Smart cars are highway legal and pass crash test safety standards. Making them much more expensive than they need to be. And yeah, they suck to drive because they're under powered for their weight. There are much better alternatives. [For example all of these cars are illegal, or regulated out of usefulness, in the US.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car) And they're the prime size of vehicle for commuter electric cars right now. However, they would never pass a crash test at highway speeds. There's a similar class of cars in India and Europe, I just happen to like the Kei trucks myself.


If you were going to spend money to get laid, why would you not get a real woman? I fear the true danger of AI is that if they ever put a working one into one of these things and get it to move reasonably, real women will become obsolete.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/opioid-use-explains-20-of-drop-in-american-men-from-labor-force) reduced by 65%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Opioid use by American men may account for one-fifth of the decline in their participation in the U.S. labor force, according to a study by Princeton University economist Alan Krueger. > &quot;The opioid crisis and depressed labor-force participation are now intertwined in many parts of the U.S.,&quot; Krueger, who was chief economist at the Treasury Department in the Obama administration, wrote in the study released Thursday at a Brookings Institution conference in Washington. > Krueger&#039;s study echoes previous research that attributes most of the decline in labor force participation since the early 2000s to an aging population and young people choosing school over work. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6yozd6/opioid_use_could_explain_20_of_the_drop_in/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~205982 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*: **labor**^#1 **force**^#2 **Krueger**^#3 **work**^#4 **participation**^#5"


The very link the OP provided focuses on a group of people who lost their jobs to H1B imports. The people coming in had no special skillset and the people who lost their jobs were required to spend months training their replacements or forfeit their severance pay.


"That depends, really. Generally speaking, though - Roth IRAs are THE PLACE for Stock-Market/Mutual-Fund investing. All the off the wall (or, not so off the wall) things like Real Estate investments, or buying up gold, or whatever other ideas you hear from people - they may be good or bad or whatnot. But your Roth IRA is maybe not the best place for that sort of thing. The whole philosophy behind IRAs is to deliberately set aside money for the future. Anything reasonable will work for this. Explore interesting investment ideas with today's money, not tomorrow's money. That being said - at your age I would go for the riskier options within what's available. If I were in your situation (and I have been, recently), I would lean toward low-fee mutual funds classified as ""Growth"" funds. My own personal opinion (THIS IS NOT ADVICE) is that Small Cap International funds are the place to be for young folks. That's a generalized opinion based on my feel for the world, but I don't think I'm personally competent to start making specific stock picks. So, mutual funds makes sense to me in that I can select the fund that generally aligns with my sense of things, and assume that their managers will make reasonably sound decisions within that framework. Of course that assumption has to be backed up with reputation of the specific MF company and the comparative performance of the fund relative to other funds in the same sector. As to the generalized question (how else can you work toward financial stability and independence), outside of your Roth IRA: find ways to boost your earning potential over time, and buy a house before the next bubble (within the next 18 months, I'm GUESSING)."


Something with an FDIC guarentee, so a bank. With an emergency fund, I think the 'return of capital' is more important than the 'return on the capital', so I'm fine with putting it in a standard savings account in a local bank(not an internet account) even if it pays next to nothing. The beauty is that since the bank is local, you can walk in and withdraw it all during any weekday.


You 5 downvoters are literally the first people I've ever heard that are ostensibly pro high frequency trading. I still haven't heard a convincing argument that it's anything more than a parasite on the trading economy. Premise 1. High frequency traders earn billions of dollars. Premise 2. No goods or valuable services are produced. Where am I wrong? What is valuable about having a computer trade fractions of ownership of a company back and forth thousands of times a second?


A financial advisor is a service professional. It is his/her job to do things for you that you could do for yourself, but you're either too busy to do it yourself (and you want to pay somebody else), or you'd rather not. Just like some people hire tax preparers, or maids, or people to change their oil, or re-roof their houses. Me, I choose to self-manage. I get some advise from Fidelity and Vanguard. But we hired somebody this year to re-roof our house and someone else to paint it.


Here are the topics covered under the Canadian HR professional designation which would be similar in the US: - strategy (what does the company need from their people to achieve their strategic goals) - engagement - total rewards (pay, benefits, recognition) - labour and employee relations (dealing with unions, coaching, performance management, discipline & terminations) - learning & development - HR metrics and reporting and financial management - professional practice (employment law, ethics) - workforce planning and talent management (recruitment, organizational design) - health, wellness and safe workplace


Here's what I'd do: Pay off the cards and medical. Deposit 35k in the best interest bearing accounts you can find (maybe some sort of ladder). Link your student loans payments to this account. This frees up $486 a month in income, and generates a small amount of interest at the same time. Now, set up some sort of retirement account. Put $400 a month in it. This leaves you with $86 a month to use as you please. You still have $10 000 cash, out of which you could buy an inexpensive used car, and bank some as emergency funds.


"Hopefully you forgot the ""/s"" at the end of your post. You mean the [special skills that Disney](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/us/judge-says-disney-didnt-violate-visa-laws-in-layoffs.html) requires? Really the only special skill is doing the same skill for a lot less and being tied to a specific company. [More here](http://fortune.com/2017/05/03/h-1b-visa-infosys/)"


Earthmoving equipment hire is a completely different thing from hiring other things required in a construction project. You should try and contact the companies that have all the equipments needed by you so that you don’t have to rush from one supplier to another to complete the required fleet.


"Your explanation is nearly perfect and not ""hand wavy"" at all. Stock prices reflect the collective wisdom of all participating investors. Investors value stocks based on how much value they expect the stock to produce now and in the future. So, the stability of the stock prices is a reflection of the accuracy of the investors predictions. Investor naivity can be seen as a sequence of increasingly sophisticated stock pricing strategies: If investors were able to predict the future perfectly, then all stock prices would rise at the same constant rate. In theory, if a particular investor is able to ""beat the market"", it is because they are better at predicting the future profits of companies (or they are lucky, or they are better at predicting the irrational behavior of other investors......)"


"There are services, usually associated with real estate agents, that provide apartment search services for relocating professionals. I was very underimpressed when I was offered the use of such a service and did better on my own, but I did have the company paying for a hotel room while I searched so I had time to investigate alternative channels -- and in fact found and took a place being offered by a co-worker's father. But if you're really looking for ""a room"" in a shared living situation, and you aren't already on campus talking to other students, I agree that the school's housing office, or the dorms and/or fraternity houses and/or independent living groups are your best bet. In a college town most roommate openings get snapped up pretty quickly and are more likely to go to someone who is a known or vouched-for quantity."


weird holdover from the bad old days when you had to do arithmetic by hand I would guess. Stocks used to trade in 1/8ths, so bonds trading in even smaller increments makes sense. Also (and I am unsure if this is still true) U.S. bonds trade on a 360 day year (or used to anyway) for the same reason... 360 divides well into months and quarters (for easier math) whereas 365 is considerably harder. Most of the world now trades in decimals and 365/365 years so I am unsure why the U.S. doesn't. Institutional inertia I would guess.


From your question, it seems your problem is that you have a company that wants to make a deal, but does not currently have enough money to go through with it. Therefore it needs to raise capital. Assuming that you cannot get a loan from a bank and you do not want to seek funding from other sources, the two owners must provide the funds themselves somehow. Option A: The easiest and fairest way to do this is for the two shareholders to provide 75%, and 25% of the funding as a loan to the company. They will provide this loan knowing it may not be paid back if the company goes under. Note that it would not be fair for one of the shareholders to provide more, as that shareholder would be taking all the risk, while the other still reaps the rewards (although you could add a large interest rate to account for this). Option B: But say one of the shareholders cannot provide additional funds. In that case, the company should issue new shares, and each shareholder can purchase however many of the new shares he/she wants (each shareholder is entitled to purchase at least 75% or 25% respectively, but does not have to). The result of this may be that company ownership percentages have changed after the capital raising. This is more complex as it require valuing the company accurately to be fair, and probably requires reporting to a government (depending on the jurisdiction).


"I've just started using Personal Capital (www.personalcapital.com) after seeing the recommendation at several places. I believe it gives you what you want to see, but I don't think you can back populate it with old information. So if you log in and link accounts today, you'll have it going forward. I only put in my investment accounts as I use another tool to track my day-to-day spending. I use Personal Capital to track my investment returns over time. How did my portfolio compare to S&P 500, etc. And here is a shot of the ""You Index"" which I think is close to what you are looking for:"


As a consultant I charge my clients by the hour of my time they're occupying, not just my productivity. That means when I walk to the printer, task a colleague, scan an incoming email, go pee, time taken to tally productive tasks, or take an ergonomic stretch break are client paid non-value added work. Professions that track billable hours are not tracking productivity. Some more than others are definitely more productive in a given hour, but productivity will vary by the person and skill level.


Buying individual/small basket of high dividend shares is exposing you to 50%+ and very fast potential downswings in capital/margin calls. There is no free lunch in returns in this respect: nothing that pays enough to help you pay your mortgage at a high rate won’t expose you to a lot of potential volatility. Main issue here looks like you have very poorly performing rental investments you should consider selling or switching up rental usage/how you rent them (moving to shorter term, higher yield lets, ditching any agents/handymen that are taking up capital/try and refinance to lower mortgage rates etc etc). Trying to use leveraged stock returns to pay for poorly performing housing investments is like spraying gasoline all over a fire. Fixing the actual issue in hand first is virtually always the best course of action in these scenarios.


Heh I'm more baffled by the sheer size of the collection I shared with my siblings. It must have seriously reached about 75k to 100k pieces. My parents were not well off at the time, but they never bought us cheap crap. Instead they just kept feeding more LEGO into the collection. I never fully appreciated them for it at the time. Looking back now I'm almost ashamed of how spoiled I was.


I am looking at size by revenue. Looking at market capitalization gives a much different list. I don't think market cap is a good metric for this discussion. According to market cap Telsa is the largest automotive company in the US, but that is because it is expected to do well in the future by the investment community. According to market cap what is reddit worth?


Your parents are troopers (pooper troopers?). Nothing in our area was affordable for those services so we tried the clean-your-own kind - they were really nice and probably would help potty train but seriously a few months of scraping poop into the trash and washing a bucket of smelly diapers got old quiiiiiick! I will say this - the kind you clean yourself is the absolute cheapest option. It was like $300 for a half week supply of cloth diapers so you're doing diaper laundry twice a week and the only other added cost is the special detergent which was pretty cheap and lasted a long time... Then we sold them used on eBay for $200 and bought the next size up when it was time which was like 2 months later (they snap to multiple sizes)... Rinse and repeat - works out pretty well if you're willing to commit to washing poop cloth twice a week. And 3 months of honest diapers is around $300 I think.


"Overoptimism, making mistakes and wrong assumptions, being taken by lies, all of that is legal and, in a lot of ways, very human and forgivable. But when they ""buried her findings ... before, during and after the financial crisis, and even into 2012"" from senior management whose job it is to look out for bad investments, ""buying mortgages from outside lenders with doctored tax forms, phony appraisals and missing signatures"", ""systematically violating U.S. mortgage regulations"", and lying about losses while still taking money from the government, these are illegal and immoral practices with profit as a motive and with the knowledge that what they were doing was wrong. Buying into something with all you've got is any business's prerogative. Lying, manipulating, and willfully breaking the law, especially when the product and means to purchase directly impacts the customer, all to maximize profit is not."


We get funding based upon productivity (i.e. papers published), mostly. No one checks the reproducibility of the results, or at least not for many years. This creates an incentive to publish nonsense. Many do, as it turns out.


This is wrong. It should be or Now, to get back to self-employment tax. Self-employment tax is weird. It's a business tax. From the IRS perspective, any self-employed person is a business. So, take your income X and divide by 1.0765 (6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare). This gives your personal income. Now, to calculate the tax that you have to pay, multiply that by .153 (since you have to pay both the worker and employer shares of the tax). So new calculation or they actually let you do which is better for you (smaller). And your other calculations change apace. And like I said, you can simplify Q1se to and your payment would be Now, to get to the second quarter. Like I said, I'd calculate the income through the second quarter. So recalculate A based on your new numbers and use that to calculate Q2i. or Note that this includes income from both the first and second quarters. We'll reduce to just the second quarter later. This also has you paying for all of June even though you may not have been paid when you make the withholding payment. That's what they want you to do. But we aren't done yet. Your actual payment should be or Because Q2ft and Q2se are what you owe for the year so far. Q1ft + Q1se is what you've already paid. So you subtract those from what you need to pay in the second quarter. In future quarters, this would be All that said, don't stress about it. As a practical matter, so long as you don't owe $1000 or more when you file your actual tax return, they aren't going to care. So just make sure that your total payments match by the payment you make January 15th. I'm not going to try to calculate for the state. For one thing, I don't know if your state uses Q1i or Q1pi as its base. Different states may have different rules on that. If you can't figure it out, just use Q1i, as that's the bigger one. Fix it when you file your annual return. The difference in withholding is going to be relatively small anyway, less than 1% of your income.


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Here are the basic questions I usually ask any new business startup: Do these numbers/answers seem reasonable to you and is some benchmark available that allows you to see how likely this is? Remember, particularly in Internet-based advertising ventures, the client may be indirect. The person who clicks on a Google context-based link is not directly Google's client. The person who decided to host AdWords code on their site is the direct client. You're also going to want to see a Gant chart or some process chart indicating exactly what needs to be done, at what cost and by whom. Answers to these questions give a sense of not only how seriously they are taking the business, but also how organised. My final question: who is your first client? They need either someone who is going to contract the service, or have a clear indication of where income is going to come from, on their first day of trading. Their task is to sell their idea to you by proving that it will return on your investment and be profitable. From the strength of these answers you can gauge the value of your investment to them, how critical it is, how risky the opportunity and - ultimately - the stake and returns you should expect.


"The ""software industry"" also uses some of the strongest DRM available - see any enterprise-level solutions out there (Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, IBM, etc.). Sure, piracy there happens, but it's not widespread in the U.S./Europe. Similar with the gaming industry - strong DRM, and though piracy is tolerated, it's made difficult and time-consuming, thus ensuring that the vast majority of consumers purchase the product instead of steal it. Everyone knows that some piracy is inevitable, but DRM ensures that most consumers won't steal - the same way that retail stores use those little magnetic strips embedded in products. Bottom line - no one gives away their product for free. That's not a business model."


There are two significant drawbacks to this type of transfer. They were the reasons why I kept my American 401(k) as-is and started funding my Canadian RRSP from zero balance. 1. Taxes - a large chunk of your 401(k) will be lost to taxes. There is probably no way to transfer the funds without making a 401(k)/IRA withdrawal, which will incur the US federal tax and the 10% early-withdrawal penalty. When the money went into the 401(k), you got a tax deduction in the US and the tax break is supposed be repaid later when you make a withdrawal (that's basically how tax deferral works). It's unlikely that any country will let you take a deduction first and send the payback to a foreign country. The withdrawal amount may also be taxable in Canada (Canadians generally pay taxes on their global income and that includes pensions and distributions from foreign retirement plans). Foreign tax credit will apply of course, to eliminate double taxation, but it's of little help if your marginal Canadian tax rate is higher than your average US tax rate. 2. Expenses. Your RRSP will have to be invested in something and mutual fund management expenses are generally higher in Canada than in the US. For example, my employer-sponsored RRSP has a Standard & Poor's stock index fund that charges 1.5% and that is considered low-cost. It also offers a number of managed funds with expenses in excess of 2% that I simply ignore. You can probably invest your American 401(k)/IRA in mutual funds more efficiently.


One such strategy I have heard for those who have this opportunity is to purchase the maximum allowed. When the window to sell opens, sell all of your shares and repurchase the most you can with the amount you gained (or keep an equivalent to avoid another transaction fee). This allows you to buy at a discount, and spread out the risk by investing elsewhere. This way you are really only exposing yourself to lose money which you wouldn't have had access to without the stock discount.


It depends how detailed you want to get in your calculation, but fundamentally, 1K < 25K. On a very basic level, divide the cost (less what you sell it for) by the time you'll have the car for. If you junk it, $1K/12 month = $83/month to buy tires to have a car for a year. If you sell it for $1K, then it become $0/month. (Plus other maintenance, etc..., obviously). If you pay 25K and keep the new car for ten years and sell it for nothing, it becomes roughly $208/month (plus maintenance). If you want to get more accurate, there are a lot of variables you can take into account--time cost of money, financing, maintenance costs of different vehicle types, etc...


I'd argue that you should be focusing on avoiding taxation and maximizing employer matching funds as your first objective. Over a longer period, quality of investment options and fees will both drive your account value. A personal IRA account is usually a better value over time -- so contribute as much as possible to your IRA, and rollover 401k accounts whenever you have an opportunity to do so.


"A mutual fund's return or yield has nothing to do with what you receive from the mutual fund. The annual percentage return is simply the percentage increase (or decrease!) of the value of one share of the mutual fund from January 1 till December 31. The cash value of any distributions (dividend income, short-term capital gains, long-term capital gains) might be reported separately or might be included in the annual return. What you receive from the mutual fund is the distributions which you have the option of taking in cash (and spending on whatever you like, or investing elsewhere) or of re-investing into the fund without ever actually touching the money. Regardless of whether you take a distribution as cash or re-invest it in the mutual fund, that amount is taxable income in most jurisdictions. In the US, long-term capital gains are taxed at different (lower) rates than ordinary income, and I believe that long-term capital gains from mutual funds are not taxed at all in India. You are not taxed on the increase in the value of your investment caused by an increase in the share price over the year nor do you get deduct the ""loss"" if the share price declined over the year. It is only when you sell the mutual fund shares (back to the mutual fund company) that you have to pay taxes on the capital gains (if you sold for a higher price) or deduct the capital loss (if you sold for a lower price) than the purchase price of the shares. Be aware that different shares in the sale might have different purchase prices because they were bought at different times, and thus have different gains and losses. So, how do you calculate your personal return from the mutual fund investment? If you have a money management program or a spreadsheet program, it can calculate your return for you. If you have online access to your mutual fund account on its website, it will most likely have a tool called something like ""Personal rate of return"" and this will provide you with the same calculations without your having to type in all the data by hand. Finally, If you want to do it personally by hand, I am sure that someone will soon post an answer writing out the gory details."


The Facebook IPO wasn't a debacle. Facebook got maximum value for their shares. That's precisely what you want at IPO. If you sell your stock initially for $25, and next week it's at $35, you've left a hell of a lot of money on the table.


"You're getting great wisdom and options. Establishing your actionable path will require the details that only you know, such as how much is actually in each paycheck (and how much tax is withheld), how much do you spend each month (and yearly expenses too), how much spending can you actually cut or replace, how comfortable are you with considering (or not considering) unexpected/emergency spending. You mentioned you were cash-poor, but only you know what your current account balances are, which will affect your actions and priorities. Btw, interestingly, your ""increase 401k contributions by 2% each year"" will need to end before hitting the $18K contribution limit. I took some time and added the details you posted into a cash-flow program to see your scenario over the next few years. There isn't a ""401k loan"" activity in this program yet, so I build the scenario from other simple activities. You seem financially minded enough to continue modeling on your own. I'm posting the more difficult one for you (borrow from 401k), but you'll have to input your actual balances, paycheck and spending. My spending assumptions must be low, and I entered $70K as ""take-home,"" so the model looks like you've got lots of cash. If you choose to play with it, then consider modeling some other scenarios from the advice in the other posts. Here's the ""Borrow $6500 from 401k"" scenario model at Whatll.Be: https://whatll.be/d1x1ndp26i/2 To me, it's all about trying the scenarios and see which one seems to work with all of the details. The trick is knowing what scenarios to try, and how to model them. Full disclosure: I needed to do similar planning, so I wrote Whatll.Be and I now share it with other people. It's in beta, so I'm testing it with scenarios like yours. (Notice most of the extra activity occurs on 2018-Jan-01)"


My wife works at a prestigious hospital where advancement is based on medical achievement. Given what goes on her floor, the lack of basic management skills is causing things like chronic short staffing, which in turn directly affects things like costs (reliance on short term, expensive staff) and nurse to patient ratios. This cuts both ways: if medical staff want to be 100% in charge, learn a little bit about management.


Clark Howard suggests you hop your cards. Get your new card now and when you have it, dump the card with the high fees. The age of your accounts has some impact on your credit rating, but unless you have a major purchase coming up and your score is teetering, I would take the score hit to save money on the card.


The employer most likely has already sent that money that was withheld to the IRS. Therefore they cannot refund you any money. Instead you need to get the money back from the IRS. You do this by filing a tax return. Your W2C will show that taxes were withheld (I.e., that you paid taxes). The rest of the return will show that no taxes were due and therefore you are entitled to have your money refunded. If you have already filed for that tax you, you just need to file an amended return with the new data. That amendment will show that you are to be refunded the extra money. Then just wait several weeks for the payment from the IRS. As pointed out user102008, if it is Medicare and social security taxes that have been withheld in error, then you need to file a different set of forms with IRS. It would be nice if refunding FICA also occurred via the tax return.


he invested in goog. hes a couple of appl shares away from being a mod on /r/wallstreetbets. a billionaire investing in an S&P500 company is literally the most mundane shit you can think of. if thats proof hes (((up to no good))) then i dont know what to even say to that.


"Except that Shamu is the Sea World brand. This is like if for some reason people got angry about Mickey Mouse, would Disney surrender that icon? Sea World has been built on Shamu, and Sea World executives will estimate that were it not for the orca shows, their park would see massively reduced attendance anyway. They may have hard numbers, they may not, but if they see their attendance shrinking less than they think it would shrink were the shows not there, then they won't do it. The idea of ""we'll be the good guys then"" won't sit well with executives, because they can't quantify it - will they be the good guys, or won't they? They've already made an enemy out of the animal rights people, they may think the animal rights people will just want more out of them after getting some concessions, so they're going to dig in and not even start the concessions. They may be destroying themselves, or maybe their business model is just being destroyed by moving technology and social progressions. Bullfighting-ring owners had to deal with it in Spain, Sea World has to deal with it here. Sorry, sometimes this happens to a business."


I don't disagree. My iPhone is made with products from Fox con. They have a horrific record for taking care of their employees. I need to own that. Simultaneously, Apple goes out of its way to do everything they can in order to stifle that victimization. This includes searching for other vendors, overseeing as much of the production process as they are allowed to, and also creating factories and processes here in America that are more under their direct control. I do not see rival companies (like Samsung) doing the same thing. I would never say that I live a purely virtuous life. But I try to make a stand where I think it will make a difference while still being able to provide for my family. And I provide for my family very well.


It doesn't sound fishy at all to me. Just seems like you may be dealing with a company that has relatively light trading volume to begin with, meaning that small trades could easily make the price drop 8% (which isn't much if you're talking about a stocks in the $5 or less range. If someone sells at the bid and the bid happens to be 8% lower than the current price, that bid is now the price, hence the drop. The bid moving up afterward, just means that someone is now willing to place a higher order than what the last trade was, to try to get in.


This is a long term investment but can be very useful during tough times. Be prepared not only to take but to give as well. Moreover:


All this may be true but rampant fraud was not at the core of the housing crisis. Middle managers fired because Human Resources could do middle manager work on management software for low wages -- that is the core of the housing crisis. Fired middle managers who were paying their home loans walked away from their homes because they no longer were able to get a high paying job to pay for those homes. The middle class of lower populated Canada is greater than the middle class in the U.S. today. As a former manager of hundreds of home loan officers, I should know.


The most important thing to remember about bitcoin is that it is an information technology. As you’re probably aware, information tech advances very rapidly and renders the previous generations obsolete. I too think bitcoin is in a bubble, though it probably has a while to go. Blockchain tech will rapidly improve and become more ubiquitous, meanwhile bitcoin offers nothing new and is plagued with issues. The fact it accounts for 50%+ of all crypto value is mind boggling. Imagine one stock accounting for 50% of the entire stock market of the world. When blockchain tech is mainstream, that’s essentially what bitcoin has to do to maintain its status. Seems very doubtful to me.


"You have already indicted in another question, titled Which risk did I take winning this much?, that you did not understand (1) Why a previous trade made you as much money as it did; nor (2) How much you could have lost if things went a different way. You were, in that other question, talking about taking short position, without understanding (apparently) that a short position can create losses exceeding the value of your initial investment. Can one make money doing day trading? Yes, an educated investor may be able to prudently invest in short term positions making knowledgeable judgments about risk, and still make money. Can you make money doing day trading? Well, maybe. You have in the past, in what you described in a previous post as ""winning"". So even in your own eyes, you were effectively gambling, and got lucky. Perhaps the more relevant questions you can ask yourself are: Can you lose money doing day trading? And, most importantly, Are you more likely to lose money day trading, or consistently make money by taking on reasonable and educated risks?"


The exact answers depend on what you're going to do and what you started with and what your local market is like ... But a bit of websearching (and/or asking a good general contractor) will yield a table of typical improvement in sale price from various renovations. One thing you'll discover is that unless you are staring with something almost unsellable, few if any if thgem return more than you paid for them; getting back 85% is exceptionally good. A possible exception is energy-saving measures; basic air-seaking and attic insulation improvements pay back their cost relatively quickly, and solar can do so if you have a decent site for that -- and these are often subsidized in one way or another by government or utilities. For most things, thoiugh, the real answer is to ask yourself what would make the house better for you and your family, and what that would be worth to you. If you can get it done for less than that, go for it. It's a good idea to put together as complete a list vas possible before starting, since some will be considerably less expensive if done in the right order or at the same time. (Redo your roofing before installing rooftop solar panels, if possible; as one example.) Then prioritize thiose by what will improve your enjoyment of the house most. You'll probably get better specific advice over in the Home Improvement area of Stack Exchange.


Obviously you can't predict the future too much, but it's not too hard to figure out what is going to happen to mortgage rates in the short term. Mortgage rates are heavily influenced by 10 year treasury yields. You can find the daily 10 year rates here. It's easy to see the direction they've been moving recently. It usually takes a few days for mortgage rates to follow if the 10 year treasury yield is dropping (although if it's going up, mortgage rates will go up faster than they will fall). Here's a sample of all the 10 year treasury yields for the past 10 years. Looks like a good time to get a mortgage or refinance! You can also take a look at movements in mortgage backed securities. Here you can find a chart for Fannie Mae 3.0% mortgages. As the price goes up, mortgage rates go down. Think of it this way. Right now people are will to pay $103 for $100 worth of 3.0% mortgages. That doesn't really make sense because I could just loan you $100 at 3.0% and turn around and sell it for $103 immediately, pocketing the $3 profit. The reason is because right now, no one would willingly borrow money at 3.0%. Rates have fallen so much that if a bank has a customer paying them 3.0% on a mortgage, other people are willing to pay a premium on that mortgage. New mortgages are probably being written for 2.0%. (There is no current mortgage backed security for 2.0% fannie maes because rates have never been this low before).


At some point, there will even be non wealthy nations with better healthcare. Anyone who is well travelled, or from another country knows how horrific the US healthcare system is. The media talks about poor people, but it's awful for the middle to upper middle class too in comparison to alternatives. It constantly shocks me this is not a bigger public issue. If only the general population realized what the alternative looks like. Not perfect by any means, but so much better.


it depends on you, thats just the point, how risk averse you are determines how wide your risk premium needs to be to as you feel adequately compensate you for the risk you are taking. If I have some money i inherited from grandad and I want to make 15% on it then my required rate is 15% on top of the risk free rate. Thats what I require. Alternatively you could use a historic market rate to to determine the markets required return since on average that should be correct allowing you to sell your asset later to the average market participant. Thats easy for the equity investment. Because you have two different asset classes for your investments you could use different discount rates using the historic market risk premium in each asset's market or you can use the same discount rate for both which makes it easier to compare. In the second case I would discount using the equity required return since the equity investment you are not making is the opportunity cost of your real estate investment. At the end of the day its a value judgment in my opinion and there isn't a right. Your understanding of the economics and from that what is important will inform what you use as a discount rate and that value judgment is kindha where an analyst adds value.


Buy low, sell high. I think a lot of people apply that advice wrongly. Instead of using this as advice about when to buy and when to sell, you should use it as advice about when not to buy and when not to sell. Don't buy when P/Es cannot support the current stock price. Don't sell when stocks have already fallen due to a market panic. Don't follow the herd or you will get trampled when they reverse direction in a panic. If you are smart enough to sell ahead of the panics, more power to you, but you should be using more than a 52-week high on a graph to make that decision.


"Vanguard's Admiral shares are like regular (""investor"") shares in their funds, only they charge lower expense ratios. They have higher investment minimums, though. (For instance, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund has a minimum of $3,000 and an expense ratio of .18% for the Investor Shares class, but a minimum of $10,000 and an expense ratio of .07% for Admiral Shares). If you've bought a bunch of investor shares and now meet the (recently-reduced) minimum for Admiral shares, or if you have some and buy some more investor shares in the future and meet the minimums, you will qualify for a free, no-tax-impact conversion to the Admiral Shares and save yourself some money. For more information, see the Vanguard article on their recent changes to Admiral Shares minimums. Vanguard also offers institutional-class shares with even lower expense ratios than that (with a minimum of $5 million, .06% expense ratios on the same fund). A lot of the costs of operating a fund are per-individual, so they don't need to charge you extra fees for putting in more money after a certain point. They'd rather be competitive and offer it at cost. Vanguard's funds typically have very low expense ratios to begin with. (The investor shares I've been using as an example are advertised as ""84% lower than the average expense ratio of funds with similar holdings"".) In fact, Vanguard's whole reason for existing is the premise (stated in founder John C Bogle's undergraduate thesis at Princeton) that individuals can generally get better returns by investing in a cheap fund that tracks an index than by investing in mutual funds that try to pick stocks and beat the index and charge you a steep markup. The average real return of the stock market is supposedly something like 4%; even a small-looking percentage like 1% can eat a big portion of that. Over the course of 40 years waiting for retirement, saving 1% on expenses could leave you with something like 50% more money when you've retired. If you are interested in the lower expense ratios of the Admiral share classes but cannot meet the minimums, note that funds which are available as ETFs can be traded from Vanguard brokerage accounts commission-free and typically charge the same expense ratios as the Admiral shares without any minimums (but you need to trade them as individual shares, and this is less convenient than moving them around in specific dollar amounts)."


Which is unions. But there is such hatred for unions that America has fallen to 7% unionization in the private sector. If things get much worse I sure hope there is a re-mobilization of the labour movement in the US. I don't know how the middle class with survive without them.


"Yeahhhh right.... Just like the good 'ol time when you where busting your ass in factory for +12 hours a day (and I'm taking the low estimation here) for a penny (but without taxes), and that they were no taxes or regulation. Or when your child of 6 was forced to work in mine because you couldn't make enough to feed your four person family. Or when you where sweating your ass in a cotton field for a piece of oatmeal. Before the big bad govt decide it was time to end certain things. Money is a way of expressing value in an organized economy, money is (and has always been) the ""government"" installing a way for your society to economicaly work by ""upgrading"" basic good exchange so that people that doesn't product anything but virtual sociological value can take a share (like bankers, politicians, CEO and other marvels). Taxes are just another way of making the value flows, like debt. >When the public sector comes in, there will be a lot of people in between who consume resources yet do not provide anything useful in return. I bet neither the military, NASA, FDA or your local police station/firefighters aren't providing any usefullness..."


If you look at the shit people are saying now with what they were saying Tsarist Russia in 1917, the similarities are striking. Evil Banker Conspiracist Jews, secret societies, etc. We all know how those energies got channelled, yes? Rich people might not wear monocles at secret parties but that matters very little to the angry mob that is increasingly screaming for their blood. Unless the economy starts finally improving, I'd be a little worried about my safety if I were making $800k a year, just sayin'...


**Free software** Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow the software users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute the software and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, not price: users, individually or collectively, are free to do what they want with it, including the freedom to redistribute the software free of charge, or to sell it, or charge for related services such as support or warranty for profit. The right to study and modify software entails availability of the software source code to its users. While this right is often called 'access to source code', the Free Software Foundation recommends to avoid using the word 'access' in this context because it is misleading and may make people believe that they may have a copy of the source code unconditionally. *** ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/business/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.27


IT asset management software --Integrate Alloy Navigator as your IT Service Management solution for medium and large business environments. Designed and built with the industry's best practices and real-world customers in mind, it offers an intuitive, comprehensive, easy-to-use approach to managing the Service Desk, IT assets, task assignments, and more.


Zoning laws with no urban planning? Completely private infrastructure? Hahahahhaahahahahhahahahaahahhahaahha, you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. I have worked in civil engineering for 20 years, what you describe would turn American sprawl into SE Asian slums over night. India has more zoning laws than the US including a whole crap load of religious ones we don't have but everyone just ignores them because they have a weak federal government, which is what you favor. The real world disagrees with your ideology, change it.


My wife and I do this. We have one account for income and one for expenditures (and around 7 others for dedicated savings.) Doing this we are forcing ourselves to keep track of all expenditures as we have to manually transfer funds from one to the other, we try to do this periodically (every Wednesday) and then keep the expenditures within what is actually on the account. It is a really good way to keep track of everything. Bear in mind that our bank provides a fast handy smartphone app where we both can check our account as well as transfer funds in less than 10 seconds. (Fingerprint authentication, instant funds transfer as well as zero fees for transfers.) Right now we have a credit card each attached to the expenditures account, but earlier we only had a debit card each and no credit cards. Meaning that when the weekly funds ran out we where simply not able to pay. We did this to mimic living only on cash and when the cash runs out you simply have to stop buying stuff. And at the same time we could accrue quite a bit of savings. I would definitely recommend this if you have problems with over expenditures.


No you can't, as you would have to have a different order for each security. Usually the bigger the order the more the brokerage you would also pay.


"The best way to do this is to use IRR. It's a complicated calculation, but will take into account multiple in/out cash flows over time along with ""idle periods"" where your money may not have been doing anything. Excel can calculate it for you using the XIRR function"


Option prices consist of two parts: the intrinsic value (the difference between the strike and the current price of the stock) and a time premium, representing the probability that the stock will end up above the strike for a call (or below for a put). All else being equal, options decline in value as time passes, since there is less uncertainty about the expected value of the stock at expiration and thus the time premium is smaller. Theta is the measure of the change in value in one day. So for every day that passes, the calls you sold are going down by $64.71 (which is positive to you since you sold them at a higher value) and the calls you sold are going down by $49.04. So your position (a short spread) is gaining $15.67 each day (assuming no change in stock price or volatility). In reality, the stock price and volatility also change every day, and those are much stronger drivers of the value of your options. In your case, however, the options are deep out of the money, meaning it's very likely that they'll expire worthless, so all you have left is time premium, which is decaying as time goes on.


Dude! I specifically said big businesses got paid. But you IMPLIED big Business was more altruistic, was the great giver of our infrastructure. Now you’re telling me the financial sector pays for everything, and should be loved for it, as if they aren’t making money off the loans either. Back to the beginning: Big money is not to be thanked for our infrastructure. The government is. Big money is the parasite using that infrastructure to leech money from the government as many ways as they can. Every item you have pointed out is another place where big money has gained off the government. We need to relearn thatbpeopke are more important than money, and it starts with big money being held responsible for its practices and how those practices affect We the People. Well, maybe we should make the Media accountable first.


Look at the tech used. Bitcoin a a very small numbers of others have their own blockchains. Nearly all other coins are build on Ethereum. Ethereum is like iOS for blockchain. One can build public or private versions. The fuel / transaction currency of the Ethereum playtform (think distributed operating system) is Ether (ETH) The Ethereum guys were very clever and got the biggest guys deploy involved multi nationals.. all of them have internal ethereum projects to capture their internal value distribution systems. But they ar already planning to manage their entire supply chains with this. Think: Com apt gets order via a distributed order system . These orders are legally binding. The bank of the producer Dan now issue a credit that flows through 10+ levels to suppliers and they will no longer be held up by week if not Knoth long PurchaseOrder processes. => these types of things is what the EEA is all about. At the same time Ethereum has much different transaction limits and has clear paths for increasing those limits in the future. Try transfer bitcoin right now :) The might be a lot of other coins coming but the question you should ask yourself: do you think there will there be a competitor to ethereum as general purpose blockchain platform in any near / mid term future. Keep in mind the already unreadably broad industry support. Depending on the answer to this ether is a great investment or just a good one. Either way :) Not saying other coins won't yield higher results but if you invest in the ether you invest in the currency the transactions of the others us calculated at. So in any case if you believe in coins there will be uptake on Ether.


"It makes no sense to spend money unnecessarily, just for the purpose of improving your credit score. You have to stop and ask yourself the question ""Why do I need a good credit score?"" Most of the time, the answer will be ""so I can get a lower interest rate on (ABC loan) in the future."" However, if you spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars in the present, just so that you can save a few points on a loan, you're not going to come out ahead. The car question should be considered strictly in the context of transportation expenses: ""It cost me $X to get around last year using Lyft. If instead I owned a car, it would have cost me $Y for gas, insurance, depreciation, parking, etc."" If you come out ahead and Y < X, then buy the car. Don't jump into an expensive vehicle (which is never a good investment) or get trapped into an expensive lease which will costs you many times more than the depreciation value of a decent used car, just so that you can save a few points on a mortgage. Your best option moving forward would be to pay off your student loans first, getting rid of that interest expense. Place the remainder in savings, then start to look at a budget. Setting aside a 20% down payment on a home is considered the minimum to many people, and if that is out of reach you might need to consider other neighborhoods (less than 400K!). If you're still concerned about your credit score, a good way to build that up (once you have a budget and spending under control) is to get a credit card with no annual fees. Start putting all of your expenses on the credit card (groceries, etc), and paying off the balance IN FULL every month. By spending only what you need to within a reasonable budget, and making payments on time and in full, your credit rating will begin to gradually improve. If you have a difficult time tracking your expenses or sticking to a budget, then there is potential for danger here, as credit cards are notorious for high interest and penalties. But by keeping it under control and putting the rest toward savings, you can begin to build wealth and put yourself in a much better financial position moving into the future."


At the end of each calendar year the mutual fund company will send you a 1099 form. It will tell you and the IRS what your account earned. You will see boxes for: You will end up paying taxes on these, unless the fund is part of a 401K or IRA. These taxes will be due even if you never sold any shares. They are due even if it was a bad year and the value of your account went down. Most if not all states will levy an income tax yon your dividends and capital gains each year. When you sell your shares you may also owe income taxes if you made a profit. The actual taxes due is a more complex calculation due to long term vs short term, and what other gains or losses you have. Partial sales also take into account which shares are sold.


"Although not required, #2 would work best if you used magnetic ink... That is an extra cost which you may or may not want to pay for. You can often get a free checking account and a free set of checks if you can meet the minimum requirements. This often means a higher average daily balance, direct deposit, or some combination of multiple requirements. The bank is taking a risk that a client meeting those minimum requirements while likely earn the bank more in fees and services than what they give out for ""free"" such as the account and checks. My wife and I opened a Wells Fargo checking account two years ago. Back then, we were able to open the account for free along with a free set of 250 checks. I think the requirement now requires $7,500 average daily balance."


Relative Strength Indicators are also trailing indicators. They are based on the number of recent upticks or downticks in an investment's price. (The size of a tick is quantized, and related to the investment's price.) By the time enough upticks have accumulated to generate a buy signal, the investment has already increased in price significantly. Similarly, by the time enough downticks have accumulated a to generate a sell signal, the investment has already dropped in price significantly. The theory of Relative Strength Indicators is based on the hope that moves found by these indicators are likely to continue after the signal is generated. But even if this is the case, someone who relies on these indicators will miss out on the first part of the move. Dorsey-Wright offers investment research based on the theory of Relative Strength Indicators. They offer investment vehicles based on this research. They also work with local investment advisors to develop custom back-tested strategies. They have published a white-paper, with references to others' research.


Unless you own a business and the car is used in that business you can't write off your auto repairs. If you start a sole-proprietorship in your own name there are all sorts of things you can write off as long as there is a reasonable expectation of profit. This includes a portion of your car repairs, a portion of your home expenses (assuming it's a home-based business), any tools used in the business, all kinds of stuff. The portion of your auto is based on total miles driven in the year vs. total miles driven for business purposes. Eligible auto expenses include repairs, gas/oil, insurance, parking, and interest on the auto loan. There are some things to remember: I'm no expert on California business law. Talk to a lawyer and an accountant if you wish to go this way. Many offer a half-hour free session for new clients.


"The key with analyzing financial statements is that you need to look at all angles of a particular item. ie: Sales has gone up, but has the cost of sales increased by even more, implying narrower margins? Or, interest expense has gone up, but is that because new debt was taken on to pay for expansion? In the specific case you mentioned [buying assets that will create depreciation expense over time], there is a grouping on the cash flow statement called 'Investing', which will state the amount of cash used during the year to invest in the business. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on other factors (and your personal preference regarding dividends being paid to shareholders). In addition, you can see the amount of depreciation expense separately listed on the cash flow statement. This tells you many things. Consider a company with $10M in assets on the balance sheet, but $2M in depreciation expense. This tells you that [in a very loose sense], every 5 years the assets owned by the company will all need to be replaced. Compare that with the Investing section of the cash flow statement - if they are buying $4M of new assets this year, this tells you that on an overall basis, they are likely expanding the business, because the new investments outpace the depreciation. But, is your concern of under-reported earnings a common issue? Typically, keep in mind that the most common bias of a company is to over-report earnings. This is because management compensation (in the form of performance bonuses and stock option valuation) is increased by profitable years. However, in a year where a loss / poor performance is likely, a reverse-bias occurs, to take as much of a loss as possible in that year. This is because if a manager's bonus is already 0 due to poor company performance, having a worse year will not turn the bonus negative. So, by taking all expenses possible today on the financial statements, next year might have less allocated expenses, and therefore the manager might get a bigger bonus impact next year. This is called ""Taking a big bath"". Note that public companies must meet certain reporting standards, and they are audited by external accounting firms to show that they meet those standards. Of course, there is no guarantee that the auditors will catch all cases of accounting manipulation (see Enron, etc., etc.)."


"Check is an obligation to pay, and is unconditional. In the US, checks don't expire (there are countries where they do). Endorsements such as ""void after X days"" are meaningless and don't affect the obligation to pay. The bank is under no obligation to honor a check that is more than 6 months old (based on the date on the check, of course). This is from the Unified Commercial Code 4-404. However, this refers to the bank, not to the person who gave you the check. The bank may pay, if the check is deposited in good faith and there's nothing wrong with it or with the account. So the first thing you can do is deposit the check. If asked - you can say that the person just wrote the wrong date, which is true. Worst case the check bounces. If the check bounces - you can start with demand letters and small claim courts. The obligation to pay doesn't go away unless satisfied, i.e.: paid."


It depends on your goals. Without knowing more than the fact that you live in Mexico (and therefore presumably have future expenses in pesos) and that you are concerned about the purchasing power of pesos, I would suggest an inflation-linked peso-denominated investment, if one is offered.


Im pretty sure its a moral application of the forceful basis of taxation. And most people get rich by providing goods and services, or via investing in goods in services. The rest, the hyperwealthy banksters, international weapons/ death merchants, wall street, fraudsters, the-good-ole-boys-network, etc... that was via government, and its probably not a good idea to give them more. Pay your taxes, please. I dont want them to ruin your life.


I believe so (that you can, not that you are greedy) I run my own business and, generally speaking, am 'charging' my company 40p per mile as per the quote above. I did not know about the ability to claim the shortfall, as it is not relevant to me, but it makes perfect sense and I'm sure that a phone call to HMRC will help you understand how to claim. As for the greedy question - personally I think that laws are there for a reason (both ways) so if there's money to be claimed - there's no reason not to do so, unless of course the hassle is greater than the potential gain. One last note - not sure exactly what the rules around this are, but I know that the allowance is not applicable for one's general commute and so if you're travelling to the same place over 40% of the time for more than two years you are no longer allowed to claim these miles.


A 25% variance in price, in most markets, isn't so crazy as to require it be some sort of terrible scam, but that doesn't mean much else. It could be the inclusion of floor plans that are carefully designed to add square footage at minimum cost and thus reduce the average cost per square foot without actually being cheaper otherwise, less insulation, thinner walls, cheap piping, minimized wiring, or they are just efficient and competitive. As you pointed out they don't have gas, so that's certainly one way you know they cut costs - no gas lines to install! As the article from NAHB: Cost of Constructing A Home points out, though, what this figure includes can vary. Does it include the finished lot? If so then a smaller lot would mean lower square footage building price - because the land is smaller and cheaper, not the house! Is any kind of financing quoted in the price? Compare also change-plan costs, any penalties for delays in construction, grade of materials, floor plans, customization costs, fees or premiums to pick colors/floors/counters/cabinets/fixtures, and so on. What about central cooling and heating - are they quoting an electric furnace? How does electrical heating in your area compare to the cost of gas heat? (relative pricing of electric and gas vary widely by region and climate) In short: often square footage price isn't the whole story of what it would cost to construct a home. Ensure you are comparing everything that's important to you and you are getting a full quote, not comparing small isolate sales-pitch figures with no clear details. If it turns out the price is 25% lower than other builders in your area and they give you what you are wanting, and you have the good sense to have a qualified home inspector and/or structural engineer inspect the home thoroughly before you take possession, then you might just have found a good builder! I'd encourage you to personally visit some of their past construction work, such as houses they build 2-10 years ago and ensure they are in the sort of condition you'd expect.


Employment, output and inflation are your feedback. Too little spending manifests as a an output gap with elevated unemployment and low inflation. Too much spending shows up as full employment, full capacity and rising inflation as additional dollars just bid up prices. Get it right and you have full employment with price stability. So are we there yet? Well, it's not a static point we reach and cross but a dynamic balance in every period based on what's going on in the non-government sectors. Lately we've been leaning towards too little and the result is a tepid, stagnant recovery dragging on for years with elevated unemployment, weak growth and a persistant [output gap](http://lostoutputclock.com/).


Currently certain money back policies are tax free and a vast majority are taxable. There are revised guidelines that would govern which policies are tax free. At a broad level the rule is that the sum assured under the policy should be 10 times the premium paid. There is no distinction of single premium or yearly. Hence certain policies of single premium are taxable. Further there is a TDS also in place from this year. This article gives a good overview. You should consult the documentation of your specific policy and check with your insurance company or CA.


I think it varies with where you are located but in Ontario, Canada salaries cover up to 44 work hours a week. Anything beyond the 44 hours counts towards overtime. Eg. You normally make $1000 a week and this week you worked 50 hours. $1000/44 = $22.73/hr Overtime rate is 1.5x normal so... $22.73 x 1.5 = $34.10/hr You work 6 extra hours $34.10 x 6 = $204.60 Added together $1000 + $204.60 = $1204.60


There are two different ages, one where you can start withdrawing from the account, and a higher age where you must start withdrawing (at a minimum rate). The withdrawals are treated like regular income, so they get taxed according to the same rates, and with the same deductions, as a salary.


>and unfortunatley, keeping unemployment low is directly at odds with increasing productivity. That is a good point. Up until now, the loss in manufacturing jobs has been generally offset by the increase in service jobs. If service jobs start becoming more automated - then I think we'll have to become a society in which more and more individuals become entrepreneurs/self employed to generate income. We're already seeing this to some extent - just have to browse r/entrepreneur. * People trying to monetize blogs/websites/vidoes * Creating new products/services * Using new technology to do something new (cloud based mobile apps) * Crowd sourced funding * Peer to peer lending The internet is allowing individual people with a entrepreneurial spirit to fulfill their goals.


A bank isn't going to offer to lend you money on a property you don't own. You first need to finish the process of probate and get a clear title. Then it's your house and a bank with lend you money based on a combination of your income and the home's value.


Diversification is a risk-mitigation strategy. When you invest in equities, you generally get a higher rate of return than a fixed income investment. But you have risks... a single company's market value can decline for all sorts of reasons, including factors outside of the control of management. Diversification lets you spread risk and concentrate on sectors that you feel offer the best value. Investing outside of your currency zone allows you to diversify more, but also introduces currency risks, which require a whole other level of understanding. Today, investing in emerging markets is very popular for US investors because these economies are booming and US monetary policy has been weakening the dollar for some time. A major bank failure in China or a flip to a strong dollar policy could literally implode those investments overnight. At the end of the day, invest in what you understand. Know the factors that can lower your investment value.


Good, at least you are back to admitting that we have had a 17 year pause. Progress from your earlier denials. Now, you can join your fellow alarmists in trying to explain it. So far we are up to 30 different explanations.


I think we can both agree to these two assertions: 1) Utterly nonesensical amounts of waste exist in the federal government. 2) The postal service will never be closed or privatized. The government is going to keep funding it until mail volume diminishes to 0, and even then they will fight and clamour to justify its existence. The question is not where does government waste exist. I could punch out of work right now and fill your screen with example after example of feel good government projects that do more harm than good, and we both know it. The question is why. Why is government waste created and why does it persist?


Oh, ok. You have $3.8m cash to work with in creating a low-risk investment portfolio. All you need to do is pick investment options that stick to the three objectives of the fund. You may assume all the capital is available for immediate investment ($200k out of the $4m is set aside for scholarships so it must stay liquid).


I went to school for something I was interested in. Also, if you looked at what pay rates some people I went to school with took jobs at, you would stick with what works for you just like me. I have no desire to start at $60000 or something. IT certifications can matter in some cases, and I have my share of them, but they again represent a synthetic benchmark. Lots of people are good test takers and can't do things in the real world. A recent project of one of my companies was to install a wired network for 12 users that would allow each user basically unrestricted internet access in a site with a connection with a single external IP address. It was required that the clients not be able to communicate with each other. If you saw the idiotic solution and ridiculous configuration using (that didn't work) using mac address filtering and detection and whatever that a CCNA who used to work for me tried, you would go crazy. Why not just have individual VLANs individually PATed to the external internet interface with no routing between them, and then broken out at the main switch? The config to do that is very very simple and works perfectly. I think it took me 5 minutes to pull out of my ear. To me, experience and prior work trump all.


"The Facebook ad sales aren't ""concrete"" enough for you? Look dummy, we know for a fact that Russia interfered with the election. No serious person disputes that. What we don't know is how far their efforts went, but that's what we should expect because until he's done building his case, Mueller isn't going to reveal what he knows. At this point, while it's still somewhat reasonable to be skeptical about the extent of Russian interference, denying that it happened at all just makes you look stupid or insane."


My understanding is that it works as you describe. Is this really a loophole? You could call it that if you want, but let's look at what really is happening. You get the tax deduction when you put money into the HSA, not when you take money out. And you can only put money in when you have the HSA-eligible High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) in place. While you had the non-HSA eligible plan in place (presumably a more expensive low deductible health plan), you somehow incurred $5000 of out-of-pocket expenses. This is real money that you had to pay out. Finally, you went back to the HDHP and began contributing to the HSA again, taking the tax deduction as you put money in, subject to the contribution limits. The money that is in the HSA is yours, and you had legitimate out-of-pocket medical expenses. Are you really cheating anybody out of anything if you choose to take that money back out? I don't think so.


"You ask about the difference between credit and debit, but that may be because you're missing something important. Regardless of credit/debit, there is value in carrying two different cards associated with two different accounts. The reason is simply that because of loss, fraud, or your own mismanagement, or even the bank's technical error, any card can become unusable for some period of time. Exactly how long depends what happened, but just sending you a new card can easily take more than one business day, which might well be longer than you'd like to go without access to any funds. In that situation you would be glad of a credit card, and you would equally be glad of a second debit card on a separate account. So if your question is ""I have one bank account with one debit card, and the only options I'm willing to contemplate are (a) do nothing or (b) take a credit card as well"", then the answer is yes, take a credit card as well, regardless of the pros or cons of credit vs debit. Even if you only use the credit card in the event that you drop your debit card down a drain. So what you can now consider is the pros and cons of a credit card vs managing an additional bank account -- unless you seriously hate one or more of the cons of credit cards, the credit card is likely to win. My bank has given me a debit card on a cash savings account, which is a little scary, but would cover most emergencies if I didn't have a credit card too. Of course the interest rate is rubbish and I sometimes empty my savings account into a better investment, so I don't use it as backup, but I could. Your final question ""can a merchant know if I give him number of debit or credit card"" is already asked: Can merchants tell the difference between a credit card and embossed debit card? Yes they can, and yes there are a few things you can't (or might prefer not to) do with debit. The same could even be said of Visa vs. Mastercard, leading to the conclusion that if you have a Visa debit you should look for a Mastercard credit. But that seems to be less of an issue as time goes on and almost everywhere in Europe apparently takes both or neither. If you travel a lot outside the EU then you might want to be loaded down with every card under the sun, and three different kinds of cash, but you'd already know that without asking ;-)"


If the hospital is run like hospitals in the US it can take a long time just to determine the bill. The hospital, Emergency room, ER doctors, surgeons, anesthesiologists, X-Ray department, pharmacy and laboratory are considered separate billing centers. It can take a while to determine the charges for each section. Is there an insurance company involved? When there is one involved it can take weeks or months before the hospital determines what the individual owes. The co-pays, coverages, and limits can be very confusing. In my experience it can take a few months before the final amount is known. You may want to call the hospital to determine the status of the bills.


"Leans is polite. I keep saying we are slaves to the military-industrial-complex. Shit, we just gave it $700bl and made cuts to social programs and fed school funding... ""Slaves"". >Black people at least knew they were slaves. You people remain clueless. -DS"


"If by ""putting money in the bank"" you mean regular savings or checking, then the bond locks a rate for a period of time, whereas your savings/checking rate can vary over that period. That variation might go for you or against you. Depending on your situation, you might prefer to take a determined rate to the variations. In addition, some bond types provide tax benefits (e.g. treasuries and municipal bonds) that change the effective return - You cannot just compare the interest rates. Finally, the bonds have ""resale"" value on the secondary market like stock - Depending on your outlook and strategy, you might by the bond for its value as a security rather than for the interest specifically just like you'd could buy a dividend-paying stock for its value as a security rather than for the dividend. In other words, you might think that bond values are going up, so you buy bonds with the intent of making a capital gain rather than counting on the interest returned. (The bond market does depend on the interest rate, so these are not independent factors.) I see the other answer that mentions the potential for your bank busting and you losing money beyond the FDIC insurance limit. The question doesn't specify U.S. Government bonds though, so I don't think that answer is generally good. It would be good in the case that you had a lot of money (especially an institution or foreign government) and you were specifically interested in U.S. Treasury bonds. Not so much if you invest in corporate bonds where you have no government insurance / assurance of any sort. Municipal bounds are also not backed by the U.S. (federal) government, but they may have some backing at the state level, depending on the state."


"I love it - it was the policies under Bush (as much as one can squarely place blame on the president) that results in the crash that nearly destroyed him - the same president he claims he got elected... and yet here were are and he is claiming if Obama is re-elected that he might have to fire people because of his policies (as much as he claims we can squarely place blame on the president) would lead to another loss for his company, that is after they enjoyed this period of recovery that allows him to continue building his massive house o' opulence. Wonderful business sense, ""Pay more in taxes?? FUCK those profits altogether! I'll shut down the company and HA HA! That'll show them! Because no one else will swoop in and pick up my massively profitable vacation scam business... you know why? Because taxes - that's why! And socialism! and communism!.... COMMULISM!"""


Points are the units of measurement of the index. They're calculated based on the index formula, which in turn based on the prices of the underlying stocks. Movement in points is not really interesting, the movement as a percentage of the base price (daily opening, usually) is more interesting since it gives more context.


> No fair and equal is paying the same price for the same service. I'm asking about compensation, not the purchase of a service. Do you think fair pay for full time work in a society should at a minimum provide for a modest life in that society?


For this rollover, there are no restrictions of age/income/etc. You need to know - the transfer must be direct, i.e. if you get a physical check, it should be payable not to you, but to the new custodian (broker) for your benefit. Direct is preferable and faster. The assets may not be transferable 'in kind.' This phrase simply means that you may move the value, but if the assets are not shares that are held by the public, but special 401(k) class shares, they must be liquidated before moving, and moved as cash. This is a risk people with large accounts take should the market move dramatically during the time they are liquidated, and why, for them, I suggest doing it piecemeal.


The market doesn't really need to adjust for fees on ETF funds that are often less than 1/10th of a percent. The loss of the return is more than made up for by the diversification. How does the market adjust for trading fees? It doesn't have to, it's just a cost of doing business. If one broker or platform offers better fee structures, people will naturally migrate toward the lower fees.


There is one edge case that may be of value to you. If you declare a bonus (probably to yourself given a very small company) you can deduct it from your year and then have up to 6 months to actually write the cheque and give it to the person. Say your year end for the corporation is July 31st. You could declare the bonus July 30th and deduct it from that year, lowering your corporate tax. You could then wait until January 30th to actually write the bonus cheque. The person would then have that taxable income in a later calendar year, deferring paying the tax. Depending on the size of the bonus, this would possibly matter, although if you did large bonuses every year it would only matter the first time. The other issue is the availability of your bookkeeper or accountant. They are sometimes very busy during personal income tax season. They often like a vacation immediately after that. They may go away in the summer when their kids are out of school. The nice thing about a July 31st year end is that you can probably count on a quick turnaround from your accountant in September. The possible downside is that you won't enjoy reconciling your credit card statements and the like in August as part of getting your year end stuff together. You can avoid that by keeping your books in a decent shape all the time.


"One possibility you may consider is to keep all of your funds in the stocks and shares ISA while investing that proportion you wish to keep in cash into a tradeable ""Money Market"" ETF. A Money Market ETF will give you rates comparable to interest rates on cash and at the same time it will give you ""instant access"" subject to normal 3 day settlement of equities. This is not exactly a perfect solution. Most Money Market ETFs will pay monthly dividends, so depending on your timing, you may have to give up some interest. In the worst case, if you were to sell the day before going ex-dividend, then you would be giving up a months interest. In the best case, if you were to sell on the day of going ex-dividend, you would be giving up no interest."


One of the most common types of consultancy is management consulting, which is the practice of helping organizations to improve their performance, primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement. Organizations may draw upon the services of management consultants for a number of reasons, including gaining external (and presumably objective) advice and access to the consultants’ specialised expertise. For more details visit our site lawyerslegalformsanddocuments.com


In the broadest strokes: *Strategy* is about decision making *Finance* is about the management of money *Business Development* is about identifying and developing opportunities There's a lot of interplay between all aspects of business, so it's going to sound like a lot of them beget the other, or are interchangeable: because you can't make decisions without knowing your capital situation and how the decision will affect your cashflows, and you wouldn't have a decision to make without an opportunity being identified, and you wouldn't know how valuable an opportunity is unless you knew how it would impact your cashflows. This is also why the higher in the corporate ladder you go, the more meetings you'll be in, because it's a coordinated dance between every department and none of them act in a vacuum. If you got an MBA concentrating in Strategy, your most prominent opportunities straight out of school are going to be in consulting where you would help businesses make decisions on moving forward. Strategic roles within a fortune 500 company are likely going to be filled with senior employees; with opportunities after a few years in consulting to transition into a management role within a corporate setting. None of it is set in stone though. If you got an MBA concentrating in Finance (what I did), your most prominent opportunities will be in corporate finance and financial services. Corporate finance jobs center largely on capital budgeting and working capital management. Capital budgeting is assessing how valuable potential investment projects are, and prioritizing what should be funded and how. Working capital management is making sure you don't run out of cash (more complicated than it sounds). You can look on payscale.com to see what common career paths for any of the entry jobs look like. A financial analyst becomes a senior analyst after a few years, and then moves into finance management positions, then up to director/VP, CFO. A management consultant would become a project manager, move into operations management, director/VP, C-suite.


It depends. If cost of tuition + income forgone during studying years is less than your lifelong discounted incremental cash flows you receive thanks to your education, then it is not worth it. If your studies are, say, 150K, and you forego another 60K/y during 4 years of university, you will need to make roughly 39K ***more*** per year until you retire than you otherwise would have, or more, for your degree to be worth it. I don't see that as very realistic scenario for 90% of the people who get degrees. Obviously cheaper/more expensive degrees, different discount rate assumptions, and different salaries before/during/after university are different from person to person. That's why everyone has to make their own calculation and then decide whether or not to make such a risky investment in themselves.


I have sat on the phone with people for 40 minutes to install our program...which should normally take 2 minutes. Its pretty tedious, but it does feel good when they have it working. Then they call you five minutes later and go, soo how does it work? Lol.


I like this plan. A [law](http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/05/27/why-do-hospitals-charge-4423-for-250-ct-scans-blame-arizona-republicans/) that would take Arizona hospitals in this direction was [shelved](http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2012/05/27/why-do-hospitals-charge-4423-for-250-ct-scans-blame-arizona-republicans/) earlier this year. For all the lip service paid to a transparent and functioning free market, it looks like there is not much political will to push in that direction from either side of the aisle, unfortunately. I think that the Republican's best play would be to push this kind of legislation through in a couple of places, let the market work its magic and then point to it as a model. I don't know why they don't. There is nothing stopping it from coexisting with Obamacare. But instead they'd rather sit on their hands and complain and promise how much better things would be without doing anything to prove it. Sigh.


The answers you'll receive are going to be largely subjective. I can't tell you which option would be best for you, but there are plenty of things to consider. Do you know how to sell a home? If your market is hot enough, FSBO may make sense as you won't need the marketing power and expertise of an agent. In very hot markets, you'll end up with potential bidding wars if you price your house correctly. But that's where things start getting tricky. Do you know what your house is realistically worth in your market, or are you making assumptions based on Zillow (or similar)? Do you know what paper work is needed to complete a FSBO sale? Are you any good at negotiating? There are certainly plenty of resources out there for FSBO sellers to learn how to do it, but it can be overwhelming. FSBO isn't really fee free. If the buyer has an agent, they'll want a percentage (3%) for setting up their part of the sale. Without experience in negotiation, you may be leaving a decent amount of money on the table. Also, in negotiations, an experienced agent may nickel & dime you with contingencies all the way up until closing. Then there's anything you might need to pay for marketing materials and time off from work (if needed) to have the house shown. However, if you're in a market where people are literally walking up to your door to ask if you'd consider selling and for how much (which just happened to a friend of mine), then it might actually be a pretty painless process. Traditional agents charge a fee, but that fee goes towards marketing and their experience in sales and negotiations. They do the work of getting your property in front of the right people and setting up house showings. The work is done on your behalf, and you won't need to alter your personal work schedule anywhere near as much as you would with FSBO. They only get paid if the house sells. Limited service agents are a bit of an unknown to me, but it's more than likely the buyer will have an agent, so assume the higher fee. It also appears that the LSA gets paid at least $500 no matter what happens, so they're certainly not putting in any extra effort to help get your house sold. It appears that you're simply paying to get on their list of homes and get some marketing from them, but that's about it. I'd imagine you could get the same exposure as a well educated FSBO seller.


Annual-report expense ratios reflect the actual fees charged during a particular fiscal year. Prospectus Expense Ratio (net) shows expenses the fund company anticipates will actually be borne by the fund's shareholders in the upcoming fiscal year less any expense waivers, offsets or reimbursements. Prospectus Gross Expense Ratio is the percentage of fund assets used to pay for operating expenses and management fees, including 12b-1 fees, administrative fees, and all other asset-based costs incurred by the fund, except brokerage costs. Fund expenses are reflected in the fund's NAV. Sales charges are not included in the expense ratio. All of these ratios are gathered from a fund's prospectus.


You can buy real gold, or you can buy shares of a gold ETF, or invest in gold futures contracts. There's a number of ways, but the goal is to be exposed to the price fluctuations of gold. I actually have a bank account through www.goldmoney.com. It works just like PayPal or a bank account. You send money and buy gold and then they send you a debit card linked to that account. When you swipe it, you're spending your gold. They also cater to business customers as well..you can send invoices to get paid, do payroll, and everything in between.


I don't about where you are, but most apprenticeships in the UK are places like supermarkets, retail, McDonalds and they're oversubscribed anyway. Seems to me almost everything is oversubscribed. Working in retail or McDonalds is no longer a part-time job, it's an apprentice opportunity. It's been like that since apprenticeship wage has been lower than minimum wage, and apprenticeships have weak regulation so almost any job can be classed as one. Thus companies are turning as many low end jobs into apprenticeships as possible.


Checks are normally numbered sequentially, to keep them unique for record-keeping purposes. The check number takes as many digits as it takes, depending on how long the account has been open and thus how many checks have been written. The most recent check I looked at had a four-digit number, but as has been pointed out businesses may run through thousands per year. I recommend storing this in an unsigned long or long-long, which will probably be comparable to the bank's own limits. I don't know whether there is an explicit maximum value; we would need to find someone who knows the banking standards to answer that.


"Ah, two things! First, there isn't a small state with capitalism. Capitalism requires LOTS of support from a state. For example, there needs to be a functioning judicial system to settle disputes and to enforce all sorts of laws that benefit capitalism. There also needs to be large investments in infrastructure, including infrastructure that would be impossible for a private entity to build and run. Also, capitalism has this thing called ""business cycles."" We have had two now in the past 80 years that required MASSIVE state intervention in order to save capitalism itself. You say you are in favor of democracy, but that doesn't extend to the enterprise? Wouldn't democracy also include workers being able to own and vote how a company is run. How is it democratic for the person with the most shares (and thus the most money) to have the most votes. Even in our political ""democracy"" capital has a giant corrupting influence. One only has to look at our current government to see that influence."


Interactive Brokers offers many foreign markets (19 countries) for US based investors. You can trade all these local markets within one universal account which is very convenient in my view. IB offering


It's a con being played upon the middle money people by the big money people and it's based on the Bernoulli Principle or Venturi Effect. Simply put -- and in analogous form -- if a lot of something goes in one direction, then a lot of other similar somethings will go in the same direction too. So, if a lot of big money gets invested into derivatives then other money will follow. That original big money is called the primer -- it primes the pump flow and gets the other money following it in. If the original money, the primer, gets removed from the process it doesn't stop the flow of other money into the flow because once the flow is going, any new money in the process acts like the original primer money, sucking in even more money; this is the Venturi Effect in action -- it's how most pumps work. So, you prime the pump, get it flowing nicely, move your priming money out of the process and wait for the thing to suck out as much money as the economy can withstand and then *crash,* er, profit! If you've set your stakes correctly to benefit from the stopping of the flow -- the crash -- you can make billions with very little effort and practically no risk at all.


Copper and its scrap have been used by mankind for centuries. Vic Recycle Metals is one of the top notch copper scrap dealers in Melbourne specialises in recycling scrap copper, scrap brass, scrap wire/cable, scrap aluminium/copper coils & copper radiators, Batteries, & any kind of metal scrap. Our reputation has been built on providing quality customer service, punctuality & top prices. Call us on 0403 938 119 today and get the cash on the spot.


"The years since the start of the crisis have been largely defined by two camps, the “too-muchers” and “not-enoughers... I posit both are wrong, so you can put me in the ""wrong-targeters"" camp. Wrong target because that's what the Fed has done, chosen the wrong target: Dumping money into the banking system isn't doing squat for the real economy (but it surely is making the bankers happy.) You want to see the economy improve, then put the money directly into the economy and not the banks; our banking system has precious little to do with the real economy in the U.S."


Apparently it is up to the credit card company on how they want to report your available balance. Another disadvantage to the no-limit credit card may not be apparent to most people, but it is something noted by organizations like The Motley Fool, which is expert in many issues of finance and investment. Part of your credit score, about 30%, considers the amount of money you have borrowed, and the limit on your present credit cards. A no-limit credit card company may report your limit as $0 if you have not used the card, or they may report a maximum limit available to you. They may not, nor are they obligated, to report times when you put tons of expenses on a credit card and then paid them off. While some companies will report your timely payments and paid off amounts, others simply report an extremely low limit. For instance if you spent $100 US Dollars (USD), your limit might be considered $100 USD, or it may merely be reported as zero. You’ll need to check with a credit card company on how they report payments and limits on a no-limit credit card before you obtain one. Some people who are scrupulous are paying off their cards at the end of each month suffer major losses to their credit score, without even realizing it, if their spending ability is rated at zero, or their payments don’t count toward showing credit worthiness. Source


> I absolutely am willing to accept reality that some will never be anything but a waste of resources and a negative to society. I agree there are a few psychopaths out there who will never fit in and we need to keep behind bars. But I believe most of the people you would consider a waste were shaped that way by bad parents, a poor educational system, an economic system that prides itself on giving people as little as possible, and a society that implements emotional policies and glorifies violence. > Let them drop out or kick them out... Whether it's for better schools and family services or jail cells and police forces, I think you are going to end up paying for these people one way or another.


Michael Pryor is 100% correct here. This is almost certainly a scam. If you want confirmation, look at the feedback of the buyers and of folks who buy stuff from them. You'll typically find that they run through a bunch of low value auctions, build up some feedback, then all of the sudden buy and sell lots of laptops or other high-value items. It's a big scam that has been going on for a decade or more. If you are actually trying to sell things like computers overseas, particularly to third world countries, the sign of a legitimate buyer is usually someone who will have you ship to an import-export company who handles the customs stuff and the bureaucratic nonsense required to deal with government on the other side. I had a bunch of Sun equipment in the late 90's that was purchased by folks in Latin America via EBay. They bought from EBay because the local resellers had a monopoly on the products or couldn't get sufficient quantities. All of them used companies, mostly in Miami, which handled the actual export at the customer's expense.


"I think the answer depends very much on where you are. I believe the other answer covers north america. On contrast, in (continental) Europe, giving the account and bank number (IBAN and BIC) is a (the most) common way to enable someone to send money to you. E.g. in Germany, you need much more than account number and bank number to withdraw money: To ""push"" money to another account (wire transfer from your account to someone who gave you the other account + bank numbers), you either have to hand-sign a certain form, or (online) certain credentials (e.g. login & password / PIN + TAN) are needed. I.e. for defrauding you, the other would need to get your online credentials (for mTAN also your mobile phone, for chipTAN a TAN generator of your bank [easy] and your bank card, for (i)TAN your TAN list) or fake your signature. There are also ways to allow someone to pull money from your account, see e.g. direct debit For that you sign that the other side is allowed to withdraw specified amounts of money (at specified dates). This is either between you and the other (i.e. your bank cannot check and doesn't reject withdrawals that are not authorized). However, the other side needs to have signed a contract with their bank that they'll only try to withdraw money they're entitled to. or you sign such a thing with your bank (then they do know whether the other side is allowed to withdraw money, and you can tell the bank that you won't accept any further withdrawals from XYZ). In the first case, the withdrawal technically still needs your approval. In order not to create a huge risk of fraud, the rejecting here is really easy: If you tell your bank that you reject the payment, The practical rule is that the payment is approved if you didn't reject within the first 6 weeks after the bank sent the account statement. In other words, until 4 1/2 months after the withdrawal (in case you have a bank that does only quarterly account statements), the one to get the money cannot be really sure that he actually has the money. I think (but I'm not completely sure, maybe someone else can comment/edit) that these two possibilities are also what is used with debit card payments (EC/Maestro card - these are much more common here than real credit card payments). -- end of Germany specific example --"


You put in a market order when you want to sell to whomever raises their hand first. It results in the fastest possible liquidation of your stock. It's appropriate when you need to sell now, regardless of price. An example of when to use it: It's 3:55 PM, the market's going to close in 5 minutes and you need to sell some stocks to make some kind of urgent payment elsewhere. If instead you have a limit order in place, you might not reach the limit price before the market closes, and you'll still own the stock, which might not be what you want.