vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
A lot of people do this. For example, in my area nice townhouses go for about $400K, so if you have $80,000 you can buy one and rent it. Here are the typical numbers: So you would make $350 per month or $4,200 per year on $80,000 in capital or about 5% profit. What can go wrong: (1) The property does not rent and sits vacant. You must come up with $2100 in mortgage payments, taxes, and insurance every month without fail or default. (2) Unexpected expenses. A new furnaces costs over $5,000. A new roof costs $7,000. A new appliance costs $600 to $2000 depending on how upscale your property is. I just had a toilet fixed for a leaky plunger. It cost me $200. As you can see maintenance expenses can quickly get a lot higher than the $50 shown above... and not only that, if you fix things as cheaply as possible (as most landlords do), not only does that decrease the rentability of the property, but it causes stuff to break sooner. (3) Deadbeats. Some people will rent your property and then not pay you. Now you have a property with no income, you are spending $2100 per month to pay for it, AND you are facing steep attorney fees to get the deadbeats evicted. They can fight you in court for months. (4) Damage, wear and tear. Whenever a tenant turns over there is always a lot of broken or worn stuff that has to be fixed. Holes in the wall need to be patched. Busted locks, broken windows, non-working toilets, stains on the carpet, stuck doors, ripped screens, leaky showers, broken tiles, painting exterior trim, painting walls, painting fences, etc. You can spend thousands every time a tenant changes. Other caveats: Banks are much more strict about loaning to non home owners. You usually have to have reserve income. So, if you have little or no income, or you are stretched already, it will be difficult to get commercial loans.
You bought a rental property in 2001. Hopefully you paid fair value else other issues come into play.  Say you paid $120K. You said you have been taking depreciation, which for residential real estate is taken over 27.5 years, so you are about halfway through. Since you don't depreciate land, you may have taken a total $50K so far.  With no improvements, and no transaction costs, you have $50K in depreciation recapture, taxed at a maximum 25% (or your lower, marginal rate) and a cap gain of the 5-10K you mentioned. Either can be offset by losses you've been carrying forward if you suffered large stock losses at some point.
"All very true.  Keep in mind that the parents of the boomers saw it all coming first and took full advantage of the opportunities.  In 1972 the rent prices just plain exploded, just in time for all those 20 something boomers who were leaving home. Those rents ""bid up"" housing prices.  I bought an old house in 1972, on rent with option to buy or contract for deed, same thing, for $10,900.00 and sold it for $17k in 77.  I would expect to see more ""rent with option to buy/contract for deed"" sales when the flipper crowd realizes they need to address the fact that buyers can be found without using banks."
Australia is not really comparable.   Where she lives in the US, there are 2-3 bedroom homes to rent for $125 per week.   An apartment at the luxury end of the spectrum could be had for $250 per week (which is not viable for a minimum wage earner).  Expenses in the US are far lower than Australia in most areas (outside of healthcare and higher education).        Her life on $1700 per month in Kansas, is probably closer to the life of someone on $40k per year in Sydney.  Not easy, and necessary to be frugal, but not at homeless levels.
It is in the bank's interest to sell the property for as much as they can (although it is doubtful they will put as much effort/time into selling it as the owner might). They will certainly not sell it for $1. The main reason for this is that the bank would prefer to own $100k, than a loan to them from a customer for $100k. Banks have to discount the value of loans to take into account the likelihood of the loan not being repaid. They classify certain loans as riskier than others, and these are discounted more heavily. An unsecured home loan to a customer that has already defaulted, has no collateral, and now needs to pay rent AND loan repayments would count as an extremely risky loan.
There is not any fraud involved. Anybody can gift money to another person.
You can either get the right door knob for your home or consult glass door accessories manufacturers to get the best suitable knob for your door. Door knobs are not the type of products you buy from the market as a gift, so you have to ensure about the selection of the door knob for your home
It's a gift if there are no strings attached. If you are rationalizing it to try to make it a gift for tax or any other purpose when there really is a connection between the transactions, or when you expect any kind of value or benefit in return for it, then it's not a gift... don't make it one and don't call it one. That would indeed likely be fraud. Play be the rules and sleep easy, is how I like to live.
Typically you can not buy gift cards with gift cards but in most stores this is a function built into the cash register, I find it hard to believe that targets system would not restrict it if it was in fact against their policy.  I worked for Home Depot for 5 years, they have a strict gift card/store credit policy that prevents such things from happening.
Your son can gift you unlimited amount of money. It does not fall under income tax. It falls under gift tax. As per gift tax there is no tax for you. Any interest you earn on this is taxable to you. Your son transferred into savings account... if your son is NRI he can't hold savings account. Ask him to open a NRE account and convert savings account to NRO account.
"Hi I'm the writer thanks for the read and the comment. With the statement you quoted, I'm trying to dispute the claim that ""people these days can't afford a house because they would have to pay their entire salary just to afford the mortgage,"" which I think is quite common in some circles. The data makes no statement as to whether home ownership is more affordable or not, but simply shows that those buying property are using around the same percentage of their income to pay for it, which the data clearly shows to be true.   https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N  As it turns out, home ownership levels have remained within ~5% of their 1980 levels based on percentage of the total population. I think there is an major classification flaw when comparing only sales because a great deal of people inherit property with no sale ever being made."
That's a place you can't just buy one house you must buy a few blocks and develop it to change the way things are there! Heck they have 5 dollar houses  in those parts with homeless and all scrap metal taken out of them heck of a place.
I like THEAO's answer above but I would make some changes.  Treat this as a gift; not a loan. Having to ask your friend for repayments is likely to become a huge strain on the friendship.  Giving them money, whether you decide to do it as a gift or a loan, does not entitle you to then dictate their life.  Sitting down with friends and going over their budget until it satisfies you is likely to be stressful for you both and demeaning to them.  You can make getting help from a financial advisor/counselor a part of your gift. I would go as far as to suggest paying for that service for your friends as a part of the money you give them. If a few months from now they need more money, you'll have to reassess the situation.
"Sheesh, are people kidding here? It's a gift. It's not fraud. Just keep in mind that, because it's a gift, you cannot get it ""back"" if you break up--you are giving it to her. If you happen to get married at some point in the future, you will then own part of the apartment, but that is a completely separate matter. Give her the money, don't expect it back. Ever."
Yes, because we don't want to be China. It also helps stimulate an economy to have your largest portion get most of the wealth.      Warren Buffett can only eat one meal at a time, live in one house at a time, and only has so much time in his day. If you give his yearly salary to 150 people that are right now unable to do any of those things, they will put that money to better use.
Talk freely about what you can now do because of saving. If you plan to retire sooner than most, or more comfortably than most, and can tie that to something you want them to do, show them that. If you buy a very nice car, or install a pool, and they wish they could afford that, tell them it took 5 or 10 or 20 years to save up for it, at x a week, and now you have it with no loan. Or be a cautionary tale: wish you had something, and regret not having saved for it. Young adults are generally well served by knowing more of parental finances than they did while they were dependents. Ask them if they will want or need to fund parental leaves, make a down payment for a house, own vacation property, put a child through post secondary education (share the cost of theirs including living expenses if you paid them), or go on amazing vacations fairly regularly. Tell them what those things cost in round figures. Explain how such a huge sum of money can accumulate over 2, 5, 10 years of saving X a month. for example $10 a week is $500 a year and so on. While they may not want to save 20 years for their downpayment, doing this simple math should let them map their savings amounts to concrete wishes and timeframes. Finally, if this is your own child and they live with you, charge them rent. This will save them from developing the habit of spending everything they earn, along with the expensive tastes and selfish speaking habits that come with it. Some parents set the rent aside and give it back as a wedding or graduation present, or to help with a downpayment later, but even if you don't, making them live within their true means, not the inflated means you have when you're living rent-free, is truly a gift.
"I will answer the question from the back: who can NOT afford luxury cars? Those whose parents paid for their college education, cannot afford luxury cars, but buy them anyway. Why? I have what may seem a rather shocking proposition related to the point of not saving for kids' college: parents do NOT owe children a college education. Why should they? Did your parents fund your college? Or did you get it through a mix of Pell grants, loans, and work? If they did, then you owe them $ back for it, adjusted for inflation. If they did not, well then why do you feel your children deserve more than you deserved when you were a child? You do not owe your children a college education. They owe it to themselves. Gifts do not set one up for success, they set one up for dependence. I will add one more hypothesis: financial discipline is best learned through one's own experiences. When an 18+ year old adult gets a very large amount of money as a gift every year for several years (in the form of paid tuition), does that teach them frugality and responsibility? My proposition is that those who get a free ride on their parents' backs are not well served in terms of becoming disciplined budgeters. They become the subjects of the question in this post: those why buy cars and houses they cannot afford, and pay for vacations with credit cards. We reap what we sow as a society. Of course, college is only one case in point, but a very illustrative one. The bigger point is that financial discipline can only be developed when there are opportunities to develop it. Such opportunities arise under one important condition: financial independence. What does buying children cars for their high-school graduation, buying them 4 years of college tuition, and buying them who knows what else (study abroad trips, airfare, apartment leases, textbooks, etc. etc.) teach? Does it teach independence or dependence? It can certainly (at least that's what you hope for) teach them to appreciate when others do super nice things for them. But does free money instill financial responsibility? Try to ask kids whose parents paid for their college WHY they did it.
From India Tax Point of view, your parents can Gift you the money. There is no tax due to this in India for your parents or for you. Transferring the funds out of India is also possible.  Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme by RBI, one can transfer upto 200,000 USD. Please check with your Bank for the exact paperwork.  Typically PAN and a CA certificate mentioning the relevant clauses and certifying the purpose is required.  Bank may have some more paperwork on its own.
a. Depends on whether it is a gift (no tax, but need to file gift tax form against his lifetime exclusion) or a loan (in which case he needs to charge fair market interest, which he can forgive as a gift with no gift tax form, but for which will need to pay tax on the forgiven income. b. This is a definite possibility. Probably depends on the specific lender, but I would imagine this might be questioned, especially if there is an expectation of paying him back. c. Relationships. I would always avoid mixing family and finances in this way. Do you want your family gatherings to be tainted by owing him money? What if you fall on hard times? What if you go on a nice vacation instead of paying him back faster?
Anything is possible. I bought a house in as the market was dropping and all the lenders were scared. I think i put down less than 10% and I think even more like about 5%.  The tricky thing was finding a lender. Ultimately I used a local credit union. A few things to note though:
For about six months now, every 3-4 weeks, I get a misdelivered packaged from those idiots.  It's to the same person.  They have the same house number, Asian name like myself, but ten streets away.  First couple of times I reported this to Amazon, but I got real tired of spending my own time to help fix their problem. I figure let Amazon keep sending replacement packages and maybe they'll finally get the hint.  Meanwhile, my housekeepers have been enjoying these gifts.
This is on top of the interest, so even at 5%, that last $10,000 is costing nearly 17%. If you can't raise that $10K (or whatever 10% is on that house) in cheaper funds, you should hold off. Using the 401(k) loan for this purpose is appropriate, yet emotionally charged. As if suck loans are written by the devil himself. ""Buy the biggest house you can""? No. I have a better idea. Buy the smallest place you can tolerate. I have a living room (in addition to family room) that has been used 3 times in 20 years. A dining room we actually use. Twice per year. When your house is 50% too big, you pay 50% more property tax, more utility bills, and more maintenance. Closing costs, commission, etc, isn't cheap, but the lifetime cost of living in a too-big house is a money pit."
4.7 is a pretty low rate, especially if you are deducting that from your taxes. If you reduce the number by your marginal tax rate to get the real cost of the money you end up with a number that isn't far off from inflation, and also represents a pretty low 'yield' in terms of paying off the loan early. (e.g. if your marginal tax rate is 28%, then the net you are paying in interest after the tax deduction is 4.7 * .72 = 3.384) While I'm all for paying off loans with higher rates (since it's in effect the same as making that much risk free on the money) it doesn't make a lot of sense when you are down at 3.4 unless there is a strong 'security factor' (which really makes a difference to some folks) to be had that really helps you sleep at night. (to be realistic, for some folks close to retirement, there can be a lot to be said for the security of not having to worry about house payments, although you don't seem to be in that situation yet) As others have said, first make sure you have enough liquid 'emergency money' in something like a money market account, or a ladder of short term CD's If you are sure that the sprouts will be going to college, then there's a lot to be said for kicking a decent amount into a 529, Coverdell ESA (Educational Savings Account), uniform gift to minors account, or some combination of those. I'm not sure if any of those plans can be used for a kid that has not been born yet however. I'd recommend http://www.savingforcollege.com as a good starting point to get more information on your various options. As with retirement savings, money put in earlier has a lot more 'power' over the final balance due to compounding interest, so there's a lot to be said for starting early, although depending on what it takes to qualify for the plans there could be such a thing as too early ;-) ).
No, that's not a fair argument. Obviously that is theft, and the sales associate isn't authorized to do that. She is allowed to act on Target's behalf to process transactions, however.   Buying a gift card with a gift card is not theft. At the most it's a breach of a contract, but Target has little resource because it was a mutual breach of contract. A judge would laugh in Target's face if it tried to get its money back after its own employees and managers processed the transactions.
"Ya it's not really young ""modern"" people buying these houses. I personally believe it's immigrant students, who use their parents money (as a sort of bypass), or just younger people who have rich parents, or get help from their parents. A lot of older people are still buying houses as well. It's quite a stupid landscape, from an economic perspective it's very inefficient, but that's not an issue that directly effects me, or that can easily be fixed. The cheapest you can find a ""decent"" house that I know, is about 2-3 hours north of the city, for around 500k. It's just a different lifestyle; you wouldn't be commuting downtown anyway, but it depends on the person and the job"
No.  You will already have paid taxes on the gift you give to your wife, so there will be no tax savings.
Thank you, I was thinking the same way. A lot of women who are in a relationship and with children want to contribute financially, feel like they are accomplishing something and be successful (in the career sense) but still have their main role as house/child care. These schemes prey and focus on this and how easy it is to do from home/in your own time. It is something that a lot of people wish were true and get sucked in by.
I've definitely seen a similar conversation about this, I personally don't buy from eBay (Amazon for me). So I turned to the internet to see what I could find to offer you any additional information (albeit not my personal experience).  I first read this article: CodeNerdz Article and was pretty horrified by the scamming that can happen by buyers. Then, this article by another regular user of eBay, Selling on eBay without PayPal : eBay Guides confirmed the trouble people have with PayPal & eBay. Payment Services permitted on eBay: Allpay.net, Canadian Tire Money, cash2india, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyperwallet.com, Moneybookers.com, Nochex.com, Ozpay.biz, Paymate.com.au, Propay.com, XOOM Have you looked into any or all of these?
"PayPal has a very generous buyer protection program.  That means that the buyer can dispute receiving the goods and get their money back fairly easily (compared to credit cards).  For this reason Craigslist and other sites recommend not accepting PayPal  payments.  I know that many transactions go through them flawlessly.  But unless I really trust someone, PayPal would not be an option for me unless it was the money transfer (different rules; not as easy to get the money back).  However this may be breaking PayPal Terms of Service so I would read them carefully before I went this route.   There have been reports of PayPal putting extended holds on funds and effectively seizing the money by refusing to release the funds.  I have never had this happen (though I did have a sale on eBay reversed though the item was never returned) but there are many reports of it on the Internet. As far as the BoA option I would contact them and see what they recommend. I would find out what their policies are on reversing the transfers and on providing your account number.  They may have a special deposit-only account number you could provide the buyers.  But I would want to learn as much about the system as I could before I started using it.   The Internet has turned the old adage of ""buyer beware"" into ""seller beware"".  There are many schemes that con artists have come up with to defraud unsuspecting sellers.  I received several offers from people wanting to pay me with a cashiers check for a few items I recently sold on Craigslist.  It is scary how prevalent these fraudsters have become."
"At least in the US, one reason could be the ""liability shift"" that encourages adoption of chipped and contactless cards by shifting the fraud liability to the party that caused the transaction to not use chip-and-PIN / contactless payment: either the merchant (by not having a new compatible terminal) or the card issuer (by not providing the customer with a compatible card). This means the issuers will try to replace old, magnetic-only cards as soon as possible once adoption of the liability shift is certain. http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/bulletin-us-participation-liability-shift-080911.pdf"
"I doubt it's a scam. It would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to pay someone money using PayPal and end up getting more than you paid back. PayPal doesn't have the concept of ""pulling"" money without the owner of the account signing up for a subscription. Otherwise the owner must ""push"" the payment to the recipient. So, it is very likely that someone simply mistyped an email address which happens to be an alias of yours (since the periods are optional in gmail addresses). As for what to do, I think you've already done the right thing by contacting both PayPal and the sender."
"OK, reading between the lines here it looks like the services offered by your company are of an ""adult"" (possibly illegal?) nature and that this individual has actually paid you in full for the services rendered up to this point. The wrinkle here is that you say that you've been offered large cash ""gifts"" in return for unspecified future favours, but that your client hasn't provided a real Paypal account to do so. When you pressed him on it, he sent a fake email and invented a ""financial adviser"" to fob you off, then hasn't contacted you  since. It's pretty clear that he hasn't got any intention of making these payments to you. What you're now proposing to do is to use his known banking details to collect money to cover those verbal promises. In pretty much every part of the world, that's a crime. Without a written agreement to use that payment method for those promises, he could easily call the police and have you arrested for theft of funds. The further wrinkle is that his actions (claiming to have made payment via paypal, forged email headers, etc) strongly suggest that this individual is involved in cyber-crime and may well have used a fake bank account to pay for your initial services.  The bottom line here is that you need real legal advice, from an actual lawyer."
&gt;In short, pay banks not to lend money, not to invest the reserves.  This is just like Federal programs that paid farmers not to farm...IOER (interest on excess reserves) pays big bankers not to bank  That's paying fucking interest. Why are you making this sound like a conspiracy theory?   And your article is poorly written and nobody takes a title with three question marks seriously. Stop.
Additionally my understanding is that a Faster Payment is as good as cash once received. Yes it is but there is a caveat. Read on unauthorized payments on Faster Payments website. Either the sender is fraudulently claiming this was unauthorised, or their bank doesn't have adequate security standards - why is it me who loses out here? Agreed. You should take this up [dispute the action] with your bank asking why your account was closed as there is no fraud from your side. Make sure you do all the follow-up with writing and provide evidence of the trade being genuine.