vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"On a longer time scale, the plot thickens:  It almost looks random.  A large drop in real rates in the mid-70s, a massive spike in the early 80s, followed by a slow multi-decade decline. The chaos doesn't seem to be due to interest rates.  They steadily climbed and steadily fell:  All that's left is inflation:  First, real rates should be expected to pay a moderate rate, so nominal rates will usually be higher than inflation. However, interest rates are very stable over long time periods while inflation is not.  Economists call this type of phenomenon ""sticky pricing"", where the price, interest rates in this case, do not change much despite the realities surrounding them. But the story is a little more complicated. In the early 1970s, Nixon had an election to win and tried to lessen the impacts of recession by increasing gov't spending, not raising taxes, and financing through the central bank, causing inflation.  The strategy failed, but he was reelected anyways.   This set the precedent for the hyperinflation of the 1970s that ended abruptly by Reagan at the beginning of his first term in the early 1980s.  Again, interest rates remained sticky, so real rates spiked. Now, the world is not growing, almost stagnating.  Demand for equity is somewhat above average, but because corporate income is decelerating, and the developed world's population is aging, demand for investment income is skyrocketing.   As demand rises, so does the price, which for an investor is a form of inverse of the interest rate. Future demand is probably best answered by forecasters, and the monetarist over and undertones still dominating the Federal Reserve show that they have finally learned after 100 years that inflation is best kept ""low and stable"":  But what happens if growth in the US suddenly spikes, inflation rises, and the Federal Reserve must sell all of the long term assets it has bet so heavily on quickly while interest rates rise?  Inflation may not be intended, but it is not impossible."
Common sense was the foundation - the idea that you can't spend more than you take in, indefinitely, without there being negative long term effects.  We've been doing that since 1958.  With that as the base, then watching what is going on in the economy, not just in the present day, but historically.  Looking into how the government has manipulated the economic numbers for decades.  Consumer confidence counts for a lot - which is why some of the numbers have been manipulated.  Investor confidence counts for a lot too - which explains the others.  You can only hide things for so long, though.  Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and then borrowing even more from Paul to pay Peter so Bob thinks you're credit worthy only works until they all figure out you haven't actually got enough money to pay them back, and won't ever.  As for confidence, I'm making major life decisions based on it, so I'd say pretty confident.  I just hope to be reasonably well prepared by the time it all goes down.
You should know when to sell your shares before you buy them. This is most easily done by placing a stop loss conditional order at the same time you place your buy order. There are many ways to determine at what level to place your stop losses at. The easiest is to place a trailing stop loss at a percentage below the highest close price, so as the price reaches new highs the trailing stop will rise. If looking for short to medium term gains you might place your trailing stop at 10% below the highest close, whilst if you were looking for more longer term gains you should probably place a 20% trailing stop. Another way to place your stops for short to medium term gains is to keep moving your trailing stop up to just below the last trough in an existing uptrend.
"This is a great data find. I've been trying to explain to my friends for years that outsizes corporate profits have been caused by outsized corporate leverage but they never believe me (and never bother picking up a 10-K either).  I do, however have an issue with this statement:  &gt;If corporations really are people, it's time for them to start acting like people--and sharing their wealth.  I don't know that many people who actively ""share"" their wealth. My parents have always seemed much more concerned about saving for retirement and college than they did about ""sharing"" their wealth with others. To somehow imply that sharing wealth is the natural human thing to do is a bit presumptuous."
I'm an old-school Cyberpunk and Shadowrun fan, so I start thinking in those terms, but for now, I'd settle for eyes that can see better than 20/20 and ears that can hear better than normal if I want to buy them.  I have an eye disorder and what I have to go through to get 20/30 vision is fairly difficult for me, but I'm not bad enough that the doctors want to try any more-permanent solution, so I'm stuck with what I've got. If I could pay $20,000 and have a set of 20/15 eyeballs installed that never get old, I'd start saving up for them today.
I can say for certain that everyone in my group of friends had to wait a long time to buy homes, some including me still rent, due to the impossibility of saving for a downpayment with sky high rent and $1000+ dollar a month student loan payments. It basically took until they paid the loans off after 10 years or got management level positions at excellent salaries before they could start saving for a down payment.  Probably hundreds of thousands of people have this same experience.
I know it isn't exactly the question you asked, but please consider your future too. 529 is the correct answer, because if you can fund a Roth, you should be funding it for your own retirement. Your retirement has much a higher priority over anybody's college fund.  It is pretty great that you want to set aside cash for the niece's education, I think asking which vehicle is best for saving for education might be the wrong question. Students have many options for going to school and paying for it but retirement is pretty limited. http://www.clarkhoward.com/news/clark-howard/education/clarks-529-guide/nFZS/ is a good place to learn about 529s and makes good suggestions on where to get one.  Do it yourself, and don't pay a broker or agent to do it for you. If your retirement is already handled, feel free to vote me down and I will delete this.
If I get a prepaid debit card for the money I make do I have to report my earnings? How do I go about doing this? Yes you must report this. It doesn't matter if they put it in your bank account, or on a debit card, or cash under the table. You have to report the income. You can count on your employer reporting the income to the IRS.  What is the limit I can make when it comes to working while on social security? The Social Security Administration has all sort of info regarding working and receiving benefits. The exact answer depends on the type of benefit (retirement, disability, survivor) and your age (pre-full retirement age, the year you reach retirement age, post retirement age) I would look at their website: http://www.ssa.gov/retire2/whileworking.htm for examples: You can work while you receive Social Security retirement (or   survivors) benefits. When you do, it could mean a higher benefit for   you in the future. Each year we review the records for all working Social Security   recipients. If your earnings for the prior year are higher than one of   the years we used to compute your retirement benefit, we will   recalculate your benefit amount. We pay the increase retroactive to   January the year after you earned the money
You can't force a horse to eat carrots. You have to make him hungry...  It's good that you're ready to start saving. The hardest part about building wealth is that most people live in denial. They think a bigger hat is wealth. That said, you need to get your husband excited about the idea of saving. If you're capable of sparking a little passion in him for saving then you'll see your wealth grow almost over night.  So, how do you make someone excited about something as boring as saving? Great question. If you find a way, write a book. Honestly, I think it's different for everyone. For me it was like someone turned on a light. I was blind but then I saw. If he is a reader then I would suggest the following books in this order. If he makes it through those and has any argument at all against saving then write a book about him haha.  Now I want to be clear, the other two answers above mine were also spot on. If you can't get him passionate about it then you need to take the initiative and start doing it yourself. I can't stress enough though that you both need to be engaged in order to do it quickly and efficiently.  Good luck!
Why are you saving your emergency fund in a Roth-IRA? That type of fund should be for retirement. I know you can pull out your principal but that would mean in a crisis you will be destroying your retirement fund.  Remember there is an annual limit, it could take years to replenish it if you have to pay for a big repair, or period of unemployment. The emergency fund should be kept in a very safe account. I would just keep in a high yeild account at a Credit Union
The rest, to savings, according to the general order of emergency fund, 6-12 months expenses, to cover a job loss, another fund for random expenses, such as new transmission (I've never needed one, but I hear they are expensive), and then the bucket towards house down payment. Keep in mind, I have no idea where you live or what a reasonable house would cost. Regardless, a 20-25% downpayment on even a $250K house is $60K. That will take some time to save up. If the housing in your area is more, bump it accordingly. If the savings starts to grow beyond any short term needs, it gets invested towards the long term, and is treated as ""retirement"" money. There is no such thing as Saving too much. When I turned 50 and was let go from a 30 year job, I wasn't unhappy that I saved too much and could call it quits that day. Had I been saving just right, I'd have been 10 years shy of my target."
I don't mean to discourage you from investing, just make sure you have your bases covered so that you don't have to cash out at a bad time. Best of luck! Edit Response to additional questions below. 1) Emergency fund. I would recommend not investing in anything other than cash equivalents (money market, short-term CDs, etc.) until you've built up an emergency fund. It makes sense to want to make the ""best"" use of your money, but you also have to account for risk. My concern is that if you were to experience one or more adverse life events, that you could lose a lot of money, or need to pay a lot in interest on credit card debt, and it would be prudent to self-insure against some of those risks. I would also recommend against using an investment account as an emergency fund account. Taking money out of investment accounts is inefficient because the commissions/taxes/fees can easily eat up a significant portion of your returns. Ideally, you would want to put money in and not touch it for a long time in order to take advantage of compounding returns. There are also high penalties for early disbursements from retirement funds. Just like you need enough money in your checking account to buy food and pay the rent every month, you need enough money in an emergency fund to pay for things that are a real possibility, even if they are less common. Using a credit card or an investment account is a relatively expensive way to do this. 2) Invest at all? I would recommend starting an emergency fund, and then beginning to invest for retirement. Once your retirement savings are on track, you can begin saving for whatever other goals you may have"
What is the goal here? You state that this is your first cash investment but don't state if this is for retirement, a vacation in 10 years, a house in 7 years or a bunch of other possibilities which is something to consider. If I consider this as retirement investments, I'd like pick 1 or 2 funds known for being tax-efficient that would be where I'd start. So, if a fund goes down 30%, that's OK? Do you have a rebalancing strategy of any kind? Do you realize what taxes you may have even if the fund doesn't necessarily have gains itself? In not stating a goal, I wonder how well do you have a strategy worked out for how you'll sell off these funds down the road at some point as something to ponder.
The best way to get cash from retirement is to not do it.  Leave the retirement savings alone.  Start saving for house down payment.  Look for ways to squirrel away money for that down payment.  Consider payment plus insurance, taxes, and maintenance costs.  If all that comes in less than a rental, you're probably better off buying.  Most likely it will not.  Make sure that when you go to buy, you have 20% down, AND an emergency fund that will cover you for 3 months of expenses at the new, higher, rate.  Hint, that'll probably be in excess of 10k based on a single person with a 1.5-2k a month mortgage, plus utilities and food.  And as a home owner, you will have a lot of things for which that emergency fund will come in handy.  It's a matter of when, not if.  Consider, 5k for a new roof, 6k for a hvac system, 1.5k for exterior paint, 500 for the plumber, 750 for pest control, 250 to have the tree removed that fell in a storm.  1000 for a new fridge.  500 for a new water heater.  1200 for washer and dryer.  ALL of these are periodic costs, and they all able to fail before they're supposed to.
"**Q: ""Why aren't you giving your grandmother children before she dies?""**  A: Stop being selfish, it's my life and I decide what I want to do, whenever I want to.  **Q: ""I bought a house at 23. Why are you still renting?""**  A: I want to be very wealthy, and not have my own house owned by a bank for 3/4ths of my life. Worry about your own life.  **Q: ""Who is going to take care of your parents when we they get old?""**  A: I'm going to be doing that, and my parent's retirement will help. I'm going to be able to do that because I decided to be financially intelligent rather than indulge in selfish personal pride and temporary happiness.  **Q: ""If you don't have X by age Y, then there's something wrong with you""**  A: Fuck you, I'm rich. Have fun with your wife and kids while you slave away hoping for a raise someday and pray for the weekends to come.  -----------------------------------------------------------------------  I've used all of these except the parents getting old situation. Stop letting other people dictate what's important in your life. If your parents are mad that you won't have kids or get married, fuck them. You got a nice loft, an AMG Mercedes, a Lexus, saving for a Lamborghini, and enough money in the bank to make people feel inferior just by looking at your account balance. Not to mention that's it's completely possible to have casual, safe sex with many women nowadays.   But hey man, make your family happy and appease society. Lol, hope it works out for you."
"Since your question was first posted, I happened to watch PBS FRONTLINE's The Retirement Gamble, about ""America's Retirement Crisis"" and the retirement industry.  You can watch the entire episode online at the previous link, and it's also available on DVD. Here's a link to the episode transcript. Here's a partial blurb from a post at PBS that announced the episode: If you’ve been watching any commercial television lately, you are well   aware that the financial services industry is very busy running   expensive ads imploring us to worry about our retirement futures. Open   a new account today, they say. They are not wrong that we should be doing something: America is   facing a retirement crisis. One in three Americans has no retirement   savings at all. One in two reports that they can’t save enough. On top   of that, we are living longer, and health care costs, as we all know,   are increasing. But, as I found when investigating the retirement planning and mutual   funds industries in The Retirement Gamble, which airs tonight on   FRONTLINE, those advertisements are imploring us to start saving for   one simple reason. Retirement is big business — and very profitable. (... more... ) There's another related PBS FRONTLINE documentary from back in 2006, Can You Afford To Retire? You'll find a link on that page to watch the program online. Finally, I'm also aware of but haven't yet seen a new documentary called Broken Eggs: The Looming Retirement Crisis in America. Looks like it isn't available for online streaming or on DVD yet, but I expect it would be, eventually."
I know, I also didn't do it justice. The guy came up with an attitude to start something. Like he was going to show us.   I'm not the one to flip out on service people. I also have worked my entire career over 20 years in the service industry. So I know what it's like to get shit on as a service person. I just have little tolerance for uncalled for hostility.
I have done this for years and have been quite successful at it. Two reason I even need to do this - desire to pay for engagement ring and pay for 150 person wedding without using my nest-egg/savings.  You need to keep a document that details when the free APRs run out, and you need to setup automatic payments of the minimum balance from your checking account so you ensure you do not miss a payment.  You need to understand when you are going to need to make big purchases of homes/apartments/cars so that you can ensure you aren't doing this right before your credit score is being checked (Need to leave 12 months without opening new accounts before doing this).  I have been able to finance about $60,000 worth of unsecured debt paying between 3-5% interest per year. We have an unsecured credit line with Citibank that charges 14% and is capped at $10,000, and Discover Personal Loans charge around 14% as well (in pre-paid interest!).  I would say, all things considering, that this is a great deal if you don't have a secured line of credit with a low interest rate.  It is something, however, that if you aren't diligent can get away from you. From my experience I would rather pay a small amount of interest while allowing my savings and retirement to grow interest (hopefully greater than 3-5%) than pay the huge expense and start from zero. But if you miss a single payment on a 0 APR balance transfer they charge you all back interest concessions plus charge you a penalty rate.  Like many of the other posts, you need discipline to make this work.
"Make a list of all your expenses. I use an Excel spreadsheet but you can do it on the back of a napkin if you prefer. List fixed expenses, like rent, loan payments, insurance, etc. I include giving to church and charity as fixed expenses, but of course that's up to you. List regular but not fixed expenses, like food, heat and electricity, gas, etc. Come up with reasonable average or typical values for these. Keep records for at least a few months so you're not just guessing. (Though remember that some will vary with the season: presumably you spend a lot more on heat in the winter than in the summer, etc.) You should budget to put something into savings and retirement. If you're young and just starting out, it's easy to decide to postpone retirement savings. But the sooner you start, the more the money will add up. Even if you can't put away a lot, try to put away SOMETHING. And if you budget for it, you should just get used to not having this money to play with. Then total all this up and compare to your income. If the total is more than your income, you have a problem! You need to find a way to cut some expenses. I won't go any further with that thought -- that's another subject. Hopefully you have some money left over after paying all the regular expenses. That's what you have to play with for entertainment and other non-essentials. Make a schedule for paying your bills. I get paid twice a month, and so I pay most of my bills when I get a paycheck. I have some bills that I allocate to the first check of the month and some to the second, for others, whatever bills came in since my last check, I pay with the current check. I have it arranged so each check is big enough to pay all the bills that come from that check. If you can't do that, if you'll have a surplus from one check and a shortage from the next, then be sure to put money aside from the surplus check to cover the bills you'll pay at the next pay period. Always pay your bills before you spend money on entertainment.
"Your companies are declining to lower your rates because you are describing it as being kind. When I was in a similar situation, I called each one, starting with the highest rate, and said this: For the last little while things have been tight and my balances have crept up on all my cards. Now I'm about to start a fairly dramatic paydown. I'm going to be doing highest-rate fastest, which is you. Are you able to lower my rate so that you can continue to collect it?  Some said no. Some said ""ask again when you've paid more than the minimum three months in a row."" Most said yes, and sometimes by a dramatic amount. It made a real difference to getting things under control. I agree with the other answers that $50 extra on each card is just not as fulfilling as putting all the extra to a single card. If you must still use a card (to put gas in your car, buy groceries etc) getting one card to zero will return you to not paying interest even when you use it, so you might want to start with your lowest balance and then go to highest-rate once you have one clear one you can use. (If your balances are all so high that it will take a year or more to get one to zero, then maybe not. But if one is low drive it down first.) As for the consolidation loan, for some people it's the key to saving interest and getting the debt behind them. For others it's a chance to catch their breath and run up even more debt. Most people cannot predict in advance which they will be or which others will be. Be aware that it is a risk. You can vow that you will never again cover payroll with a cash advance from the company credit card (or your personal one) but when push comes to shove, you just might anyway."
I'm not hating on anyone, just agreeing that it's pretty much all older people or all younger people and not many in between. Not any one person's fault, just where human nature got us.   Although I think that they (the vocal majority of my generation) think that once the boomers retire, when the government finally gets filled with people from our generation, and once we take over the large corporations, that things will get better for us. Which is the reason for lashing out.   I just think we have a s**t load of problems that need to be fixed, and it seems like all we ever do is patch them up because the long term fixes are too costly in the short term, and that this cycle won't ever change. But look on the bright side, every generation will have a group they can blame and a group to be afraid of, so nothing will be anyone's fault. At least until it finally is and someone ends up paying the piper.  Hell, it's not like I've experienced the good times, this is what I grew up in, so I don't really know any better. My generation doesn't expect to stay with the same company for their entire lives because we don't think it's possible. We've learned to adapt, we've had to. The smarter of us know to learn from your generations' mistakes (like saving for retirement).
"Do you think that you had previously been over-saving for retirement? If so, then the first time home buyers exemption might be a good opportunity for you to reverse that error. On the other hand, if you think you have been saving the right amount, or too little, for retirement, then why would you undo that savings?  ""Because I can, under existing tax law"" seems like an inadequate answer. Remember that if you are anticipate to be maxing out your tax advantaged accounts in the near future, then such a distribution is a permanent loss of opportunity.  You can't get the money back in. Are you thinking more clearly now, or were you thinking more clearly back when you decided to contribute to an IRA rather than build up a down-payment fund in the first place?"