Working in my current sales role, I find myself listening to hours of business podcasts a week while travelling. Some of my favourite podcasts at the moment are: PNR With This Old Marketing Futureproofing with Kelsey Ramsden The Brutal Truth About Sales & Selling


The QuikTrip business model is an interesting one, I'm looking forward to seeing its long term stability. Every business has to offer value to its customers and it needs to bring unique value in order to take off at QuikTrip's rate. IMO QuikTrip's value is their large footprint combined with clean, organized stores carrying a wide variety of products. This value is only unique in comparison to the general shittiness of their primarily regional competition. Most convenience store chains are regional on a city by city basis and they generally do a poor job of ensuring consistency in the areas I listed for QuikTrip. That's the general trend including good chains, there are plenty of bad ones where you would have to be insane to try one of the hotdogs or tex-mex tube things that have sat on the rollers for 3 months. The problem is that maintaining a convenience store isn't hard, it requires competent management and employees who give a half-ass effort. QuikTrip can afford to pay for excellent management and employees who give a whole-ass effort because their geographic footprint affords another unique advantage. How long will that remain unique? I know of several equally decent, growing chains that offer better prices and if the market is large enough we're likely to see oil companies giving a shit about the convenience store side again like they did in the 90's after the rise of 7-11. I'm more than likely wrong somewhere in my analysis of QuikTrip's list of advantages. However, if I'm on the right track I'd be hesitant to call them a long term winner when they operate a high cost operation in a heavily price sensitive market.


Generally it goes by when they receive the check, not when they cash the check. Though if the check was received prior to midnight on December 31st, but after the bank closes, they would probably let the tax payer decide to count it for the next year. Of course if the check is from person A to person B then the only issue is gift tax, or annual limit calculations. If it is company to person then income tax could be involved. The IRS calls this Constructive receipt Income Under the cash method, include in your gross income all items of income you actually or constructively receive during your tax year. If you receive property or services, you must include their fair market value in income. Example. On December 30, 2011, Mrs. Sycamore sent you a check for interior decorating services you provided to her. You received the check on January 2, 2012. You must include the amount of the check in income for 2012. Constructive receipt. You have constructive receipt of income when an amount is credited to your account or made available to you without restriction. You do not need to have possession of it. If you authorize someone to be your agent and receive income for you, you are treated as having received it when your agent received it. Example. Interest is credited to your bank account in December 2012. You do not withdraw it or enter it into your passbook until 2013. You must include it in your gross income for 2012. Delaying receipt of income. You cannot hold checks or postpone taking possession of similar property from one tax year to another to avoid paying tax on the income. You must report the income in the year the property is received or made available to you without restriction. Example. Frances Jones, a service contractor, was entitled to receive a $10,000 payment on a contract in December 2012. She was told in December that her payment was available. At her request, she was not paid until January 2013. She must include this payment in her 2012 income because it was constructively received in 2012. Checks. Receipt of a valid check by the end of the tax year is constructive receipt of income in that year, even if you cannot cash or deposit the check until the following year. Example. Dr. Redd received a check for $500 on December 31, 2012, from a patient. She could not deposit the check in her business account until January 2, 2013. She must include this fee in her income for 2012. In general it is best not to cut it close. If the check is to be counted as an January event it is best to send it in January. If it is to be December event it is best to send it early enough to be able to say with confidence that the check arrived at the destination before the end of the year.


"The answers here are all correct. This is 100% scam, beyond any reasonable doubt. Don't fall for it. However, I felt it valuable to explain what would happen were you to fall for this. It's not all that hard to understand, but it involves understanding some of the time delays that exist in modern banking today. The most important thing to understand is that depositing a check does not actually put dollars in your account, even though it appears to. A check is not legal tender for debts public and private. It's a piece of paper known as a ""bill of exchange."" It's an authorization for a payee (you), to request that their bank pay you the amount on the check. A transaction made with a check does not actually draw to a close until your bank and their bank communicate and cause the actual transfer of funds to take place. This process is called ""clearing"" the check. Despite living in the modern times, this process is slow. It can take 7-10 days to clear a check (especially if it is an international bank). This is not good for the banking business. You can imagine how difficult it would be to tell a poor client, who is living paycheck to paycheck, that he can't have his pay until the check clears a week later. Banks have an interest in hiding this annoying feature of the modern banking system, so they do. When you deposit a check, the bank will typically advance you the money (an interest free loan, in effect) while the check ""floats"" (i.e. until it clears). This creates the illusion that the money is actually in your account for most intents and purposes. (presumably a bank would distinguish between the floating check and a cleared check if you tried to close out your account, but otherwise it looks and feels like the money is in your hands). Of course, if the check is dishonored (because the payer had insufficient funds, or the account simply did not exist), your bank will not get the money. At this moment, they will cancel any advances you received and notify you that the check bounced. Again, this happens 7-10 days later. The general pattern of this scam is that they will pay you by a method which clears slowly, like a check. They will then ask you to withdraw the money using a faster clearing method (like a wire transfer or withdrawing the cash). Typically they will be encouraging you to move quickly (they are on a timetable... when their check bounces, the game is up!) At this time, it will appear as though the account has a positive balance, but in fact it has a negative balance plus an advance on the check. This looks great until 7-10 days later, when the check bounces. At that time, the bank will cancel the advance, and reality will set in. You will now have an open bank account, legally opened by you in your own name, which is deeply in debt. Meanwhile, the scammer walks away with all the money that you sent them (which cleared quickly). There are many variants which can hide the details. Some can play games with check kiting to try to make your first check clear (then try to rope you in for a more painful hit). Some will change the instruments they use (checks are the easy ones, so they're simply most common). Don't try to think ""maybe this one is legit."" These scammers literally make a living off of making shady transactions look legit. Things I would recommend looking out for:"


"The simple answer is, there are many ways for trades to take place. Some systems use order-matching software that employs proprietary algorithms for deciding the order of processing, others use FIFO structures, and so on. Some brokerages may fill customer orders out of their own accounts (which happens more frequently than you might imagine), and others put their orders into the system for the market makers to handle. There's no easy all-encompassing answer to your question, but it's still a good one to ask. By the way, asking if the market is ""fair"" is a bit naive, because fairness depends on what side of the trade you came out on! (grin) If your limit order didn't get filled and you missed out on an opportunity, that's always going to seem unfair, right?"


Hardly. Minimum wage is designed so people are not slaves. Rent for a 3 bedroom around my area went from $900 to $1250 in the past 3 years... minimum wage went up a few cents. Your unskilled labor isn't worth less than being able to afford a home. Medical billing pays $19 an hour... hardly skilled practice there. pretty sure a cashier being able to ring you out in a timely fashion and help bring Walmart 400b in revenue a year is worth more than living in a tent or 15 people in your home.


I think you're mixing up being incorporated with being public. A corporation is just a financially separate organization from the owner(s). There might be only one owner, but the company's assets are separated from the person's. A public company is one entity whose ownership is on the market - a shareholder can sell his or her portion easily. A company that decides it no longer wants to be public just becomes a private corporation, with ownership of its own assets, but with a few owners, not many.


Good news! It will be enough if you make the most important decision after retirement; that is, the decision to live within your means. With $220,000 per year in 2015 resources, will you live in the same size home in the same location as you do now? Or will you downsize a bit and move to a town with more reasonably priced homes and lower taxes? Apply the same thinking to all of your expenses. In my opinion, making the decision to live within your means is the biggest decision you can make going into retirement.


>This is what happens when departments are stupid and don't hire the people they need. No, this is what happens when unions rule. Bet you didn't know that after 9/11, the NYPD and NYFD put their most senior people on the overtime shifts so they could retire at their last year's pay grade. That story is buried now.


"Very often, the word secondary market is used synonymously with the stock market as we all know it. In this case, the primary market would be the ""closed"" world of VCs, business angels, etc to which stock market investors do not have access, e.g. the securities are not trading on a public stock market."


What you're saying is that your dogma provides you no useful response to my argument, so you'd rather ignore my comments instead of having to confront the futility of your beliefs. Good luck with that. If you keep your head buried in the sand, you won't see the ocean creeping up to drown you.


The problem comes when the borrower cannot afford his home. If a borrower buys more home than they can afford, as long as he can sell the house for more than he owes, he's not in a disastrous situation. He can sell the house, pay off the mortgage, and choose more affordable housing instead. If he is upside-down on his home, he doesn't have that option. He's stuck in his home. If he sells it, he will have to come up with extra money to pay off the mortgage (which he doesn't have, because he is in a home he can't afford). It used to be commonplace for banks to issue mortgages for 100% of the value of the home. As long as the home keeps appreciating, everybody is happy. But if the house drops in value and the homeowner finds himself unable to make house payments, both the homeowner and the bank are at risk. Recent regulations in the U.S. have made no-down-payment mortgages less common.


"Ignoring the complexities of a standardised and regulated market, a futures contract is simply a contract that requires party A to buy a given amount of a commodity from party B at a specified price. The future can be over something tangible like pork bellies or oil, in which case there is a physical transfer of ""stuff"" or it can be over something intangible like shares. The purpose of the contract is to allow the seller to ""lock-in"" a price so that they are not subject to price fluctuations between the date the contract is entered and the date it is complete; this risk is transferred to the seller who will therefore generally pay a discounted rate from the spot price on the original day. In many cases, the buyer actually wants the ""stuff""; futures contracts between farmers and manufacturers being one example. The farmer who is growing, say, wool will enter a contract to supply 3000kg at $10 per kg (of a given quality etc. there are generally price adjustments detailed for varying quality) with a textile manufacturer to be delivered in 6 months. The spot price today may be $11 - the farmer gives up $1 now to shift the risk of price fluctuations to the manufacturer. When the strike date rolls around the farmer delivers the 3000kg and takes the money - if he has failed to grow at least 3000kg then he must buy it from someone or trigger whatever the penalty clauses in the contract are. For futures over shares and other securities the principle is exactly the same. Say the contract is for 1000 shares of XYZ stock. Party A agrees to sell these for $10 each on a given day to party B. When that day rolls around party A transfers the shares and gets the money. Party A may have owned the shares all along, may have bought them before the settlement day or, if push comes to shove, must buy them on the day of settlement. Notwithstanding when they bought them, if they paid less than $10 they make a profit if they pay more they make a loss. Generally speaking, you can't settle a futures contract with another futures contract - you have to deliver up what you promised - be it wool or shares."


The everyday investor buys at the ask and sells at the bid but the market maker does the opposite This is misleading; it has nothing to do with being either an investor or a market maker. It is dependent on the type of order that is submitted. When a market trades at the ask, this means that a buy market order has interacted with a sell limit order at the limit price. When a market trades at the bid, this means that a sell market order has interacted with a buy limit order at the limit price. An ordinary investor can do exactly the same as a market maker and submit limit orders. Furthermore, they can sit on both sides of the bid and ask exactly as a market maker does. In the days before high frequency trading this was quite common (an example being Daytek, whose traders were notorious for stepping in front of the designated market maker's bid/ask on the Island ECN). An order executes ONLY when both bid and ask meet. (bid = ask) This is completely incorrect. A transaction occurs when an active (marketable) order is matched with a passive (limit book) order. If the passive order is a sell limit then the trade has occurred at the ask, and if it is a buy limit the trade has occurred at the bid. The active orders are not bids and asks. The only exception to this would be if the bid and ask have become crossed. When a seller steps in, he does so with an ask that's lower than the stock's current ask Almost correct; he does so with an order that's lower than the stock's current ask. If it's a marketable order it will fill the front queued best bid, and if it's a limit order his becomes the new ask price. A trade does not need to occur at this price for it to become the ask. This is wrong, market makers are the opposite party to you so the prices are the other way around for them. This is wrong. There is no distinction between the market maker and yourself or any other member of the public (beside the fact that designated market makers on some exchanges are obliged to post both a bid and ask at all times). You can open an account with any broker and do exactly the same as a market maker does (although with nothing like the speed that a high frequency market-making firm can, hence likely making you uncompetitive in this arena). The prices a market maker sees and the types of orders that they are able to use to realize them are exactly the same as for any other trader.


"At this level it's not so much about ""handling money"" in the way we think of it in the first world. It's more like you have no possible way to get enough capital to get out of a desperately bad situation. But if you do get that capital, you can start digging your way out. For example, in one case I read about, someone used part of that $1000 to buy a cow. Then she started selling milk and saving money."


Well now your going to have to justify the amount of money a student has to pay to get help via phone/text. The problem is you're trying to target only your school. Which limits your options. To add on top of it people are already providing it for free. My honest advice would be to move on from this project. Unless you can provide tutoring for free then leverage the people you meet for another business.


"Assuming no constraints on how much you can move (or how frequently) into and out of your offset mortgage account, the question becomes one of what rate of return you expect from your long-term savings/emergency cash fund. The rate you are getting from the offset mortgage account is known; since it reduces the principal amount owing and thus reduces interest charges, the return is the mortgage rate (though I would not be surprised if the offset mortgage account contract has bells and whistles reducing the effective rate, saying something like 3 pounds reduction of principal for every 5 pounds you put in). So, as a movie character once said, ""Do you feel lucky today?"" If so, move money from your offset mortgage account to savings, and earn more. If not, move money in the opposite direction. A ""guaranteed"" 2% return on the offset mortgage account might be better than taking a risk on the vagaries of the stock market, and even the possibility of loss in your long term savings account."


Google Peter schiff 2006 housing bubble youtube. You may not even like the guy, but he was right all along--way before it happened. (takes about 1 hour or something). Another of the many guys that saw the bubble way before anyone and profited from it is called Kyle Bass. I would seriously recommend everybody that sees this post to watch all his videos. I take this guys seriously. They have been warning about the crisis for a long time. The media, on the other hand, will advise you to buy Facebook or something.


Oh surprise, surprise. The problem forcing the world towards another Great Depression - is that he's not making enough money. And, the only way to avert disaster - is to do things that will make him even more powerful and wealthy. What a freaking shock...


Oh come on. I'm sure that's helped to gain momentum quicker but it's not like the guy doesn't have a passion, business knowledge, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Ever heard about that amazing company that a trust fund baby started? Yeah, me neither.


BLUF: Continue renting, and work toward financial independence, you can always buy later if your situation changes. Owning the house you live in can be a poor investment. It is totally dependent on the housing market where you live. Do the math. The rumors may have depressed the market to the point where the houses are cheaper to buy. When you do the estimate, don't forget any homeowners association fees and periodic replacement of the roof, HVAC system and fencing, and money for repairs of plumbing and electrical systems. Calculate all the replacements as cost over the average lifespan of each system. And the repairs as an average yearly cost. Additionally, consider that remodeling will be needful every 20 years or so. There are also intangibles between owning and renting that can tip the scales no matter what the numbers alone say. Ownership comes with significant opportunity and maintenance costs and is by definition not liquid, but provides stability. As long as you make your payments, and the government doesn't use imminent domain, you cannot be forced to move. Renting gives you freedom from paying for maintenance and repairs on the house and the freedom to move with only a lease to break.


Actually when someone hates something that bad, it's only a matter of time before they're fired anyway. I have hated something this bad before. A good internship working in environmental crimes. I didn't last because of a couple things. People were too conservative (was not expecting that!), and it was god-awful boring, quiet, and lonely. I had to be switched into something that didn't make me wish for a brain annuerism(?) It's not entirely up to OP; if the people around him know how much he hates his job, then if this were a real job, he'd be fired anyway.


I agree, but you would think there would be a better area to spend his waning popularity on. Although I'm sure the land is cheap and people there would happily go to a trump hotel, so maybe it'll end up making money.


"Managers aren't receiving pension plans? They do nothing on their own? I agree there needs to be strong leadership and direction, and most people specialize in 1 thing while others specialize in coordinating teams with different skill sets, but the workers aren't just pieces in an intricate assembly line. If you take this corporate philosophy obsessed with short term gains you get jaded workers and create a similar culture. ""*Corporate:* I'll pay the least I can for the best I can get AND I'll fire them on the spot the second I find someone better. *Worker:* I'll work the least I can for as much as I can get AND I'll be on the lookout for better opportunities constantly"". You need to strike a balance of respect somewhere. These are interdependent processes, not a hierarchy of dependent sheep vs corporate overlords."


"While Chipotle execs have admitted that queso was far and away the most requested menu item by its customers, the burrito chain struggled for years to create a queso recipe that adheres to its strict requirements for all natural food and actually taste good at the same time. “Additives make typical queso very consistent and predictable, but are not at all in keeping with our food culture,"" source: https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/chipotle-queso-dip-ingredients-recipe"


Well, they did a really *horrible* job of not looking bad. They dragged people from two different offices in different cities, bussed them to another city, and had a huge money-blowing event. Then a couple weeks later, they had another one. This wasn't even the 'mission statement' deal, either. That was separate, and a month or two later. Then every meeting people go to, the managers have to harp on them about saving money. It takes some real strong cognitive dissonance to be able to stomach this crap. Don't even get me started on the banners they keep hanging up all over that just annoy the crap out of most people. (those damn things are *real* expensive, too.)


"How about the new Mastercard ""In Control"" card http://www.pivotalpayments.com/ca/industry-news/mastercard-introduces-in-control-program-to-help-consumers-budget-800077802/ You can set budgets at your bank and go between getting alerts when you go over, or completely declined if you are out of money. There are going to be obvious loop holes and slack in the system, but this system seems like a pretty neat start. Combine this with a bank account that does bill pay and you might have something to work with."


It's generally the hype that blinds them. Unfortunately, as rare as it happens on the scale of the FB IPO - it shouldn't happen at all. But then again, if everyone was well educated, informed and risk averse - we wouldn't have losers in the market. Everyone can't keep winning forever!


Dude. If there was any farmer offering $30/hr there would be every rig hand in the country beating down his door right now. GTFO of here with this BS. Edit: Actually I know exactly what this guy is talking about. Seasonal harvesting work. So yeah. It's $30/hr for 3 months of work at best. They do have trouble finding people that can afford to get out there because who is doing to give up a decent pay job for only 3 months of work? And who makes minimum wage has the means to up and relocate?


"I fear this question may be impossible to answer, beyond the options you already seem to know about. It depends too much on the details of your situation, some of which you say you don't know. If you don't even know how much debt you have, I think you're going to need some kind of professional advice to assess your situation. One place to start is the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. This organization can provide free or low-cost advice about your situation, including bankruptcy options. That said, the main missing piece I see in your question is your expenses. The first thing you should ask yourself is: what am I spending money on, and can I stop spending on money on that in order to save and/or pay off debt instead? You say that you can ""live comfortably paycheck to paycheck"" and ""routinely"" put money into savings. Can you start living uncomfortably and thus put a lot more into savings, or towards debt repayment? Whether this will work or not depends on how much debt you have, but it definitely needs to be part of your thought process. Likewise, if you continually are wiped out by unbudgeted expenses, start budgeting for them."


CFD providers typically offer CFDs to investors using either the direct market access (DMA) model or the market maker (MM) model. Direct Market Access The DMA model gives you access to trade the Underlying instrument on the relevant Exchange from which the CFD is then derived. All CFD Transactions under the DMA model have corresponding trades in the Underlying instrument. Under the DMA model, providers typically charge their clients Commission based on the notional contract value of the CFD. Market Maker The MM model uses the price of the Underlying instrument to derive the price of the CFD that is offered. Trading under the MM model does not necessarily mean that your CFD will be reflected by a corresponding trade in the Underlying instrument. Under the MM model each CFD Transaction creates a direct financial exposure for the provider, which may or may not be hedged in the Underlying instrument. Where the financial exposure is not hedged, the market risk may increase for the market maker. The MM model enables the provider to offer CFDs against synthetic assets, even if there is little Liquidity in the Underlying instrument, which can result in a wider range of products on offer than with the DMA model. Volatility and Illiquidity in the Underlying instrument can affect the pricing of MM CFDs. The MM model can charge its clients Commission based on the notional contract value or it can incorporate costs and fees in the dealing Spread, which represents the difference in price at which the issuer is prepared to Buy and Sell the CFD. What Do I use and why? I have traded with both DMA and MM models and prefer the MM. The big advantage with MM is that they will provide a market even when the underlying is very illiquid and only might have a few trades each day. Regarding the spread of the MM to the spread of the underlying, I have found the MM to be practically in line with the underlying spread about 95% of the time. The other 5% it may have been slightly wider than the spread of the underlying by usually 1c or 2c. Most MMs aim to give you the best spread they can because they want to keep your business. If they gave too wide a spread (compared to the underlying) it wouldn't be long before they had no customers.


"That is technically the ""rule of law"" but goes against the spirit of the ""rule of law"", which is the principle that people's rights should be protected by the law regardless of the demands of the many. >And really, who do you consider to be the ""mighty"" on this issue? The mighty is those who use the force of government or the threat of violence (e.g. violent strikes) to prevent another party from exercising their contract liberty and firing them."


It's the promise of a dependent subscriber base a la Tassimo or Nespresso machine who change your juice business into a lifestyle money-printer. This is also why finding out the DRM was useless was a spine-breaking allegation: even if the juices differentiated themselves on the market users could just run around the big pricey machine and subscription.


Not prohibitively expensive to the degree that it can't be done on accident. But it does go against the model of fast and cheap as possible. I've worked in a few places built in a way that huge swaths of the building are almost impossible to get signal in. There is a way for them to have their cake and eat it too but it would require a carrier being in cahoots with the company trying to control internet access on premise.


Online banking, including international wire transfers, works from (nearly) anywhere in the world; make sure to have it set up. You can also give someone power of attorney (authorization to act in your name, the bank must accept him as you), if you have someone you trust enough; or if not, give a lawyer power of attorney. You can do that even after the fact, while you are out of the country; you would work with an international lawyer company.


High-interest checking / savings accounts are often a better choice than CDs today for three reasons. At the time this question was asked, CDs were probably a better answer as rates were much higher. Since CD rates have plummeted in recent years, and because a CD is only semi-liquid, i.e., even if you ladder CDs, an early withdrawal fee often means foregoing the interest on that particular CD which you withdrew. 1.) On the other hand, high-interest checking and/or savings accounts are very viable options these days. There are several options available that earn ~1%+ APY. It's not quite that simple, and there are a few gotchas: If you run into the balance cap problem, of course nothing is stopping you from having multiple accounts across different banks. 2.) The high-interest bank accounts are fully liquid able to be liquidated at anytime (without foregoing interest). 3.) A minor benefit is that the high-yield savings account is low maintenance whereas CD laddering is pretty hands on and may require physical trips to your bank. (If you know of a way to automate the process more, please comment or edit.)


> It's more evidence that the government isn't really good at running anything. Congress doesn't run the post office, they just interfer with it. If not for a 2006 law that required the post office to pre-fund their pension system to absurd levels they would have been close to profitable last year. And if Congress would let them kill Saturday delivery in unprofitable areas like they want then they would doing fine. > It's partially because they don't have to worry about making a profit Yes they do, the post office is not allowed to make a profit.


"People always use that place as an example when talking about the evils of the fast food industry. I love Chipotle as much as the next guy, but the place pretty much only serves giant expensive burritos. Their model could never scale up to something like McDonalds or Taco Bell. I'm not disagreeing with you though. Calling Chipotle and Taco Bell ""pretty much the same thing"" is nuts."


> Over months or years it causes iron deficiency and anemia, weight loss, tiredness and impaired mental function, especially in children, helping to trap them into the poverty in which the disease flourishes. If you are someone who believes that people who don't make a living wage just need to apply themselves and learn new skills, do you think anything different should be done in communities with a hookworm problem?


So you operate under the assumption that people aren't already better. To assume people are selfish is to be short sighted. People are selfish in SOME WAYS, but people are selfless in others. To operate without seeing both sides is to cut out at least half of your tool set. The problem isn't how to stop people from being selfish, but how to use each aspect of the person to benefit themselves and society as a whole.


"Assuming you live in the US, it is quite normal when you are applying for a loan that the application will ask you to confirm your identity. One of these methods is to ask you which of the following addresses you have lived at, with some of them being very similar (i.e. same city, or maybe even the same street). Sometimes they will ask questions and your answer would be ""None of the above."" This is done to prevent fraudsters from applying for a loan under your identity. If you see no signs of unauthorized accounts or activities on your credit reports, and you initiated the car loan application, then you should be fine."


Hasbro is also in this mindset with a lot of their properties. Look at how they handle the MyLittlePony thing going on. Every single episode of that cartoon is on YouTube in full 1080p, but Hasbro doesn't really care. They don't make money off the episodes, they make money off the merchandise so they let the episodes stay online. Same thing with custom pony models and plushies, these things [sell on eBay for over $2000 using Hasbro's IPs](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Fluttershy-Galloping-Gala-Custom-Plush-My-Little-Pony-Friendship-is-Magic-/120792470190?nma=true&si=lA3t7kbBPFukGe0nnpU9m4g7c7Y%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557). Yet even though all these things are a clear violation of their copyright, Hasbro just stands back and lets it run. That's one of the reasons the brony thing spread so fast as it did.


"Joe has explained how most mortgages work A mortgage is simply a loan backed by a property (and, because it's both very large and very common, covered by some specific laws). As such, the bank isn't an ""investor"" in your house; it simply is lending you money with the property as collateral. So, it doesn't get any share of the profit. However there are some mortgages when the bank takes part of the increase in the property value, e.g. Castletrust’s “But to Let Equity Loan” in the UK. Other products allows a old person to take money out of their property in exchange for say 60% of what the property sells for on their death. Islamic mortgages also work in a different way as interest is not allowed to be charged. For example Unlike a conventional mortgage where the purchaser borrows money from a lender which is then repaid with interest, Al Rayan Bank's Sharia compliant Islamic mortgage alternatives (Home Purchase Plans or HPP) are based upon the Islamic finance principles of a Co-Ownership Agreement (Diminishing Musharaka) with Leasing (Ijara)."


I think he could sell for about 6 or 9 months out of the year. If he wanted to cash in, he could just resign. He makes no salary so that is no harm to him. He is in the top spot simply because he is the best man to lift share prices.


Is it any different than if I decide to put similar amount of money in 401(k) at some other time of the year? Not from a tax standpoint, but if can affect a few other things: Since the earnings difference is likely negligible (you miss out on returns for only a few months), I would look at other conditions - In the long run it probably won't make much difference, but knocking out obstacles to wealth building can give you a sense of accomplishment that will encourage smart money decisions going forward.


Something I've not heard mentioned in any of the answers is that (at least for me) owing some tax money is better than having a refund from a ID theft/fraud/security aspect. The US IRS has been hacked several times recently and there have been cases of fraudulent tax refunds being filed and tax refund checks being cashed by ID thieves. Well, if you owe a bit of tax then you're less of a target for fraudulent tax refunds being filed in your name. Even in the case that you were unlucky enough to have had your identity stolen, at least you don't have to deal with the IRS trying to sort a mess like that up. Thus, (IMO) it's better to owe a bit of tax, than to have a small refund, or any refund for that matter. Ideally, you want to get to zero dollars owed like you suggested, but that's often pretty hard to do. So, the next best thing is to owe a bit. One should try to calculate tax liability quartely or if income changes, adjust your withholding, so that you get closer to zero tax.


">With their customer base, they can literally choose segments of the market and dismantle them. Or so you think. And of course everyone else will be ""powerless"" to oppose them, and all of their users will simply follow like sheep... Wow. Delusional."


Ummm, yeah, if you'd like to explain to me how Google is performing poorly, that'd be great. I'd like to have that in a post by tomorrow. Total revenue has jumped 51% from last year. Just taking a quick look at their financial statements their revenue has increased 1.9 billion from quarter before, to 14.1 billion. Their cash and cash converts are up about 2.5 billion from the quarter before. Finally, their total equity for the company is up about 3.5 billion from the quarter before. Not bad. If you think this is a bad quarter, I'd love to see what their good quarters are. What's weighing them down is the buying of Motorola for 13.5 billion. But think about it, they have revenues of that in just *one* quarter. And even more have enough cash to buy Motorola in *cash* 3 times over and still have some left over.


"well said. securitization of mortgages is a huge reason. anyone involved in the sale of loans was as guilty as the people who took on stupid loans. by being able to turn a mortgage into a CDO, they were able to divvy up the risk and pass it on to investors... little slices at a time. you make the sale, get your sweet commission, wash your hands of the risk, and live happily ever after. obviously way more complicated and more cogs in the machine than just the two parties mentioned, but it was a situation where everyone was making money and no one wanted to stop and say ""hmm... let's check some numbers on this."""


I have lived in five of the 7 continents. Yes, I have been outside my house. Part of that time was in third world countries where you get to see what it looks like when you don't have basic government services. > And I don't know where the hell you live but I have to pay for my own internet, had to pay to get the lines put in too. Did you pay for the interstate which allowed for those cables to be brought to your state? The transportation and security that imported those cables if they weren't made in the USA? Did you pay for the installation of the utilities that made it possible for you to even have power in your house? The answer to all these is yes, through your taxes.


I never said America is doomed, you said that. Does America not have kind and good people in it, who are getting robbed of their lively hood and home? They Make up the 99%, there is really going to be no place to hide


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Yes, #2: the Hackathon prize money counts as income, but a donation to charity is a deductible charitable gift. For more background and a few scenarios: http://people.opposingviews.com/deductible-donor-donates-prize-2517.html


"You should be aware that the IRS considers all gifts of cash or cash equivalents from an employer (the partnership in this case) to an employee (your husband in this case) to be wages, regardless of what the transfer is called by either party, or how it is transferred. I'd strongly recommend that you review IRS publications 535 and 15-B, which are linked in my response to the question that littleadv referred to above. I would also recommend speaking with a lawyer, as in this case, you have knowledge of the income and would not be able to claim an ""innocent spouse"" provision if he is convicted of tax evasion/fraud. Good luck."


"As has been said before: Tell stories. I got a job with an awesome hotel company because I told a story of how I worked for my dad when I was 5, making change and telling his customers to ""have a good day"". This story showed my lifelong commitment to hospitality and the kind of spirit I would pass on to their guests. So find a story about yourself that shows how you embody a key tenet of the spirit of your company and tell that story. Smile while you tell it, remember it fondly, and use that to sell just how PERFECT you are for them."


Source:- Registering for VAT You must register for VAT with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) if your business’ VAT taxable turnover is more than £82,000. You can register voluntarily if it’s below this, unless everything you sell is exempt.


Amazon should buy Best Buy. They are the best showroom after all... Edit: Just think about it. You walk in, see the thing you want and order it there with your amazon account, and it shows up at your house in the next two days. You want to take it home right now? Okay, fine, that'll be +2% mark-up for an inventory fee. if you think about it, that's kind of what happens now, except you have to go home to put your order in.


$33K, $227 payment is 7.33%. But is that right? You're also stretching out the remaining loan back to 30 years. Now, if the bank just let you do the stretch, you'd owe $95K / 4.75% / 360 mo / PMT = $495.56 - this would be a neutral move, same rate. You now have: $128K / 5.625% / 360 / PMT = $737 so to my thinking, the delta is: $33K / X rate / 360 / PMT = $241.44 and the rate is 7.97% If you have enough equity to refi, you have enough to take that in a HELOC, and pay it off aggressively, why give up the great rate? The $227/mo you will pay the HELOC off in 22 years even at 6%. My HELOC is 2.5%. I'd use any raise or bonus to hack away at it. I tried to spell out my thought process on the math. If any savvy reader (you all are, I know) wants to look at this and offer a better method, I'm open minded. There's a fallacy that comes with refinancing, certainly money appears in the payment stream as a result of extending the term. Somewhere that needs to be accounted for, else a higher rate at a longer term appears favorable, so my approach is to normalize the numbers one way or another. Here, producing that first step of calculating the payment on the extended term (an interim step that's a mental process only, that loan is hypothetical). Comments welcome.


"It's interesting that the federal government actually has a set of criteria they use to fight against gangs by labeling them as ""Transnational Crime Group."" What would happen if they applied the same standards to these corporations? How similar are their current strategies for dealing with both?"


Hola, I am a nontraditional student, meaning I am in my 30's. I was laid off in 2009 because of the economy and was encouraged by the unemployment agency to goto school AND get student loans. Now I am completeley screwed!!! Are any of you out there screwed because of student loans? AMA!


If you're a customer, TD Ameritrade has a really robust alerting system.


"Yeah raising taxes while devaluing the currency is a winning strategy to spur consumer spending and increase economic growth...Oh wait Japanese citizens are by and large broke (like Americans and Europeans)... so they won't be spending additional money they don't have. Oh yeah and the tax hikes only serve to eat into economic growth as it diverts existing consumption away from the greater economy towards the government. Brilliant! Abenomics was all talk and no substance from the get go when he pounded his chest about it. I just rolled my eyes as I read the article thinking this wasn't going to end well. The fact that his ""strategy"" ended up including shaming companies publicly for not giving pay raises was ridiculous. Apparently Abe is ignorant of the fact that South Korea and China among other competitors are out competing Japanese businesses... which is a strong disincentive for them to add on additional wage costs for no reason, despite Abe's politically motivated school yard bullying."


A home upgrade is akin to make your home wonderful- in terms of strength as well as appearance. Be it interior or exterior, both angles are distinguished, but connected with a thread. If the exterior is superb, then the interior should be second-to-none or vice-versa.


To mhoran's point, yes, the company, TIAA-CREF is valid. I'd focus on the expenses - Their S&P fund (Index US Large Cap Equity Portfolio) shows a .11% total fee. You might choose this one, or others, but this number looks great to me. We are in an investment world where fees are still often over 1%, and we are conditioned to think anything less is a good fee. For me, the goal is less than .25% in your retirement fund, college savings, etc.


In simple terms : Equity Loan is money borrowed from the bank to buy assets which can be houses , shares etc Protected equity loan is commonly used in shares where you have a portfolio of shares and you set the minimum value the portfolio can fall to . Anything less than there may result in a sell off of the share to protect you from further capital losses. This is a very brief explaination , which does not fully cover what Equity Loan && Protected Equity Loan really mean


You should invest in that with the best possible outcome. Right now that is in yourself. Your greatest wealth building tool, at this point, is your future income. As such anything you can do to increase your earnings potential. For some that might mean getting an engineering degree, for others it might mean starting a small business. For some it is both obtaining a college degree and learning about business. A secondary thing to learn about would be personal finance. I would hold off on stocks, at this time, until you get your first real job and you have an emergency fund in place. Penny stocks are worthless, forget about them. Bonds have their place, but not at this point in your life. Saving up for college and obtaining a quality education, debt free, should be your top priority. Saving up for emergencies is a secondary priority, but only after you have more than enough money to fund your college education. You can start thinking about retirement, but you need a career to help fund your savings plan. Put that off until you have such a career. Investing in stocks, at this juncture, is a bit foolish. Start a career first. Any job you take now should be seen as a step towards a larger goal and should not define who you are.


working full time for low wages, does force a family to take government assistance. It is a way my business and others who pay a living wage while still paying our taxes subsidized the mega businesses destroying america like walmart. Sorry but if you have a family cant get another job with better pay and have to work 40 hours for min wage, you are going to use government assistance.


No. There is no guarantee that credit card issuing banks will always use 0% introductory rates to entice anyone.


This answer assumes that your purpose for using the ESPP is to generate a relatively safe 15% return on that portion of your income. Frequently before there were Roth 401K options the advice was: This advice was especially good for the younger workers because they wanted to have a Roth account but didn't want to miss the 401K match. As Roth 401K accounts were introduced that advice changed somewhat because it was possible to get the benefit of the Roth and still get the maximum match. for your situation what I would propose is: contribute to the 401K enough to get the maximum match. Contribute as much as you want or are allowed into the ESPP. Take the proceeds and contribute to an IRA or Roth IRA. If you reach the IRA max you have to decide if you will scale back the ESPP to contribute more to the 401K.


So what you're saying is if the janitor got a degree in a lesser paying field, he should be entitled to that 100k as a janitor. Ok. Just because you went to college doesn't mean your job takes more skill, or is harder. My ex also has a brother who didn't go to college and got a bomb ass job at EA games as a programmer. I guess he deserves minimum wage.


You're young. Build a side business in your spare time. Invest in yourself. Fail a few times when you have some time to recover financially. Use the money that you would have let sit in some account and develop your skills, start up an LLC, and build up the capacity to get some real returns on your money. Be a rainmaker, not a Roth taker.


"Your son is in the right. But he broke the ""unwritten"" rules, which is why the car dealer is upset. Basically, cars are sold in the United States at a breakeven price. The car company makes ALL its money on the financing. If everyone bought ""all cash,"" the car companies would not be profitable. No one expected anyone, least of all your son, a ""young person,"" to pay ""all cash."" When he did, they lost all the profit on the deal. On the other hand, they signed a contract, your son met all the FORMAL requirements, and if there was an ""understanding"" (an assumption, actually), that the car was supposed to be financed, your son was not part of it. Good for him. And if necessary, you should be prepared to back him up on court."


we have 5 customers already lined up, and like 15 who are very interested in our service. So like I said, we definitely dont need sales for the next 6 months, probably not for a year. which is great.


Also, unless I missed it and someone already mentioned it, do keep in mind the impact of these credit cards balances on your credit score. Over roughly 75% usage on a given credit account reflects badly on your score and has a pretty large impact on how your worthiness is calculated. It gives the impression that you are a person that lives month to month on cards, etc. If you could get both cards down to reasonable balances to where you could begin paying on them regularly and work them down over time, that will not only look incredible for your credit report but also immediately begin making your credit worthiness begin to raise due to the fact that you will not have accounts that (I'm assuming here) are at very high usage (over 75% of your total limit.) If you have to get one card knocked out just to get breathing room, and you're boxed in here -- or honestly even if the mental stress is causing you incredible hardship day to day, then I suppose blow one card out of the water, reassess and start getting to work on that second card. I hope this helped, I'm no expert, but I have had every kind of luck with credit cards and accounts you could think of, so I can only give my experience from the rubber-meets-the-road perspective. Good luck!


I definitely agree with this. Before I could get federal or state loans I had to do this online orientation and while you probably could skip most of it and click accept I actually read through and am competent in how the interest works and how even though not paying until after graduation is an option that'll increase my total loans by like 50%. Almost every other student I've talked to with student loans has little to no knowledge as to how interest works and how it applies to their loans. And the choosing what to study. Because while it is nice to study something fun if you can't practically get a decent paying job in your field then you have a lot of knowledge and nothing to do with it.


I'd definitely say I have doubt in their potential for future growth. Some say all they have to do is continue to grow their user base. The problem there is they don't have very much expansion area among the US population, and only a bit more among western nations in general. Of US internet users, about 70% are already on facebook, and the rest are largely people who will never signup, or people who have had facebook and moved away from it. Outside of the US, facebook has significant competition to deal with. China and India already have established facebook competitors that won't make it easy for them to grow their. Russia is the same. Countries like Germany, France, and England have the same saturation issues as the US. Some say all facebook needs to do is spur ad clicks. The problem there is more and more facebooking is done via mobile apps, where the existing UI's don't even have ads. I'm sure the official Facebook app will start to incorporate ads down the road, but there's still the issue of not many people click them, ever. I really just don't see where their growth will come from.


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I got a Capital One credit card because they don't charge a fee for transactions in foreign currencies. So I only use it when I travel abroad. At home, I use 3 different credit cards, each offering different types of rewards (cash back on gas, movies, restaurants, online shopping etc).


"Others are very correct to indicate you NEED to put numbers on it. Exactly how much debt are you talking about? What kind of interest are you paying on it? Put that against your income (on a spreadsheet) and then start charting your monthly expenses. Now add in a ""fudge"" factor for the unexpected like car repairs or other unknown that appear from time to time. Once you do that you'll be staring straight at ""reality"" otherwise it's just fiction and guesswork. As Mrs. John isn't working she should be doing everything possible to help you save. Great saving ideas include: Buying in bulk and portioning food in the freezer. Preparing bulk meals like Chili, rice dishes, noodle dishes and thing you can prepare for 1/5th the cost of eating out, portion and freeze meals. Wash dishes in the sink, use cold water (but buy good soap, you'll use much less). Take short showers, save energy everywhere you can. If it's cold, dress warm even at home and if it's warm, undress to the tasteful limits. Minimize heat and AC use. Do you NEED cable and all the channels? So much to view online. You and she may need to find creative ways to earn money, if she's paying off student loans then she has a degree, use it! Can't find a job? Be a consultant, go sell yourself and find some work. It's out there but may take work to find work. If she's disabled than look into government subsidies to assist. If not, then find work that needs to be done and go do it. Time to get busy!"


"I live in the UK so it's a little different but generally you'd have one account (a current account) which would have a Visa/MasterCard debit card associated before working and any high street bank (don't know what the US equivalent would be, but big banks such as HSBC/Santander) will offer you a savings account which pays a v small amount of interest as well as bonds as all sorts. From what I know most people have their salary paid into their current account (which would be the spending account with a card associated) and would transfer a set amount to a savings account. Personally, I have a current account and a few different saving accounts (which do not have cards associated). One savings account has incoming transfers/money received and I can use online banking to transfer that to my current account ""instantly"" (at least I've done it standing at ATM's and the money is there seconds later - but again this is the UK, not US). This way, my primary current account never has more than £10-15 in it, whenever I know I need money I'll transfer it from the instant access account. This has saved me before when I've been called by my bank for transactions a few £100 each which would have been authorised I kept all my money in my current account. If you don't have money (and dont have an overdraft!) what are they meant to do with it? The other savings account I had setup so that I could not transfer money out without going into a branch with ID/etc, less to stop someone stealing my money and more to be physically unable to waste money on a Friday if I don't arrive at the bank before 4/5PM, so saves a lot of time. US banking is a nightmare, I don't imagine any of this will translate well and I think if you had your salary paid into your savings on a Friday and missed the bank with no online banking facilities/transfers that aren't instant you'd be in a lot of trouble. If the whole ""current + instant access savings account"" thing doesn't work to well, I'm sure a credit/charge (!!!) card will work instead of a separate current account. Spend everything on that (within reason and what you can pay back/afford to pay stupid interest on) on a card with a 0% purchase rate and pay it back using an account you're paid into but is never used for expenses, some credit cards might even reward you for this type of thing but again, credit can be dangerous. A older retired relative of mine has all of his money in one account, refuses a debit card from the bank every time he is offered (he has a card, but it isn't a visa/mastercard, it's purely used for authentication in branch) and keeps that in a safe indoors! Spends everything he needs on his credit card and writes them a sort of cheque (goes into the bank with ID and signs it) for the full balance when his statement arrives. No online banking! No chance of him getting key logged any time soon. tldr; the idea of separating the accounts your money goes in (salary wise) and goes out (spending) isn't a bad idea. that is if wire transfers don't take 3-5 days where you are aha."


I love how the spokespeople in the article basically try to pass it off as 'no big deal' or 'we reacted right away'. I don't believe any of that for an instant. I have been in several Kmart stores and they almost always have a leaking ceiling...and not a tiny leak either. They've even have a couple stores roofs completely collapse in heavy snowstorms over the past few years. It's amazing that some of the buildings are legally habitable.


I am not a lawyer. In the United States, this does not look like theft to me. If the seller acted in good faith, theft does not apply. It seems that the purchaser of the inventory is in receipt of stolen goods. These can be recovered from the purchaser (the police will assist). The purchaser then has some recourse against the seller.


Major things to consider: If you're expecting to look at the property market: it might prove to be sensible to start doing it now, since the market is just recovering, and (IMHO warning -I'm not a professional investor, just a random guy on the internet) prices still hasn't caught up with value fundamentals. check out cash ISA's for a 24-36 month timeframe; most do a reasonable 3-4% AER, with the current inflation rate being around 4%, this will, at the very least, make sure your money doesn't loose it's purchasing power. Finally, a word of caution: SIPPs have a rather rubbish AER rates. This, by itself, wouldn't be much of a problem on a 30-40 years timeframe, but keep the (current, and historically strictly monotonically increasing) 4% inflation rate in mind: this implies the purchasing power of any money tied in these vehicles will loose it's purchasing power, in a compounding manner. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions.


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unless you're goinna say Final Cut Pro (and not X), there's not really many programs you can say that doesn't have a version on the PC that's at least semi industry standard. And besides that, artists don't make much of a living. I was down that route for a while. the industries are shit.


You might want to check again on the whole best standard of living thing. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/countries-with-the-highest-standard-of-living-social-progress-index/ Not even in top 12. We also have by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, housing more prisoners than China with 1/4 the population. Our infant mortality rate is the highest in the developed world. Our healthcare is also the worst in developed countries and even some developing ones despite paying more for it than in any other country in the world. We rank near last in education despite also paying the most for it. It's is almost as if adding a profit motive to social services results in the highest costs with the lowest output. Europe is doing great actually, pretty much is the reverse of all these statistics.


FAQ on Alibaba Fair Play Fund: We also continue to assist buyers and suppliers in attempting to settle business disputes. In cases where a complaint of fraud against a supplier is substantiated, that supplier is immediately removed and banned from our platform. If the supplier was a paying member, the supplier forfeits their subscription fee. Forfeited fees are the source of our new Fair Play Fund, which aims to help buyers recover some of their financial losses given that they can demonstrate they were defrauded by a supplier using our platform.


DRiPs come to mind as something that may be worth examining. If you take the Microsoft example, consider what would happen if you bought additional shares each year by re-investing the dividends and the stock also went up over the years. A combination of capital appreciation in the share price plus the additional shares purchased over time can produce a good income stream over time. The key is to consider how long are you contributing, how much are you contributing and what end result are you expecting as some companies can have larger dividends if you look at REITs for example.


In today's market being paid 1% for risk and free access money is pretty darn good. If 50k is what you feel comfortable with an emergency fund, then you are doing a fine enough job. To me that is a lot to keep in an emergency fund, however several factors play into this: We both drive older cars, so I also keep enough money around to replace one of them. Considering all that I keep a specific amount in savings that for me earns .89%. Some of that is kept in our checking accounts which earns nothing. You have to go through some analysis of your own situation and keep that amount where it is. If that amount is less than 50K, you have some money to play with. Here are some options:


Why don't we just repeal Nixon's Health Maintenance Organization Act so that the health care system isn't allowed to profit off of patients anymore? Oh ya, because the fascist system wants to implement a certain solution so they have to keep the things that create the problem.


Yep, this. In the sand the smart guys bought these neckerchiefs filled with really absorbent beads. Soak 'em in icewater for a bit and they stay cold for hours. If these weren't on hand we learned to get ice cubes when we could and wrap them in a shemagh/keffiyeh which went around the neck.


"> The long-run goal is to eliminate poverty through wealth creation. If that makes for some weird new social interactions, I'd say that's a reasonable cost. Yes, I agree but there's a problem if we ""allow"" income inequality to become so rampant it causes macro-geopolitical issues. I'm not sure how that would be solved, it seems almost inherent in a captalistic model. I suppose mitigating rent seeking in favour of actual wealth creation and spreading meritocracy in proportion rather than exponentiality might be a start. The current wave of green energy, climate change and focus on health might be an indirect mitigating factor to this. Perhaps the limitation of land is the *real* issue. Space colonization would be an interesting scenario but there's likely a lot of time before that happens. > I mention comparing to earlier periods simply as a measure of progress to determine whether or not there is a problem that needs correction, such as a specific group in society experiencing real wage stagnation, or truly anemic growth rates relative to earlier periods. It's the slope of the trend line for each group that I'd be worried about, where linear or exponential is good, and logarithmic should indicate a potential crisis. That actually makes sense. > Ultimately, I believe that it's not a persons absolute circumstances that matter, but the rate at which those circumstances are improving throughout their lives that most strongly affects their subjective well-being (but that's just my theory). I have not read enough in both economics or human psychology to really have an opinion on this but so far, I would lean towards an agreement. > As for real estate costs, you're absolutely correct that this is a problem, but it's as easily explainable problem. Supply is artificially constrained in most of the US due to the need for explicit government permission (in the form of building permits and zoning laws) in order to build new units. Basic economics says that when supply is artificially restricted, prices will rise. I'm on the fence on this issue because real estate is based on rent seeking and promotion of debt slavery. While I won't argue against the principle of government restriction -> higher prices, what exactly keeps private interests from raising living cost as high as it can? Even in the developed world people spend as much as half of their income on rent / mortgage alone. Other than competition of course but in a high competitive area the incentive is to eat up market share. The laws of accumulation would then argue that in the end a few, large institutions would own the majority of residential homes and living apartments. They can now set their own prices and that will, in effect, be as bad as government regulation."


The difference is that for the one year time frame the data is represented based on daily data and the SMA is 20 days, whilst for the 5 year timeframe the data is automatically represented as weekly data with the SMA represented by 20 weeks not 20 days anymore. This happens due to daily data on this chart being too much data to represent over a 5 year period so the data defaults to weekly data over such a long period. If the chart is represented as weekly data then any indicators will also have to be represented in weekly data. If you use a more sophisticated charting program you can actually select to see daily or weekly data over longer periods such as 5 years or more.


"You report it when the expense was incurred/accrued. Which is, in your case, 2014. There's no such thing as ""accounts payable"" on tax forms, it is an account on balance sheet, but most likely it is irrelevant for you since your LLC is probably cash-based. The reimbursement is a red-herring, what matters is when you paid the money."


There is very little difference these days between account types. The fee structure and interest paid is different, but the actual mechanics, and as noted by others, the coverage by deposit insurance is identical. So look at how much money you have in the account(s) you have; are you maximizing the interest that you could be receiving, even from the small amounts that the banks will pay? If you could get more interest from the savings account, and only write one or two cheques per month, you might be better off with that account only; but given common fee structures, you likely would not want that as your primary account. Another reason for separate accounts is more psychological. You might be able to train yourself to not dip in to your savings if you don't have a chequebook.


It depends on the selling price, but if we can assume the property will be sold at a profit, they are getting a pretty sweet deal at your expense. They are both getting about 5.2% interest on their money, plus the lion's share of any property appreciation. I would say that fair would be either of:


Most bank registers (where you write down entries) show deposits (+) to account as a CREDIT. Payments, fees, and withdrawals are DEBITs to your bank accounnt. On loans such as credit card accounts, a credit to your loan account is a payment or other reductions of the amount you owe. A charge to your account is a DEBIT to you loan account. They did this just to confuse us!


What an amazing success story. Because Bezos owns both Wa Po and Amazon, Trump has been tweeting several threats to break up and tax Amazon. He is threatening to destroy all that wealth in order to silence the journalists at Wa Po. https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/889675644396867584


"> how the market going up and down in dramatic fashions due to speculative behavior by traders (of any kind) should have the power to decide the worth of thousands of companies going about their normal business. Wow. I don't even know where to start. First: why shouldn't traders be able to decide (as a group) what the companies are worth? If not them, who? Some committee you and your friends in the government get to appoint? Second: do you really think that intraday (or even intraweek) prices are really representative of what ""the market"" thinks a company is valued at? Third: compared to the effect of long term buy and holders changing their mind about a company, the effect of any HFT people on the valuation of a stock is practically nothing - like I said, there's just about no evidence of speculators causing significant mispricing over any significant period. Fourth: there's no credible evidence that outside of individual events like the Knight Capital farce HFT has actually increased volatility."


Yes for sure. It would be redundant. I have three of them, so what. Its just more money in retirement. I would prefer a ROTH IRA in your tax bracket and you next employer may not offer that. And yes there are tax breaks either putting money in to a IRA or if you go the Roth route, on the way out. So if you put money in a Roth now you will have some money at your tax rate in 40 years from now. And if you put money in a traditional IRA when you are an employee you will save on the tax rate you are at then. So you are hedging you bets on tax rates by paying them in two different decade. Personally we are probably all on a tax holiday right now and I would be that taxes will be higher in the future as they are historically pretty low right now.


"As others have pointed out, there are often many factors that are contributing to a stock's movement other than the latest news. In particular, the overall market sentiment and price movement very often is the primary driver in any stock's change on a given day. But in this case, I'd say your anecdotal observation is correct: All else equal, announcements of layoffs tend to drive stock prices upwards. Here's why: To the public, layoffs are almost always a sign that a company is willing to do whatever is needed to fix an already known and serious problem. Mass layoffs are brutally hard decisions. Even at companies that go through cycles of them pretty regularly, they're still painful every time. There's a strong personal drain on the chain of executives that has to decide who loses their livelihood. And even if you think most execs don't care (and I think you'd be wrong) it's still incredibly distracting. The process takes many weeks, during which productivity plummets. And it's demoralizing to everyone when it happens. So companies very rarely do it until they think they have to. By that point, they are likely struggling with some very publicly known problems - usually contracting (or negative) margins. So, the market's view of the company at the time just before layoffs occur is almost always, ""this company has problems, but is unable or unwilling to solve them."". Layoffs signal that both of those possibilities are incorrect. They suggest that the company believes that layoffs will fix the problem, and that they're willing to make hard calls to do so. And that's why they usually drive prices up."


I'm a caucasian male and get a pat down every time I fly, although to be fair I only fly a few times per year (maybe 5 round trips tops, average 1-2) so I could just be getting bitch slapped by statistics due to small sample set. Still aggravates me.


"In addition to the answers provided above, the weight the Dow uses to determine the index is not the market capitalization of the company involved. That means that companies like Google and Apple with very high share prices and no particular inclination to split could adversely effect the Dow, turning it into essentially the ""Apple and Google and then some other companies"" Industrial Average. The highest share price Dow company right now, IIRC, is IBM. Both Google and Apple would have three times the influence on the Index as IBM does now."


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It's not non-zero but, in a resource extraction economy, the prices of those resources is critical. Alberta, which produces a lot of expensive oil, needs the prices to be above a certain amount or there are major problems. Prior to 2008, everything was wine and roses. After the crash, the elected government has been crying. Instead of funding everything through oil royalties in a surplus, they've made cutbacks and run a sizeable deficit most every year since. The lower prices has resulted in slowed construction and cancelled projects on the oil sands, which reduces the jobs, which undercuts the only positive to practically giving the oil away. This is with $32 billion is subsidies for oil and gas each year. Reduced jobs and money means less demand for real estate, which tripled between 2003 and 2008 and has mostly held steady since then. With rising interest rates on the horizon, many Albertans could lose 25%-50% of their wealth. If an oil produces wanted to hurt Alberta, increasing production enough to drop the price of oil by $5-$10 could do it. I know it's a tall order but there are certain countries and/or organizations that could do it. The US govt, for example, could have its oil barons and military hawks team up to subsidize production enough to sink Russia in the name of national security. It may not make much sense but neither does ethanol from corn and look where that is.


"There is no fundamental, good reason, I think; ""that's just how it's done"" (which is what all the other answers seem to be saying, w/o coming out and admitting it). Just guessing, but I'll bet most of the reason is historical: Before up-to-the-moment quotes were readily available, that was a bit tedious to calculate/update the fund's value, so enacted-laws let it be done just once per day. (@NL7 quotes the security act of 1940, which certainly has been updated, but also still might contain the results of crufty rationales, like this.) There are genuinely different issues between funds and stocks, though: One share of a fund is fundamentally different from one share of stock: There is a finite supply of Company-X-stock, and people are trading that piece of ownership around, and barter to find an mutually-agreeable-price. But when you buy into a mutual-fund, the mutual-fund ""suddenly has more shares"" -- it takes your money and uses it to buy shares of the underlying stocks (in a ratio equal to its current holdings). As a consequence: the mutual fund's price isn't determined by two people bartering and agreeing on a price (like stock); there is exactly one sane way to price a mutual fund, and that's the weighted total of its underlying stock. If you wanted to sell your ownership-of-Mutual-Fund-Z to a friend at 2:34pm, there wouldn't be any bartering, you'd just calculate the value based on the stated-value of the underlying stock at that exact moment. So: there's no inherent reason you can't instantaneously price a mutual fund. BUT people don't really buy/sell funds to each other -- they go to the fund-manager and essentially make a deposit-or-withdraw. The fund-manager is only required by law to do it once a day (and perhaps even forbidden from doing it more often?), so that's all they do. [Disclaimer: I know very little about markets and finance. But I recognize answers that are 'just because'.]"


"Financial services job? Sales? The reason is that many non-sales jobs require MBAs, and while there are lots of openings, there is also a TON of competition. Many people are getting MBAs right after undergrad and they're setting themselves up for some very good jobs. Don't believe me? Go look at some job postings for some very junior jobs. Nearly ANY manager role they want an MBA - even jobs that only require 2+ years of experience they're saying ""MBA preferred"" and you'll see that there are dozens of applicants for every position. Call up a recruiter, validate what I'm saying."


"I thought Derivatives Markets by Robert McDonald was a solid textbook when I used it for an SOA exam and a 4th year financial mathematics course. For a decent intro to interest rates, annuities, bonds etc I thought ""The Theory of Interest"" by Stephen Kellison was pretty good. Other people have mentioned Shreve's Stochastic Calculus for Finance. There's actually two parts to it. Part 1 is the binomial asset pricing model and this is the one you would want (for now). Part two is on stochastic differential equations. I've used part 2 and I thought it was a good book that covers a lot of amount of material. It is certainly not an easy read though"


In addition to the prior answer, talking from experience, you get into trouble if you surpass the contribution limit and your employer continues to deposit money above the IRS maximum allowed. When that happens, you have until April to take out the excess contribution and earned interest on that chunk of money and included in your tax return or else you get a steep tax penalty in addition to being double taxed ( for the current and next tax year). Also from experience, payroll departments will most likely get this wrong and it will end up in a compliance mess with you picking up the tab on your tax bill. Don't let it happen!!!


I took a look at a lot of these products while doing some work for a non-profit. We ended up going with a hosted solution called [Thinkific](https://www.thinkific.com/). Good product, reasonable pricing, and responsive support. I think they've got a free trial iirc. (I'm not associated with them in any way.)


"Don't worry about this yet. You need the essentials first. Read in this order: ""How to win friends and influence people"" by Dale Carnegie ""Think and grow rich"" - Napoleon Hill "" The effective executive"" - Peter Drucker Then decide what type of business you want to start and learn the details. Bonus: ""Atlas Shrugged"" - not as practical but will motive you."


It's not a church it is a company and needs to adhere to legal and ethical practices. I used to work at a company that brewed their own beer and staff could drink it at the end of the work day... that doesn't make it a bar. Your thinking is fundamentally flawed if you were to replace religion with something like gender, race, sexuality, age etc. It is discrimination, there are laws in place because of it, and religion has no exemptions.


Ally Bank is a good online only account. They reimburse any ATM Fees you may occur. I have both checking and savings, with both Ally and ING Direct. I don't know about having 25 total accounts - seems like overkill to me. I do something similar though - I get direct deposit into one account, then transfer the average bill amount each pay to a different account that I never touch other than for the allotted bills. It works well, especially for Utilities that are inflated seasonally. What do you use to mange the 25 accounts? I use Quicken, but I don't have 25 accounts...yet.


You could buy some call options on the USD/INR. That way if the dollar goes up, you'll make the difference, and if the dollar goes down, then you'll lose the premium you paid. I found some details on USD/INR options here Looks like the furthest out you can go is 3 months. Note they're european style options, so they can only be exercised on the expiration date (as opposed to american style, which can be exercised at any time up to the expiration date). Alternatively, you could buy into some futures contracts for the USD/INR. Those go out to 12 months. With futures if the dollar goes up, you get the difference, if the dollar goes down, you pay the difference. I'd say if you were going to do something like this, stick with the options, since the most you could lose there is the premium you put up for the option contracts. With futures, if it suddenly moved against you you could find yourself with huge losses. Note that playing in the futures and options markets are an easy way to get burned -- it's not for the faint of heart.


You should write a demand letter immediately, send the letter by certified mail, and then wait 30 days. Here is a sample demand letter for the state of california that you can send: http://www.courts.ca.gov/11151.htm It seems like most of the demand letters assumed that you tried to cash the check and incurred a service fee. Personally, I wouldn't risk incurring even most cost. Instead, after 30 days, I would take him to small claims court and show all the evidence you have (checks, receipts, and letters of correspondence).


You spread money/investment across different accounts for different reasons: All this is in addition to diversification reasons. Investing all your money into one stock, bond, Mutual fund, ETF is risky if that one segment of the economy/market suffers. There is a drawback to diversification of accounts. Some have minimum amounts and fee structures. In the original question you asked about 1,000 per account. That may mean that some accounts may be closed to you. In other cases they will charge a higher percentage for fees for small accounts. Those issues would disappear long before you hit the 1,000,000 per account you mentioned in your comment. One problem can occur with having too much diversification. Having dozens of funds could mean that the overlap between the funds might result in over investing in a segment because you didn't realize that one stock segment appeared in 1/3 of the funds.


Ahh, that's embarassing. I read two articles on Uber on hackernews this morning, one with this title, and the other talking about uberPool which said that they aggressively offered discounts because without those rebates drivers wouldn't have enough passengers, but if they could reach a critical number of users they would have enough passengers that the ride was (barely) profitable. I went back and found the articles posted on hackernews and feel pretty silly now. I should definitely tone down my smugness in the future, so sorry for that. Glad you found it amusing though! [Here is the link to the story I thought this was, in case you were interested](https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2017/05/31/uberpool-sf-buzzfeed-documents-burn-rate/amp/&ved=0ahUKEwjI8IqTuKDUAhUByoMKHT7zCHsQFggwMAQ&usg=AFQjCNFMBLxrbnKD1QDka1w0Jm99Xs6OFg&sig2=-efzgIxdqrDmb0j7oAiPyw)


I agree. ZH is way ahead on some big stories. The different spin on Russian propaganda was interesting for a while (Syria, Iraq) but has become worse than the Western media on Ukraine and some other nutty stories. Western media is influenced by the banks and Russian media is controlled too much by Putin. But despite the distortions you sometimes get clear picture if you keep an eye on both.


"The best reason for endorsing a check is in case it is lost. If the back is blank, a crooked finder could simply write ""pay to the order of "" on it and deposit it in his own account. You do not need a signature for the endorsement. The safest way to endorse a check is to write ""FOR DEPOSIT ONLY"" followed by an account number, in which case the signature is not needed. most businesses make up rubber stamps with this and stamp it the minute they receive a check. That way it has no value to anyone else. Depositing checks is increasingly going the way of the dodo. Many businesses today use check truncation - the business scans the check in, sends the digital image to the bank, and stores the check. I was surprised that Chase already has an applet for iPhones that you can use to deposit a check by taking a picture of it!"


The worst. Joe Buck mode, for those of you who like NFC teams: turn the center channel on your surround sound off. All you'll hear is crowd going nuts. Turn that shit up, fans say funny things, and you don't have to listen to fucking Joe Buck.


"Typically, the CC company itself won't follow the customer very far upon a default (though it certainly can act as its own debt collector, or hire an agency for a fee to do the collection). What most often happens: Once they do that, assuming they win the lawsuit, they can do the following: They cannot ""force"" you into bankruptcy, but they might make it so you have no better options (if bankruptcy is less painful than the above, which it often is). They certainly can (and will) report to the credit bureaus, of course. For more information, Nolo has a decent help site on this subject. Different jurisdictions have slightly different rules, so look up yours. Here is an example (this is from Massachusetts). Not every debt is sued for, of course; particularly, pay attention to the statute of limitations in your state. (In mine, it's seven years, for example.) And it's probably worth contacting someone locally (a legitimate non-profit debt relief agency, or your state's help agency if they have one) to find local rules and regulations."


"If you ""do business"" in a state, then you need to register your business in that state. I suspect that you have a misconception of what it means to ""do business"" in a state. If you are a 1-man shop, then you very likely are not doing business in any state except the one state where you work. Examples of when you are doing business in a state include having an office in the state or having employees in the state. Merely selling something to a client in that state is NOT enough to be doing business in the state. Each state is different, but unless you are doing something that is, in some sense, close to having an office or an employee in a state, then you have nothing to worry about. For example, if you regularly travel to a state to do work for a client then it is possible that you could be doing business in that state (I have no idea if that would be sufficient in any state). But if you are just working out of your basement running a website, then you are only doing business in your own state."


[Japan] had been for some time, but during the recession, China went strongly for US debt as a hedge against a depression occurring. Now that the world economy is rebounding, China can get a bit more aggressive and will probably back off on treasuries.


I do work my ass off. If I roll my commute in I've got a fairly regular 14hours of work a day, and lots of stress. And I'm on call virtually always. Hence the stress, and the dream of life after a lottery win. And with my stress I make pretty good money for my age, so I don't mind throwing some away to a dream


Doesn't matter. What concerns me is the potential, since it is very plausible that at some time in the near future the Feds will need to be violently fought by the citizens of the USA in order to correct the deviation of their allegiance.


Just keep in mind that on Upwork, you basically have to be the cheapest person to get most of the gigs. It's great to get your feet wet, but I would strongly encourage you to use it to build a portfolio up and then start reaching out to people in your network to see if anyone needs your services.


Trading error at Citi


Over my lifetime (over sixty now) I found that having both options (white- and blue-collar) available always meant I could get work. By the age of twenty-one I had two paths available; by the age of forty-five I had four. The key is to not lock yourself into one path and always be learning something new, which means having an awareness of your society and its technology *and be interested in it.* The sad truth is that most people just aren't intelligent enough to be able to so this and that is not a bad thing; we're not all the same and so can't be held to the same measuring stick.


Shares are partial ownership of the company. A company can issue (not create) more of the shares it owns at any time, to anyone, at any price -- subject to antitrust and similar regulations. If they wanted to, for example, flat-out give 10% of their retained interest to charity, they could do so. It shouldn't substantially affect the stock's trading for others unless there's a completely irrational demand for shares.


Although this is possible with many brokers, it's not advisable. In many cases you may end up with both trades executed at the same time. This is because during the opening, the stock might spike up or down heavily, bid/ask spread widens, and both of your orders would get picked up, resulting in an instant loss. Your best bet is to place the stop manually sometime after you get filled.


You're ignoring the fact that you still had the taxes from the $5500 (so $1375) left over when making the traditional IRA contribution. So yes, the Roth IRA grew without further taxing more than the Traditional IRA did; but you could've just as easily invested that $1375 in the same investments. While you'd owe taxes on them, true, you'd still earn a boatload of money. That's another $10,607 you've earned, not tax-free, but with gains at the 15% CGR is still $9170. So you now have $60,627 in the Roth, available tax-free, or you have $60,627 available at a 10% or so average rate (12% if you like, though I think you'll find it's more like 10%). Say $53351, plus $9170 from the not-sheltered income after taxes, for $62,521 after taxes. So you make about $2000 more by using the traditional IRA for $5500 and then just investing the rest in a long term account. The math might be slightly worse if you invest in something that has regular dividend taxes due, but if you're careful to use tax-favored investments you should be okay, and even if you don't you'll still end up ahead in the end if you make the same exact investment as your tax-sheltered account. Ultimately the question is: are you paying more in taxes now, or later, comparing now marginal rate to later average rate. If you are paying more in taxes now, then traditional IRA plus invest the rest unsheltered. If you're paying more later, then Roth IRA.


"The question is about the dealer, right? The dealer isn't providing this financing to you, Alfa is, and they're paying the dealer that same ""On the Road"" price when you finance the purchase. So the dealer gets the same amount either way. The financing, through Alfa, means your payments go to Alfa. And they're willing to give you 3,000 towards purchase of the car at the dealer in order to motivate those who can afford payments but not full cash for the car. They end up selling more cars this way, keeping the factories busy and employees and stockholders happy along the way. At least, that's how it's supposed to work out."


In the U.S., there are two kinds of court cases: civil and criminal. Only a crime can put you in jail. Simply the fact that you owe someone money cannot land you in jail. If you agree to pay money to someone, and then you don't pay, you have not committed a crime. However, you may have committed a crime in the way that you became in debt. For example, as Joe mentioned in his answer, if you write a bad check and give it to someone as payment, you will owe them money (not a crime), but you will also have committed fraud, which is a crime that can put you in jail. Another example is the IRS. The IRS cannot put you in jail simply for having unpaid taxes. However, it is a crime to lie on your tax return and evade taxes. It is an important distinction.


I hear that Google's counter to the Amazon/WF play is to push Google Express mass market. This would mean dropping the yearly membership and partnering with Walmart to expand available inventory. I don't like it for the reason mentioned above. I mean Google has the cash reserves to go after Target or even Costco, but they have a poor history of managing established brands post acquisition. Hello Moto? Still I personally spend loads of money at Amazon, Whole Foods, Costco, and Target... hardly a penny at Walmart.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://news.sky.com/story/japans-economy-posts-longest-unbroken-growth-streak-in-more-than-a-decade-10988359) reduced by 71%. (I'm a bot) ***** > It was the strongest quarter of growth since the first quarter of 2015. > It means Japan is growing faster than the likes of the United States, whose economy grew by just 2.6% on an annualised basis during the same period, and appreciably faster than the UK. Japan&#039;s economy has now grown for sixth successive quarters, the longest growth streak it has enjoyed since 2006, representing a triumph for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office in 2012 promising a revival. > Toshimitsu Motegi, Japan&#039;s new economic and fiscal policy minister, said the stronger-than-expected growth reflected continued strength in consumer spending and business investment. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6ttbyy/japans_economy_beats_the_forecasts_growing_by_4/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~191182 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*: **Japan**^#1 **growth**^#2 **quarter**^#3 **economy**^#4 **year**^#5"


JPM is probably the hugest too big to fail alongside being one of the most highly leveraged. Did you see Jamie Dimon testifying before our great politicians earlier this year? I mean if the Federal Government is kissing his ass, what will the State of New York really accomplish? The Bear Stearns collapse was avoided by JPM jumping in and saving the pride of Wall Street. Do you see Barclay's getting sued for things Lehman Brothers did? Barclay's is living the good life in London rigging LIBOR, while JPM, an American institution is being re-regulated. Should the government sue every company that goes out of business for defrauding customers, employees, and all stakeholders? SMH


When looking for a ventilation system for the house, there are a few construction law prerequisites which you need to know about. The most ideal method for battling rising damp and mould buildup in your house is by introducing a legitimately composed ventilation framework including exhaust fans.


The length of time you have established credit does improve your credit score in the long run. As long as you can avoid paying interest, you might see if you can get a card with cash back rewards. I have one from Citi that sends me a $50 check every so often when I have enough rewards built up.


Yeah meanwhile you would keep your mouth shut if you bought a brand new $30,000 lemon car right? You'll just say fuck the regulations I'll take the hit. You sure as shit won't care if the Exxon mobile truck misses its exit and dumps its load on your front yard, you won't go after them for regulation violations. Get the fuck outa here. Regulations are needed.


Yes, you've summarized it well. You may be able to depreciate your computer, expense some software licenses and may be home office if you qualify, but at this scale of earning - it will probably not cover for the loss of the money you need to pay for the additional SE tax (the employer part of the FICA taxes for W2 employees) and benefits (subsidized health insurance, bonuses you get from your employer, insurances, etc). Don't forget the additional expense of business licenses, liability insurances etc. While relatively small amounts and deductible - still money out of your pocket. That said... Good luck earning $96K on ODesk.


You are confusing two things. One is the business side and the other is the social safety net. I believe very strongly in a social safety net. I do not believe in a business safety net. If you don't want progress then have central planning. Let the central planners work out how much to make of everything and direct employers on how many people to employ. There won't be any overt creative destruction. There will however be a significant decrease in prosperity. It is like getting a lower rate of interest - doesn't seem to be so bad in the short term, but really bites in the long term.