"The definition you cite is correct, but obscure. I prefer a forward looking definition. Consider the real investment. You make an original investment at some point in time. You make a series of further deposits and withdrawals at specified times.  At some point after the last deposit/withdrawal, (the ""end"") the cash value of the investment is determined. Now, find a bank account that pays interest compounded daily. Possibly it should allow overdrafts where it charges the same interest rate. Make deposits and withdrawals to/from this account that match the investment payments in amount and date.  At the ""end"" the value in this bank account is the same as the investment. The bank interest rate that makes this happen is the IRR for the investment..."


"> I knew exactly what I wanted to do going into college. Now, I also did not end up doing what my first major was, but that was because an opportunity in finance presented itself surreptitiously.  Phrased alternatively, ""I knew *exactly* what I wanted to do, and I was *exactly* wrong about it.  Essentially, a post in support of the /u/wolfmans-brother."


I recall at the time that people on investment boards were circulating lists of companies audited by AA, as a - quite reliable - indication that they were fraudulent.   I have had a lot of dealings with their offshoot AA Consulting, now known as Accenture. These dealings have not, to put it mildly, given me any reason to think that AA's culture was very ethical. And if you cannot trust an auditor, they are worthless.


I believe Amazon is being forced to collect sales tax in several states now or soon. Newegg probably will be as well. The gravy train of no tax on the internet is going away, probably entirely within a few years. :/


If a business owner works for no salary, put time and effort into the   business, can those hours be considered a capital investment? No.


"As noted in richardb's comment buried in the comments/debate on the other answer (and all credit for this answer should be due to him): a significant issue with the scheme as originally envisaged in the question (up to £11K pa) is that there is actually a cap on the maintenance part for over 60s: On page 28 of this ""Student finance - how you're assessed and paid"" document it says: If you're 60 or over on the first day of the first academic year of   your course you can apply for a Maintenance Loan of up to £3,566,   depending on your household income. Your loan will be reduced by £1   for every £5.46 of household income over £25,000, up to £43,675. If   your household income is more than this you won't get any Maintenance   Loan. I'd consider that to make this route considerably less attractive... and maybe that's the intention of the rule!  (Although I might not think that was so true if I was actually on the UK's state pension of £6K a year and desperate.  However, I was originally thinking more in terms of comparing the accumulated ""free money"" over the three years with the UK's average - and woefully inadequate - pension pot of £50K, rather than with pensioner income). I'll leave those who found the idea of exploiting government incentives so outrageous to ponder the at least as troubling ethics of discriminating against people based on their age, especially when that government apparently likes the idea of older people retraining. (Just to complicate things: I note that one of the possible criteria for applying for a ""special support grant"" - an alternative to a maintenance loan - is being over 60.  That's a grant not a loan and doesn't have to be repaid, but abusing that would seem even to me to be on a par with faking disability to get benefits or similar)."


"I would answer your question very simply: marketing works. ""If you don't have a new F-150, you are not a real man.""  for men, and ""If you don't have a new Honda Pilot your kids are in danger."" for woman.  One observation that reinforces this are the amount of new(er) Buicks on the road.  Five years ago, they were pretty rare, now there are many.  Their marketing strategy of ""We don't suck so much anymore"", seems to have worked.  I don't get it. Last year, Consumer Reports reported that 84.5% of new cars are financed with an average payment of $457 over 65 months.   I like your analysis, but lets say instead of following this path, Brad and Jenn, put $250 a month away in a cookie jar (to cover repairs and car replacement), and $664 (457*2-250) in a mutual fund.  After doing this for 30 years, they will have 1.5 million.  Driving a new car is precluding many from being wealthy. It is hard to jump aboard the ""income inequality"" bandwagon when you see with brand new iphones and cars."


I don't really care which ship of Theseus I am so long as one of me gets to escape the perils of biology. Any priests hounding me at my deathbed will be laughed off because some part of me is already on its way to living forever.


"I encourage you to think of this home purchase decision as a chance to buy into a community that you want your children to grow up in.  Try to find a place where you will be happy for the next 20 years, not just the next 2 or 7 years. In your situation, option 1 seems like a bad idea.  It will create an obstacle to having children, instead of establishing a place for them to grow up in. Option 2 is close to ""buying a house on a layaway plan"".  It offers the most financial flexibility.  It also could result in the best long-term outcome, because you will buy in an established area, and you will know exactly what quality house you will have.  But you and your fiancé need to ask yourselves some hard questions:  Are you willing to put up with the mess and hassles of remodelling?  Are you good at designing such projects?  Can you afford to pay for the projects as they occur?  Or if you need to finance them, can you get a HELOC to cover them? Especially if you and your fiancé do much of the work yourselves, break down the projects into small enough pieces that you can quickly finish off whatever you are working on at the time, and be happy living in the resulting space.  You do not want to be nagging your husband about an unfinished project ""forever"" -- or silently resenting that a project never got wrapped up.  I posted some suggestions for incrementally finishing a basement on the Home Improvement Stack Exchange. If you are up to the job of option 2, it is less risky than option 3.  Option 3 has several risks: You don't know what sort of people will live in the neighborhood 5 - 20 years from now.  Will the homes be owner-occupied?  Or rentals?  Will your neighbors care about raising children well?  Or will lots of kids grow up in broken homes?   Will the schools be good?  Disappointing?  Or dangerous?  Whereas in an established neighborhood, you can see what the neighborhood is currently like, and how it has been changing. Unless you custom-build (or remodel), you don't control the quality of the construction.  Some neighborhoods built by Pulte in the last 10 years were riddled with construction defects. You will be paying up-front for features you don't need yet.  You might never need some of them.  And some of them might interfere with what you realize later on might be better. In stable markets, new homes (especially ones with lots of ""upgrades"") often decline in value during the first few years.  This is because part of the value is in the ""newness"" and being ""up-to-date"" with the latest fads.  This part of the value wears off over time. Are the homes ""at the edge of town"" already within reasonable walking distance of parks, schools, church, grocery stores, et cetera?  Might the commute from the ""edge of town"" to work get worse over the next 5 - 20 years?"


>Conclusion   >Covert operations organized and abetted by foreign governments have played a substantial role in the political and economic development of poorer countries around the world. We look at CIA-backed coups against governments which had nationalized a considerable amount of foreign investment. Using an event-study methodology, we find that private information regarding coup authorizations and planning increased the stock prices of expropriated multinationals that stood to benefit from the regime change. ***The presence of these abnormal returns suggests that there were leaks of classified information to asset traders.*** Consistent with theories of asset price determination under private information, this information often took some time to be fully reflected in the stock price. We find that coup authorizations, on net, contributed substantially more to stock price rises of highly exposed companies than the coup events themselves.   >This suggests that most of the value of the coup to the affected companies had already been anticipated and incorporated into the asset price before the operation was undertaken.


Read about [Pigovian Taxes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax).    > A Pigovian tax is a tax levied on a market activity that generates negative externalities. In economics, an externality is a cost or benefit, not transmitted through prices, incurred by a party who did not agree to the action causing the cost or benefit  For example someone polluting incurs costs on you to your health and quality of life.


"This answer is an attempt to answer the actual question posed. Please keep in mind that this applies specifically to the Equifax credit model that Mint uses as mentioned in the accepted answer, and that different models may react in different ways (or not at all). As mentioned in the comments, the number of total accounts you have does not have much bearing on your overall credit score. If you click on Mint's ""About Total Accounts"" link, you get the following statement: Total Accounts has a low impact on your score. Second, the way the Total Accounts score is represented is misleading. This is not a count of the total number of accounts you have open, but rather how many accounts you have in your total history. Mint's header under this metric is flat out wrong: Try to have a good mix of credit lines open. To back up the assertion that this is looking at total accounts in your credit history rather than just those that are open, my Mint report shows 2 open accounts and 7 closed accounts, for a total of 9. Under the Total Accounts metric, I am plotted smack dab in the middle of the ""Not Bad"" range, right where people with 9 would be plotted. So the proper advice here is to just let it be and only open new accounts as you need them. As you amass credit history, this metric will continue to grow naturally - it should never decrease. You may ask, then, why did your overall score decrease when you paid off your student loans? Most likely because your average age of credit dropped when you closed your loan account. If you're like most people I know, your student loan is one of your oldest accounts, so closing that account will hurt your score - credit age is measured only on your open accounts."


According to Wikipedia a flange is an external ridge or rim for attachment to another object, as the flange on the end of a pipe, steam cylinder, etc. Blind Flanges are those flanges which are used to stop the flow of fluid through a pipe temporarily or permanently.


"If you're skipping and blocking the ads then you're not paying for shit. You are not helping that ""model.""  Fortunately you're in good company, and the few changes necessary *will* happen in response to how insufferable and ineffective ad-funding is. The whole business will simply fade away."


Stock prices are set by the market - supply and demand. See Apple for example, which is exactly the company you described: tons of earnings, zero dividends. The stock price goes up and down depending on what happens with the company and how investors feel about it, and it can happen that the total value of the outstanding stock shares will be less than the value of the underlying assets of the company (including the cash resulted from the retained earnings). It can happen, also, that if the investors feel that the stock is not going to appreciate significantly, they will vote to distribute dividends. Its not the company's decision, its the board's. The board is appointed by the shareholders, which is exactly why the voting rights are important.


I learned this as CAR - Context, Action and Result. One less letter made it easier for me to remember. I like that balance, though. And remember, the interviewer probably didn't work where you did, so no acronyms or project names without explanation.


A lot may depend on the nature of a buyout, sometimes it's is for stock and cash, sometimes just stock, or in the case of this google deal, all cash.   Since that deal was used, we'll discuss what happens in a cash buyout. If the stock price goes high enough before the buyout date to put you in the money, pull the trigger before the settlement date (in some cases, it might be pulled for you, see below).  Otherwise, once the buyout occurs you will either be done or may receive adjusted options in the stock of the company that did the buyout (not applicable in a cash buyout). Typically the price will approach but not exceed the buyout price as the time gets close to the buyout date. If the buyout price is above your option strike price, then you have some hope of being in the money at some point before the buyout; just be sure to exercise in time. You need to check the fine print on the option contract itself to see if it had some provision that determines what happens in the event of a buyout.  That will tell you what happens with your particular options.   For example Joe Taxpayer just amended his answer to include the standard language from CBOE on it's options, which if I read it right means if you have options via them you need to check with your broker to see what if any special exercise settlement procedures are being imposed by CBOE in this case.


Fiverr and Mechanical Turk comes to my mind. You won't break the bank, but will give you a nice distraction and earn you some cash for your time.  And you can do this at your own schedule.


I hope your company spends a little more on your web site than NantWorks or Five3Genomics. From the looks of their late-90's-style website I would never guess that NantWorks was worth more than $10 million, and the Five3Genomics site looks like any number of open source software development sites from the last decade.


The relationship is not linear, and depends on a lot of factors. The term you're looking for is efficient frontier, the optimal rate of return for a given level of risk. The goal is to be on the efficient frontier, meaning that for the given level of risk, you're receiving the greatest possible rate of return (reward). http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/efficientfrontier.asp


">Exactly. People don't seem to realize that a lot of the things they take for granted as being provided by the government were more than adequately provided by private charities until the government stepped in and 'fixed' things.  Or that -- absent things like a 15.3% FICA tax (and all of the other taxes that have been added or increased substantially during the past couple of decades) -- which people could simply afford to save up and pay for themselves (or help friends, family, etc).  Currently private charity is significantly restrained because there is so much taken away (from the lower & middle class wages) via taxes -- so quite literally, they already ""gave at the office"".  >This is why the founding fathers hated democracy  Yes, they were well aware of (and VERY wary of) the possibility of the ""tyranny of the majority"" and the inefficiency/corruption that would tend to happen via governments."


"I always found that move by Google to be both brilliant, and almost comically simple.   **Apple**: ""Hey Google, we're going to sue you for infringing on our touch screen phone patents!""  **Google**: ""Oh, hey Apple, so funny story. We now own the patents for *the entire technical cellular network foundation that all cellphones are built on.*""  **Apple**: ""...right, we'll drop our lawsuit over the touch screen idea.""  **Google**: ""Yeah that's what I thought."""


>Consider the following scenario. After a victory by the left-wing Syriza party, Greece’s new government announces that it wants to renegotiate the terms of its agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.   The election is on June 17th, but I don't see Syriza winning.


$6 per gallon, up to 20 gallons.  So if gas was $2/gallon, that would be 3 20-gallon fill-ups, or 60 gallons.  I guess if today's cost is $2.32, that would be 2 free 20-gallon fill-ups, and the last 20 gallons for $1.36/gallon, or $27.  Much cheaper than the $140 it would be without the discounts :)


Assuming you mean that seriously, millimeter wave machines don't expose you to radiation, and backscatter x-ray machines expose you to as much radiation as you experience in about 9 minutes of daily life at sea level (and far less than you get exposed to in flight due to altitude).  Also, use of scanners isn't limited to the TSA or the USA.


"If I understand correctly, your question boils down to this: ""I have $X to invest over 25 years, are guaranteed returns at a 0.6% lower rate better than what I expect to get from the stock market over the same period?"" Well, I believe the standard advice would go something like: Rational investors pay a premium to reduce risk/volatility. Or, put another way, guaranteed returns are more valuable than risky returns, all things equal. I don't know enough about student loans in America (I'm Australian). Here a student loan is very low interest and the minimum repayments scale with what you earn not what you owe, starting at $0 for a totally liveable wage - Here I'd say there's a case to just pay the minimum and invest extra money elsewhere. If yours is a private loan though, following the same rules as other loans, remember the organisation extending your loan has access to the stock market too! why would they extend a loan to you on worse terms than they would get by simply dumping money into an index fund? Is the organisation that extends student loans a charity or subsidised in some way? If not, someone has already built a business on the the analysis that returns at 6.4% (including defaults) beats the stock market at 7% in some way. What I would put back to you though, is that your question oversimplifies what is likely your more complex reality, and so answering your question directly doesn't help that much to make a persuasive case - It's too mathematical and sterile. Here are some things off the top of my head that your real personal circumstances might convince you to pay off your loan first, hit up Wall Street second:"


"No, this really doesn't happen. When states buy power from that great a distance, they really are only buying renewable ""credits"". The electricity is not actually directed through 16,000+ miles (NY <-> CO) of cables. That would be incredibly inefficient.  When a state needs power, not merely credits, they buy from one of their neighbors."


Costco is great, and more companies should be great.  Everybody is about squeezing every last bit of profit in the short term.  Part of the problem is that executives aren't judged on the success and health of their companies, but the short term profits they can generate.  When the company has been sucked dry and dies, they just move on to the next opportunity to gut and destroy value.    The last few decades of HP is a great example, and now that Mayer is finished stomping out Yahoo's last breath, rumor is she might get the opportunity to do it at Uber.    Costco pays its employees a living wage, doesn't fuck the consumer, and doesn't allow the company to be sucked dry by executives' payouts.


"The person who told you ""no-load funds"" had the right idea.  Since you are risk-averse, you tend to want a ""value"" fund; that is, it's not likely to grow in value (that would be a ""growth"" fund), but it isn't like to fall either. To pick an example more-or-less at random, Fidelity Blue Chip Value Fund ""usually"" returns around 8% a year, which in your case would have meant about $20,000 every year -- but it's lost 4.35% in the last year. I like Fidelity, as a brokerage as well as a fund-manager.  Their brokers are salaried, so they have no incentive to push load funds or other things that make them, but not you, money.  For intermediate investors like you and me, they seem like a good choice. Be careful of ""short term"".  Most funds have some small penalty if you sell within 90 days.  Carve off whatever amount you think you might need and keep that in your cash account. And a piece of personal advice: don't be too risk-averse.  You don't need this money.  For you, the cost of losing it completely is exactly equal as the benefit of doubling it.  You can afford to be aggressive. Think of it this way: the expected return of a no-load fund is around 5%-7%.  For a savings account, the return is within rounding error of zero.  Do you spend that much, $15,000, on anything in your life right now?  Any recreation or hobby or activity.  Maybe your rent or your tuition.  Why spend it for a vague sense of ""safety"", when you are in no danger of losing anything that you need?"


"I think the 60 days/year come from the IRS tax residency determination, which isn't a Florida law but applies to all the states. Have a look at the ""substantial presence"" paragraph to see where the 60 days are coming from."


I know this is beside the point, but part of the reason Europe can afford such a strong social safety net is because the USA provides substantial military support.  If the EU nations had to pay the full bill for their own defense, I wonder how that would effect those safety nets?


What makes the S&P 500 Index funds have low expenses ratios is that the amount of money spent by the mutual fund company on research is Zero. Standard and Poors does the research, the fund companies piggy back on that research.  Another big factor in keeping expenses low is the fact the companies that makeup the index don't change very often. If the fund frequently changes the makeup of the investments not only can that trigger tax considerations but there are costs associated with all those transactions. The question is: do the other algorithms overcome the additional costs due to higher expenses and taxes.


In addition to finding another woman investor, you have an equitable option that is not unreasonable: ask your partner to buy out 3% worth of shares from you (which then gives her 54%, allowing you to then sell 5% to an investor and have it not dilute her below 51%: .54 * .95 = .513).   That keeps you whole but also keeps your woman-owned-business status.


I think your casting most Best buy employees in a bad light. While that may be true for some of the larger stores(with equally as large employee turnover) it is most certainly not true for all stores. I work at a community store(smaller store) and I most certainly do have an interest in customers needs and wants and I enjoy helping people. Please don't cast blanket assumptions because its cool to hate best buy.


During World War II, the United States (US) instituted wage and price controls.  To attract better employees, companies would offer benefits to get around salary limits.  Health insurance was one of the more successful benefits.   At that time, income taxes were newer and there were many ways to evade them.  Companies could generally deduct expenses.  So at that time, health care was deductible because everything was.  And at that time, only wages were taxable compensation from employer to employee.   Since that time, many other benefits have become non-deductible for employers, e.g. housing or the reduced deduction for meals and entertainment.  But health care is generally regarded as different, as a necessity.  While everyone needs to eat, not everyone needs to eat at a $100 a meal restaurant.  People who need expensive health care really need it.  People who eat expensive food just prefer it.   And of course, health care is more intermittent where food is relatively consistent.  You don't need ten thousand calories one day and zero the next.  But some families have no health care expenses in a year while another might have cancer or a pregnancy.  Note that medical care expenses can be deducted for individuals if they are large enough in aggregate and you itemize.   And of course both businesses and workers have incentives to maintain the current system with deductibility.  Health insurance is a common benefit.  Housing is not (although it's worth noting that travel housing and meals are deductible).  So there have been few people impacted by making housing taxable while many people would be impacted by taxable health insurance.   You can deduct health insurance costs if self-employed.  It's also not true that health insurance is the only benefit with preferential tax treatment.  Retirement and child care are also deductible.  Even meals and housing can be deducted in certain circumstances.  The complex rules about what and how much is deductible.   There have been rumbles about normalizing the tax treatment of health insurance and medical care, but there is a lot of opposition.  Insurance companies oppose making all healthcare expenses deductible, as that reduces their effective benefit.  They would prefer only insurance premiums be deductible.  Traditionally employed individuals oppose making health insurance taxable, as that would increase their taxes.  So the situation persists.  There isn't quite enough support to move in either direction, although the current compromise is economically silly.


The S&P 500 represents a broadly diversified basket of stocks.  Silver is a single metal.  If all else is equal, more diversification means less volatility.  A better comparison would be the S&P 500 vs. a commodities index, or silver vs. some individual stock.


"> You said that they were both using the same method, but, in fact, they aren't  The same underlying flawed assumptions.  >Unless you're arguing an MIT 'academic conspiracy'  It's a subconscious bias thing... they all inherently belive that an ""inflationary currency"" is a good & necessary thing... ergo they do not really TRY to disprove that dogmatic assumption.  >BPP is independant, it uses a different methodology, and yet the results confirm those of the BLS.  Yup, and that ""confirmation"" was the entire goal of the project... it is entirely unsurprising that they managed to achieve it."


Good luck!


This is a very common misconception. I've been studying equities and credits for a while now, and the simplest way to explain the difference is this:  - Credit is about stable cash flows. Your investment in a bond has almost (read: almost) nothing to do with growth rate. It has everything to do with how stable the cash flows are and interest coverage.  - Equity is about growth. No wonder companies with highly irregular cash flows (e.g., every single young tech company in the history of tech companies) can have the most in-demand equity while few bond investors would touch them with a ten foot pole.


"There's already an excellent answer here from @BenMiller, but I wanted to expand a bit on Types of Investments with some additional actionable information. You can invest in stocks, bonds, mutual funds (which are simply   collections of stocks and bonds), bank accounts, precious metals, and   many other things. Discussing all of these investments in one answer   is too broad, but my recommendation is this: If you are investing for   retirement, you should be investing in the stock market. However,   picking individual stocks is too risky; you need to be diversified in   a lot of stocks. Stock mutual funds are a great way to invest in the   stock market. So how does one go about actually investing in the stock market in a diversified way? What if you also want to diversify a bit into bonds? Fortunately, in the last several years, several products have come about that do just these things, and are targeted towards newer investors. These are often labeled ""robo-advisors"". Most even allow you to adjust your allocation according to your risk preferences. Here's a list of the ones I know about: While these products all purport to achieve similar goals of giving you an easy way to obtain a diversified portfolio according to your risk, they differ in the buckets of stocks and funds they put your money into; the careful investor would be wise to compare which specific ETFs they use (e.g. looking at their expense ratios, capitalization, and spreads)."


"We had a ""civics"" class when I was a freshman in high school. This was in the Ann Arbor, MI public schools. It covered the very basics (how to balance your checkbook, what are stocks, how do income taxes work, what is interest, etc.) of money management along with an overview of politics and the legal system. It was a really light class, though, and didn't go deeply into personal finance and money management. I agree that such a class would be very valuable, as would cooking, nutrition, and basic home and car repair."


"I'd check the terms of the student loan. It's been a long time since I had a student loan, but when I did it had restrictions that it could only be used for educational expenses, which they pretty clear spelled out meant tuition, books, lab fees, I think some provision for living expenses. If your student loan is subsidized by the government, they're not going to let you use it to start a business or go on vacation ... nor are they likely to let you invest it. Even if it is legal and within the terms of the contract, borrowing money to invest is very risky. What if you invest in the stock market, and then the stock market goes down? You may find you don't have the money to make the payments on the loan. People do this sort of thing all the time -- that's what ""buying on margin"" is all about. And some of them lose a bundle and get in real trouble."


Most full time developer jobs in the US are paid on a salary basis rather than hourly unless you are a contractor. Also, the pay varies widely by region in the US with the West and East coast typically paying the most, but also having the highest cost of living. A site I really like for getting salary data by region and keyword for technical jobs is indeed.com. Here is a link to a chart on that site comparing salary trends for PHP and Joomla.


You do know that since the shale gas boom started the cost of energy declined significantly, don't you? Your theory is a bit simplistic and had more than a few holes.   GDP growth is not that contingent on energy prices. How do you factor in increasing fuel efficiency in your theory?


Used to be big on netflix culture, but after working in a place with very similar culture then reading a recent post from their CEO comparing their teams to professional sports teams (the implication that there are starters and folks who are on the bench, and the folks being benched should be cut/fired). I'm not so sure.   These kinds of cultures breed toxicity, the stench of with they try to disguise with the faux perfume of hyper-meritocracy (the best survive, everyone else can go). Truth is they're not willing to invest in personally improving their employees, so they just want to do the easy job of picking the most talented people and discarding them as soon as they stop performing ... its lazy, and its pretty ugly once you figure out how it all works.


> The prize pool for the 2014 International was over $10M raised by fans of the video game, greater than golf's 2014 Masters which paid out $9M.   Which is very interesting... but also guilty of selection bias. You're looking at the one video game tourney ever to have this purse against a single golf event, which is actually part of a year long series of events with large purses.  In fact, the Master's is something like the 6th largest purse in golf.


I have a little experience with this.  My home state of Wisconsin was on this list until 2011. The thing to remember is that these states simply do not recognize the HSA.  What this means is that there are no state income tax advantages to the account, and no state tax penalties, either. Here are the implications: When you invest in a taxable account, your broker in many cases keeps track of cost basis for you.  However, when you invest inside an HSA, your HSA custodian will generally not keep track of any of this, because it is not normally needed.  Therefore, you need to keep track of any cost basis yourself, and when you sell, calculate the capital gain or loss on your state return. In my opinion, the HSA is a good deal even if your state does not recognize it.  The tax-free savings/investing is a great deal, even if only on your Federal taxes.  The state return will be a little more complicated, but the savings you get on your federal return are worth it. In my situation, our family spends the money in the HSA on medical expenses fast enough that we don't invest it in anything other than an interest-bearing savings account.  Therefore, we didn't have to worry about capital gains inside our HSA, and only had to add contributions and earnings to our state income.  I am very glad that our state now recognizes the HSA.


You would need to check the original mortgage papers you signed with the originators.  Chances are you agreed to allow the mortgage to be sold and serviced by other parties. Refinancing would also put you in the same boat unless you got them to take that clause out of the mortgage/refinance papers. Also, chances are most small banks and originators simply can not keep mortgages on their books. There are also third parties that service loans too that do not actually own the mortgages as well. This is another party that could be involved out of many in your mortgage.  I would also not worry about 127/139 complaints out of 1,100,000 loans. Most probably were underwater on their mortgage but I am sure a few are legitimate complaints.  Banks make mistakes (I know right!).  Anyway, good luck and let me know if you find out anything different.


Check out this site: http://www.m-x.ca/produits_options_actions_en.php  (Under the Trading Strategies). If you have a background in math or eco or are comfortable with graphs, I suggest you graph the payoffs of each of these strategies.  It will really help you understand it.  If you need help with this, let me know and I can draw a couple out for you. Your question is rather vague but also complicated however I will try to answer it.  First off, many investors buy options to hedge against a current position in a stock (already own the stock).  But you can also try to make money off of options rather than protecting yourself. Let's suppose you anticipate that a stock will increase in value so you want to capitalize on this.  Suppose further that you have a small amount of money to invest, say $100.  Suppose the stock is currently at $100 so that you can only afford 1 share.  Suppose there is a call option out there with strike $105 that costs you only $1. Let's compare two scenarios: The stock increases to $120 at the maturity date of the option. So, you made a lot more money with the same initial investment.  The amount of money you put in is small (i.e. can be perceived as low risk).  However, if the stock price ended up being $104.90 then your options are worthless (i.e. can be perceived as high risk). HTH.


Yes, it's possible (and quite legitimate) to do that using depreciation expenses. While there's a large up-front cash expense (a capital expenditure), you then get many years (depending on the usable life of the asset) of depreciation expense that reduces your taxable income. Many capital-intensive businesses can be attractive for just that reason (for example, real estate).  Your question is a bit of a reverse on the common criticism that companies overemphasize non-GAAP numbers (like EBITDA) to appear more profitable (or profitable at all) compared with their GAAP Net Income. But it is certainly true that plenty of companies (especially private ones) factor tax considerations into capital expenditure timing and choices.


And they send you squash every single week with every single meal! Now don't get me wrong, squash is great, but at some point a man reaches him limit on squash consumption. Blue apron should just be called squash apron or how to get burned out on squash in 6 weeks.


No I don't want that, but not only was I implying that the comment-poster would find it despicable (I could be wrong), but also that the majority of society would find it so.  While I don't argue that majority opinion should always be codified as law, I do believe it does strongly influences morality and law, and rightfully so.    All this leads me to the conclusion that this is not a frivolous lawsuit.  And I should also point out that I didn't say it should be illegal, only that it is worth exploring further in a lawsuit.


">I agree the numbers are bunk, however the 900k figure is the ""opportunity cost"" of a moderate income family 60k-100k and not the actual.  The problem with that... is that *sans kids* most people really don't have much incentive to work all that hard.  * You don't need anywhere NEAR as big of a house (heck, as a single or childless couple, you don't need a house, you can easily just rent a small studio or 1 BR apartment).  * You don't need a minivan (or ""crossover"" or whatever the heck they call the equivalent of a station wagon these days).  * You are feeding a LOT less people.  * You don't need to worry about keeping anyone in shoes or clothes and buying new shit every year (provided you control your weight, of course, and don't ruin good clothing or follow ""fashion trends"" like a fool).  * You don't have to plan & take expensive ""Disney"" vacations for anyone, much less a group of 4 or 5 (or more) people.  * You don't have anyone to ""send to college"" or a teenager to ""buy a car for"" (much less pay insurance to cover).  * You can pretty much ignore the vast majority of life-insurance costs (if you're single, do you really give a shit who gets anything if/when you croak?)  * Likewise with health-insurance -- dirt cheap while you're young, and even cheap when your middle aged if you have no kids (and with good reason, no ""pregnancy/birth"" costs, no vaccinations or childhood diseases, no tonsil-removal operations, etc.)  * Etc.  Quite seriously, **people without kids simply don't have as many REASONS to work like ""slaves"".**  A single person or childless couple can easily buy a home, car and other assets and pay it all off in a few short years (certainly less than a decade) -- **and live content & fairly well on a minimal income** after that.  Remember things like **cars chiefly wear down because of ""mileage""**; and most mileage is spent either chasing after INCOME (commuting to/from a job from a home in the suburbs, said home bought ""to get the KIDS into a good school"" and ""to give the KIDS room to play"", etc) -- OR chasing round for the KIDS -- explicitly playing ""taxi driver"" carrying the kids around to/from school, team sports & other inane ""activities"".  Ergo, the childless person (or couple) really doesn't HAVE to chase after the all-mighty dollar in the same way.  *Instead they can enjoy life & leisure (and to paraphrase MasterCard, that can be ""priceless"").*"


You may want to dive into the various scandals and further hefty settlements between blue chip brands and agency networks here. Ask around if Dentsu Aegie finances enjoyed being honest to their clients as to where the money was going and what kind of online advertising was actually in place, just to name a specific example.  Of course online ads find positive outcomes for lots of businesses. You don’t expect any less when you see Google revenues to be honest. It still doesn’t mean that the whole tracking and private information dragging framework isn’t wrong or that so many web experiences aren’t soiled by intrusive and nasty ads.


Air Source1LLC is a Port st lucie, Florida based company operates in providing best services in AC Repair, Air Conditioning and Heating Systems both Residential and Commercial. We have team of well trained and certified technicians in repairing to deliver quality services to our customers.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2017/july/global-energy-investment-fell-for-a-second-year-in-2016-as-oil-and-gas-spending-c.html) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Global energy investment fell by 12% in 2016, the second consecutive year of decline, as increased spending on energy efficiency and electricity networks was more than offset by a continued drop in upstream oil and gas spending, according to the International Energy Agency&#039;s annual World Energy Investment report.  > Global energy investment amounted to USD 1.7 trillion in 2016, or 2.2% of global GDP. For the first time, spending on the electricity sector around the world exceeded the combined spending on oil, gas and coal supply.  > The United States saw a sharp decline in oil and gas investment, and accounted for 16% of global spending.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6nqnvn/july_global_energy_investment_fell_for_a/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~168423 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*: **energy**^#1 **investment**^#2 **spender**^#3 **year**^#4 **Global**^#5"


"The firms listed as protesting - Google, Facebook, Amazon, Reddit, AirBnB, Twitter and Snapchat - almost to a ""T"" (sans Amazon) rely on the free delivery of content model to survive.  Of all of these, Google benefits most due to the advertising revenues.  I pay for the New York Times because I find that it's quality journalism.  I don't pay for the Huffington Post because it's shit journalism.  If it was no longer free to deliver that sort of content, the NYT would survive; the Huffer's Post wouldn't.  And is that what we're fighting for here?  The right for the Huffington Post to scrape content off the web, provide it for free, then earn money off of advertising for grabbing our eyeballs?  Think about who you're carrying water for here."


An article has just popped up on the Young London PRSupdate blog and it is very much a topic close to the heart of those in company.  This week Michael takes a look at customer service and how it can affect professionals from doing business with others.


Ok smart guy. The point was in NY people who make $112k wouldnt consider themselves affluent and still need help to cover rising costs of higher education. You dont like my janitor example? Look up what a police officer makes at top pay with a little overtime, or a nurse or a fireman. Go see what a foreman in a union labor job makes.


Well it's not so simple as just swapping cash and assets. It has its unintentional effects. Such as encouraging debt, increasing inflation over a longer time period, decreased attraction from foreign investors.  And yea it drives valuations up, but it's making the assets overpriced. And we all know what eventually happens to overpriced assets.


You pay taxes in the normal way -- when you earn the money.  Just like all your other income.   What makes a Roth special is what happens when you withdraw.  You don't pay any taxes at all since you already paid them.  And there are some other convenient features.


Or maybe it's analyzing a critical aspect of the economic relationship between China and the US. US agricultural exports bring in over $100 billion each year, and China is a huge consumer of American-grown crops, meaning that whenever China cuts back on imports, American business suffers. NPR is an American radio station with an American demographic, which means that they are going to prioritize how the disagreement affects Americans.  The article does a good job of examining the nature of the problem, too. It doesn't read like a pro-Syngenta article at all.


> To get a well paying job requires a degree these days.  Not if you're willing to do some manual labor.  The skilled trades are experiencing a shortage of young workers.  They pay pretty well.  Well enough to save for college.    > Not everyone has the money to pay for college without a loan. Does that mean they shouldn't be able to get a well paying job?  The unfortunate reality of the world is that life, sometimes, isn't fair.  To be fair, I needed student loans to get through school.  I didn't choose to major in art history or underwater basket weaving though.  After a year of majoring in mathematics, I realized the dire economic decision I was making and chose to pursue engineering instead.


Waaah! Call the Waaaambulance! Google nuked my SEO!!11!!ll!  I know exactly why this happened, but I'm not going to tell you. Suffice to say, it is your own fault due to bad configuration. But I don't intend to help you fix your SEO to compete for market share. The sites and subscriptions I maintain attained their Google ranking the hard way: by earning it.


This is one of the most repeated claims on reddit, that companies are legally obligated to maximize shareholder profit. But articles like [this say otherwise.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-goal-that-changed-corporate-america/2013/08/26/26e9ca8e-ed74-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html)  Of course, it does all come back to regulations. Companies may not be forced to maximize profit, but its obviously their goal. They certainly won't always make decisions for the good of society over their profit, and I can't blame them for that. It isn't the responsibility of a business to fix the worlds problems. But it is still their choice.


Obama wanted to take your guns. Trump wants to leave you alone. Obama took event opportunity to turn a violent crime into guns are bad. Even when the weapon wasn't a gun. When you think you won't be able to purchase guns anymore you buy guns. Because it's easier to not sell a gun than to take a mans gun.


"This doesn't make sense to me. Writing a covered call gives him a long delta position - the exact opposite of what he wants. And the tax losses won't turn a losing position into a winning one.  Is there something I'm missing?  Edit: Also, doesn't ""shorting against the box"" mean he has to have a long position, and short against that? That means you've got zero net delta, which isn't very useful at all..."


I would buy an ETF (or maybe a couple) in stable, blue chip companies with a decent yield (~3%) and then I'd play a conservative covered call strategy on the stock selling a new position about once a month. That's just me.


To me the key is a budget.  Each month, before it begins, decide on what to spend on each dollar that you earn.  Money should be allotted for normal expenses such as housing, food, transportation, and utilities. If you have any consumer debt that should be a priority.  Extra money should go to eliminate that debt. There should be money allotted to savings goals (such as retirement, home down payment, or vacation home).  Also there should be money set aside for clothing and giving.  Giving is an important part and often overlooked part of wealth creation.   Somewhere in there you should also give yourself a bit of free money.  For example one of the things I spend my free money on is coffee.  I buy freshly ground coffee from a really good supplier.  It is a bit expensive, but that is okay as it does not preclude me from meeting other goals. If you still have money left after all of that increase your giving some, your savings some, and your free money some.  You can then spend that money without guilt. If your budget includes $100 of free money per month, and you want something that costs $1000, save up the $1,000 and then buy it.  Do not borrow to buy free money stuff!   Doing those sorts of things will make you weigh purchasing decisions very carefully. If you find that you cannot stick to a budget, you should enlist a friend to be your accountability partner.  They have to be very good with money.


If you are looking e-mail marketing services in USA, Saleglue provides e-mail marketing services in USA . E-mail marketing is perform of seanding business massgae classically to a group of people, using email. Every email send to a possible or present customer could be considered email marketing. http://www.saleglue.com/


I understood what you were saying. My point is that I don't think the race or heritage of the person preparing the food at a large chain restaurant makes it any more or less authentic. If I'm at an actual Mexican restaurant, absolutely, but at Chipotle, I don't think so.


"The HSA tax deduction comes when you contribute money to the HSA, not when you take money out. So you can contribute up to the max and take your maximum deduction each year, regardless of what medical expenses you have.  If you have medical expenses, but no money left in your HSA, you will just have to pay for them out-of-pocket. However, in the future when your HSA has money in it again, you can reimburse yourself for medical expenses you have now. As long as you have an HSA in place (even if there is no money in it currently), there is no time limit to reimburse yourself for those medical expenses.  Reimburse yourself for what you can, and keep track of whatever expenses you are unable to reimburse at this time. Hopefully, in a future year your health will improve (or your medical coverage will improve), and you can ""catch up"" reimbursing yourself for these old expenses.  Regarding your question about tax benefit: The HSA acts similar to a traditional IRA when invested, growing tax-deferred. So if you contribute, and choose not to withdraw but instead invest, there are tax advantages, similar to an IRA. However, if you are already investing a sufficient amount in retirement accounts, there is nothing wrong with reimbursing yourself now for the expenses if you need the money. You get the primary tax deduction either way."


I think we need some reform on what can be pat ended, but eliminating IP all together is a terrible idea. It would destroy any chances for a startup company to thrive. Let's say you invent a new widget (not an Android widget), but only have a small amount of capital to get started.   What stops a large company like Apple, Samsung, or Sony from taking your widget and copying it exactly? They have the capital to manufacture it on a global scale while you are stuck as a startup who had their idea stolen. Without IP they could do this without any repercussions.


HuffPo's [article](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/15/michelle-apperson-teacher_n_1601015.html) has more detail; the reason that she was laid off was because the teacher layoffs here were mandated to be seniority-based, as is common in public-school layoffs.  Seniority-based layoffs rather than merit-based are something that teachers' unions have [long promoted](http://www.writeonnevada.com/2012/05/seven-outstanding-rookie-ccsd-teachers.html); one is rewarded for being part of the system for a long time rather than doing a good job.  There has been a general shift [away from seniority-based layoffs](http://eagnews.org/indiana-schools-will-use-teacher-performance-as-predominant-factor-for-layoffs/) and towards performance-based layoffs.  Generally-speaking, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about strictly seniority-based pay and strictly seniority-based firing; it doesn't seem to make a tremendous amount of sense.


Actually sadly true. Between not living in a major metropolitan area and rarely eating out, there are probably 5 restaurants we've eaten at in the last year. Four are local places and quite good. Olive Garden has been our go-to when we visit relatives in a nearby larger city because at least the quality was fairly even and these relatives liked it. We've had some pretty sucky service on our last few visits, but assumed it was just that they were probably working new waiters barely out of training in the late afternoon hours before the regular dinner staff came in. It all makes so much more sense now.


1.) There is no logic in this question, because when there is an increase in net income for the year it will be in the form of something, ie it can be cash and cash equivalent like cash in hand or cash at bank. So as your ques says if there is increase in net income of 20 then asset side also increase by 20(cash) which makes the equation  Asset = liability + share capital tally 2.) Balance sheet is a statement of assets, liabilities, and capital of a business or other organization. Expenditure or income related items wont come under balance sheet it comes under profit and loss account 3.) Stockholders' equity can increase just as easy. When a firm issues bonus to the existing share holders from free reserve a/c or capital redemption reserve a/c or security premium this will increase the share holders equity and also decreases the reserve a/c


"He knows maintenance, and presumably he knows which cars are notorious for breaking down. I can only imagine three scenarios for ending up with your broken car:  * SAABs break if you don't maintain them normally/properly - your husband knows better than to neglect this.  * SAABs break no matter how well you maintain them - your husband knows better than to buy an old used car that is guaranteed to fail.  * Your SAAB is a fluke, of unusually poor quality, or was in an accident - in which case I don't understand why you used it as an example to illustrate that ""SAABs are notorious for electrical problems"".  That makes me curious. Which one is wrong? Or am I missing something - am I wrong?"


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.dawn.com/news/1366178/pakistan-tells-us-to-accept-defeat-in-afghanistan-agrees-assistance-on-equal-terms) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot) ***** > He said Pakistan would see further success if the Parliament, the National Security Committee and the people of the country send a united message as they had after August 21 when US President Donald Trump announced his South Asia policy and lambasted Pakistan for offering safe havens to &quot;Agents of chaos&quot;.  > Referring to a recent statement by US Am&shy;bassador to the UN Nikki Haley where she said that India can help the United States in keeping an eye on Pakistan, Asif said that Pakistan &quot;Also has a mouth to speak&quot; but will proceed with caution so that relations with America can improve.  > Pakistan is not a safe haven for terrorists, US told Following the meeting between Pakistani officials and Rex Tillerson in Islamabad, Asif  who was a member of the Pakistani delegation  said that the American delegation was informed that Washington&#039;s allegations against Pakistan of offering safe havens to terrorists and protecting the Haqqani network are incorrect.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/78pjvx/pakistan_tells_us_to_accept_defeat_in_afghanistan/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~235010 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*: **Pakistan**^#1 **Asif**^#2 **delegation**^#3 **Pakistani**^#4 **told**^#5"


Make the price match the cheapest similar product, then advertise the hell out of it. If it's in a specialist section, put some in the general area too. Keep it towards the fish kits so that when people are buying a bunch of stuff for a new tank, they can get cheaper food. If the price/lb is right, most people will feed their fish anything. You can also extend the life of your overstock by keeping it in cool storage. Maybe a basement with an AC. Shy away from 'buy more than one to save' deals, those are just annoying. Just post the price along with some indication that it's a 'low price'.   For pricing, figure out how much you paid for the lot to find your ideal minimum return, then multiply it by 50-80% depending on your maximum loss. Divide each of these numbers by the number of units to get the ideal price for your situation. Don't forget to fuzz it upwards to account for storage costs and other minor overhead. Repeat for each product.


"They used to pay over 90% during the glorious 30s (1940-1970). All of this is about the capture of politicians by the rich (both Democrats and Republicans) and the balance of power between labor and capital which has tilted on favor of capital. As Warren buffet cheekily said: ""there is a class war and we are winning it"". With the free movement if capital, it's super easy for the super rich to get their money out of a country.  Now regarding the""fairness"" of taxes and their level, if you posit that taxes take away your hard earned work, then both 10% and 90% are unacceptable. It's like a thief arguing he only stole 10% of a bank, how is it more or less acceptable?   Of course, I don't subscribe to this logic at all, I just want to point out that either any level of taxation is fair, regardless of the level, or unfair. There aren't any ""in betweens"".   To finish, I would use market mechanisms to set taxation. Taxes on the super rich should be gradually increased until there is a noticeable effect on productive investment."


You need your transit, branch account and SWIFT code. Example, CIBC: To get this information as it pertains to you, it is best to go to your bank in person.


Most companies put the company match in your account each paycheck, but your are not generally vested for the match. If you leave before the specified time period then they pull back part of the matching funds.  I knew somebody who did something similar back in the 1980's with their 401K. They put in 8% of their paycheck after taxes; a 100% match was deposited; then they pulled out the employees contribution every quarter. They did this for the 10 years I knew them. It avoided any tax implications, and they were still saving 8% of their pay for retirement.


Every single expensive book you buy - make sure you relist on eBay, Half.com, local craigslist, university boards, whatever ... the second after your final exam for that class. I figured that out when I went back to grad school, and the impact to my wallet was substantially less than undergrad (scaled for the number of classes). I ended up only being unable to sell maybe 2 or 3 books out of a dozen or so. And out of like $1000 on books, recovered probably $800.


"As somebody who works in the industry, this is the biggest fucking joke I've ever witnessed. The sad part is, if they have rich connections, they may actually get away with pulling in a few accounts.   ""We have good lawyers."" bahahaha"


The Motley Fool suggested a good rule of thumb in one of their articles that may be able to help you determine if the market is overheating. Determine the entire cost of rent for a piece of property. So if rent is $300/month, total cost over a year is $3600. Compare that to the cost of buying a similar piece of property by dividing the property price by the rent per year. So if a similar property is $90,000, the ratio would be $90,000/$3600 = 25. If the ratio is < 20, you should consider buying a place. If its > 20, there's a good chance that the market is overheated.  This method is clearly not foolproof, but it helps quantify the irrationality of some individuals who think that buying a place is always better than renting.  P.S. if anyone can find this article for me I'd greatly appreciate it, I've tried to use my google-fu with googling terms with site:fool.com but haven't found the article I remember.


"First, excellent choice to say no to non-subsidized loans! But I'd say you are cutting things very close either way, and you need to face up to that now.  $35/mo extra at the end of the month is ""within the noise"" of financial life, meaning you should think of it as essentially $0 each month or even negative money, since one vet bill/school books/unforeseen problem could remove it for the entire year, easily.  You are leaving yourself no buffer. But by taking the loan, unless you are (as Joe said) socking away savings to pay for it upon graduation, you are guaranteeing you'll leave college with debt, which I think should be avoided if you can.  Could you do a hybrid plan in which you worked hard to do the following?: If you do these things or something along these lines, the loan is probably OK; if not, I'd be concerned about taking it. [Probably unnecessary, but: Keep in mind that student loans are not excusable by bankruptcy, so one is on the hook for them no matter what]. Also consider whether you can take a semester off now and then to catch up financially.  The key is to really stay far from the edge of any financial cliffs."


No, this is quite wrong. Almost all hedge funds (and all hedge fund investors) use Sharpe as a *primary* measure of performance. The fact that they don't consider themselves risk-free has no bearing on the issue (that's a bizarre line of reasoning - you're saying Sharpe is only relevant for assets that consider themselves risk-free?). And as AlphaPortfolio rightly points out, most funds have no explicit benchmark and they are usually paid for performance over zero.  I've never seen a hedge fund use a benchmark relative information ratio - for starters, what benchmark would you measure a CB arb fund against? Or market neutral quant? Or global macro? Same for CTAs...


Nobody is going to short sell stocks through a lender that forces people to buy in as soon as it is getting good for them.


I think you may be drawing the wrong conclusion about why you put what type of investment in a taxable vs. tax-advantaged account. It is not so much about risk, but type of return. If you're investing both tax-advantaged and taxable accounts, you can benefit by putting more tax-inefficient investments inside your tax-advantaged accounts. Some aggressive asset types, like real estate, can throw off a lot of taxable income. If your asset allocation calls for investing in real estate, holding it in a 401k or IRA can allow more of your money to remain invested, rather than having to use it to pay for taxes. And if you're holding in a Roth IRA, you get that tax free. But bonds, a decidedly non-aggressive asset, also throw off a lot of taxable income. You're able to hold them in a tax-advantaged account and not pay taxes on the income until you withdraw it from the account (or tax free in the case of a Roth account.) An aggressive stock fund that is primarily expected to provide returns via price appreciation would do well in a taxable account because there's likely little tax consequence to you until it is sold.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2017/07/27/Bank-Consolidation-Efficiency-and-Profitability-in-Italy-45063) reduced by 49%. (I'm a bot) ***** > This paper examines the case for efficiency-driven banking sector consolidation in Italy, evaluates its potential effects on profitability, and discusses policy options to facilitate a consolidation process that is as effective as possible.  > A bottom-up analysis of 386 Italian banks suggests that while profitability is expected to improve as the economy gradually recovers, operational efficiency gains are nonetheless needed to restore large parts of the banking system to healthy profitability.  > Banking system consolidation can play a role in facilitating such efficiency gains, but its effectiveness is likely to be most as part of a comprehensive strategy that includes complementary reforms to clean up bank balance sheets.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6pxk55/imfbank_consolidation_efficiency_and/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~177073 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*: **bank**^#1 **IMF**^#2 **consolidation**^#3 **profitability**^#4 **paper**^#5"


"Compounding is just the notion that the current period's growth (or loss) becomes the next period's principal. So, applied to stocks, your beginning value, plus growth (or loss) in value, plus any dividends, becomes the beginning value for the next period. Your value is compounded as you measure the performance of the investment over time. Dividends do not participate in the compounding unless you reinvest them.  Compound interest is just the principle of compounding applied to an amount owed, either by you, or to you. You have a balance with which a certain percentage is calculated each period and is added to the balance. The new balance is used to calculate the next period's interest, which again adds to the balance, etc. Obviously, it's better to be on the receiving end of a compound interest calculation than on the paying end. Interest bearing investments, like bonds, pay simple interest. Like stock dividends, you would have to invest the interest in something else in order to get a compounding effect. When using a basic calculator tool for stocks, you would include the expected average annual growth rate plus the expected annual dividend rate as your ""interest"" rate. For bonds you would use the coupon rate plus the expected rate of return on whatever you put the interest into as the ""interest"" rate. Factoring in risk, you would just have to pick a different rate for a simple calculator, or use a more complex tool that allows for more variables over time. Believe it or not, this is where you would start seeing all that calculus homework pay off!"


Not sold on BK at all.  It seems what is being implemented is not going to be sustainable.  Net income never = increasing shareholder wealth.  BK still has pisspoor food, with sizes of burgers that are laughable, and the whole sector is being eaten by casual dining.    Increased comp sales are great, but nothing when traffic is going down more and more. And don't get me started on the 20/20 BK restaurants that cost a fortune to remodel and Schwartz has pushed so hard.  TAST even had to dip (quite significantly) into more common to pay for all these remodels.  Idk, maybe I'm being bias, but I'm not sold on BK in the slightest or what's driving their, and their franchisee's, stock price.


The accounting equation, in short, is: This can be further broken down into: Which can be further broken down into: The GnuCash equation is right, though I would substitute the word equity in that equation with a more-specific paid-in capital. Equity is (simply put) made up of 2 parts: shareholders' equity and retained earnings. Shareholders' equity is the amount invested by shareholders. Retained earnings is the amount earned by the business on behalf of the shareholders. Retained earnings is directly affected by your net income (which is income minus expenses). An increase in income will result in an increase in retained earnings. This must be balanced somewhere. Usually an increase in an asset. It may also be balanced by a decrease in equity. Likewise, increase in expenses will result in a decrease in retained earnings, which must also be balanced.


"Amazon closed down their prototype ""cashierless"" store didn't they? I mean, retail brick and mortar might be dying, but that's not because of automation. That's because we can click a button on our phones anywhere in the world and get a product within 2 days.   There are probably always going to be stores for certain things: food to eat (can't automate delivery of food to your stomach, or the restaurant pampering experience), food to store (not every area has proper distribution lines to ensure quality produce), construction materials (weight and bulkiness are a factor). I don't think automation is the killer app for any of these use cases."


"Your question isn't great, but I will attempt to answer this piece as it seems really the root of your personal finance question: I want to convince my wife to make this move because it will save us   at least 800 month, but she fails to see how buying a second home is   financially sound because we have to lose our savings and we have to   pay interest on our second home. And... Her logic is it will take almost 5 years to get back our down payment   and we have to pay interest as well. So how can this move help our   family financially in the long run? ... Is she right? She is mostly wrong. First, consider that there is no ""ROI"" really on your down payment. Assuming you are paying what your home would sell for the next day, then your ""RIO"" is already yours (minus realtor fees). She is talking about cash on hand, not ROI. I will use an example without taking into account risk of home markets going down or other risks to ownership. Example: Let's say you pay $2800 a month in mortgage interest+principle at 5.5% apr and $200 a month in taxes+insurance on a $360k loan ($400k house). In this example let's say the same house if you were to rent it is $3800 a month. Understand the Opportunity Cost of renting (the marginal amount it costs you to NOT buy). So far, your opportunity cost is $800 a month. The principle of your house will be increasing with each payment. In our example, it's about $400 for the first payment, and will increase with each payment made while decreasing the interest payment (Suggest you look at an amortization table for your specific mortgage example). So, you're real number is now $1200 a month opportunity cost. Consider also the fact that the $400 a month is sitting in a savings account of sorts. While most savings accounts give you less than 1% in returns and then charge taxes on that gain, your home may (or may not be) much higher than that and won't charge you taxes on the gains when you sell it (If you live in it for a period of time as defined by the IRS.) Let's assume a conservative long term appreciation rate of 3%. That's $12k a year on a $400k house. So, now you're at $2200 a month opportunity cost. In this example I didn't touch on your tax savings of ownership. I also didn't touch on the maintenance cost of ownership or the maintenance cost of renting (your deposit + other fees) which all should be considered. You may have other costs involved in renting. For instance: The cost of not being able to fully utilize your rental as your own house. This may be an even simpler and more convincing way to explain it: On the $2800 mortgage example, you will be paying around $19k in interest and $2400 on taxes, insurance = $23k per year (number could be way different in your example). That is basically throw away money you're never getting back. On the rental, 100% of your rent at $3800 a month is throw away money you're never getting back. That's $45,600 a year."


"Especially when the anti-piracy campaigns try to guilt folks about ""stealing money from the artists"" - ads run by the folks who are far more guilty of doing exactly that.   Even the huge name bands make most of their money from concerts (though Ticketmaster is working on that). Why do you think the average multi-platinum career path includes ""create own record label""?"


Unless you want to invest a lot of time into learning about ForEx, I think the best time to convert is whenever it's most practical for you. This is because, as some of the comments say, no one knows when which currency will go up and down. Unless something major happens, you're unlikely to gain/lose a huge amount within a year. Whatever you do, try to avoid converting the money twice (NZ - AUS - GBP) and I'd suggest a provider like Transferwise for actually transferring the money, instead of using your bank (its usually cheaper).


"Why are banks all of a sudden providing people their credit scores for free? Because it is a really good idea.   On an ABC Bank website, it has:  ""Check your credit score for free"" button.  You click it.  Not only will it come up with a credit score, but it could also trigger a marketing workflow.  If it is direct mail, email, or a phone call a banker could contact you for help with a debt product.  This marketing could also be targeted, say a person with a high score could be targeted for a mortgage.  A person with a low or medium score could be targeted for ways and products to improve their score. Now if you run XYZ bank and not do the same, you are losing a competitive advantage to banks that offer this.  Not only will your customers be less happy, but you will lose a great marketing opportunities.   Face it, the only people that worry about their credit score are people that are in the market to borrow.  Which again, is more information.  If you have someone that never checks their credit score, or has their credit frozen, then it is wise not to market to them debt products."


I'd say that it cannot be meaningfully calculated or measured because the two are just too different in every way. Poker Stock trading I guess the last point (that someone relying on luck is exploitable in poker but not in stock trading) could be interpreted as stock trading being based more on luck, while the second and third points indicated that poker has more true randomness and is thus based more on luck. Something both have in common is that people who have been losing money are often tempted to take stupid risks which lose them everything.


The IRS can direct your refund towards repayment of your unpaid taxes either on Federal or State/Local level. Whether it will depends on whether the State of New York will ask for it. Generally, if you owe taxes to New York for this year only, you would expect them to wait for you to file your State tax return and pay the taxes owed. If you don't - I'm pretty sure that the next year refund from the IRS will go directly to them.


It's the Apple approach: sell your own product at the price you want it to be set at, then sell it wholesale to other retailers at a price so close to that they can't undercut you without having zero margin.  That's why you never see discounts worth anything on a lot of electronic products. The manufacturers have effectively captured the entire margin by competing against the retailers via direct sale options.


It is possible that they only do the hold on the first deposit from a given source. It is probably worth asking if they intend to do the hold on every paycheck or just the first one.


One other consideration. If you are a US citizen or Resident Alien, you are going to owe US income taxes regardless of where you earn the money. Here it is straight from the horse's mouth: Tax guide for US Citizens living abroad


Since then I wanted to move out of this house because the property taxes are so high and the mortgage payment is a killer. As I understand this is a property jointly owned by your parents and you. As they are not living staying in the house, you have taken over the mortgage payments for this house along with any other maintenance. If you move out of this house; the rent is expected to cover the cost of maintenance and mortgage payments. Are we better of staying in Jersey where our family and friends are?  This is an individual decision. It is not just family and friends, but also schooling of kids, penitentially if you change jobs would it also entail changing residence as the workplace would be more near from current home than the new home. I want to convince my wife to make this move because it will save us at least 800 month, but she fails to see how buying a second home is financially sound because we have to lose our savings and we have to pay interest on our second home. There are quite a few posts on first-time-home-buyer Some question like this one and this one and this one are good reads. There are historically times when the Mortgage EMI becomes equal or less than Rent paid. In such times it is good to buy home, than pay rent. Otherwise quite a few invest advisor's mention that fools buy house and wise live in it. There are advantages to buying as well advantages to renting. There is no simple answer and it depends on multitude of factors.


**Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission**  The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCT), also known as the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, is a Malaysian organisation established in 2007 by Mahathir Mohamad to investigate war crimes. The KLWCC was instigated as an alternative to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which Mahathir accused of bias in its selection of cases to cover.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/finance/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.24


The commenters who referred you to the prisoner's dilemma are exactly correct, but I wanted to give a more detailed explanation because I find game theory quite interesting.  The prisoner's dilemma is a classic scenario in game theory where even though it's in the best interests of two or more players to cooperate, they fail to do so. Wikipedia has a simple example using prisoners, but I'll use a simple example using Fidel and Charles, who are fund managers at Fidelity and Charles Schwab, respectively.  To make the table shorter, I abbreviated a bit: INC = increase fees, KEEP=keep fees the same, DEC=decrease fees. Here is the dilemma itself, in the table that shows the resulting market shares if each fund manager follows the course of action in question.  While this example isn't mathematically rigorous because I completely fabricated the numbers, it makes a good example. The most profitable course of action would be both fund managers agreeing to increase their fees, which would keep their market shares the same but increase their profits as they earn more fees. However, this won't happen for several reasons.  Because economies of scale exist in the market for investment funds, it's reasonable to assume in a simple example that as funds grow larger, their costs decrease, so even though a fund manager decreases his fees (betraying the other players), this decrease won't be enough to reduce their profits. In fact, the increased market share resulting from such a decrease may well dominate the decreased fees and lead to higher profits. The prisoner's dilemma is highly applicable to markets such as these because they exist as oligopolies, i.e. markets where a relatively small number of established sellers possess considerable market power. If you actually wanted to model the market for donor-advised funds using game theory, you need to take a few more things into account. Obviously there are more than two firms. It's probably a valid assumption that the market is an oligopoly with significant economies of scale, but I haven't researched this extensively.  There is more than one time period, so some form of the iterated prisoner's dilemma is needed. The market for donor-advised funds is also complicated by the fact that these are philanthropic funds. This may introduce tax implications or the problem of goodwill and institutional opinion of these funds. Although both funds increasing their fees may increase their profits in theory, institutional investors may look on this as a pure profit-seeking and take their funds elsewhere. For example, they may choose to invest in smaller funds with higher fees but better reputations. While reputation is important for any company, it might make more of a difference when the fund/investment vehicle is philanthropic in nature.  I am by no means an expert on game theory, so I'm sure there are other nuances to the situation that I'm unaware of.


"The Option 2 in your answer is how most of the money is moved cross border. It is called International Transfer, most of it carried out using the SWIFT network. This is expensive, at a minimum it costs in the range of USD 30 to USD 50. This becomes a expensive mechanism to transfer small sums of money that individuals are typically looking at.   Over a period of years, the low value payments by individuals between certain pair of countries is quite high, example US-India, US-China, Middle-East-India, US-Mexico etc ... With the intention to reduce cost, Banks have built a different work-flow, this is the Option 1. This essentially works on getting money from multiple individuals in EUR. The aggregated sum is converted into INR, then transferred to partner Bank in India via Single SWIFT. Alongside the partner bank is also sent a file of instructions having the credit account. The Partner Bank in India will use the local clearing network [these days NEFT] to credit the funds to the Indian account.   Option 3: Other methods include you writing a check in EUR and sending it over to a friend/relative in India to deposit this into Indian Account. Typically very nominal costs. Typically one month of timelines. Option 4: Another method would be to visit an Indian Bank and ask them to issue a ""Rupee Draft/Bankers Check"" payable in India. The charges for this would be higher than Option 3, less than Option 1. Mail this to friend/relative in India to deposit this into Indian Account. Typically couple of days timelines for transfer to happen."


Yes, a mortgage is debt.  It's unique in that you have a house which should be worth far more than the mortgage. After the mortgage crisis, many found their homes under water i.e. worth less than the mortgage.  The word debt is a simple noun for money owed, it carries no judgement or negative connotation except when it's used to buy short lived items with money one doesn't have.  Aside from my mortgage, I get a monthly credit card bill which I pay in full. That's debt too, only it carried no interest and rewards me with 2% cash back. Many people would avoid this as it's still debt.


>Just because one issue is tied up in legal battles doesn't mean you have to stop raising capital  Isn't that the problem? YOu said it yourself that nobody will be interested in losing more money on the country's defaults, so where are they going to raise this capital from?


Thank you for the summary! I live in a small city where it would never take more than 10 minutes to walk into the store and get your refund, so I don't see a huge advantage to this. Maybe for bigger and busier stores.


I think class is a little more than just how much money you make. You could make $1,000,000 a year but if you are still wretched, have a corrupt morality, and possess no sense of culture, then you are still lower class. Yet, you could be making $40,000 but if your mind is elevated, your self control strong, and possess a good degree of culture, I would consider you upper class. Its not just money bro!


Wash sale applies. If you purchase shares within 30 days of that Feb 3 sell date, the wash sale kicks in, preventing the loss on that sale, and deferring it into the new shares.


Your experience supports my point, though. New Zealand is currently freer, economically speaking than America.  According to an annual report published by the Heritage Foundation in America, New Zealand is in 3rd place globally. America is 17th.  You actually have far less government than we do.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-12/rooftop-solar-is-no-match-for-crony-capitalism) reduced by 93%. (I'm a bot) ***** > It therefore makes economic sense to charge rooftop solar owners extra to maintain the electrical grid - without the grid, after all, a person using only rooftop solar wouldn&#039;t have any electricity at night.  > Measures to ban third-party ownership of rooftop solar are crony capitalism, plain and simple.  > Eventually, solar power will be so cheap that it makes sense to install rooftop panels even without net metering, and utilities will start switching from power plants to solar farms.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6nhc7p/rooftop_solar_is_no_match_for_crony_capitalism/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~167580 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*: **solar**^#1 **utility**^#2 **power**^#3 **company**^#4 **rooftop**^#5"


Generally speaking: when a company buys another company it's a complex agreement that spells out many things, including how the acquiring company is paying for the target company.  These are the most common form of payment:  1. Cash. Shareholders of the target company get cash. 2. Shares. Shareholders of the target company get shares of the acquiring company. 3. A combination of 1 and 2 above.


>a San Jose resident and experienced worker in the information technology sector, said it appears tech employers frequently inquire about an applicant, but the interest doesn’t always lead to a job interview and almost never results in a full-time job with benefits. Now, his jobs consist of contract work and temporary projects.  Who didn't see this one coming? But we need more H1B software developers they all said. LOL, now you have them, plenty of them.


Contractors regularly deposit checks like this; if the income is legitimate don't worry. Report it to the IRS as income whether or not the customer issues you a 1099. With deposits like this you should be making quarterly payments to the IRS for your projected income.


"Visa card expired while on the other side of the world.  Visa from other bank declined for suspected fraud.  ""You should have told us you were going to a country that has lots of fraud.""  Nearest ATM, twelve kilometers."


Are you trolling right now? If you knew what you were doing when you made that bet, you might consider reinvesting that money.   24yr olds don't buy first-time houses anymore. Houses today are meant for existing landowners and wealthy foreign investors willing to pay cash.


Some of the expenses you describe may be eligible to be paid off by a 401(k) without incurring a penalty. As long as you do not mind paying tax on the extra income. If your tax bracket does not go up, then using your IRA may not be a bad idea. You should consult a tax expert and see which expenses can qualify for a withdrawal without penalty.  I believe medical bills and medical insurance costs are eligible to be withdrawn without penalty in some instances.


Is my understanding correct? It's actually higher than that - he exercised options for 94,564 shares at $204.16 and sold them for $252.17 for a gain of about $4.5 Million.  There's another transaction that's not in your screenshot where he sold the other 7,954 shares for another $2 Million. What do executive directors usually do with such profit?  It's part of his compensation - it's anyone's guess what he decided to do with it. Is it understood that such trade profits should be re-invested back to the company? No - that is purely compensation for his position (I'm assuming the stock options were compensation rather then him buying options in the open market).  There generally is no expectation that trading profits need to go back into the company.  If the company wanted the profits reinvested they wouldn't have distributed the compensation in the first place.


no. Then there is proof that banks are actually ripping off the public using made up price index. It's basic scam.  The entire Singapore forex banking index was found to be a fraud. All of them fired and bunch of them go to jail.


"After this happened the second time, I wonder if there could be a ""catch"" on this.  No I mean, what is my bank's real motivation for allowing me to spend more money.  Credit card companies make money in a few ways. By giving you a higher limit the credit card company hopes you will spend more on the card. This immediately gets them more merchant fees and if they are lucky means you will have to carry the balance for a while earning them interest. If they get really lucky you will miss a payment or two earning them some fees. Of course if they let you borrow too much you might never pay it back. So the credit limit is a balancing act. Letting you borrow more money gives them the potential to make more money but also the potential to lose more money. As you build up a history of paying as agreed they feel comfortable lending you more money."


Since I work full time I'd have to take online courses. The school isn't some online scam school it's legit, but the costs are much higher there. I've thought about getting a finance degree but I think I have more options with an accounting degree. I'm probably overestimating the costs. I think it would be more around 30k but still. I'm not sure how to get out of the sales trap. Non sales jobs in finance making decent money usually won't give me another look without a bachelor's.


Yes, they do. Generally though you'll only see it on one or two reports. With regards to the impact on your credit score.  Hard inquiries only stay on your credit for 2 years, after that they fall off.  For most credit scores (specifically FICO) they only have an impact for 1 year after their date.  If you have a few in the same 30 day period FICO will lump these into 1 pull to allow you to shop around for credit/loans.  They also have a low to medium impact on your score.


To be fair you are right in thinking that consumers will always try to find the best option, the point that people are arguing here is that this consolidation will likely push prices up in physical retail stores that specialize in outdoor goods.   Which kind of sucks if you like going into stores and browsing the isles because you are now going to have to pay a premium for that experience. Honestly, shopping online (esp. Amazon and eBay) is actually cheaper now for most things IMO, this is just accelerating the death of physical retail.


No. Loss of most senior executives is the worst possible thing, short of an accounting scandal, which can happen prior to an IPO.  Mind you, if Uber ever *does* IPO it will be yuge and drop precipitously. The company is worth maybe 5% of its most recent funding round valuation. People need to get a grip.


>But productivity should increase likewise driving prices down by the same amount.      Really? My experience in business has been that when we lower production costs the last thing that we do is lower the price. In fact I've never known it to happen.


"As the OP expressed their thought it seemed to me they were suggesting anyones (or rather anyone who is ""Rich"" however *that* is defined*) non-invested money be taxed at this high rate and that strikes me as hopelessly naive. You don't think they would leave the country or ""invest it"" in a savings account earning .05% (or most likely spread across many so it was FDIC insured)?   > I bet the rich would find something to do with that idle cash overnight if it was taxed at a 75% rate or so.    They were basically suggesting the US government sieze the savings of wealthy people.   The question of whether the highest effective tax rate **on income** should be raised is  a completely different discussion. Personally I favor a higher tax rate and some new tax brackets for the very highest earners. I don't really think it's necessarily *fair* in a progressive system to treat the rich as a ""piggy bank"" but it is what it is. They benefit the most so they are called to contribute the most.   I think I'd favor some kind of Alternative Minimum Tax for rich people so they had to pay a minimum of 30ish% of their income above some sort of cap (5 million per year? 100 million per year?) and capital gains  applied. This would close the Buffet loophole.   My biggest reason for this though is not because I don't think they *deserve* their money. It's because bottomless coffers basically guarantee that the legislation will be written for them and by them. There is always this tension between the poor and middle class that want more services and the upper class that wants to pay less taxes.   I am starting to get to the point where I think it might be better to have a smaller government (and less services) because they abuse their power (and our money) so much. ACTA, SOPA, NDAA, warrantless wiretaps, Afghanistan and Iraq wars, etc. I *do* like the idea of social safety nets but perhaps those should be more local.   Anyways, sorry for the wall of text."


What you have suggested would work in Spain, Ireland, US, even Italy but not in Greece. Because the last piece of the cycle of money you outlined earlier would be that Greek economy would expand and the government would collect revenues.  The problem is that public and private projects in Greece are very expensive due to strict labor laws. A good chunk of any public money would end up in bank accounts outside Greece and the resultant building would be of poor quality and little use. In summary the Greek government would be even more debt, the economy would see very little benefit, no increase in tax revenue and you would end up with a useless structure.  Even if Greece hadn’t joined the Euro it would either suffer from inflation or from a crisis similar to this. The global economic crisis has made the situation much worse, it is not the cause of the crisis, at least for Greece.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.npr.org/2017/08/02/540975904/senate-republicans-dont-seem-too-worried-about-trumps-subsidy-threat) reduced by 90%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Senate Republicans don&#039;t appear to be too worried about President Trump&#039;s latest round of threats.  > Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions would begin holding health care hearings in September.  > The Trump administration could order the Office of Personnel Management to reverse that ruling, and leave lawmakers and staffers to fully fund their health insurance costs themselves.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6r43zh/trump_threatens_congress_health_care/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~181295 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*: **Insurance**^#1 **Trump**^#2 **health**^#3 **Senate**^#4 **bailout**^#5"


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"If the only jobs you have around you are manual labor, dead-end employment where there are no skills to be garnered, if you have other options you will take them.  That is the problem with the current state of this country. Instead of being thankful for the job you have and taking advantage of opportunities, it is okay for an individual to just ""sit it out"" and sponge of the rest of society. It is to easy and to lucrative now to just do nothing."


I understand that they made a mistake but I think we're missing the point here. Nothing in business goes swimmingly and besides, if you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying anything new. I think the media is blinded by short-term macroeconomic factors, meagre company issues and forecasts. Forecasts are just that, forecasts. They're not certain and of course, some years they'll miss them. That's no problem. Management is actively engaged in resolving these issues and they're aware of them, they're not complacent. They're expected to sell roughly $1.6 billion of Teavana products through Starbucks this year and are expanding Teavana's offerings through Anheuser-Busch.   When Starbucks opened their first store in Chicago, it underperformed. Needless to say, Starbucks is flourishing today.   I think we all need to take a step back here and focus on long-term objectives rather than insignificant short-term issues when management are prudently resolving them.


I'm going to assume that the 401K is not a Roth.  If that's the case, no, you should not withdraw from your 401K to pay off your mortgage. You will pay taxes on the withdrawal as if it is income, and that loss will far exceed the 6% you are paying in interest on the mortgage (which is deductable, so may actually be less than 6% all things considered). The calculation is really more complicated, but in general, this sounds like a bad idea.


There is no segregation of amounts that you have in Rollover (Traditional) IRAs when it comes to figuring out how much of your basis is being converted from  your Traditional IRA into a Roth IRA.   So, yes, you will lose the benefit of being able to make nondeductible contributions to your Traditional IRA each year and rolling them over into a Roth IRA without tax consequences. Since your  401k amount may be  substantially more than the $5K basis you create each year, converting the 401k amount into a Traditional IRA will mean that most of the money converted to the Roth IRA is pre-tax money, and so you end up paying tax on most of the converted amount.


Are you under the assumption that an employer gives vacation because of laws?? I'll assume you are European and inform you that in America there are no laws requiring vacation days. It's up each individual company to set their policies on it. They can take and they can give if you don't like it your only option is quitting.