vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
You have to wonder, don't you? Is he leaving because he finally realises the business is entirely a scam? That it's nothing more than a payday loan scheme, charging 25% interest, but the loan comes from the driver!  They effectively borrow large sums of money (which are car maintenance costs deferred for the future) from themselves, and have to work like a dog to do it.  A payday loan is a much more ethical thing, and not hidden behind math that Uber drivers are incapable of performing. Even if you ahve a very efficient car, the most you can ever make driving fro Uber is 6 cents a mile, net profit.  If you think 6 cents a mile is an equitable payment, then by all means, become an Uber driver! Driving 100 miles will net you $6.  On the odd occasion I have had to use my car for work, the accepted rate to charge it out at (just to cover the running costs!) is 90 cents per kilometre, or $1.45 per mile.  That figure is what it actually costs to run a car. It does not include any payment for actually driving the car.
Hindsight is 20/20, but I offer some suggestions for how this might have gone down. If you had told the bank what was going on they might have extended the terms of your loan until the truck was ready. Alternatively you might have taken the loan (was it secured on the truck?) and put the money in a savings account until the truck showed up, while asking the dealer to pay the interest on it until the truck showed up. Or you might asked the dealer to supply you with a rental truck until yours showed up. I'm not saying I would have thought of these under the circumstances, but worth trying.
Make sure that when you have the loan you still contribute enough to get the company match. For example:  An inability to maximize the match might need to be figured into the opportunity cost of the loan. Some companies will suspend your contributions for a specific number of months for a hardship withdraw.  Make sure you understand where the money comes from for the loan. Can you count the money that the company matched but you are not vested with, when determining the maximum amount of the loan?  If the money is in what is now a closed fund can you replenish the funds back into that fund if use it to fund the loan? Know what the repayment time period is of the loan.
"I would actually disagree with MrChrister on this. You can afford yourself the car in this price range paid cash. I don't know how exactly you spend your income, but from my experience, in expensive California, saving $20K a year from $70K income with $800/mo rent is feasible. Having a loan on your credit report which is paid on time and in full will definitely help you rebuilding your credit. Your calculations re the costs of the loan are based on the assumption that you're going to keep the loan for the whole period. Don't do that. See #1 - you can repay this loan much quicker than the 3 years it should originally have been. 6 months of the loan which is then paid off will do marvels to your credit report and credit score. Yes, it is going to cost you some, but in your particular case I would argue that its worth it. You're an adult now, you need credit cards, you'll need a mortgage at some point, you need to rent a place to live - all these require a good credit report. Just waiting, as MrChrister suggests, will help, but much much slower.  Having said that, a seller that ""cannot discuss the terms over the phone"" is most likely a dishonest person. Once you're there and in front of him it is harder for you to verify information, resist signing papers, and negotiating."
In many ESPP programs (i.e. every one I've had the opportunity to be a part of in my career), your purchase is at a discount from the lower of the stock prices at the start and end of the period. So a before-tax 5% return is the minimum you should expect; if the price of the stock appreciates between July 1 and December 31, you benefit from that gain as well. More concretely: Stock closes at $10/share on July 1, and $11/share on December 31. The plan buys for you at $9.50/share. If you sell immediately, you clear $1.50/share in profit, or a nearly 16% pre-tax gain. If the price declines instead of increases, though, you still see that 5% guaranteed profit. Combine that with the fact that you're contributing every paycheck, not all at once at the start, and your implied annual rate of return starts to look pretty good. So if it was me, I'd pay the minimum on the student loan and put the excess into the ESPP.
"If you make $10 in salary, $5 in interest on savings, and $10 in dividends, your income is $25, not $10. If you have a billion dollars in well-invested assets, you can take a loan against those assets and the interest payment on the loan will be smaller than the interest you earn on the assets. That means your investment will grow faster than your debt and you have a net positive gain. It makes no sense to do this if the value of your asset is static. In that case, you would be better off just to withdraw from the asset and spend it directly, since a loan against that static asset will result in you spending your asset plus interest charges. If you have a good enough rate of return on your investment, you may actually be able to do this in perpetuity, taking out loan after loan, making the loan payments from the loan proceeds, while the value of your original asset pool continues to grow. At any given time, though, a severe downturn in the market could potentially leave you with large debts and insufficient value in your assets to back the debt. If that happens, you won't be getting another loan and the merry-go-round will stop spinning. It's a bit of a Ponzi scheme, in a way. The U.S. government has done exactly this for a long time and has gotten away with it because the dollar has been the world's reserve currency. You could always get a loan against the value of the U.S. currency in the past. Those days may be dwindling, with more countries choosing alternative currencies to conduct business with and the dollar becoming comparatively weaker into the foreseeable future. If you have savings, you can spend more than you make, which will put you into debt, then you can draw down your savings to pay that debt, and at the end of the month you will be out of debt, but have less in savings. You cannot do this forever. Eventually, you run out of savings. If you have no savings, you immediately go into debt and stay there when you spend more than you make. This is simple arithmetic.
I would just create a single liability account to represent the loan, starting with a $0 balance. Then, create a transaction in which the amount of the loan moves from the liability account into your savings account. As you pay the loan off, you'll create new transactions that move money from whichever account you're using to pay it off into your liability account.
Now, a growth fund is going to be more volatile than what you would normally want for an emergency fund, but the risk isn't that bad, if you think about it. Say your emergency comes up and you find that the growth fund is down 20% (which would be a pretty horrible run). That's $600 less that you have to deal with the situation. Keep in mind that you already have $2000 (and building) in your current emergency fund. Is that $600 going to make the difference between meeting the need and not? It's not likely. Better to leave the investment where it is and keep building your emergency fund week by week. Things that might change your mind: Your level of risk aversion (if having that money in a more risky investment is keeping you up at night, move it). You face significant job uncertainty (if you have reason to think your job is at risk, it might be a good idea to top off that emergency fund sooner rather than later.) Your other two choices both seem like solid options under the right circumstances. If it were me, I'd leave the investment in place rather than use it to pay off the student loan. The investment is likely (though of course not guaranteed) to earn more than the interest rate even on the highest-rate loan, especially when you consider that the interest on the student loan is probably tax deductible. Moreover, the size of the investment isn't enough to fully repay the loan, so putting it toward the loan won't even improve your cash flow for some time to come. However, there is always a chance that the investment will perform poorly and some people prefer the guaranteed return from paying off the loan. It depends on your personal risk tolerance. The one thing I would recommend is to think of putting the money toward the loan not as a debt repayment, but as a fixed-income investment with a yield equal to your loan's interest rate. If you would still consider buying it then, then go ahead. If not, then stick with what you've got. In my experience people get way too emotional about debt; try to take that emotion out of your decision making if you can.
"This is ""incentive financing"". Simply put, the car company isn't in the business of making money by buying government bonds. They're in the business of making money by selling cars. If you are ""qualified"" from a credit standpoint, and want to buy a $20k car on any given Sunday, you'll typically be offered a loan of between 6% and 9%. Let's say this loan is for three years and you can offer $4000 down payment and/or trade. The required monthly payment on the remaining $16k at the high end of 9% is $508.80, which over 3 years means you'll pay $2,316.64 in interest. Now, that may sound like a good chunk of change, and for the ordinary individual, it is, possibly enough that you decide not to buy today. Now, let's say, all other things being equal, that the company is offering 0.9% incentive financing. Same price, same down payment, same loan term. Your payments over 3 years decrease to $450.64, and over the same loan term you would only pay $222.97 in interest. You save over $2,093.67 in interest over three years, which for you is again a decent chunk of change. Theoretically, the car company's losing that same $2,093.67 in interest by offering this deal, and depending on how it's getting the money it lends you (most financial companies are middlemen, getting money from bond-buying investors who expect a rate of return), that could be a real loss and not just opportunity cost. But, that incentive got you to walk in their door, and not their competitor's. It helped convince you to buy the $20,000 car. The gross margin on that car (price minus direct costs) is typically 20% for the dealer, plus another 20% for the manufacturer, so by giving up the $2,000 on the financing side, the dealer and manufacturer just earned themselves 4 times that much. On top of that, by buying that car, you're committing to buy the parts for the car, a side business with even higher margins, of which the car company gets a pretty big chunk.
Kentucky property tax is assessed as of the owner on January 1 of each calendar year.  In April you should be notified of what KY considers you to owe them, and you have a two week period in May to appeal those decisions (though it appears that you can only appeal Real property tax assessments).  The final tax bill is then sent to you in the fall, by October, and you have until the end of the year to pay the bill. See Kentucky Property Tax Calendar Overview for more details. Thus, if you owned the car on Jan 1 2016, then you should owe personal property tax on it for 2016 due in the fall.  You may not have owed the tax paid in November, if it was indeed personal property tax, unless the seller was asking you to recompense them for the tax they paid in 2015. Note that property tax is separate and distinct from usage tax, the 6% tax for vehicles paid at purchase date (once and only once).
the best thing to do is file bankrupt. your credit will be shot for 7 to 10 years. however usually 3 years after the bankrupt people will give you small lines of credit. then you rebuild on the small credit lines. and never get into a bad loan again you learn from mistakes. there is no shame in a mistake if you learned from it. I rebuilt my credit by using fingerhut. small credit limit on a cap 1 credit card 300 dollars unsecured card. personal loan of 1500 dollars to buy a old clunk for a car as I did not want to have five years of car payments. you can also get a secured credit card. and build credit with that. the bank will explain how to build credit using your own money. also you should know a lot of banks like your bankrupt stat. because they no you cant file for several more years. meaning if you don't pay your loan they can garnish you and you cant file bankrupt. you can get a new car loan with good interest rate. by taking 5000 dollars of your 15000 dollars savings down on the new loan. making your new car loan have better payments cheaper and better interest. and get a secured credit card of 2000 to build towards a unsecured credit card. keep all your new credit tabs small and pay on time.i would not use all your nest egg savings. that is not smart. get a lawyer and file. stay in school you will have a fresh start and you learned about upside down loans. don't listen to people trying to tell you bankruptsy is bad. it in a lot of ways gives you the upper hand in a no win debt or debts.
One way to reduce the monthly payment due each month is to do everything to eliminate one of the loans. Make the minimum payment to the others, but put everything into eliminating one of the loans. Of course this assumes that you have separate loans for each year of school.  Make sure that in trying to get aggressive on the loan repayment that you don't neglect the saving for a down payment. Each dollar you can put down will save you money on the mortgage. It might also allow you to reduce the mortgage insurance payments. If you pay one student loan back aggressively but can't eliminate it you might be worse off because you spent your savings but it didn't help you qualify for the mortgage. One way to maximize the impact is to not make the extra payments until you are ready to apply for the mortgage. Ask the lender if you qualify with all the student loans, or if you need to eliminate one. If you don't need to eliminate a loan, then apply the extra funds to a larger down payment or pay points to reduce the interest rate.
Liquidity. That's the issue. You rent, and that's not bad. No new roof, boiler, etc. But, you have a car? Your savings is a guarantee that you'll not have to charge a $2000 transmission on an 18% credit card. You job may be secure, but employment (aside from self employment) is never 100% guaranteed. With $3000 income per month, I'd not prepay the student loan until I had at least $9000 in savings.  We don't know your country, although we don't have fortnights in the US, so if you are in the US, you have a non-US background. Either way, if your employer offers any kind of matching retirement deposits, I'd prioritize that. Never leave that matched money on the table.  You are off to a great start, this relatively low student loan debt shouldn't keep you awake at night.
"Collateralized & Secured are interchangeable terms. Note the following two quotes from wikipedia (links below): ""A secured loan is a loan in which the borrower pledges some asset (e.g. a car or property) as collateral for the loan, which then becomes a secured debt owed to the creditor who gives the loan."" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secured_loan ""In lending agreements, collateral is a borrower's pledge of specific property to a lender, to secure repayment of a loan."" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_%28finance%29 This website also uses the terms interchangeably: http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-collateral-loan.htm Loan & Line of Credit are not interchangeable terms.  In a loan, you receive a one time disbursement & repay it over a fixed amortization schedule. (Think home mortgage) In a line of credit, you can pay back & re-borrow from your credit line as often as you need. (Think credit card or Home Equity Line of Credit)"
There are some circumstances in which it is a good idea. Chris W Rea has already mentioned the case where you expect your marginal tax rate to decrease. But there is also the case where lack of contributions might cause your marginal rate to increase. Assume your income is $20,000 over the 46% threshold, and you normally contribute $20,000 to RRSP. However this year you have only been able to contribute $10,000. If you wait until next year and contribute an extra $10,000 (making $30,000) the extra $10,000 will only bring 35% tax back. If you can borrow the money and make the contribution this year it will get 46% tax back. That makes the loan worth taking. Making the contribution now can also get you a larger rebate this year. You will have that money for twelve extra months and you can invest it. That probably isn't enough to make it worthwhile alone, but it certainly makes the damage less. However I would always recommend taking out an RRSP loan for as short a time as possible. My recommendation would always be to make the contribution as late in the period as possible, apply for your tax refund as soon as you can, and then pay off the loan with the refund. You shoulod be able to get away with having the loan only for a couple of months.
"I think this advice to carry a balance each month is nonsense.  You're just wasting money that way.  Personally, I have always paid off my credit cards every month for as long as I can remember, and my credit score is only 8 points below the max.  The bigger factors by far are: It might be good advice to charge a small amount each month on your credit cards each month in order to keep seldom-used accounts active (remember, longer payment history is better), but there's no reason not to pay off the balance to avoid the interest charges.  In short, the ""ideal balance"" to carry month-to-month on a credit card is zero."
&gt;  low seven hundreds wont even garner a look from any school in the top 20   From my understanding, without a math background already (math major for a double in undergrad) you're expected to have a perfect quant score on the GRE to be competitive in the PhD realm.
No. There is no indication that the recent decline will have an impact on the house market in the UK. The reason(s) for the downward move these last few weeks are mainly due to: The last two points caused the Chinese government to decide to devaluate the Yuan. This in turn triggered an unforeseen panic attack among investors and speculators around the globe starting with the Chinese that are trading on borrowed money (not only on margin but also by using loans). The UK house prices are not influenced by the above factors, not even indirectly. The most important factors for house prices are in general: If you keep the above points in mind you should be able to decide whether now is the right time to buy a house in your area. Given that a lot of central banks (incl. BoE) are maintaining a low interest rate policy (except fed soon), now is a good time to take a mortgage. Sources used: I know interest rates are determined by the BoE which looks at the global picture to determine these rates but the main directive of a central bank is to maintain an inflation close to but not exactly 2 % as to spur on economic growth.  As such, the value of a company as valuated on the stock market is not or barely taken into account. The negligible impact is the reason why I stated that the crash in the summer of 2015 doesn't even have an indirect impact.  Also such a crash is very short lived. It's more the underlying reason for the fears that could cause issues if they drag on.
"Pretty hilarious the job you're describing sounds EXACLY like my job working in Margin Credit at a major bank. I do all the processing work, but after a few weeks of that, and saying that I was ""ready for more training"" to my supervisor, he took that as the sign to get me working on some of the smaller client accounts. Now I'm looking at accounts and issuing approvals for funds and trades (depending on how much margins hey have and other factors) Id say just approach your supervisor, tell him you're ready to move on, if they have anything for you hopefully they'll get you started. Stick with it, and don't stab yourself!"
"Those two hard inquiries will only count as one on your score because you applied for the two cards immediately one after the other. Credit bureaus see this as just credit card shopping, so will hit your score only once as a single hard inquiry. If you had applied for these two cards days apart, then your score would have been hit with two hard inquiries. Find more details here, specifically under the ""What to know about rate shopping"" section."
In your specific case, I would leave them open unless you have a specific reason for wanting to close them - particularly, unless you feel closing them is necessary for you to not misuse them. The impact on the credit score is not why I say this, though.  Much more important are the two competing real factors: My suggestion would be to take the cards and put them in your file cabinet, or whatever would cause you to not use them.  In fact, you could even cut them up but not close the accounts - I had an account open that I didn't possess a physical card for several years for and didn't use at all, and it stayed open (though it's not guaranteed they'll keep it open for you if you never use it).   In an emergency you could then ask them to send you a new copy of the card very easily.  But, keep them, just in case you need them. Once you have paid off your balances on your balance-carrying cards, then you should consider closing some of them.  Keep enough to be able to live for ~4-6 months (a similar amount to the ideal rainy day fund in savings, basically) and then close others, particularly if you can do so in a way that keeps your average account age reasonably stable.
I am not a financial expert, but I'm pretty sure that it DOES matter.  When you take out a mortgage on a home, you are using the home itself as collateral. If you fail to make payments on that home, and go into foreclosure, the bank takes possession of your home. With that understanding, imagine you borrow $500K for a purchase of a home. If the cost of the home was $1M, the bank will have more confidence they can recover the money they lent you (by selling the home should it go into foreclosure) than they would if the house was only worth $700K. In effect, the larger your down payment, the easier it would be for the bank to recover their money should you go into foreclosure early on. As far as 50% overcoming a low credit score... that's a very open-ended question. There are just too many factors at play to give a simple yes or no answer to that.
I want to be a bit contrarian here. It may be true that to rebuild credit it helps to have credit, but it's not the most important thing. If your description of your wife's history is correct, the most important thing is to fix her tendency to 'spend out of control', especially on get-rich-quick schemes. She may well be on the way to fixing that, but in those circumstances every source of credit is a temptation to spend. Why put that temptation in her way? Whatever tiny postive effect having a credit card has on her credit score will be wiped out if in six months time she suddenly maxes out that card and can't pay it off. I don't want to play credit counsellor, and you should get some professional advice, but her credit score will improve by itself if she  takes on no new debt, pays off what she has, and cuts up any credit cards she owns.
"In the US, the government effectively sets a price floor for rents with a concept called ""prevailing rent"" for government subsidy. Even the crappiest, minimally compliant hovel is ultimately worth whatever the government will issue housing vouchers for. Rent can and does fluctuate for the higher end of the market. Basically in most places the available, cheap credit has a negative impact on rent prices, and tighter, costlier credit increases demand and rents. Local economic events have an impact too. If the company closes in a company town, people leave."