vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Employers may offset the increase by shopping some ancillary benefit like group life insurance, or bundling the dental program with the medical carrier. Remember, employees don't pay premiums they pay contributions and some employers are more generous than others. Employers are also better at budgeting for planned increases than individuals are. Regulators: In many of the states that are making the news because of their healthcare premium increases there simply isn't a regulator scrutinizing increases. California requires all individual and small group premiums to be filed with the state and increases must be justified with some sort of math and approved by a regulator. Without this kind of oversight insurers have only the risk of subscriber flight to adjust plan provisions and press harder during provider contract negotiations. Expiring Transitional Reinsurance Fee and Funds: One of the fees introduced by healthcare reform paid by insurers and self-insured employers established a pot of money that individual plans could tap to cope with the new costs of the previously uninsurable folks. This fee and corresponding pot of money is set to expire and can no longer be taken in to account by underwriters. Increased Treatment Availability: It's important that as new facilities go online, insurer costs will increase. If a little town gets a new cancer clinic, that pool will see more cancer treatment costs simply as a result of increased treatment availability. Consider that medical care inflation is running at about 4.9% annually as of the most recent CPI table, the rest of the increases will result from the performance of that specific risk pool. If that risk pool had a lot of cancer diagnoses, you're looking at a big increase. If that risk pool was under priced the prior year you will see an above average increase, etc.
&gt; If someone who is paid $200k+ a year is flying long haul to participate in some meetings, I want them at their best at those meetings, as their time is worth $100/hr.       I work with plenty of people in private industry who earn far more than that who only get economy flights paid for.
These are the same sort of people that calculate and rate the size and health of economies, the cost of social services, pensions, unionised wages, government intervention, deficits, debts, public sector costs, etc, etc. Sometimes it feels like the chaps advising the rest of us on the cost of things live on a totally different planet.
Well, if someone is paid hourly and works less hours—then clearly there is lost income.  Additionally, there may be promotions that a parent gets passed over for because he/she often leaves work early to be with the kids.  Usually, I think, one of the two spouses slows his/her career a bit while raising the kids, this obviously effects the earning potential of the family.    Ultimately, the point I was focused on is that the amount, $900,000, isn't just paying for food, diapers, clothes, books, the larger house you need to house a larger family, the larger car/van you need to tote the kids around in, the extra gas you use in that car/van taking the kids to places you wouldn't otherwise be going, the baby-sitter for date-night, the potential extra seats on planes etc., it includes other lost opportunities (hey, that great job offer on the other side of the country, can't take it unless you want to pull your kids out of 8th grade in the middle of February... etc).  All of this adds up, it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that it would be close to a million dollars.  Also, the $900,000 estimate is probably an estimate of the average.  Obviously, I can't speak for your friends, they may be outliers.  Edited: grammar
Yahoo finance does in fact have futures quotes.  But I've found them difficult to search for because you also have to know the expiration codes for the contract to find them. S&P 500 Emini quote for June 2012
I use Couponrefund.com I get coupon and coupon codes from here to get discount by which I save hundreds of dollars while shopping.
Talk about opportunity cost. Show a rope, and put a tag with him on the end of it.  Explain that since he has max out his credit, he can no longer get more.  Without more credit here are the things he can't have The key to illustrate is that all the money he makes, for the next several years is obligated to the people he has already borrowed it from.  Try to have him imagine giving his entire paycheck to a bank, and then doing that for the next five years.  To drive it home, point out that there are 5 super bowls, 5 college championship games, 5 final fours, 5 annual concerts he likes, 5 model years of cars, 5 or more iPhone versions in those five years.  Or whatever he is into.  5 years of laptops, 5 years of fishing trips. These things are not affordable to him right now.  He has already spent his money for the next 5 years, and those are the things he cannot have because he is, in fact, out of cash. Furthermore, if he continues, the credit will dry up completely and his 5 year horizon could easily become ten. To illustrate how long 5 or 10 years is, have him remember that 10 years ago he might have been in college or the military.  That 5 years ago Facebook was no big thing.  That 5 years ago the Razr was an awesome phone.  That 5 years ago we had a different president.
When you do finance problems the first thing you need to think about is how the interest is accrued. Is it monthly semi annually or yearly? Once you understand the period of time on the interest and payments it’ll help you understand these problems more. Also a good thing to memorize is converting from EAR to APR. and APR to EAR. You’ll use that a lot. Good luck!
Here are some really excellent video tutorials on these topics: Introduction to Compound Interest Introduction to Present Value
"I *think*... the topic of the essay states: ""Provide a thorough discussion if the meaning  and interpretation of the four descriptive statistical measures required in your analysis: Arirthmetic mean, Variance, Standard Deviation, and coefficeint of variation. for example, how are these measures related to each other?""  I have no idea what I'm doing. I'll buy you reddit gold for a year if you help me out."
"What you are looking for is an indicator called the ""Rate of Change (Price)"". It provides a rolling % change in the price over the period you have chosen.  Below is an example showing a price chart over the last 6 months with a 100 day Rate of Change indicator below the price chart."
Interesting question.  I would need to look at the actual wording on the subsidies themselves.  I’ll dig around.  In the mean time, do you have any suggestions that could narrow down my search?  Many times, these things are riders on other bills, to both get it passed and to give them an out if someone is called on it.
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If you download the historical data from Yahoo, you will see two different close prices. The one labeled 'Close' is simply the price that was quoted on that particular day. The one labeled 'Adj Close' is the close price that has been adjusted for any splits and dividends that have occurred after that date.  For example, if a stock splits 10:1 on a particular date, then the adjusted close for all dates prior to that split will have been divided by 10. If a dividend is paid, then all dates prior will have that amount subtracted from their adjusted quote. Using the adjusted close allows you to compare any two dates and see the true relative return.
Don´t forget that changing volatility will have an impact on the time value too! So at times it can happen that your time value is increasing instead of decreasing, if the underlying (market) volatility moves up strongly. Look for articles on option greeks, and how they are interdependent. Some are well explaining in simple language.
What matters is the combination of the loan amount and the time (hours/days/whatever) you've loaned out the money.  $100 * 10 hours * 30 times = 30K dollar-hours  The other loan is $100 * 24 hours * 30 days = 72K dollar-hours  But using your math the original loan is 30X the amount of the second.
"Using the fact that you'd save $160/mo by spending $7000, I'd look at it this way -  If I were to lend you the $7000 at 12%/yr, $160 would pay it off in 58 months. At 18%/yr, 72 months or just 6 years. You can run spreadsheets to get breakeven scenarios, and mhoran is on track with his answer, but breakeven is just one point to consider. Beyond that date, it's free money.  My approach is to look at it with a question - ""How much interest could I afford to pay to make that monthly savings worthwhile?"""
While I don't disagree with the other answers as far as CD laddering goes (at least in principle), three months CDs are currently getting much lower rates than money market accounts, at least according to http://www.bankrate.com.  A savings account is also more liquid than CDs. Bonds are another option, and they can generally be liquidated quickly on the secondary market.  However, they can go down in value if interest rates rise (actually this is true of CDs as well--there is a secondary market, though  I believe only for brokerage CDs?). Bottom line, A high yield savings account is likely your best best.  As others noted, you should think of your emergency fund as savings, not investment.
If liquidity and cost are your primary objectives, Vanguard is indeed a good bet.  They are the walmart of finance and the absolute best at minimizing fees and other expenses. Your main portfolio holding should be VTI, the total stock market fund.  Highly liquid and has the lowest fees out there at 0.05%.  You can augment this with a world-minus-US fund if you want.  No need to buy sector or specific geography funds when you can get the whole market for less. Add some bond funds and alternative investments (but not too much) if you want to be fully diversified.
In 2008, 10 year treasuries were up 20.1%, to gold's 4.96%. Respectfully, if I were certain if a market drop, I'd just short the market, easily done by shorting SPY or other index ETFs.  If you wish to buy gold, the easiest and least expensive way is to buy an ETF, GLD to be specific. It trades like a stock, for what that's worth. There are those who would suggest this is not like buying gold, it's just 'paper'. I believe otherwise. It's a non leveraged, fully backed ETF. I try not to question other's political or religious beliefs or as it pertains to this ETF, their conspiracy theories.
Vanguard offers an index fund. Their FTSE Social Index Fund. For more information on it, go here.
"Your relatively young age and the current very low bond interest rates make annuities a very poor buy. And most of the other suggestions you have mentioned have very low diversification, which exposes you to imprudent risks. Buying shares for dividend income can solve the diversification problem by averaging out your totals as different shares change by different amounts. There is no really good solution to the problem of share price volatility except to ignore it: Take your dividends and pretty much ignore the bouncing around of the share price. They usually recover in a year or three. Owning shares of companies that reliably increase their dividend payouts is the only investment type that gives you both diversification and regularly increasing income to counteract inflation over the years. Read some investment books and consider consulting with a financial advisor who charges a fee for the advice. I.e., you don't want ""free"" advice."
"Vanguard has a Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund.  Their web page says ""Some individuals choose investments based on social and personal beliefs. For this type of investor, we have offered Vanguard FTSE Social Index Fund since 2000. This low-cost fund seeks to track a benchmark of large- and mid-capitalization stocks that have been screened for certain social, human rights, and environmental criteria. In addition to stock market volatility, one of the fund’s other key risks is that this socially conscious approach may produce returns that diverge from those of the broad market."" It looks like it would meet the qualifications you require, plus Vanguard funds usually have very low fees."
Don't really know much about futures but I'll give you a couple of options: Assuming that you are just looking around right now about currency investing, are you sure (I mean, really sure) that you want to do it?
Transfer your savings to a dollar-based CD. Or even better, buy some gold on them.
This may make Australian exports cheaper, which can be a good thing. However it is at the expense of making imports more expensive. Look to Japan, which is devaluing their currency, and is a large importer of energy:  I wont say its bad or unnecessary to hold money in other currencies. However, keep in mind that all AUD-denominated assets will, or at least should, rise as the currency falls. If just AUD/USD falls this may not apply, but if AUD is weakened all around it should hold true. Again, look to Japan, where the Nikkei is closely correlated with the strength of the yen:  Another possibility is to buy gold which should rise in AUD terms but other forces are at work with gold price so some would not agree with this.
Lots of good advice on investing already. You may also want to think about two things: A Bausparvertrag. You can set this up for different monthly saving rates. You'll get a modest interest payment, and once you have saved up enough (the contract is zuteilungsreif), you will be eligible for a loan at a low rate. However, you can only use the loan for building, buying or renovating real estate. With interest rates as low as they are right now, this is not overly attractive. However, depending on your salary, you may qualify for subsidies, and these could indeed be rather attractive. This may be helpful (in German). A Riester-Rente. This is a subsidized saving scheme - you save something every year and again get subsidies at the end of the year. I think the salary thresholds where you qualify for a subsidy are a bit higher for the Riester-Rente than for a Bausparvertrag, and even if you don't qualify for a subsidy, your contributions will be deducted from your taxable income. I wouldn't invest all my leftover money in these, considering that you commit yourself for the medium to long term, but they might well be attractive options for at least part of your money, say 20-25% of what you aim at saving every month. Finally, as others have written: banks and insurance companies exist to make money, and they live off their provisions. Get an independent financial advisor you pay by the hour, who doesn't get provisions, and have him help you.
If you are more interested in implementing the general approach of GFP rather than the specific details, what I would recommend is: The Vanguard and superannuation diversified funds have a very similar internal split to the GFP with a mix of local, first-world and emerging market shares, bonds, and property trusts. This is pretty much fire-and-forget: contribute every month and they will take care of rebalancing, spreading across asset classes, and tax calculations. By my calculations the cost is very similar, the diversification is very similar, and it's much easier. The only thing they don't generally cover is a precious metals allocation, and if you want that, just put 5% of your money into the ASX:GOLD ETF, or something similar."
"I'm really surprised more people didn't recommend UGA or USO specifically.  These have been mentioned in the past on a myriad of sites as ways to hedge against rising prices.  I'm sure they would work quite well as an investment opportunity.  They are ETF's that invest in nearby futures and constantly roll the position to the next delivery date.  This creates a higher than usual expense ratio, I believe, but it could still be a good investment.  However, be forewarned that they make you a ""partner"" by buying the stock so it can mildly complicate your tax return."
Diversification is an important aspect of precious metals investing.  Therefore I would suggest diversifying in a number of different ways:
A few weeks ago, I was thinking about this exact thing (except swap Euros for Canadian Dollars). The good news is that there are options. Option 1: yes, buy Indian fixed deposits Interest rates are high right now- you can get up to 9% p.a. It boils down to your sentiment about the Indian rupee going forward. For instance, let's say you purchase a deposit for amount x at 9% p.a., you can have it double to almost 2x in 10 years. Three things can happen in 10 years: Are you optimistic about Indian governance and economy going forward? If you are, go for it! I certainly am. Option 2: heard of FCNR? Look in to FCNR deposits. I don't know about Europe, but in Canada, the best rate for a 1 year deposit is approximately 1.5%. However, through Foreign Currency Non-Resident (FCNR) deposits, you can get up to 4% or 5%. The other benefit is that you don't have to convert currency to INR which results in conversion savings. However, only major currencies can be used to open such accounts.
Unless you're Los Angeles. Because they have a lot of the facilities already. Plus they can now use it to insist all the metro expansions and infrastructure upgrades are completed on time. You can pass all kinds of local resolutions because the Olympics are coming.
No, I don't mean like company towns. I mean that if the government did not provide roads (we'll use roads as an example) then a private company would see an area of the market that needed service and profit was to be made and fill that whole. Roads would exist, probably in some form similar to toll roads, and we would still have our infrastructure.
I must humbly disagree with your analysis.  These politicians want to help out their fossil fuel buddies because they know once they leave office they can then work as lobbyists for the industry.  They do not need to be misled or lied to.    3 former mayors of my city now work as Investment Bankers getting paid at least $2,000,000 a year to help companies get contracts from the city they were mayors of.
"&gt; In Moraga, where the council discussed establishing a poet laureate position before approving the fiscal distress declaration  The problem has a lot more to do with management and priorities than ""people are not doing a damn thing to help their local communities."" If a community takes in sufficient taxes to meet their needs and squanders it, people with sense aren't going to ""help"" (whatever you mean by that)."
Note investors freely bought these from Treasury, meaning the market thought at the time of purchase that this was a good invesement. It is *not* the government merely wishing more money into existance. It is market forces that require more money for trades and is selling goods from the marketplace of (presumably) equal value to the Fed. This increases liquidity, but takes valuable assets from circulation. When the Fed wishes to shrink the money supply, they sell these bonds back into circulation basically by offering better terms than Treasury. In fact, you can find graphs of the Fed operations and see how every December they inject money for more Christmas shpping (need more coupons for more trade) and every January they extract some. So open market transactions, buying and selling goods at market prices in the marketplace along with other traders, is how the Fed injects and removes money from the money supply. This is the primary mechanism that the Fed uses to control the number of coupons in the economy. Finally, a little about reserve requirements and the money multiplier, since it affects so much of the number of coupons in play. This also I must simplify drastically. Each bank needs to hold 1/10 of all deposits in cash. The rest can be lent, which lands in another bank, which again can be lent, etc... Thus each $1 deposited can result in loans totalling 9/10 + (9/10)^2 + (9/10)^3 +... = 9 more dollars. Many people claim that banks are printing money, which is nonsense, since each also has an equal debt to pay to the person they borrowed from. When all loans are paid back there is no net money gain. However, this allows for each $1 the Fed injects by buying bonds for there to be up to $9 in the economy, *if banks all loan to the fullest extent*. Banks tend to want to loan since loaned money makes them profit. Banks used to loan too much and runs on the banks caused significant problems, which is why laws were made to require *all* banks to have the same reserve requirement.
"Firstly, ""the government"" is the people. So should the Government be involved in Fire and Police departments, military services, roads/highways, water/sewer, the electrical grid, air transportation, trains, the National Parks, schools, libraries, state colleges, zoning and municipal bylaws? The government exists to serve the people's interests and not those of profiteering business lobbyists."
Can I sell section 54EC infra bonds before maturity? That would depend on the specific bond, some can be sold before maturity but after the specified lock-in period. Some are non-negotiable / non-transferable and cannot be sold before maturity The prospectus mentions that bonds in physical form can be transferred to another person or entity. Are there financial institutions that offer to buy these bonds? How do I find them? Banks will not do this. Any leading broker can help assist you in finding a buyer. Generally you may not find a good deal and the buyer doesn't get any tax benefit and would buy this only for returns and hence may want to buy this cheaper. The broker can assist you with the process, it involves sending of the physical certificate along with a letter and ownership details of new buyer to the registrar of the respective entity. A new certificate will be issued to the new owner.