Of course not, this is confidential information in the same way that I cannot phone up your bank and ask to see a list of the transactions that you have made. Any bank has to be extremely careful about protecting the private transactions of it's customers and would be subject to heavy fines if it revealed this information without the customer's consent.


Can someone please explain the following in more detail please. I'm not exactly sure how and why synthetics work. > Instead of having credit default swap reference a single company like Exxon, J.P Morgan bundled together a large, diversified basket of credit derivatives that referenced hundreds of corporate credits... those who invested in J.P Morgan's invention didn't own a piece of the actual corporate loan. Instead, they owned credit default swaps - the performance of which was determined by the performance of the underlying corporate credits. This is from *All the Devils are Here* by Bethany Mclean and Joe Nocera


I wouldn't personally spend any money on an appraisal. Spend some time yourself looking at Zillow.com and maybe Realtor.com and other sites to review recent sales in your specific area. Not the houses a mile away. Try to find comparables to yours. The key factor is dollars per square foot. See if the trend over the last couple of years is upwards or downwards in dollars per square foot of living area. If it's downwards, I wouldn't invest for sure.


"Other answers didn't seem to cover it, but most ""0%"" bank loans (often offered to credit card holders in the form of balance transfer checks), aside from less-obvious fees like already-mentioned late fees, also charge an actual loan fee, typically 2-3% (or a minimum floor amount) - that was the deal with every single transfer 0% offer I ever saw from a bank. So, effectively, even if you pay off the loan perfectly, on time, and within 0% period, you STILL got a 3% loan and not 0% (assuming 0% period lasts 12 months which is often the case)."


Short Answer Collections agencies and the businesses they collect for are two different animals. If you don't want this to hurt your credit I suggest you deal directly with the hospital. Pay the bill, but prior to paying it get something in writing that specifically says that this will not be reported onto your credit. That is of course if the hospital even lets you pay them directly. Usually once something is sold to a collections company it's written off. Long Answer Credit reports are kind of a nightmare to deal with. The hospital just wants their money so they will sell debt off to collections companies. The collections companies want to make money on the debt they've bought so they will do what ever it takes to get it out of you, including dinging your credit report. The credit bureaus are the biggest nightmare to deal with of all. Once something is reported on your credit history they do little to nothing to remove it. You can report it online but this is a huge mistake because when you report online you wave your rights to sue the credit bureaus if they don't investigate the matter properly. This of course leads to massive amounts of claims being under investigated. So what are your options once something hits your credit history? I know this all sounds bleak but the reason I go into such depth is that they likely have already reported it to the credit bureaus and you just don't see it reported yet. Good luck to you. Get a bottle of aspirin.


For an investor , I understand its a higher return on investment; but I was wondering if an investor is actually investing in the minerals, or the means of delivery such as ports, rail, trucks, roads, etc; or is that abstracted away


leveraged etf's are killer to hold because they seek to return some multiple of the DAILY price movement in an index. so twm seeks to return 2x the daily move in the russell 2000 Let's trace this out assuming (just to make it easy) large daily moves, and that you start with $1000 and the russell 2000 starts at 100. start of first day rusell 2000 == 100 you have $1000 end of first day (up 10% nice!) rusell 2000 == 110 you have $1200 end of second day (~9.1% down) russell 20000 == 100 you have $981.60 so the russell 2000 can move nowhere and you have lost money! This doesn't apply to all etf's just leveraged etf's. You would be better buying more of a straight inverse etf (RWM) and holding that for a longer time if you wanted to hedge.


Yeah, I got one of those and didn't look at the fine print. They gave me a 250 dollar credit limit with so many initial fees just for signing up that the card already had $180 on it when it came.


One of the key questions experts should ask when they first get started to work with a financial adviser or investment specialist is how they get paid for their expert services. There are generally four types of compensation plans for financial consultants.


I guess it's a thing called cant keep up with demand and the rest of the money going towards normal bills and shit. I have no idea tbh. Just assumed she was throwing me a bone to help me with my own hopes and dreams and 200k a year sounds pretty good to me


"You are a teacher with income. Presumably, between you and your spouse-to-be, more than $5500. That's all that matters. Unless, of course you make ""too much money"" (i.e. $184K or over). That's another story. The actual deposit can be from any source. The example we often give is that a teenager with legitimate income can have a Roth, up to the income or $5500, whichever is lower, funded by gifts from a parent, or from savings. They don't need to turn over the money they made. The money you are getting is a gift, and it's your money to do what you wish."


Whole life insurance accumulates a cash value on a pre-tax basis. With a paid-up policy, you make payments until a particular age (usually 65 or 70), at which point you are insured for the rest of your life or a very old age like 120. You can also access this pool of money via loans while you are still alive, but you reduce your benefit until you repay the loans. This may be advantageous if you have a high net worth. Also, if you own a business or farm, a permanent policy may be desirable if the transfer of your property to heirs is likely to generate alot of transactional costs like taxes. Nowadays there are probably better ways to do that too. Whole life/universal life is a waste of money 95%+ of the time. An example, my wife and I were recently offered open-enrollment (no medical exam) insurance policies our employers in New York. We're in our early 30's. I bought a term policy paying about $400k which costs $19/mo. My wife was offered a permanent policy that pays $100k which costs $83/mo, and would have a cash value of $35k at age 65. If you invested the $60/mo difference between those policies and earned 5%/year with 30% taxes on the gains, you'd have over $40k with 4x more coverage.


Much as I hate to agree with you (because my personal bias is towards the belief China is cooking the books in a significant way) we should consider that this is the most likely explanation. Reconciling exactly a superset of data against hard-to-measure subsets is near impossible and, in an economy as dynamic as China's, it would be very difficult to get this right to such a small margin.


I'd say the best course of action would be to call the card issuer and ask them. Converting can definitely be done, but you'll have to enquire about the bonus.


"So... is Kroger angry with the use of a word that starts with ""P"" and the word ""Selection?"" Back in the day, I thought the Kirkland Signature branding was kind of kitchy, but it's almost taken it's place as an actual good value brand for me."


It depends completely on the current order book for that security. There is literally no telling how that buy order would move the price of a stock in general.


You should start a dispute with the credit card company, and they might be able to recover some/all of the money. Usually, if you act fast enough, credit companies (on the merchant's side) have enough of the deposits not yet disbursed to the merchant, and they'll just reverse the charge. The earlier you start the process - the more chances you have. Otherwise you'll have to sue, I'm not familiar with the Canadian legal system.


"I wouldn't tbh, it's getting very capitalistic and corporatized and getting heavily influenced by the right, to the point that I'd say it's not really all that blue. It's more central leaning than left leaning now and it seems like that line is getting moved. Hell, Austin's anti large corporation slogan of ""Keep Austin Weird"" has been gone to capitalism and can be seen at Walmart on tshirts, coaters, bumper stickers, etc."


Suppose that the fixed overhead costs of delivering a service, not related to the actual volume of sales, are $50 million per year. Suppose the variable costs on top are $100 per customer per year. Suppose further that 1% of the population buys the service. In the US, 3.2 million people buy the service, and it costs $116 per person to deliver it ($100 plus $50 million divided by 3.2 million). In Australia, 230,000 people buy it, and it costs $317 per person per year to deliver it ($100 plus $50 million divided by 230,000). The larger your market, the cheaper everything is, and Australia is a very small market compared with the USA, the EU, China or India.


I called the IRS (click here for IRS contact info) and they said I do not need to get a new EIN. I could have just filed the appropriate employer federal tax return (940/941) and then the filing requirements would have been updated. But while I was on the phone, they just updated the filing requirements for my LLC so I am all good now (I still need to file the correct form and make the correct payments, etc. but I can use this same EIN going forward). Disclaimer: Don't trust me (or this answer) for tax advice (your situation may be different). The IRS person on the phone was very helpful so I recommend calling them if you are in a similar situation. FYI, I have found calling the IRS to always be very helpful.


Something I wanted to posit: Do you have a life insurance policy, either taken out yourself or offered through your company? Many of these policies will pay out prior to the death of the covered individual, given statements by medical professionals that the person has a terminal illness or condition. The benefit, once disbursed, can be used for almost anything, including to pay down a mortgage, cover medical bills and other care expenses, etc. If you have such a policy, I urge you to look into it; that is the money that should be used for your end-of-life care and to ease the burden on your family, not your retirement savings. Your savings, if possible, should be left to continue to compound to provide your wife with a nest egg to retire with.


Well it all kind of depends. The Realtor is your pro, and you should communicate further with him. Is this a neighborhood on the decline? Is there a good reason to make such a low offer? Are you totally off base when you think 85K is fair, and if so why? Is he just working his tail off for you (a great thing)? One thing that is a key to this negotiation is financing. What does your financing status look like? A reasonable cash offer with no contingencies and a quick close might be less than 70K. A person with strong financing can get a better discount then a person that is questionable. It could be that the Realtor is testing the waters to find the bottom price. The home selling season is closed (typically the summer), and the home has been on the market for a bit. Offering 70K might mean a counter at 82K, so you can work on an offer between 80 and 82. To me, it sounds like this guy is working for you. You should thank him. It is pretty hard to find a realtor that is willing to negotiate his pay down in order to save you money. Also he can answer the closing cost question better than us as he is more familiar with your particular market.


Disgusting. I've heard of people discovering that they have huge balloon payments at the end of their contracts that they must pay in order to keep their dogs. And in the small print people give the company the right to come into their homes to actually repossess the animals. These companies should be fined out of existence.


They're the equivalent of an Apple Store. Every Kindle, Echo, and TV stick is on display. They want to build brand awareness and cachet. The books are mostly just there for branding reasons and for foot traffic increase, as far as I know.


First, you should probably have a proper consultation with a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State). In fact you should have had it before you started, but that ship has sailed. You're talking about start-up expenses. You can generally deduct up to $5000 in the year your business starts, and the expenses in excess will be amortized over 180 months (15 years). This is per the IRC Sec. 195. The amortization starts when your business is active (i.e.: you can buy the property, but not actually open the restaurant - you cannot start the depreciation). I have a couple questions about accounting - should all the money I spent be a part of capital spending? Or is it just a part of it? If it qualifies as start-up/organizational expenses - it should be capitalized. If it is spent on capital assets - then it should also be capitalized, but for different reasons and differently. For example, costs of filing paperwork for permits is a start-up expense. Buying a commercial oven is a capital asset purchase which should be depreciated separately, as buying the tables and silverware. If it is a salary expense to your employees - then it is a current expense and shouldn't be capitalized. Our company is LLC if this matters. It matters to how it affects your personal tax return.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/next-recession-prepared/544391/) reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The economy has had three jobless recoveries following the last three recessions, and the next recession would likely prompt a fourth. > &quot;Right now, one in four unemployed workers are receiving benefits. There are 15 states out there where the share of workers is less than one in five. In the southeast, the cuts have been so deep there&#039;s barely an unemployment-insurance program there.&quot; In the event of another recession, without strong and swift federal and state intervention, many Americans would face far less help from unemployment insurance than they did last time around, he said. > In terms of global circumstances, political will, and fiscal and monetary firepower the next recession seems in some ways more difficult to fight than the last. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/79xzco/the_us_isnt_prepared_for_the_next_recession/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~238467 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **recession**^#1 **last**^#2 **state**^#3 **work**^#4 **economy**^#5"


First, I would want cash around the time I made the move. I would like enough for a 20% down payment, moving expenses, and enough for 6 months of mortgage payments on the existing house. This way if the house does not sell quickly, you are safe. As you approach the time it comes to move, you can work backwards on how much time you would need to accumulate that kind of money. Second, this does not have to be an all or nothing kind of thing. Perhaps you use some of the proceeds to beef up your retirement, some to pay down the mortgage, and some for savings. You could be very wrong about the market, even so it is a wonderful opportunity to add to your nest egg at such a young age. My own self prefers to do things in ratios. In your case I might do 10% of the proceeds in for retirement, 10% for savings, and 80% for mortgage reduction. (You may want to also add some charitable giving.) I really like paying down the mortgage. Not only is it a risk less investment, it reduces your personal risk.


"private investors that don't have the time or expertise for active investment. This may be known as every private investor. An index fund ensures average returns. The bulk of active trading is done by private institutions with bucketloads of experts studying the markets and AI scraping every bit of data it can get (from the news, stock market, the weather reports, etc...). Because of that, to get above average returns an average percent of the time, singular private investors have to drastically beat the average large team of individuals/software. Now that index ETF are becoming so fashionable, could there be a tipping point at which the market signals that active investors send become so diluted that this ""index ETF parasitism"" collapses? How would this look like and would it affect only those who invest in index ETF or would it affect the stock market more generally? To make this question perhaps more on-topic: Is the fact (or presumption) that index ETF rely indirectly on active investment decisions by other market participants, as explained above, a known source of concern for personal investment? This is a well-covered topic. Some people think this will be an issue. Others point out that it is a hard issue to bootstrap. I gravitate to this view. A small active market can support a large number of passive investors. If the number of active investors ever got too low, the gains & likelihood of gains that could be made from being an active investor would rise and generate more active investors. Private investing makes sense in a few cases. One example is ethics. Some people may not want to be invested, even indirectly, in certain companies."


">> Darling, if you are not a fan of Hillary (and the current DNC?), than why are you against Trump, who is not even career GOP politician? > I have already addressed this stupid idea that someone HAS to like one or the other. Are you serious? Why would you vote for someone you don't like? I would never vote for someone I don't like! I can't believe I have to explain that to you. Further, why would you even vote for a Party you don't like? Another question: **I assume you did not vote for Trump. Is it because you did not like Trump?** Do you get why I am asked this question? > Trump has no idea what he's doing. Absolutely not true and total fake news. Let's start with Hillary, who has been in politics for 30 years and even secretary of state: does she know how to handle e-mail(s)? Does she know how to handle Russia? Does she know how to handle Benghazi? Can you tell me of one ""accomplishment"" by Hillary in her long service? Back to Trump: he's very smart, which is mostly to choose the right people to do the work for him. He's correct with his agenda: against TPP, against illegal aliens, against terrorist supporting countries, investing in infrastructure, creating jobs, bringing jobs back to America, replacing the horrendous ObamaCare (AKA ""affordable"" Care Act), etc. **What action by Trump so far show that he's not smart?** Give me one example, please."


I was raised to expect nothing from anyone. I walked 3 mi to and from my job 5 days a week. Anyway, I don't speak from an ivory tower. I grinded my ass off and kept my head down. You may be surprised where some grit and determination can get you. Cheers.


Smart parents not wanting to get stuck with a student loan or co-signing on a loan. because rent is so high Are you able to live with your parents? Is there anyway to reduce the cost of rent like renting a room? Can you move somewhere where the rent is cheaper? working 25 hours per week Working 25 hours per week and taking 6 hours is a pretty light schedule. It is not even 40 hours per week. What is stopping you from working 40 hours and paying for school from your salary? In my own life I created a pretty crappy situation for myself when I was a young man. I really wanted to go to a prestigious university, but ended up going to a community college, and then to a university that was lesser known in a less expensive area. I had to work like crazy, upwards of 50 hours per week. I also took a full load in a difficult degree program. You probably don't have to go to the extremes that I went through, but you can work more. Most adults work at their jobs well more than 40 hours per week, then come home and continue to work (on the house, raising kids, trying to start a side business, etc...). So you might as well become an adult now. There are ways to become independent from your parents for FAFSA like have a baby, get married, or join the military. I'd only recommend the last one as you will also receive the GI Bill. Another option is to try and obtain a job that offers financial aid.


There is no interest outstanding, per se. There is only principal outstanding. Initially, principal outstanding is simply your initial loan amount. The first two sections discuss the math needed - just some arithmetic. The interest that you owe is typically calculated on a monthly basis. The interested owed formula is simply (p*I)/12, where p is the principal outstanding, I is your annual interest, and you're dividing by 12 to turn annual to monthly. With a monthly payment, take out interest owed. What you have left gets applied into lowering your principal outstanding. If your actual monthly payment is less than the interest owed, then you have negative amortization where your principal outstanding goes up instead of down. Regardless of how the monthly payment comes about (eg prepay, underpay, no payment), you just apply these two calculations above and you're set. The sections below will discuss these cases in differing payments in detail. For a standard 30 year fixed rate loan, the monthly payment is calculated to pay-off the entire loan in 30 years. If you pay exactly this amount every month, your loan will be paid off, including the principal, in 30 years. The breakdown of the initial payment will be almost all interest, as you have noticed. Of course, there is a little bit of principal in that payment or your principal outstanding would not decrease and you would never pay off the loan. If you pay any amount less than the monthly payment, you extend the duration of your loan to longer than 30 years. How much less than the monthly payment will determine how much longer you extend your loan. If it's a little less, you may extend your loan to 40 years. It's possible to extend the loan to any duration you like by paying less. Mathematically, this makes sense, but legally, the loan department will say you're in breach of your contract. Let's pay a little less and see what happens. If you pay exactly the interest owed = (p*I)/12, you would have an infinite duration loan where your principal outstanding would always be the same as your initial principal or the initial amount of your loan. If you pay less than the interest owed, you will actually owe more every month. In other words, your principal outstanding will increase every month!!! This is called negative amortization. Of course, this includes the case where you make zero payment. You will owe more money every month. Of course, for most loans, you cannot pay less than the required monthly payments. If you do, you are in default of the loan terms. If you pay more than the required monthly payment, you shorten the duration of your loan. Your principal outstanding will be less by the amount that you overpaid the required monthly payment by. For example, if your required monthly payment is $200 and you paid $300, $100 will go into reducing your principal outstanding (in addition to the bit in the $200 used to pay down your principal outstanding). Of course, if you hit the lottery and overpay by the entire principal outstanding amount, then you will have paid off the entire loan in one shot! When you get to non-standard contracts, a loan can be structured to have any kind of required monthly payments. They don't have to be fixed. For example, there are Balloon Loans where you have small monthly payments in the beginning and large monthly payments in the last year. Is the math any different? Not really - you still apply the one important formula, interest owed = (p*I)/12, on a monthly basis. Then you break down the amount you paid for the month into the interest owed you just calculated and principal. You apply that principal amount to lowering your principal outstanding for the next month. Supposing that what you have posted is accurate, the most likely scenario is that you have a structured 5 year car loan where your monthly payments are smaller than the required fixed monthly payment for a 5 year loan, so even after 2 years, you owe as much or more than you did in the beginning! That means you have some large balloon payments towards the end of your loan. All of this is just part of the contract and has nothing to do with your prepay. Maybe I'm incorrect in my thinking, but I have a question about prepaying a loan. When you take out a mortgage on a home or a car loan, it is my understanding that for the first years of payment you are paying mostly interest. Correct. So, let's take a mortgage loan that allows prepayment without penalty. If I have a 30 year mortgage and I have paid it for 15 years, by the 16th year almost all the interest on the 30 year loan has been paid to the bank and I'm only paying primarily principle for the remainder of the loan. Incorrect. It seems counter-intuitive, but even in year 16, about 53% of your monthly payment still goes to interest!!! It is hard to see this unless you try to do the calculations yourself in a spreadsheet. If suddenly I come into a large sum of money and decide I want to pay off the mortgage in the 16th year, but the bank has already received all the interest computed for 30 years, shouldn't the bank recompute the interest for 16 years and then recalculate what's actually owed in effect on a 16 year loan not a 30 year loan? It is my understanding that the bank doesn't do this. What they do is just tell you the balance owed under the 30 year agreement and that's your payoff amount. Your last sentence is correct. The payoff amount is simply the principal outstanding plus any interest from (p*I)/12 that you owe. In your example of trying to payoff the rest of your 30 year loan in year 16, you will owe around 68% of your original loan amount. That seems unfair. Shouldn't the loan be recalculated as a 16 year loan, which it actually has become? In fact, you do have the equivalent of a 15 year loan (30-15=15) at about 68% of your initial loan amount. If you refinanced, that's exactly what you would see. In other words, for a 30y loan at 5% for $10,000, you have monthly payments of $53.68, which is exactly the same as a 15y loan at 5% for $6,788.39 (your principal outstanding after 15 years of payments), which would also have monthly payments of $53.68. A few years ago I had a 5 year car loan. I wanted to prepay it after 2 years and I asked this question to the lender. I expected a reduction in the interest attached to the car loan since it didn't go the full 5 years. They basically told me I was crazy and the balance owed was the full amount of the 5 year car loan. I didn't prepay it because of this. That is the wrong reason for not prepaying. I suspect you have misunderstood the terms of the loan - look at the Variable Monthly Payments section above for a discussion. The best thing to do with all loans is to read the terms carefully and do the calculations yourself in a spreadsheet. If you are able to get the cashflows spelled out in the contract, then you have understood the loan.


"The point here is actually about banks, or is in reference to banks. They expect you know how a savings account at a bank works, but not mutual funds, and so are trying to dispel an erroneous notion that you might have -- that the CBIC will insure your investment in the fund. Banks work by taking in deposits and lending that money out via mortgages. The mortgages can last up to 30 years, but the deposits are ""on demand"". Which means you can pull your money out at any time. See the problem? They're maintaining a fiction that that money is there, safe and sound in the bank vault, ready to be returned whenever you want it, when in fact it's been loaned out. And can't be called back quickly, either. They know only a little bit of that money will be ""demanded"" by depositors at any given time, so they keep a percentage called a ""reserve"" to satisfy that, er, demand. The rest, again, is loaned out. Gone. And usually that works out just fine. Except sometimes it doesn't, when people get scared they might not get their money back, and they all go to the bank at the same time to demand their on-demand deposits back. This is called a ""run on the bank"", and when that happens, the bank ""fails"". 'Cause it ain't got the money. What's failing, in fact, is the fiction that your money is there whenever you want it. And that's really bad, because when that happens to you at your bank, your friends the customers of other banks start worrying about their money, and run on their banks, which fail, which cause more people to worry and try to get their cash out, lather, rinse repeat, until the whole economy crashes. See -- The Great Depression. So, various governments introduced ""Deposit Insurance"", where the government will step in with the cash, so when you panic and pull all your money out of the bank, you can go home happy, cash in hand, and don't freak all your friends out. Therefore, the fear that your money might not really be there is assuaged, and it doesn't spread like a mental contagion. Everyone can comfortably go back to believing the fiction, and the economy goes back to merrily chugging along. Meanwhile, with mutual funds & ETFs, everyone understands the money you put in them is invested and not sitting in a gigantic vault, and so there's no need for government insurance to maintain the fiction. And that's the point they're trying to make. Poorly, I might add, where their wording is concerned."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/oct/16/tax-biggest-us-companies-uk#zoomed-picture Has a nice infographic (and an actual infographic, not merely a diagram or picture as too many people on this sight seem think infographics are) on a bunch of large US companies with their turnover, net profits tax paid and percentage of net profit paid as tax.


It's an old problem that extends from intellectual property rights which were designed around inventions and patients. Given the current popularity of the 'mash-up' generation that sees value and merit in using part or most of anothers work and calling it original, there is a large disconnect when it comes to where and how usage should be permitted. The laws governing this particular publication depend on when it was published, what was precedent then and what addendums have been added in between.


"Hmmm... Maybe you didn't. I'll concede that. But being a mod is irrelevant. Maybe being on mobile fucked me, or my eyes are finally going. Now. >how in my original comment, pointing out a difference between ""making money"" and ""turning a profit"" displays my ignorance of the distinction between revenue and profit. First, ""making money"" means profitability. If I spent 50 grand on widgets and sold them all for a dollar, did I ""make money?"""


Although I have not tried, you can check out the Western Union Money Transfers. http://www.westernunion.com/WUCOMWEB/staticMid.do?method=load&pagename=serviceToBank


"In most parts of the US, even the more expensive parts, a $100k income can afford the rent or mortgage on a reasonably safe* 2-3 bedroom home within an hour commute of your work, plus the means to commute, plus health insurance, plus retirement savings, plus at least some discretionary income (i.e., choice between living in a nicer neighborhood, eating out more often, buying brand-name apparel, etc). In some places, $100k affords a very comfortable lifestyle, with plenty of savings. A lot of people who live in or around big, expensive cities think it is outrageous that their $100k income doesn't get them a designer apartment, a wardrobe full of fitted suits, eating out twice a week, two overseas vacations per year, etc. They confuse not having a Hollywood lifestyle, with being poor. Those are some of the most obnoxious people in the world. *because this post is sure to draw the ire of some privileged people who think that ""reasonably safe"" means top 5%, I will offer the definition of ""reasonably safe"" as one of the top three quintiles of US zip codes with lowest violent crime rates per capita."


What? I think you're really confused. ~1946 - ~1964 is the Baby Boomers. All of the policies that were put in place that led up to first the .COM bubble and then the housing bubble, took place in the late 80s and through the 90s. Most of Gen X was somewhere between their late 20s/early 30s (for the oldest) and elementary school (for the youngest, born in 81/82). The small percentage of that group that was even out of school during those years was very likely in their first few years on the job. Even while the events eventually transpired (2000-2008), most of Gen X was still either in school, or in their first few years on the job (the very oldest of them was around 40, and finally at a point where they could start being considered as middle-managers). Only now, in 2012, are we finally starting to see the bulk of the power starting to shift, as the Baby Boomers finally begin to retire, and Gen X starts taking their place. In all actuality, the collapse in 2008 could turn out to be the line in the sand where the Boomer rule ended, and Gen X took over. In 15 years, if things have gotten worse, then we can all get back together and blame Gen X...but as far as the mess we're in currently? That's the Boomers.


There's a cool calculator at Money Chimp that lets you plug in a start and end year and see what the compound annual growth rate of the S&P 500. The default date range of 1871 through 2010 gives a rate of 8.92% for example. Something you need to take into account when comparing returns to a whole life policy is what happens to the cash value in your policy when you die. Many of these policies are written so that your beneficiaries only get the face value of the policy, and the insurance company keeps the cash value.


The thing you need to keep in mind is that if you take on debt, you need to have a plan to pay it off and execute on it. You also need to understand what your carrying cost is (what you will pay in finance charges every month.) There are times when you need to take on debt in order to be a productive person. For example, in many places in the US, you need a car in order to have a job. It's ludicrous for someone to assert that you shouldn't take on any debt in order to get a reliable vehicle. That doesn't mean you go out and lease the fanciest car that you can get on your income. In this case, I'd say it's a bit of a grey area. Could you live in an unfurnished apartment for a while? Perhaps. Many people would have a hard time living like that and it could affect your ability to perform at work. I would argue that buying a decent mattress to sleep on falls under the same category as getting a car so that you can work. You don't want to be missing work because your back is in spasm from sleeping on the floor or a worn out mattress. As far as the rest of it goes, it really depends on how fast you can pay it off. If you are looking at more than a few months (6 tops) to pay off the purchase in full, you should reassess. Realize that the interest you are paying is increasing the cost of the furniture and act accordingly. As mentioned, you can often get 0% financing for a limited period. Understand that if you don't pay off the entire balance in that period, you will normally be retroactively charged interest on the entire starting amount and that interest rate will likely be quite high. The problem with credit is when you start using it and continually growing the balance. It's easy to keep saying that you will start paying it off later and the next thing you know you are buried. It's not a big one-time purchase (by itself) that normally gets people into trouble, it's continual spending beyond their means month after month.


There are lots of reasons for the differences in price. Can you go to (a) bank, (b) forex bureau and (c) central bank and post back both bid and offer prices at a given time so we can consider the spread? What you've said above for (a) and (b) are presumably USDGHS offer prices, because they are higher than the (c) central bank price. If a bank or bureau bid price was higher than the central bank offer price then you could buy GHS from the central bank and then sell them to a bureau for a higher price, an almost no risk arbitrage, other than the armoured car to deliver the funds from central bank to bureau. What you've posted is: (a) a bank will sell you 1 USD for 3.4 GHS (b) a bureau will sell you 1 USD for 3.7 GHS (c) we can see the bid/offer for central bank is 3.1949/3.1975 which means the central bank, if you have an account, will sell you 1 USD for 3.1975 GHS. You clearly want to buy USD from the central bank, then the bank, then the bureau. Anyway, the reason for these differences is all to do with liquidity conditions in the local areas, the customer types, and the frequency of orders versus inventory... Think about it. The central bank has the most frequency of orders and the biggest customers so it offers the lower price, then the bank, and then the bureau. I think the bureau is the worst price there... You have to explain further :)


I can make withdrawals immediately, 2x per month. I wasn't told the money would be tied up. And also, although it doesn't count for much, I'd like to trade under a formal prop firm just so I could put it on my resume, people wouldn't put much weight on performance in a retail account. Atleast, I don't believe so, I could be wrong


You are describing a situation that is different, than what the video presented. The video is mainly pointing out concentrated wealth. Sure, what you are doing to retire early is good. However, if you get to the point where you start to be a hoarder of wealth; then, you become part of the issue.


Go with a Vanguard ETF. I had a lengthy discussion with a successful broker who runs a firm in Chicago. He boiled all of finance down to Vanguard ETF and start saving with a roth IRA. 20 years of psychology research shows that there's a .01 correlation (that's 1/100 of 1%) of stock/mutual fund performance to prediction. That's effectively zero. You can read more about it in the book Thinking Fast and Slow. Investors have ignored this research for years. The truth is you'd be just as successful if you picked your mutual funds out of a hat. But I'll recommend you go with a broker's advice.


If anyone from Atari is reading this. Make an idiot proof box like the Nintendo classic that has all of your classic library on it. Make it Wi-Fi enabled. Allow other player to connect their console to yours to be player 2+. Include things like native twitch / YouTube streaming.


Should I have a W-2 re-issued? A W-2 can be corrected and a new copy will be filed with the IRS if your employer incorrectly reported your income and withholding on a W-2 that they issued. In this case, though the employer didn't withhold those taxes, they should not reissue the W-2 unless they plan to pay your portion of the payroll taxes that were not withheld. (If they paid your share of the taxes, that would increase your gross income.) Who pays for the FICA I should have paid last year? Both you and your employer owe 7.65% each for FICA taxes. By law your employer is required to pay their half and you are required to pay your half. Both you and your employer owe additional taxes because of this mistake. Your other questions assume that your employer will pay your portion of the taxes withheld. You employer could decide to do that, but this also assumes that it was your employer's fault that the mistakes were made. If you transitioned to resident alien but did not inform your employer, how is that your employer's fault?


"When I was getting my Business Admin degree, WFM was the hot thing because of the current ""green revolution"" and I had tons of access to management at all levels because of my job. So I pretty much built all the work on my degree around them. Nothing quite like having interviews with regional buyers and store managers as a primary source on a paper or project. Quite frankly, I think Mackey was pretty much just lucky. Most of the people I interacted with while I worked there had zero sense when it came to any sort of long term strategic positioning within the industry (which is why the activist investors have been pushing to get Mackey to sell). Now that they've actually begun to have competent competition, the cracks have really started to show. Honestly, instead of trying to expand at a breakneck pace like they started to five-seven years, they should have looked internally and instead begun to examine all the cost-saving measures they could on their supply-chain, management structure, and IT systems while they were the darling of both consumers and the markets, and had the profits. Instead, they attempted to triple the size of the business in just a decade (funded by increasing the prices of their products even more), and really destroyed all the cultural goodwill they had going for them. Then they started expanding into areas that weren't as affluent, trying to do these longshot deals with no cohesive strategy other than ""people like us, they'll show up."" Seven or eight years ago, people were excited when they heard I worked for Whole Foods, and wanted to ask me a million questions. Now they find out I worked at Whole Foods and they're just like ""Fucking A that place is insanely expensive, and all the employees seem miserable."""


I recently bought a stock - which was priced exactly as your question ponders, to the 1/100 cent. I happened to buy 2000 shares, but just a round lot of 100 would be enough to create no need for rounding. It's common for industry to price this way as well, where an electronic component purchased by the thousands, is priced to the tenth or hundredth of a cent. There's nothing magic about this, and you'll have more to ponder when your own lowest unit of currency is no longer minted. (I see you are in UK. Here, in the US, there's talk of dropping our cent. A 5 cent piece to be the smallest value coin. Yet, any non-cash transactions, such as checks, credit card purchases, etc, will still price to the penny.) To specifically answer the question - it's called decimal currency. 1/10, 1/100 of a cent.


Disclaimer: I am not a tax professional. Please don't rely on this answer in lieu of professional advice. If your sole source of Arizona income is your commercial property, use the number on line 17 of your federal form 1040. This number is derived from your federal Schedule E. If you have multiple properties (or other business income from S corporations or LLCs), use only the Schedule E amount pertaining to the AZ property.


Look at morningstar holdings.It will list the top 25 holdings and their current price.This will give you a good idea of the intra-day price of the fund.


The problem with fighting Net Neutrality is the name ‘Net Neutrality’ itself. It means nothing to the common person and requires effort to illicit a response. It’s a branding issue. Whenever politicians wants to slip some miserable piece of legislation through they wrap it in ‘Freedom for all Americans’ bill. We need to play dirtier and call this ‘INTERNET DEATH’ or ‘FREE HD PORN REMOVAL’ if we want people to pay attention.


You know that you'll get benefits for shopping at Whole Foods if you're a Prime member, meaning you'll have to have some mechanism to indicate your membership while you're at the Whole Foods checkout counter.... The only reason you're not getting on all the mailing lists Amazon just knows they can get more money from you by carefully using and selling your information rather than dumping it wholesale.


Lobbyists encourage legislators to add clauses to bills that help their clients save money on taxes or avoid taxes. The income tax on hedge fund managers is a good example of that. Some lobbyist actually craft the legislation and then give it to the legislator to get passed. In the case of Manafort he may be responsible for the mysterious disappearance of a plank in the GOP platform. There was a plank calling for the arming of the Ukrainians which Putin and Viktor Yanukovich wanted removed. It was removed and nobody claims to know how it happened.


Essentially obamacare act is forcing me NOT to claim my sister as my dependent (although I provide > 51% for her). No, that's not what it's doing. It's forcing you (or her) to get insurance. So, as a big sister I can provide for her, but NOT claim her as my dependent. Do I understand everything correctly? The exemption (that gave you that $1K back) can only be claimed by you, she cannot claim it. So by not claiming her you're giving that up. Her medical bills will probably be on you as well, so it would be in your best interest to have her insured. If you want to dump her on the taxpayer in case of a medical emergency - then yes, it will cost you the tax benefit of the additional exemption and the HOH deduction (depending on your tax rates, probably a couple of thousands of dollars). Either way you'll pay.


"Depending on where you live in the UK, buying a house sooner might be a better option. I would echo the advice about putting some money away into a ""rainy day"" fund etc. above but I know that in my area house prices are going up by around 7% per year. I bought a house two years ago and I'm paying 4% interest on my mortgage so I'm effectively making money by owning my house. Given that you want to buy a house soonish, if your money sits in an account somewhere making no interest, you're effectively losing 7% of your cash each year by not keeping up with house prices, meaning you'll be able to afford a smaller house with the same money. Do bear in mind though that buying a house costs around £4k in lawyers fees, surveys, mortgage setup fees etc. and selling a house can be more since estate agents will take a % of the sale cost. If you live somewhere where house prices are not increasing as quickly then this will not be as good an option than if you live in e.g. London where house prices are currently skyrocketing. If you don't want to live in the house, you may be able to do a buy-to-let as an investment. Generally the rent will cover the mortgage payments and probably a letting agent/property management company's fees, so while you won't see any actual net income, the people renting will be paying the mortgage off and you'll be building equity on the home. It's not entirely without risk though as tenants can trash homes etc."


Imagine that the existing interest rate is 5%. So on a bond with face value of 100, you would be getting a $5 coupon implying a 5% yield. Now, if let's say the interest rates go up to 10%, then a new bond issued with a face value of 100 will give you a coupon of $10 implying a 10% yield. If someone in the bond market buys your bond after interest price adjustment, in order to make the 10% yield (which means that an investor typically targets at least the risk-free rate on his investments) he needs to buy your bond at $50 so that a $5 coupon can give a 10% yield. The reverse happens when interest rates go down. I hope this somewhat clears the picture. Yield = Coupon/Investment Amount Update: Since the interest rate of the bond does not change after its issuance, the arbitrage in the interest rate is reflected in the market price of the bond. This helps in bringing back the yields of old bonds in-line with the freshly issued bonds.


He wasn't being condescending in his original reply. Not until you started being aggressive. Like you are to me. It must be tough to go through life like you do, throwing accusations and bile at people for nothing more than disagreeing with you. Good luck!


> That's not how business works. businesses have to follow regulations and laws. that is actually *exactly* how it works. > Economics doesn't work that way. businesses have to follow regulations and laws. that is actually *exactly* how it works. it seems you have no grasp of basic economics, this is no more intrusive than affirmative action. I can only assume you are trolling at this point. no one is this dumb.


">I don't see how employing more middle class workers would accelerate, say, the microprocessor research leading to better phones. Seriously? You don't see how more money in the hands of poor people and middle class people wouldn't accelerate a luxury commodity market? You don't see how more and more people would buy more expensive phones rather than the bare necessities if they had the means? I'm not talking exclusively about the middle class, btw, but also about the poor. In fact the mobile phone market is a great example of this, because it's a product that people only tend to have one of. Even the richest people aren't going to consume that many, as long as they have the newest, best phones. The richest 10% is not enough to make up for the rest of the market who own used or outdated phones. Wealth redistribution would almost certainly ensure a boom in the phone market, since they'd be able to afford to upgrade their phones more often, and buy the better models when they do come out. >I also don't see how we are at a point in resource distribution that only the rich can afford things. As far as I can tell, poor people have a tremendous amount of wealth compared to the poor of 500 years ago or even 100 years ago. For 100-500 years, you're probably right. But I'm not talking about the last 100 years, I'm talking about the last 30-40 or so. Every statistic I've seen indicates that the middle class and poor's purchasing power has stagnated severely while the rich have continued to rise, and it's put enormous economic strain on the middle and lower classes. >What would a ""stronger economy"" do? Use more fuel? Produce more knicknacks for consumers to waste money on? Provide better quality of life for its citizens. That's the whole point of the economy. Right now it's not doing that, it's broken. That's why we need to fix it."


Pretty cool that they are finding talented young people to lead things. Also I spit out my drink when I read this part. > Kraft Heinz, known more for slashing costs than nurturing brands, has tried to update its portfolio to meet changing tastes, adding organic Capri Sun and removing artificial ingredients from Oscar Mayer hot dogs. But growth has been elusive.


"I think that's the point. There's nothing wrong with the ""pink slime"", and ABC tried to make it sound bad for the ratings. It's hard to say which side is right in this kind of case. It would be a shame if news shows shy away from saying bad things about products, but it's also a shame if news shows report misinformation and pander to consumer fears just for ratings, and crush a legitimate business in the process."


> isn't the political will to accomplish it Or the will is bought off very quickly. BTW, what do you mean by dark markets? If you mean unlisted investments then that happens regularly with PE type deals anyway. If you mean private arrangements like the GS clearing house (forget the name), then yes that shit needs to die.


For those who are interested, I am answering my own question: We used Postbank and transferred 6000 Euro, we chose to Transfer in US$, and selected Shared Fees. There were three fees in total: All in all, I paid ~37$; this is about half of what I expected; and I got a perfect exchange rate. Postbank might have its downsides, but it seems they are still a good deal.


You should ask your broker of choice for paperwork to move funds to them. You can't move into an account that doesn't exist, so when I wanted to move my money from an old pension plan to an IRA I set up the IRA with the broker first. When I told them it was to receive this money, they weren't asking for any initial deposit. You then have a broker and account number to give the old company to set up the move.


This. Why not convert the 50k euro to dollars and AUD, and invest in a basket of companies that trade on American/Australian exchanges instead. You could hold a bit of gold, but I would definitely not put everything into gold.


It is, even when we were bidding major projects we could pretty much guess who was going to get the contract before hand. We only put bids in on the ones we might not win because often times the major project would get broken up into several smaller ones because one manufacturer couldn't produce fast enough, or didn't have enough stock for the client's entire job. Our major projects guys had inconsistently difficult jobs, one month they would be in the office until midnight. The next month they would be playing golf at 2pm on a Wednesday.


A restatement of the other answers in terms to understand the logic of an acquirer that kills it's acquisition target: Often the target company is told they are a strategic asset, but the acquiring company knows either utilizing them or killing them are both desirable outcomes. So the acquiring company will often make an effort to utilize them, but since everyone knows killing them is still a win, the incentives aren't totally aligned for the new owners to give it their best effort.


"You'll have to research the Canada side of things on your own or maybe someone else can answer that side. For the Germany side, there is a gift tax (Schenkungssteuer) which depends on the relationship (Verwandschaftsgrad) of the giver and receiver. steuerklassen.com has an overview here which shows the tax class (Steuerklasse) and tax free amount (Freibetrag). So according to the overview, nieces get 20 000 € tax free amount, anything over 20 000 € within 10 years from the same gift giver will be taxed with tax class 2, which can range from 15% to 43% depending on the gifted amount. The full article is here It also mentiones a few ""tricks"" for example if you want to gift 40 000 € to your niece, you could gift 20 000 € directly and 20 000 € to your brother or sister who then gifts it to their daughter - you'll have to trust them to do that, though, because you can't put that in a contract. Bottom line of this: If you want to gift more than 20 000 €, your niece should contact a tax advisor (Steuerberater). About the bank transfer: Your niece will have to declare any bank transfers over 12 500 € that she receives. Her bank will know how to do that so she should just ask them. It also might be helpful for her to have a letter from you stating that the money came from you and is a gift, just in case the tax office (Finanzamt) doesn't believe that the money isn't from moonlighing (Schwarzarbeit)."


Yea I don't know why they just don't raise the minimum wage to 50 an hour then everyone can afford to live anywhere and there will be no negative unintended consequences of well-meaning but poorly thought out legislation!


One thing you didn't mention is whether the 401(k) offers a match. If it does, this is a slam-dunk. The $303 ($303, right?) is $3636/yr that will be doubled on deposit. It's typical for the first 5% of one's salary to capture the match, so this is right there. In 15 years, you'll still owe $76,519. But 15 * $7272 is $109,080 in your 401(k) even without taking any growth into account. The likely value of that 401(k) is closer to $210K, using 8% over that 15 years, (At 6%, it drops to 'only' $176K, but as I stated, the value of the match is so great that I'd jump right on that.) If you don't get a match of any kind, I need to edit / completely rip my answer. It morphs into whether you feel that 15 years (Really 30) the market will exceed the 4% cost of that money. Odds are, it will. The worst 15 year period this past century 2000-2014 still had a CAGR of 4.2%.


"Assuming nothing here helps, here are some thoughts. First, If Principal Financial knows the 401k was rolled over to an IRA, then it must have been a custodian-to-custodian transfer, which means they need to know who the recipient custodian was, so I'd call them back and push a little harder. Next, they couldn't have just created an IRA out of thin air and moved some money into it without some paperwork and signatures from you, so you should have copies of that paperwork. Principal may also still have archived copies of that paperwork, that they may be able to provide to you, although they'll probably charge for that service. Also, there would have been tax reporting around the rollover. For the year the rollover occurred in, you would have received a 1099-R and 5498. The 1099-R would have to have been reported on your federal (and possibly state) income tax for that year. It may be possible to obtain copies of old 1099-R's from the IRS, maybe call them and ask. In subsequent years, you should have received at least a year-end statement. If you don't have any of that, and contacting Principal and the IRS don't help, then I'm not sure there's much that anyone can do to help you. As far as I know, there's no ""universal clearinghouse"" for IRAs, and there are a lot of IRA custodians. I would expect you to receive a year-end statement from the custodian for 2015 sometime in early 2016, so maybe just wait for (and watch for) that. And take this as an object lesson that you need to keep better track of your finances. No one's going to do it for you (unless you pay them a bunch of money)."


Stock prices are set by supply and demand. If a particular stock has a high EPS, say, $100, then people will bid more for that stock, driving up its price over one with a $10 EPS. Your job as an investor is to find stocks with low share prices, but which will give you high earnings (either in dividends, our future share price). This means finding stocks which you believe the market has priced incorrectly, for whatever reason (as an example, many bank stocks are being punished right now, even if the underlying banks are in good shape financially). If you want to beat the market indices, be prepared to do a lot of research, because you're trying to outsmart the market as a whole.


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You sell when you think the stock is over valued, or you need the money, or you are going to need the money in the next 5 years. I buy and hold a lot. I bought IBM in 8th grade 1980. I still own it. I bought 3 share it from $190 and its now worth $5,000 do to dividend reinvestment and splits. That stock did nothing for a thirteen years except pay a dividend but then it went up by 1800% the next 20 and paid dividends. So I agree with other posters the whole pigs get slaughtered thing is silly and just makes fund managers more money. Think if you bought aapl at $8 and sold at $12. The thing went to 600 and split 7-1 and is back to $120. My parents made a ton holding Grainger for years and I have had good success with MMM and MSFT owning those for decades.


"I feel that OP's question is fundamentally wrong and an understanding of why is important. The stock market, as a whole, in the USA has an average annualized return of 11%. That means that a monkey, throwing darts at a board, can usually turn 100K into over three million in thirty-five years. (The analog I'm drawing is a 30-year old with 100K randomly picking stocks will be a multi-millionaire at 65). So to be ""good"" at investing in the stock market, you need to be better than a monkey. Most people aren't. Why? What mistakes do people make and how do you avoid them? A very common mistake is to buy high, sell low. This happened before and after the 08's recession. People rushed into the market beforehand as it was reaching its peak, sold when the market bottomed out then ignored the market in years it was getting 20+% returns. A Bogle approach for this is to simply consistently put a part of your income into the market whether it is raining or shining. Paying high fees. Going back to the monkey example, if the monkey charges you a 2% management fees, which is low by Canadian standards, the monkey will cost you one million dollars over the course of the thirty-five years. If the monkey does a pretty good job it is a worthy expenditure. But most humans, including professional stock pickers, are worst than a monkey at picking stocks. Another mistake is adjusting your plan. Many people, when the market was giving bull returns before the 08's crash happily had a large segment of their wealth in stocks. They thought they were risk tolerant. Crash happened, they moved towards bonds. Then bonds returns were comically low while stocks soared. Had they had a plan, almost any consistent plan, they'd have done better. Another genre of issues is just doing stupid things. Don't buy that penny stock. Don't trade like crazy. Don't pay 5$ commission on a 200$ stock order. Don't fail to file your taxes. Another mistake, and this burdens a lot of people, is that your long-term investments are for long-term investing. What a novel idea. You're 401K doesn't exist for you to get a loan for a home. Many people do liquidate their long-term savings. Don't. Especially since people who do make these loans or say ""I'll pay myself back later"" don't."


Which strategy makes more sense: Check your new Fidelity 401k plan. Make sure it has a good group of funds available at very low fees. If it does, roll over your Principal 401k to your new 401k. Call Principal and have them transfer the funds directly to Fidelity. Do not have them send you a check. If the new plan doesn't have a good fund lineup, or has high fees, create a rollover IRA and roll your old 401k plan into it. Again, have Principal transfer the funds directly. Consider using Vanguard or other very-low-cost funds in your IRA. Taking the money out of your old 401k to pay toward your mortgage has several disadvantages. You will pay taxes and a penalty. Your mortgage rate is very good, and since you are probably in a high tax bracket and perhaps itemize deductions, the effective rate is even less. And you lose liquidity that might come in handy down the road. You can always change your mind later, but for now don't pay down your mortgage using your 401k money. As a result of being under 20%, I am paying mortgage insurance of about $300/mo. This is wasted money. Save aggressively and get your mortgage down to 80% so that you can get rid of that PMI. If you are earning a high salary, you should be able to get there in reasonably short order. If you are maxing out your 401k ($18,000 per year), you might be better off putting it on pause and instead using that money to get rid of the PMI. I have no 'retirement' plans because I enjoy working and have plans to start a company, and essentially will be happy working until I die You are young. Your life will change over time. Everyone young seems to choose one of two extremes: In the end, very few choose either of these paths. For now, just plan on retiring somewhere close to normal retirement age. You can always change your plans later.


I think they're compounding the interest daily. That means you have to look at the number of days between payments to judge how much the interest charge is. From February 3 to March 2 is 28 days (2012 was a leap year). From March 2 to April 3 is 32 days. That's an increase of about 14% in number of days between payments, which accounts reasonably well to the ~$18 difference in interest charge. Daily compounding also explains the minor fluctuations in the other interest charges. I think if you compute interest/day for each month, you'll find that it is, indeed, decreasing over time.


Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) have different end of term dates but by less than a month. Both have summer sessions, but most students do not stay over the summer. You can rent over the summer, but prices fall by a lot. Thirty to forty thousand students leave over the summer between the two. Only ten to twenty thousand remain throughout the year and not all of those are in Oakland (the neighborhood in Pittsburgh where the universities are located). So many of the landlords in Oakland have the same problem. Your competitors will cut their rates to try to get some rent for the summer months. This also means that you have to handle eight, nine, and three month leases rather than year long and certainly not multiyear leases. You're right that you don't have to buy the latest appliances or the best finishes, but you still have to replace broken windows and doors. Also, the appliances and plumbing need to mostly work. The furnace needs to produce heat and distribute it. If there is mold or mildew, you will have to take care of it. You can't rely on the students doing so. So you have to thoroughly clean the premises between tenants. Students may leave over winter break. If there are problems, the pipes may freeze and burst, etc. Since they're not there, they won't let you know when things break. Students drop out during the term and move out. You probably won't be able to replace them when that happens. If you have three people in two bedrooms, two of them may be in a romantic relationship. Romantic relationships among twenty-year olds end frequently. Your three people drops back to two. Your recourse in that case is to evict the remaining tenants and sue for breach of contract. But if you do that, you may not replace the tenants until a new term starts. Better might be to sue the one who left and accept the lower rent from the other two. But you likely won't get the entire rent amount for the remainder of the lease. Suing an impoverished student is not the road to riches. Pittsburgh is expected to have a 6.1% increase in house prices which almost all of it is going to be pure profit. I don't know specifically about Pittsburgh, but in the national market, housing prices are about where they were in 2004. Prices were flat to increasing from 2004 to 2007 and then fell sharply from 2007 to 2009, were flat to decreasing from 2009 to 2012, and have increased the last few years. Price to rent ratios are as high now as in 2003 and higher than they were the twenty years before that. Maybe prices do increase. Or maybe we hit a new 20% decrease. I would not rely on this for profit. It's great if you get it, but unreliable. I wouldn't rely on estimates for middle class homes to apply to what are essentially slum apartments. A 6% average may be a 15% increase in one place and a 3% decrease in another. The nice homes with the new appliances and the fancy finishes may get the 15% increase. The rundown houses in a block where students party past 2 AM may get no increase. Both the city of Pittsburgh and the county of Allegheny charge property taxes. Schools and libraries charge separate taxes. The city provides a worksheet that estimates $2860 in taxes on a $125,000 property. It doesn't sound like you would be eligible for homestead or senior tax relief. Realtors should be able to tell you the current assessment and taxes on the properties that they are selling you. You should be able to call a local insurance agent to find out what kinds of insurance are available to landlords. There is also renter's insurance which is paid by the tenant. Some landlords require that tenants show proof of insurance before renting. Not sure how common that is in student housing.


"Very good Ben, in a more simplistic form: If debt was about math only, we would not have payday lenders, 21% + credit cards, or sub-prime car loans. Yet these things are prevalent. Debt reduction is often about behavior modification. As such small wins are necessary to keep going much like a 12 step program; or, gamification as Ben pointed out. The funny thing is that if a person becomes and stays intense on a debt reduction program, interest rate ""inefficiency"" is dwarfed by extra income or increased austerity."


I disagree with those that claim an HSA is only useful for those that can afford it. An HSA is useful for anyone that is eligible to contribute to one and also pays their medical bills. This is true even if you are living paycheck to paycheck and have no money left over to contribute! Here's how you do it: This way even if you don't have enough money to make regular contributions to the HSA, you still get the tax advantage anytime you make a payment. It's effectively the same thing as regular contributions but without having to guess how much you'll need. You only contribute exactly the amount you need.


"Strategy would be my top factor. While this may be implied, I do think it helps to have an idea of what is causing the buy and sell signals in speculating as I'd rather follow a strategy than try to figure things out completely from scratch that doesn't quite make sense to me. There are generally a couple of different schools of analysis that may be worth passing along: Fundamental Analysis:Fundamental analysis of a business involves analyzing its financial statements and health, its management and competitive advantages, and its competitors and markets. When applied to futures and forex, it focuses on the overall state of the economy, interest rates, production, earnings, and management. When analyzing a stock, futures contract, or currency using fundamental analysis there are two basic approaches one can use; bottom up analysis and top down analysis. The term is used to distinguish such analysis from other types of investment analysis, such as quantitative analysis and technical analysis. Technical Analysis:In finance, technical analysis is a security analysis methodology for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis use many of the same tools of technical analysis, which, being an aspect of active management, stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of both technical and fundamental analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis which states that stock market prices are essentially unpredictable. There are tools like ""Stock Screeners"" that will let you filter based on various criteria to use each analysis in a mix. There are various strategies one could use. Wikipedia under Stock Speculator lists: ""Several different types of stock trading strategies or approaches exist including day trading, trend following, market making, scalping (trading), momentum trading, trading the news, and arbitrage."" Thus, I'd advise research what approach are you wanting to use as the ""Make it up as we go along losing real money all the way"" wouldn't be my suggested approach. There is something to be said for there being numerous columnists and newsletter peddlers if you want other ideas but I would suggest having a strategy before putting one's toe in the water."


No, it will have no negative impact on getting a mortgage. You are building up a history with regular payments and are not carrying a balance on the card each month. Your ability to get a mortgage will ultimately be based on other things. Money Saving Expert has a good guide on what will affect your credit score. A further discussion on the topic that backs up that what a mortgage company is interested in is affordability and a stable history. They really don't care about utilisation ratios. (Though might be spooked by almost maxed out cards - sign of poor spending control, or large unused limits - too easy to go into bad debt.)


"The legal term for this is ""intestate succession"". The 1990 Uniform Probate Code form the basis for intestate succession, though implementation and supplementary provisions will vary from state to state. Under the Probate Code, the estate will be distributed as follows : The Probate Code does not appear to state what happens if no such beneficiaries are found. I suspect the estate would be taken by the IRS after a suitable period of time has passed to allow for relatives to come forward. The source for this answer is the FindLaw website. The law will apply equally to US citizens and foreign nationals."


"If the single active member lives in California and works at home, then you likely need to register in CA and pay the annual $800 franchise tax. California is quite aggressive about enforcing registration of LLCs. A foreign LLC needs to register if it is ""doing business"" in California. Here is a blog post that covers it in some detail. It looks like you meet at least one of the criteria for doing business in California, such as:"


> Trump Says Debt Ceiling Is 'Not Necessary.' Is He Right? Of course not! How could we live without an annual white-knuckle blame-fest to decide if we are going to pay for services we already ordered and received just to score political points?


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>There’s no simple way to estimate the cost of UBI. But let’s assume the program is intended to alleviate poverty. The U.S.-defined poverty line for individuals with no children is $12,500. If the government were to give that annual sum to the 250 million adults in America, the cost would come to $3.125 trillion a year. It’s a massive figure, but not as crazy when you consider the cost of existing entitlement programs. >According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Social Security payments came to $888 billion in fiscal 2015. Medicare, Medicaid and other health-related subsidies were $938 billion, while food stamps and other safety net programs totaled $362 billion. All in, that’s $2.19 trillion. So cut social security and medicare for the elderly who have paid into it all their lives, AND increase spending by a trillion. See, here's the part that doesnt make sense about UBI. The people who need the money the most get less and the program costs more. Then somehow it's labeled as a more efficient distribution of welfare. It's really quite baffling how retarded the concept is.


"People can pretend that those are the only types that work those jobs, but that is most often not the case. Most of the jobs in this economy are service jobs. Like, 70% are. So, are we to then assume that 70% of people had better just be teenagers who need beer money? (Obviously, this is an oversimplification, but I think the point is clear enough.) It is not as if people pop out a kid and subway suddenly says ""thanks for your service! Please report to a decent job with reasonable pay to start work Monday!"" Those jobs just aren't there. Furthermore, it isn't like Subway or McDonalds or walmart can't afford it, or like their prices would go up significantly to shoulder it. If walmart were to pay a living wage, it would cost their customers an extra cent or two per item. I imagine it would impact each business differently, but paying employees decent wages often proves to be a more cost effective strategy because turnover and customer satisfaction go up- ask shake shack or boloco or in-n-out. Its also better for the economy overall."


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.


Yep, but only congress can create those debts: Article 1, section 8 states (in part): >The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; [...] >**To borrow Money on the credit of the United States**; [emphasis added] Only the congress can create the debt. The President simply doesn't have the authority to borrow money.


How about on ability to do the job? I think everyone has seen examples of women taking companies for a ride and milking them because they are pregnant and therefore untouchable. The blowback on that is that they are recognised to be less competent, in the round, than their male colleagues. The solution is in their hands.


I owned and managed a few residential properties. At one time the net cash flow was on the order of $1000 per month. But it was work. Lots of work. I was managing about 7 units. This does not count the gains in capital appreciation which were significant. Using a management company would have put the cash flow at 0 or in the negative and would have lowered the quality of management IMO. Nothing comes for free...


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Real estate is always an interesting dynamic. In most cases prices have always gone up. Price is mainly a function of demand. Sometimes demand is artificially inflated over a short term period and can come down quickly due to corrections. During recessions the housing market will usually slow down. There are some rare instances where certain areas never recover (see Subprime Mortgage Crisis Savings & Loans Crisis where scores of unwanted properties exist). Things to consider:


Maybe this video can explain it better. I'm sorry, I don't know how else to explain it. I'm not sure if you're getting it. This video looks pretty informative to me. Admittedly I haven't watched the whole thing. I just watch the first few minutes. Maybe a visual demo will help. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o9AU8MAoq4


Why for years has every broadband provider and their lobbyists been against anything net neutrality. Verizon sued because of imposed net neutrality rules and won, leaving Title II the only way to enforce net neutrality. Why believe they won't just bribe congress to allow paid-prioritization, throttling, zero-rating and blocking? These broadband companies need to start putting their money where their mouth is and stop with the bullshit lobbying against anything and everything remotely pro-consumer.


> Technology is not the the most powerful force in the universe. The most powerful force at play at any given time is imagination. Imagining a better way, an easier way, a new way and using technology to achieve it. I was just discussing something like this with my family the other day; thanks to the imagination, technology is advancing faster and faster each day. Excellent post, thanks for sharing.


"Exchange A has 100 shares of a stock at $10, the next 100 shares cost $10.01. Exchange B has the same pricing structure. A fund manager wants to buy 200 shares of the stock, and decides that buying 100 shares at $10 from each exchange will be cheaper than staying in one exchange and paying $10.01 for the second half of his order. The manager places two separate orders. Let's say the first order reaches exchange A, and the trade executes at $10. Traders (algorithms) on exchange B see this happen, and adjust their price up to $10.01 accordingly. Now, when the manager's order reaches exchange B, there will no longer be any shares trading at $10. Some people say that this is front running, but if the manager only wanted 100 shares, the price would have still shifted. Some say this creates a more efficient market with tighter spreads due to the decreased risk to the market maker, but it also means the aggregate bid-ask offers across multiple exchanges are not necessarily accurate, creating a ""false liquidity"". You can decide for yourself whether or not this is a good thing."


"There are two types of 401(k) contributions: ""elective contributions,"" which are the part put in by the employee and ""nonelective contributions,"" which are the part put in by the company. Elective contributions are summed across all the plans she is contributing to. So she can contribute $18,000 minus whatever she put in her 403(b). Additionally she can contribute 20% of the net profit of the company (before the elective contributions) as nonelective contributions (these contributions must be designated as such). You will notice that the IRS document says 25%, but that's what you can do if her business is incorporated. For a sole proprietorship, nonelective contributions ends up being limited at 20% of profit. Additionally, the sum of these two and her contribution to her 403(b) cannot exceed $53,000. Example: line 31 of her schedule C is $30,000 and she has contributed $10,000 to her 403(b). Maximum contribution to her solo 401(k) is ($18,000 - $10,000) + 0.2 * $30,000 = $14,000 Her total contributions for the year are $10,000 from her 403(b) plus $14,000 in her solo 401(k). This is less than $53,000 so this limit does not bind. If she made a ton of 1099 money, her contribution maximum would follow the above until it hit $53,000 and then it would stop there. The IRS describes this in detail in Publication 560, which also has a worksheet for figuring out your maximum explicitly. It's unpleasant reading and the worksheets are painful, but if you do it right, it will end up being as I just described it. Using the language of that publication, hers is a ""qualified plan"" of the ""defined contribution"" variety."


Yes, it's considered the students asset, regardless of the custodian aspect. I don't know how you'd propose to put it in a retirement account, even with the earned income to facilitate this, the limit is $5500/yr. The larger issue is parental income. That and parental assets. Tough to game that part of the system to get aid. In the end, one should look to scholarships, both merit and non merit based to maximize college support.


I can only answer about the U.S. For question 2, I believe the answer is no. If you are a non-resident alien for tax purposes, then only income connected to the U.S. is reported as income on the tax return. Unless there were any non-deductible contributions to your pre-tax IRAs, when you convert to Roth IRA, the entire amount of the conversion is added to your income. So the tax consequence is the same as if you had that much additional U.S. income. If you are a non-resident alien with no other income in the U.S., then the income you have to report on your U.S. tax return will basically consist of the conversion. Non-resident aliens do not have a standard deduction. However, all people have a personal exemption. If we take 2013 as an example, the exemption is $3900 per person. We will assume that you will file as single or married filing separately (non-resident aliens cannot file as married filing jointly). The first $3900 of income is covered by the exemption, and is not counted in taxable income. For single and MFS, the next $8925 of income is taxed at 10%, then next $27325 of income is taxed at 15%, and so on. So if you convert less than the personal exemption amount every year ($3900 in 2013), then in theory you do not pay any taxes. If you convert a little bit more, then some of the conversion will be taxed at 10%, etc.


Although it is strange, there is little risk. The first four numbers are just the card type (Visa, Master, etc.), and the last four alone don't give them much - there are still 8 digits missing that they do not have. There is nothing much they can do with that info, especially without the PIN and the CCV, so as I said, little risk. Maybe they are using this to verify that you are the right person - you probably used that card originally to put money in for the gaming. That would be a way for them to authenticate you.


"No offense intended but are you female? Every woman I know, in my FA ""class"" as well as co-workers, say 7 was harder than 66. While, not ""every"" man I know says the 66 was harder I'd say it was in the 80-90% range. It must be something about how our brains are wired differently."


Actually I was talking about years of having computers do all the flying and people just being there as the contingency. I don't think we're more than a few years away from seeing the first commercial airliners that are piloted completely by computer and the person is the co-pilot. I don't honestly think it will take more than 10 years for automated commercial airliners to be commonplace. They won't completely take over the market in that time but my guess is that it will be common sooner rather than later.


"I'm not a tax lawyer, but from what I can tell it looks like you'd be eligible to use your contractor income to fund a Solo 401(k). http://www.irafinancialgroup.com/whatissolo401k.php ""To access these benefits an investor must meet two eligibility requirements: The presence of self employment activity. The absence of full-time employees."" And from the IRS itself (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/forum08_401k.pdf)"


Most of helicopter enthusiasts spend more time by flying their Heli in an inverted position. The first prominent step to RC flying is being comfortable. Before anything else you need to know how to master different helicopter 3D flight. We all believe that practice makes a perfect outcome. If you happen to be a novice in this field, don’t stress out over anything. It only involves taking some time out to the field and as you try your level best.


My buddy owns a place in a large U.S. city that he rents out on AirBnB. He makes about $3,000 a month on it during the summer months, and his monthly payment (including mortgage, interest, HOA, etc.) is probably around $1,300.


See the first item in the list: For our everyday business purposes – such as to process your transactions, maintain your account(s), respond to court orders and legal investigations, or report to credit bureaus Note that there's no option for you to limit this sharing. Credit reporting is the business need of the bank, not of the bureaus. They rely on them and others reporting it in their main business: lending. While you can limit the sharing with other banks/insurance companies/service providers so that you won't get offers from them based on the data shared by the bank, you cannot limit the credit reports themselves.


If it became a choice of reading books versus finding internships in the industry I would choose the latter. If it is supplemental material to the internship I think that the ones you have listed are fine. Reading a book about an ever changing industry really isn't going to get you ahead. Experience is. That being said topics related to liquidity, repo transactions, and risk management to be key if you are entering the financial industry. For prop trading there aren't going to be too many people writing about a how to manual on the industry because then they have more competition with their experience. IMO That is why you need to work with these people and acquire the knowledge firsthand. Trading is not something you can read about you need to do it. Especially when you are competing with people who have done it their whole lives.


I think you'll find that a credit card does have an account number and sort code, I have had a Visa card previously and currently have a Mastercard. Both were paid by Direct Debit, and I could then transfer money to the account when I wanted to pay more than the minimum payment off. Check the introductory letter from the card provider, it should be on there, failing that, contact the provider and ask them for the details, how to pay, or a direct debit mandate for either the whole amount or the minimum amount.


Assuming that taxes were withheld when you received the options, you would now only owe tax on the profit from the sale of the stock. The cost basis would be whatever you bought the stock for (the strike price of the options in this case), and the profit will be the total amount received from the sale minus the total cost of those shares. Since you bought the stock more than one year ago, you will get taxed at the long-term capital gains rate of 15% (unless you are in the 39.6% tax bracket, in which case the rate is 20%). As with all tax advice on this site, you need to check with a tax specialist when you actually file, but that should give you a rough indication of what your tax liability is.


Thanks for the writeup, it was a really informative read. I've been aware for a while now that Reagan and Reaganomics were in a large way the 'start' of most of the current problems in the economic and political landscape, but you filled in a few gaps that were really useful for me. So I guess ultimately a lot of conservatives see it as a kind of necessary evil in order to bring about the success story that the current economy needs right now. Unfortunately, their strategy is totally wrong. That kind of makes sense with my observation that rather than supporting the cronyism and corruption, they turn a blind eye to it because they think it's necessary. My view is not so much that labour and finance capital returns need to be balanced (although that is probably a great thing to aim for), but that creation of wealth/capital needs to be intrinsically linked with the creation of real value. The modern banking crisis was a great example of the ability to generate wealth while in fact destroying real value.


I'm the odd man out. My previous boss (at the same company) had a kid at 15. Despite the extra responsibility, she managed to become a CPA and have a relatively successful accounting career. Yeah it's nuts, what are the odds that all these people had kids early right? Get this, the purchasing manager's daughter had a baby at 19. She managed to hook her daughter up with a job at my place of employment in order to help her earn enough money to care for the baby (father punked out). There definitely seems to be a company culture of this sort of thing. As far as seizing a promotion. I don't understand why someone who is inferior in every aspect except personal favor is automatically the best candidate for a promotion due to backdoor politics. So what you're saying is that I should focus on my soft skills and less on everything else in order to get ahead? It seems wrong that I'm forced to be stuck where I am because of back door politics and not because of merit and my ability to add value to the company. I guess I don't fit into the company culture because I don't have a sob story about how I'm supporting children I conceived before I was legally able to vote. Edit: I should probably find another company that appreciates high performers.


I feel the need to separate my freelance accounts from my personal accounts. Yes, you should. Should I start another savings account or a current account? Do you need the money for daily spending? Do you need to re-invest in your business? Use a current account. If you don't need the money for business expenses, put it away in your savings account or even consider term deposits. Don't rule out a hybrid approach either (some in savings account, some in current account). What criteria should I keep in mind while choosing a bank? (I thought of SBI since it has a lot of branches and ATMs). If you are involved in online banking and that is sufficient for most of your needs, bank and ATM locations shouldn't matter all that much. If you are saving a good chunk of money, you want to at least have that keep up with inflation. Research bank term deposit interest rates. The tend to be higher than just having your money sit in a savings account. Again, it depends on how and when you expect to need the money. What do I keep in mind while paying myself? Paying yourself could have tax implications. This depends on how are set up to freelance. Are you a business entity or are you an individual? You should look in to the following in India: The other thing to consider is rewarding yourself for the good work done. Pay yourself a reasonable amount. If you decide to expand and hire people going forward, you will have a better sense of business expenses involved when paying salaries. Tips on managing money in the business account. This is a very generic question. I can only provide a generic response. Know how much you are earning and how much your are putting back in to the business. Be reasonable in how much you pay yourself and do the proper research and paperwork from a taxation point of view.


C++ for lean and low latency computing, VBA if you're just trying to do excel macros, or python if you want scripting outside of excel. Note that C++ is much much more complicated and has a MUCH higher learning threshold than the other 2.


Close to ten years for me. I went in at 5:58pm to get a battery charger and asked someone where they were. He said that the store was about to close and he was outta there and walked off. Amazon is infinitely easier for non-emergencies.


Term life insurance makes sense if you will have a need for money if someone dies. If you (and your brothers) do not have enough money currently for a proper burial for your father, then you might consider term insurance to cover this. If you already have the money to cover this (or can save for it in a short amount of time), then you are better off financially to not purchase the insurance. Estimate what you think it will cost for a burial, then determine if you have this money available to you. If you already do, then don't purchase the insurance. If you do not have this money available to you, then you can look into a term life insurance policy on your father. You definitely do not want a whole life insurance policy. This will cost many more times what a term policy costs. A term policy is a policy with an expiration date. For example, let's say that you determine that you will need $10,000 when your father dies for the funeral and burial. You could get a 10-year policy on your father for $10,000. Over the next 10 years, besides paying your premiums, save up $10,000 ($1,000 each year) in some type of savings/investing account. Hopefully, your father will still be around 10 years from now, and you won't need the insurance policy anymore, because you will have saved enough to cover the costs when the time comes. Doing this will almost always cost you less than getting a whole life policy, which never expires, but has much higher premiums. There are also 20-year term policies, which will cost more, but will give you more time to save up your fund. The costs for these policies depend on your father's age, so get a quote for both and decide what will work for you.


Assuming that's true, and giving you that EU countries are more interdependent than most, you're still massively overstating the effect of Greece's problems on the rest of the union. Yeah, it's a problem. Yeah, they'll all pay a bit for it. Still, the economy is nowhere near collapse because of it.


"> Comcast has argued that—regardless of the competitive landscape in Internet service and cable television—the merger will not result in ""merger-specific"" harm. That is, the Internet may already be monopolized, but allowing it to acquire Time-Warner Cable will not make it any worse. I like how they have gotten to the point where no fucks are given and they ca come out and say it without any repercussions"


Stock market is like poker: you don't take the same risks when it is fake money and thus you don't learn the same lessons from your mistakes. I would recommend instead to play with real market and real money (rule #0: use only money that you don't need). Start with safe products and go to the bath progressively. It took me about ten years and I am still learning.


Basically, a bunch of non-algo/HFT people read Michael Lewis' book, which is largely an advertisement for a new exchange and some hand-waving about people cutting you, so they come to this sub and talk in analogies with zero understanding of actual market microstructure. They're inevitably called out and either resort to sticking their fingers in their ears or deleting their comments.


"But what's the point of even saying that? You could get killed in a car accident tomorrow. Should I just follow you around and post that any time you have some victory or good news? ""Yeah, you got a promotion, but you could get killed in a car accident tomorrow."" ""Hey, glad she accepted your proposal; but you could get killed in a car accident tomorrow."" I could mix it up - ""You could have a *c. dificile* infection festering in your intestine right now - your days are numbered."" ""Heading to your kid's graduation? Plane could fall out of the sky on the way."" I started all this by saying that the OP was a complete waste of time. It gives no advice, passes on no wisdom. There's nothing about it that anyone could act on to change their life. It offers zero value. Hell - the time I spent reading it (and arguing about it) I could've spent masturbating and been better off. In closing - your success is *affected* by random chance. Also, the sky is often blue and more often than not water is wet at room temperature. Have a nice day."


A more updated answer: USAA is an American bank offering chip and pin credit cards to US customers. USAA membership is restricted to military service members and their relatives, but according to this Los Angeles Times article, you do not need to be a USAA member to get a USAA chip and pin credit card. I'm a USAA member and can testify that my USAA chip and pin MasterCard worked in Europe, so assuming nonmembers get the same kind of card, it will work. However, it's worth noting that for it to work, the place still has to accept MasterCard, which seems somewhat less common in Europe than in the USA. (In Germany in particular, I was rather baffled to find that many places only accept some other European bank cards but not MasterCard/VISA.)