. Let me read a small introduction, and charge £0.03 for the rest of it and I'd impulse buy it every day of the week.  If one person can churn out content that gets 100,000 £0.03 views, that'd easily be a decent amount of money for a month's work.