Some countries don't have robust life insurance markets.  Some countries have horrible travel fatality statistics.  Some countries don't have very good liability law enforcement.   Is $2 on top of a train ticket in the US to send your family a $20,000 payment if you die on the train worth it, probably not.  The fatality rate is pretty low here, lots of people have their own life insurance, and the US justice system carries a big liability stick. If you're moving around on trains a lot in other countries where the fatality rate is much higher, you can't buy life insurance on your own, and the legal system doesn't punish negligent operators it might be meaningful, especially for frequent travelers who have dependents. Is buying this coverage a reasonable and cost effective way to insure a person's life, no, clearly not.  You're buying a policy to insure your life against being mauled by tiger in New York on a Tuesday, when you've never seen a tiger and don't live in New York.  Obviously, if you want life insurance you would not buy coverage this narrow. Personally, I think this is really akin to an impulse buy candy bar at a checkout line of a market.  They're dangling this in front of you for an amount of money that's insignificant because some people will pick it up without thinking about it.  They're tickling your fear of death just enough to get a dollar from you, but not enough to keep you off the train.  And obviously the math works out for the insurer or it would not be offered. Separately, regarding probability, it's not about an incident occurring in a train, it's an incident occurring in this particular train on this particular day/time.  If there's a 1 in 10,000 chance of dying on a train in a year the chance of dying on a particular train on a particular day is likely to be one in billions or more.  This really isn't about whether or not this coverage is valuable given the risk, it's about whether or not they can get you to impulsively spend a dollar.


Banks do not report transactions within accounts except as required by law, usually as part of anti-money-laundering efforts. Generally those involve tracking large cash transactions. As far as large payments go, there are two reasons they might be reported to the government: taxes, and criminal investigations. For tax purposes, if the payment is considered a salary or wage (that is, you are an employee of the company and the payment is for your time working there), then the company paying you is responsible for reporting the wage and withholding applicable taxes from your salary. If you are considered an independent contract employee, then you yourself will be responsible for reporting the income to the IRS and paying the applicable taxes yourself. In the second case, unless you are already under investigation, I wouldn't worry about it. Banks are very touchy about financial records being kept private, and won't release them without a subpoena. One caveat is that this is under US law. Banks which maintain branches in multiple countries must, of course, comply with all local laws in the jurisdiction where they do business. The take away from this is that Bank of America is unlikely to report a single deposit of $75,000 into your account to anyone on their own. If it is a paper check being deposited they will probably place a hold on it to make sure it clears, but that is all.


"I think the higher up you get, the blurrier the line between personal life and work gets.  since they aren't individual contributors, they don't spend saturday mining data. However, they are constantly meeting with customers/vendors and internal groups. They have frequent meetings are probably stay involved as events happen during their ""down"" time"


But I wish to know why the parameter is dividend/market price rather than just 'dividend'? What 'extra' info you can uncover by looking at dividend/market price that you cannot get from 'dividend'? Consider two stocks A and B. A offers a dividend of $1 per year. B offers a dividend of $2 per year. Let's remove all complications aside and assume that this trend continues. If you were to buy each of these stocks you will get the following amounts over its life (assumed infinity for simplicity): cash flows from A = $1/(0.04) = $25, assuming risk free is 4% per annum cash flows from B = $2/(0.04) = $50, assuming risk free is 4% per annum The price you buy them at is an important factor to consider because let's say if A was trading for $10 and B for $60, then A would look like a profitable nvestment while B won't. Of course, this is a very simplistic view. Dividend rates are not constant and many companies pose a significant risk of going bust but this should help illustrate the general idea behind the D/P ratio. P.S.:- The formula I have used is one for computing the NPV of a perpetuity.


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Do you really think that toll booth collectors deserve a 58k base salary?  I mean, sure, pay them for the hours they work, but that is a job that requires no education and is already being done by computers.  I can't know of many jobs where the skill/pay ratio is so badly skewed.  Fuck me, sit in a booth all day working as a cashier and you can make more than teachers, PhDs, professors, public workers, construction people, and on and on.


the strategy is tested all the way to 97. how is the continuous series backadjusted? the emini is rolledover and Ratio back adjusted to the 2nd nearest contract, 9 days prior to expiration. since it is an intraday trade, the discrepancy to the real thing should be next to irrelevant. but comparing it to the spx could make it interesting.  what would be a good format to present the results ? jpeg? pdf ?


"Just to comment on this, I protested against the Iraq war, but I do understand why they went in and took the decisions they took (even misguidedly)  Afghanistan was a month after 911, there was strong public demand and support for it, few protests  Unfortunately that administration became obsessed with Iraq and abandoned Afghanistan to a skeleton force - which had disastrous consequences for the country  But there was no specific malign intention in either case - more a gross misread of the situation  There were intelligence failures (they aren't infallible) plus heavy political pressure on those agencies from a quite hawkish administration  The Malaysian ""tribunal"" had no real legitimacy and was basically formed by a controversial PM who was quite anti-Western"


"I think there-in lies the rub.  There is certainly a point at which job/income loss outweighs the disposable income gains of a wage increase.  That's what I'm suggesting is the only thing left to study.  Figure out that ratio, and you have a the secret to solving America's stagnating wage crisis.  As to the ""roundabout way of creating job growth"", I guess I just believe there's no other way...well, more specifically, increasing demand is the only reliable way to increase jobs.  If you have another way to increase demand (with government policy) I am open to hearing it.    Either way, we're having the right conversation - not getting trapped in the self serving lie of ""trickle down""."


This is what I know; where I live the USPS completely renovated their main facility about 5 years ago. Then they built another facility about 2 miles away from it. I hope we can agree this does not sound like a company thats having troubles or is worried about the future.   Then I started hearing companies say they couldn't compete.


Walmart, for example posted a profit of over $100B last year but their employees are draining over $6B from taxpayer funded programs (food stamps, healthcare subsidy, housing credits, etc). They're stealing from everyone to boost their profit margin and it can't keep happening. You need to get your head out of the clouds or your ass, not sure which.


"I just read this article, and I have to say I am utterly baffled. One of the quotes:  >""This week, senior executives at the investment bank convened a group of employees to try to stem any exodus, according to several people briefed on the meeting. Among the employees’ questions: why remain at a bank that treated its top executive so harshly?""  Here's what confuses me: if you are working at that level, probably making high 6 figures or more, why in the world would you even allow yourself to be quoted about how your little fee fees got hurt because someone got fired? For fuck's sake, these guys control billions of dollars, they earn millions, they got bailed out by the fucking government and walked away free as birds after almost completely destroying the economy, they live a cushy life at the top, yet they talk like a bunch of fucking 5-year olds who got their feelings hurt on the playground."


The problem with your profession is that it is hard to distinguish those activities as 'services rendered' or just a 'pastime hobby'. If you believe that both of those activities constitutes a 'service rendered in a professional capacity', then you should include it into the 'Goods and services for your own use' field. However, should you believe that those services rendered was not in a professional capacity and it was in a personal one (i.e. helping out), you need not include it in the field. In addition, should you feel that the pro-bono services rendered overlaps with your professional freelance work in any way, you might want to consider the service rendered to your dad and yourself as a 'professional service' and include it in Goods and services for your own use. Such examples include (but not limited to): It might be wise to call up the HMRC to clarify on your particular situation. But what I know is, this box was created to ensure that such services rendered should be considered a profit (i.e. an advantage, adds value) and not a loss (or no value).


"A credit card is basically a ""revolving"" loan, in which you're allowed to borrow up to a certain amount (the limit), and any time you borrow, you pay interest.  If you were to *borrow* $100 to pay for something via a credit card, you'd have a $100 balance on the card. If you then pay $70 cash to the card, there would be $30 remaining.  That $30 balance could accrue interest. The timing of that interest charge could vary. The 20% you've quoted is almost certainly ""APR,"" of which the ""A"" stands for ""annual,"" so that 20% would be an annual rate.  It makes the most sense, mind you, to keep a minimal balance on a credit card, as the interest rate is higher than most other loans."


Take your time. When I started my business I thought I had a killer name at first and a few weeks later I found a much better one. Brainstorm with your partners.  For an internet business having a short domain name is going to matter, and you should really try to get a .com. A .us or .io are also good, but if the .com is already taken people will confuse them for you so it's good to get the .com first. Make sure you don't have any weird characters in your domain like hyphens which are harder to type on a mobile device.


This right here.  Go to China and crowds constantly complains about it. Go to India and you see the same.   There's actually a really big backlog of people wanting to come to US despite the fact that it's own citizens think it's a bad place to live.


This caught my eye because the auto industry and the parts manufacturers are notorious for pushing output and human productivity to the point where working conditions are very unsafe.  If Musk is doing exactly the same thing that is newsworthy imo.


> quesorizo (queso + chorizo)  And if you were actually, you know, in Mexico it would be a choriqueso. So much for authenticity.  Although, to be fair, that would mostly be used in the greater D.F. area. In, say, Guanajuato they wouldn't make up stupid names in the first place and it would simply be queso con chorizo.


Obviously, we're assuming the company can pay it back, which is why you may only have five to twenty policies via the most renowned five to twenty companies at one time.  *edit: Besides, an immediate boost in purchasing power is pretty advantageous (from my last post)-- *(if someone invests $500 of capital at a 5% interest rate for a one year bond, they immediately get back a note with the purchasing power of $525, which they can spend right away if they wish (if inflation is going to happen anyway, why not beat it to the punch?)).*


> I hope it makes you insanely angry that I [eat Ferrari's for breakfast].  So what? I am a hard core capitalist. I just don't attach the same kind of myopic radicalized ideology to it that seems to be the exclusive standard used today, and I don't condone corruption with peons or elites. So unless your homes were the result of murdering some grannies, or some such shit, what the hell is your point? As for the occupy protesters... well... that was just a clusterfuck.  So why not respond to the substance, rather than pretend you can pigeonhole my character and politics? Could it be because your objections lack any substance and you know it? Because for all intent and purposes that is what you just admitted to.


"If you have an S-Corp with several shareholders - you probably also have a tax adviser who suggested using S-Corp to begin with.  You're probably best off asking that adviser about this issue. If you decided to use S-Corp for multiple shareholders without a professional guiding you, you should probably start looking for such a professional, or you may get yourself into trouble. That said, and reminding you that: 1. Free advice on the Internet is worth exactly what you paid for it, and 2. I'm not a tax professional or tax adviser, you should talk to a EA/CPA licensed in your state, here's this: Generally S-Corps are disregarded entities for tax purposes and their income flows to their shareholders individual tax returns through K-1 forms distributed by the S-Corp yearly. The shareholders don't have to actually withdraw the profits, but if not withdrawing - they're added to their cost bases in the shares. I'm guessing your corp doesn't distribute the net income, but keeps it on the corporate account, only distributing enough to cover the shareholders' taxes on their respective income portion. In this case - the amount not distributed is added to their basis, the amount distributed has already been taxed through K-1. If the corporation distributes more than the shareholder's portion of net income, then there can be several different choices, depending on the circumstances: The extra distribution will be treated as salary to the shareholder and a deduction to the corporation (i.e.: increasing the net income for the rest of the shareholders). The extra distribution will be treated as return of investment, reducing that shareholder's basis in the shares, but not affecting the other shareholders. If the basis is 0 then it is treated as income to the shareholder and taxed at ordinary rates. The extra distribution will be treated as ""buy-back"" - reducing that shareholder's ownership stake in the company and reallocating the ""bought-back"" portion among the rest of the shareholders. In this case it is treated as a sale of stock, and the gain is calculated as with any other stock sale, including short-term vs. long-term taxation (there's also Sec. 1244 that can come in handy here). The extra distribution will be treated as dividend. This is very rare for S-Corp, but can happen if it was a C-Corp before. In that case it will be taxed as dividends. Note that options #2, #3 and #4 subject the shareholder to the NIIT, while option #1 subjects the shareholder to FICA/Self Employment tax (and subjects the company to payroll taxes). There might be other options. Your licensed tax adviser will go with you through all the facts and circumstances and will suggest the best way to proceed."


"Maybe I am a bit jaded but I don't spend a lot of time trying to convince friends or family members to avoid MLM schemes even though I personally see them as scams. If they specifically ask for my advice I will walk them through the economics of the particular MLM that they are interested in. I have found that if you get to pushy in showing your friends or family members that their new ""business"" is actually a fraud they tend to get defensive and it becomes counter productive to continue trying to convince them of their mistake. You waste your time and anger your friend or family member. It's just not worth it. There are a few key questions I like to ask people about their MLM ""business"".  What does the business do? How do you make money? How do they make money? You would be amazed at the number of people that sign up and pay money to get into a business and they don't even have the slightest clue what the business actually does. Even fewer have an idea about how they can actually make money because the entire sales presentation focuses on what they could with all of the money they ""are going to make"". Why does this business need you? What do you bring to the table that the business doesn't already have (skills, contacts, money)? Most MLM's and especially the pyramid schemes focus more on recruiting people than selling products because they make their money on over priced initiation fees, and their products are mediocre at best."


Because Amazon is not even close to being a monopoly. Look at Wal-Mart revenue to Amazon revenue (even with  AWS and everything else). Not even close to being the largest retailer. They are just the largest e commerce retailer. Even there, they still aren't a monopoly.  Add in the fact that a lot of amazon sales are marketplace sales (other online vendors selling through amazon), and you see that Amazon isn't even close to being a monopoly.  Amazon is just really good at retail. Being so good at something that you gain market share is not covered under anti trust law.


If the check is made out to him, he will have to endorse it. Which means that at some point he will have to physically have the check in his hands. At which point, he could probably just deposit it himself. If there's some problem getting the check to him for him to sign it, you could call the bank and ask if they'll accept it for deposit to his account without a signature. I understand some banks will do this. I would be very surprised if they would let you deposit a check made out to your son to your account. They'd have no way of knowing if your son was agreeable to this or if you were stealing his money. Traditionally, the person the check was made out to could endorse it, give the check to someone else, and then the second person could endorse it and deposit it to their (the second person's) account. That is, the endorsement would have your son's signature, and below that, your signature. But I understand some banks won't accept this any more, so you'd be best to check before trying it.


The purpose of making sure you met the safe harbor was to avoid the penalty. Having achieved that goal the tax law allows you to wait until April 15th to pay the balance. So do so.  Put enough money aside to make sure you can easily make that payment.  I was in this exact situation a few years ago. I planned my w4 to make the safe harbor, and then slept easy even though the house settlement was in May and I didn't have to make the IRS payment unti 11 months later in April.


Have his bank put the money on a gift card or gift cards and have somebody send them to you in the mail. In fact, if you are going to spend the money online all you need is the numbers and codes from the card to spend the money.  If you have more time have the bank send you a cashiers check or money order.


"I mean this - your thought process is tied to *something*. If I say ""soda"" a lot of people will have a preconceived notion of what that product is and how it tastes.   It doesn't really matter which product comes to mind but I can guarantee that notion isn't a tasteless clear liquid with a generic label that says ""soda"" on it."


A private company certainly has the right to make hiring decisions based on whatever criteria they want. The article strongly implied this company was incorporated, which makes it a public institution and that changes things.  My understanding is that laws about discriminatory hiring go into effect once a company reaches a certain size (for example, over 15 employees). It can be strongly argued that once a company reaches a certain size it is more of a public institution than a private endeavor. I like very much that companies like Koch Industries cannot discriminate in hiring, even if they aren't a public company. To allow this would enable the systemic economic persecution of any disliked minority.  Your blathering about half-witted leftist whiners is unnecessary and takes away from the valid point you were making.


If you're a few decades older, your generation is mostly to blame for this reversal of fortunes in the US.  1969 was the peak of American culture.  Not since 1969 have more cars been sold in the US despite a doubling in the population.  The average age of a US vehicle used to be between 3-5 years now it is between 8 - 12 years old.  A poorer population cannot afford a new car as often anymore.  How do you expect consumes to shop at Sears and give them high profits if they don't have jobs themselves.


Something you invest in has the ability to grow in value.  So examples of investments would be buying stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities.  Buying your house or a piece of real estate can be considered an investment because the house/property will hopefully be worth more as time passes.  So the act of paying down a mortgage really isn't an investment.


You probably want the Internal Rate of Return (IRR), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_rate_of_return which is the compound interest rate that would produce your return. You can compute it in a spreadsheet with XIRR(), I made an example: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvuTW2HtDQfYdEsxVlM0RFdrRk1QS1hoNURxZkVFN3c&hl=en You can also use a financial calculator, or there are probably lots of web-based calculators such as the ones people have mentioned.


No career advice or homework help (unless your homework is some kind of big project and you need an explanation on a concept).   I want to see financial news, legislation concerning the markets and regulation, self posts about financial concepts, opinion articles about finance from reputable sources, etc.


This is how capital shares in split capital investment trusts work they never get any dividend they just get the capital when the company is wound up


> Nokia already has a reputation for building phones that are durable and reliable.   I really think their reputation is all but forgotten now. It doesn't take long. Nobody sees Nokias anymore, nobody talks about them, and so nobody is reminding anyone that they were reliable.


Yeah, no.   Dunno who 'corporate' is to you but people have shopped based on price since when Ug the caveman made the first wheel and Ra the guy down the street was making jagged hexagon ones for cheaper because his labor costs are lower. No- they don't work as well, or last as long, but if it costs two fewer rocks to get a 6-sided wheel than a round one, Ra will be in business as long as Ug is, and Ug's product is good enough that he isn't going anywhere.   Don't pretend we're in the midst of some product development and purchasing renaissance.


I was doing some thinking about this a while back, and it makes absolute perfect sense for Amazon to buy UPS with issued shares.  First off, Amazon's stock is overpriced in every form of the word, which means using issued stocks to buy things is the best way to abuse the current situation. It gives even more validity to their share price. Some examples... If lets say Amazon issued 1 extra share for every existing share, it would give them 235 billion of purchasing power. If they used this to buy 235 billion worth of utility companies, the stock price cannot really go down below 235 billion in market cap, because they own 235 billion in real, valuable companies. So if a completely worthless company like the South Seas Company issued stock to buy real businesses, they could make validity to their absurd price. If the South Seas Company had a market cap of 500 billion at their high, and issued 1 share per existing share, and bought 250 billion dollars of businesses and assets, they suddenly became a real company and cannot really go under a market cap of 250 billion. Too bad they didn't, and the company went under almost instantly once the scam was found out.   By buying UPS, they gain the company at a discount of the discrepancy of Amazon's price and intrinsic value. But the biggest reason to merge with UPS is for their current customers. So with deliveries, Amazon would have to spend the same amount on their route as UPS. They still have to hire a driver for 8 hours a day, they still have to pay for the same amount of gas, and they stop at more or less the same amount. So your expenses are fixed. Any extra package that Amazon would deliver that they wouldn't before, is almost pure profit. The expenses don't change if the truck is 3/4 full, or full. Which means that all of UPS's business would become almost pure profit. They need to buy UPS or Fedex, making a new service is a huge mistake. It's probably just a bargaining chip in negotiation because of these reasons.  Also a side note, Amazon should also buy a huge railroad. They have a part in every inch of this country, and to buy its own method of transportation to transport boxes, which is more fuel and time efficient than trucks makes sense. They would also be able to design a lighter weight train designed to just carry boxes. Sending one truck to a warehouse is much more costly than just attaching a light weight train car heading to that warehouse anyways.   Just my two cents if I were CEO of Amazon.


Apart from some of the excellent things others say, you could borrow money in AUD and invest that in another currency (that's risky but interesting) if the AUD interest rate is low and the other countries interest rate is higher, you'll eventually win. Also, look at what John Paulson did in 2007, 2008... I wish I'd thought of that when I was in your position (predicting a housing crisis)


Buying the underlying asset will not completely hedge you, only what lies above 155 dollars (strike + price of option) - you still have the risk of losing everything but 5. You have a maximum earnings-potential of 55 dollars (strike of 150 - investment of 100 + option of 5) but you have a risk of losing 95$ (investment of 100 - option of 5). Say chance of winning everything or losing everything is 50-50, your expected outcome is 0.5 x -95 + 0.5 x 55 = -20$. Is this a great investment? Sure you don't know your odds - otherwise it would be a sure thing. You shouldn't sell the call option if you do not expect prices to go up - but in that case - why not just buy the underlying alone? Speculating in options is a dangerous game with infinite earnings-potential but also infinite loss potential. (Consider selling a call option and not buying the underlying and the price goes from 100 to 1.000.000.000).


Australia is not really comparable.   Where she lives in the US, there are 2-3 bedroom homes to rent for $125 per week.   An apartment at the luxury end of the spectrum could be had for $250 per week (which is not viable for a minimum wage earner).  Expenses in the US are far lower than Australia in most areas (outside of healthcare and higher education).        Her life on $1700 per month in Kansas, is probably closer to the life of someone on $40k per year in Sydney.  Not easy, and necessary to be frugal, but not at homeless levels.


This is becoming a reality as Saudi Arabia moves closer to Russia. It will be interesting to see what happens once the Saudis start to divest in the US Dollar, from what I hear, they hold shit loads in the back ground.  I don't think the world is falling for the Fed Unwind, usually the Fed buys up the US Treasuries to keep the yields low, who is going to buy the Feds shit to keep up demand?


Bears will be bears. People flipped shit about trump winning but if you pulled out then. U would have missed like 25%. Honestly timing isn’t worth it and there are 0 signs of a correctly atm


You can get audited for anything Business owners are more likely to get audited than people filing 1040-EZ's for their simplistic income tax obligation. According to HR Block I hope you enjoy the process where you explain the source of your earnings


Most house transactions require the taxes due to be paid off during closing. This would normally be taken from the proceeds of the sale. Since you have plenty of equity you won't have to come up with cash to do this. Depending on your location taxes are sometimes paid up to the date of sale or in advance or arrears by up to six months. In any event you should have plenty of money to pay off any taxes you may owe. Your real estate agent should be able to give you a definitive answer (or the title agency if you are selling it yourself).


>My parable shows the mechanics of how money works.  No, it doesn't.  It shows the mechanics of how a market for credit derivatives works, not money.  Money has no counterparty risk - it is generally a commodity.  So the first thing you should have done in your post (to explain it to a ten year old) is to explain this key distinction.  >I said I wouldn't get into the gold-standard debate, and I won't, and here's why  There's a very important difference between advocating a gold standard and simply pointing out that legal tender laws exist and aren't a good idea.  Your OP's completely gloss over this fact, and they even mislead people into believing that emergent markets naturally use credit derivatives as money rather than commodities (which have no counterparty risk).


The rule of thumb I have always heard and what we rent our rental house at is 1% per month at the minimum (in the US). The rent has to cover the mortgage, the property taxes, the homeowners insurance, your income taxes (on the rent), the maintenance of the property and the times when the property is vacant. Even at 1% per month that doesn't leave a whole lot of profit compared to what you put in.  I have no idea why anybody would buy a rental property in Australia if all they could get is 5% per year before expenses. They couldn't possibly be making money in that investment, not to mention the aggravations of getting late night phone calls because something broke in the rental house. No way I would make that investment.


"I believe that an understanding of the taxation system can help to understand our place in it, and how that impacts each of our personal finances. I will try to remain unbiased here but this is a somewhat subjective question, so please bear with me if you disagree on any point. Some of these tax savings are well-advertised, and can be used by many people, such as tax credits for mass-transit passes which exists in some countries. But some of these tax savings are things you never heard of before, until it winds up on the news. Why do some people seem to get tax savings that you and I cannot get, and why do those people always seem to have so much more money than us? A simplistic answer can show this in three parts: (1) The source of one's income; (2) Transaction costs; and (3) ""tax loopholes"". Tax savings occur proportionately to one's income, and if the savings apply to investment income, they occur proportionately to one's wealth. If someone living paycheck to paycheck with a minimal amount in a bank account ""saves tax on investment income"", they might reduce their taxable interest from $50 to $0. That's because they simply don't have any other investment income to reduce. All of their income comes in the form of employment, which is typically very hard to save taxes on. Most governments have a very firm grasp on the taxation of employment income, because it is a huge proportion of income in the country (and therefore has the largest amount of tax associated), and because it is very straightforward (work for someone = employment income). A more cynical person than I might point out that investment income is earned by the very wealthy, who can afford to lobby for politicians to pass favourable investment income laws. Even very straightforward tax saving opportunities may cost money to enable. The simplest example would be: if a tax saving opportunity is so complicated that an average person can't understand it themselves, then an accountant, lawyer, or banker will need to be the one to explain it. And that can cost you money. If your tax isn't so much to begin with, then the transaction costs to achieve the tax savings could be higher than the tax savings themselves. For example, most countries have tax savings / deferrals if you start a corporation. These rules typically exist to promote investment in the local economy. But someone who earns $10k in a side-business might not be able to afford the $3k in incorporation costs just to save $2k in taxes. The more income and wealth you have, the more these transaction costs become worthwhile. I'm going to generally define ""tax loopholes"" for the purposes of this answer as something where a somewhat arbitrary situation allows for taxes that a layman would consider unfair or unexpected. This often occurs with good intentions but poor legislation - the government tries to provide a benefit to a deserving group or to promote an activity, but ends up allowing another group to take advantage.  For example in Canada, there existed until a few years ago tax saving rules about passing on wealth to children at lower tax rates, only when a close family member is near-death [setting up a 'testamentary trust' between a grandparent and a grandchild could in some circumstances allow that trust to be created with additional 'tax brackets', meaning more income would be taxed at a less-than top tax rate before being distributed to the grandchildren].  The rules were put in place with the idea that ""oh gee, a family member has died, and the dang ol' family is grieving so hard they can't distribute the wealth to the next generation for a few months on account of all the crying. We should make it so that the estate is taxed like a person, and if they earn only a little income, they have a low tax rate, and they only get taxed at the full rate if they have a lot of income"". Seems reasonable enough, but if a family is ready to pass on wealth at the same time as someone is nudging the bucket with their foot, a morbid discussion with your lawyer and accountant could set your children up for life with forever reduced taxes on massive inheritances.  In the case of the Panama / Paradise leaks, tax savings are due to all 3 of the above: Those who have massive wealth (and therefore earn the majority of their income from investments instead of employment) can afford the transaction costs associated with taking advantage of specific ""tax loopholes"". The simplest example of which is just that income earned in a foreign country might have a lower tax rate than income earned domestically. This is often a result of ""cracks"" in the foreign tax treaties between countries, which exist generally to promote business between countries and prevent double-taxing individuals who need activity in both countries for whatever reason. Take for example the ""Apple loophole"". Apple has operations around the world. Some activity occurs in low-tax jurisdictions. Apple reports a high percentage of the value of R&D as being associated with those jurisdictions. Those branches in low-tax jurisdictions charge the high-tax branches (such as the US) with fees for use of their valuable research. So much of Apple's income is reported in those foreign jurisdictions. It won't be taxed in the US until Apple ""repatriates"" the cash back to the US. Until then, the cash sits in the foreign jurisdiction, accruing less tax. This and similar rules can be used by individuals wealthy enough to hold corporations in foreign jurisdictions with low tax rates. How each particular rule / ""loophole"" works will depend on the nature of a specific case - tax law is complex, and the rules between countries are even more so. These foreign tax loopholes are closing every year. It is getting harder and harder to hide money offshore, and it is getting less and less likely that you will be able to find a country with juuuust the right loopholes for your own offshore wealth. These types of news leaks will only help to expedite those changes."


In most cases, the brand on the card, eg Visa or MasterCard, is a middleman. The company processes the transaction, transferring $xx from the bank to the seller, and telling the bank to debit the buyer's account. The bank is at risk, not the company transacting the purchase. What's interesting is that American Express started as both. My first Amex card, issued in 1979 (long expired, but in my box of memorabilia) had no bank. American Express offered a card that offered no extended credit, it was pay in full each month. Since then, Amex started offering extended credit, i.e. with annual interest, and minimum payments, and more recently, offering transaction processing for banks which take on the credit risk, essentially becoming very similar to MasterCard and Visa.


>  It may be expensive but it is absolutely the best.       Can you provide a valid source for that claim?  All the numbers for health outcomes I have ready have the US far down the list.   Even in areas like maternal mortality during childbirth, US has far higher rates than other western countries, even [claiming the lives of upper middle class women](http://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger).       The first steps to resolving a problem, is to admit there is a problem in the first place.


Unless you need extremely large sums of money, I suggest you use an ATM or look for a credit card that has no foreign transaction fees (rare). AFAIK, it's not possible for a retail buyer to purchase currency at the current exchange rate quoted online.  You are always going to be paying some spread above that, and the ATM gets you the closest. You could also try to use a bank that has branches in your country and Japan (like HSBC) and do your banking there.  Then you likely wouldn't have to pay as much in fees (and possibly could draw on your account in Japan).


"I'd agree with you except for that last part.  Not sure we can really HAVE a large scale war again. Certainly nothing between the major powers (not that the human race would be likely to survive anyway).  What would be more likely would be a dramatic collapse/end of the global economy via a large scale ""slamming of the gates"" between major nations (i.e. US/China) and subsequent nationalizations/confiscations of foreign assets -- leading to a BIG depression as a lot of paper assets end up becoming worthless and it takes a decade (or more) to sort out who actually (still) owns what, and what the heck it is worth.  Meanwhile, of course, all kinds of civil unrest, riots & looting and the inevitable police-state crackdown... but ultimately then demands for solutions and the election/elevation of some ""strong-man"" types with dictatorial powers who proceed to run a very low-prosperity command economy with rationing of essentials (for the masses anyway... the elites, as they always do, would retain their privileges)."


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You are giving your parents a short term loan. The value of that loan is likely far less than the gift tax exclusion for the year. You only need to account for the money you loaned to them and the money they paid back. This is not income for you unless they pay interest. It is not a gift from them because they are just paying you back.


I am on employment based visa in USA and want to send dollars from USA to India from my savings (after paying Tax). How much maximum dollars I can send in a day? month? or in a year regularly? There is no such limit. You can transfer as money you like to yourself anywhere. To pay the Bank Loan-student Loan how much maximum dollars I can send in a day, in a month or in a year? to pay that I have to pay directly to that Bank Account or in any account I can send money? You can transfer to your NRE account in India and move it further. You can also send it directly to the Loan Account [Check with the Bank, they may not be able to receive funds from outside for a Loan Account] My mother is having Green Card. She is not working. She has a NRE account in India. Can I send dollars from my USA Bank account to her NRE account in India? what are the rules for that? any Tax or limit for that? Or I have to get any permission before sending it? If you are sending money to your mother, it would come under Gift Tax act in US. There is no issue in India. Suggest you transfer to your own NRE account.


the crude estimate of missing jobs rises to about 75,600.  You think 75k jobs is a blip?  And that is out of a -0.2 employment elasticity.  As people continue to ask for higher minimum wage, by law, that elasticity will undoubtedly increase.  There is no question about it.  I mean, sure those who keep their jobs are better off, no one doubts that, but there will surely be more unemployment.    EDIT: Sorry I took so long to respond, had to do some other things and I wanted to make sure I gave the article you sent a good read.


Yes, Edmunds gets money from the dealerships in this program. According to this USA Today article from 2013, dealers pay Edmunds a monthly fee to participate in the program.  This contrasts with TrueCar.com, a similar service, where dealers pay a fee for each sale. And yes, it is certainly possible to negotiate a lower price than the Edmunds Price Promise quote, if you enjoy haggling.  The purpose of the program is not to get you the best price, just the easiest buying experience.   From the USA Today article: Edmunds.com's price promise business model is designed to take the uncertainty out of pricing, speed up the buying process and also comes with the expectation that the customer will be given top-notch customer service. Dealers who have participated find that they are able to sell their cars for $300 to $500 more than consumers who go through the more traditional price quote request process. Customers, [Edmunds.com president and chief operating officer Seth] Berkowitz said, are willing to pay a little more than the best possible deal if they can save time, get great customer service and know they are getting a fair price.


You really should consider sitting down with an independent financial advisor to run the numbers for the various options and discuss what risks you're comfortable with and what your requirements/goals are. This isn't a simple decision,  unfortunately. Advice I've seen suggested that some portion of the money should stay in the market, earning market rate of return. Exactly how much, and invested in what, is complicated. An annuity is essentially an insurance policy.  The company assumes the risks and promises you specific payments in exchange for keeping the money.  They wouldn't do so if they didn't think that on average they'll pay out less than the combination of your purchase price plus earnings, so you really are paying a fee for this service. Whether it's worth that cost -- and for how much of your money -- depends on how much you have saved and how risk-tolerant you are. I'm going to steal a moment here to point out that many charities offer annuities. These may or may not pay out less than commercial annuities,  but the profits go to a better cause either way. If you plan to leave part of your estate as donation to a charity anyway, this basically lets them have the money earlier while you continue to receive income from it.


When your profits are increased from mass layoffs and reduced expenses (like r&d) to appease investors, and not based on innovation, new market entry, or competitive advantage.  It's a short term quick win but puts the long term in jeopardy.


"Every time people have a little fun with the lotto this comment gets made. Yes, we all understand that your odds of winning are so low that you're basically throwing your money away.  For two Powerball numbers, you know what else I could spend my $6 on?  One beer at a bar.  With that beer, I would get approximately 20 minutes worth of entertainment.   Instead, I buy two lotto tickets and have a few days worth of entertainment, fantasizing with family and friends about what we would do if we hit it big. People pool their money with co-workers and bond over the shared fantasy and the ""oh well, I guess we're going back to work tomorrow"" after the drawing.  We can all do simple math, but statistics do not usually govern how most of us spend our entertainment budget."


"TLDR:  There are no to few monetary downsides. The process of settling an estate is called probate.  Creditors can make claims against the estate, and assets should stand to pay any debts.  If more debts are owed then assets, the beneficiaries are not held liable.  Final expenses are usually the first amount paid out in full.  So if the estate only contains enough assets to pay final expenses, then the creditors receive nothing.  Usually creditors are paid pro-rated if there is not enough to cover debts. For the record, the probate process is greatly simplified if one has a will.  Get a will if you don't have one. Life insurance is a bit different though.  It passes directly to the beneficiaries and depending on the state could be untouchable by creditors. The same thing could also happen with retirements accounts.   With 401K accounts, you could take some of it out, and pay tax on that.  You could also roll it into your own account. Property receives a really good benefit.  While it does pass through probate the cost basis of real estate is reestablished at the time of death.  So if grandpa bought a house for 30K in the 40's, and it is now worth 120K.  You inherit a 120K piece of property and when you sell you use 120K as your cost basis not 30K.   Any estate taxes are typically paid by the state, not technically the heirs.  If there is a 5% estate tax and they are to inherit 100K, they will only receive 95K.  They will not receive 100K then be expected to be paid 5K.  ""Electrically"" the same, but a large difference in responsibility. The biggest downside is if you have a will fight on your hands.  If someone disputes the validity of the will that can incur a lot of legal fees.  For small estates, it may not be worth the fight.   The next is if any assets do go through probate.  The process is lengthy and depending on the executor, they could reduce the size of the estate for charging for their time."


Holy shit that can't be USA unless you're talking about commercial lending, even then sky high rates.  For the 97% LTV we sell at 3.58 last Saturday.  We're a large bank too, so none of that credit unions selling themselves short nonsense.  Mind you that's a special program through Fanny, but our normal rates are something like 4.4-4.55 depending on the day for 80/20  How can you be conservative but loan to credit score of over 500?  We don't even look at under 640 and we're considered somewhat conservative.


Social media marketing is the best way to promote your business on the social platforms. There are many free social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram. Where all businessmen can use to directly engage with their clients. Social media for business has many advantages that it allows you to reach out to a large set of the online audience base. You can get in touch with online society and interact with a large number of the potential client.


TrumpelThinSkin . . . .psst . . . TrumpelThinSkin  People are starting to wonder about all the little things  The little hands, the little brain, the little pee pee   The little man  and as the realization hits, that a draft dodger with convenient spurs on his feet does not a sheriff make, the snickers grow louder and louder  All over the world, till the laughter will drown out your little voice  No time for sleep, your masters are about to abandon you, as they realize your sheer incompetence has left them dangerously exposed


it depends on the area you want to focus in.  to be sure, i will say that pretty much all certificates in finance can be achieved online now.  CFP is a pretty ok one. i have it myself. there is quite a bit of material, but isn't too challenging. it focuses on financial planning/personal finance. certainly aids your technical knowledge but is kind of an analog to help boost your sales. most pure planners i know have this but moreover a series of more technical designations. you must have a bachelors to be given the right to use the CFP.  CFA is a great one for your resume (and knowledge), but makes the CFP look like a summer vacation. it is for analysis, but has a broad range of potential uses. i know brokers, advisors, planners, and people leaders with these marks. if you are very smart, it will take you a minimum of 2.5 years (really 3yr) to complete due to their testing schedule. they also grade on a very steep curve. from what i understand, the amount of information and level of command you must demonstrate also necessitate this lengthy schedule.  beyond that, you can look at getting FINRA licensed in a desired area (e.g. series 7/63 to be a broker). i would caution against this, unless you are very sure of where you want to go or need to meet the requirement for a job. typically jobs with license requirements will permit you 3-6 months to obtain them on company money. you risk spending a good bit of money that won't be reimbursed by getting licensed independently. keep in mind that you cannot actually use your licenses without a firm sponsor.  finally, there are a variety of specialized designations like CWS and CMT that i would also caution against unless sure of desired position or meeting job requirements. it is better, in my opinion, to find yourself in a place where getting these will better position you for your current job rather than wasting time on them and finding yourself in a place where they hold no water.


"Probably not. In general, if you withdraw money from a 401k before age 59 1/2, you must pay a 10% penalty. There are some special cases. You can withdraw money to pay certain unreimbursed medical bills, if you are disabled, or to pay back taxes. You can also withdraw money if you are dead. See https://www.irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/Plan-Participant,-Employee/Retirement-Topics-Tax-on-Early-Distributions. There is also a provision that you can make penalty-free withdrawals as long as you take them regularly: ""Made as part of a series of substantially equal periodic payments beginning after separation from service and made at least annually for the life or life expectancy of the participant or the joint lives or life expectancies of the participant and his or her designated beneficiary. (The payments under this exception, except in the case of death or disability, must continue for at least 5 years or until the employee reaches age 59½, whichever is the longer period.)"" See https://www.irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/Plan-Sponsor/401(k)-Resource-Guide-Plan-Sponsors-General-Distribution-Rules. (I don't quite understand this rule. You can't take money out one time, but you can take money out multiple times. Oh well. I think the idea is supposed to be that you can take out money for an early retirement.)"


"You need to negotiate with your broker to allow you to do more exotic order types.  One in particular I recommend is a ""hidden"" aka iceberg order.  You enter two numbers.  The first is the number of shares for your entire order, the second is the amount that will be displayed in the book (this is the tip of the iceberg, the remaining shares are hidden below the surface). The maker/taker rule applies as follows: The amount displayed will receive the rebate for providing liquidity.  The amount hidden will be charged the fee for taking liquidity. Example: You want to sell 10,000 shares total.  You enter a hidden order for 10,000 shares with 1,000 displayed.  On the level 2 screen traders will see 1,000 shares, and those shares will stay displayed there until the entire order is filled.  You receive a rebate for 1,000 shares, you pay the brokerage fee for 9,000 shares. Also, like one of the previous posters mentioned, only trade high liquidity stocks.  Large market cap companies with high volume.  This is why day traders love Tesla, Amazon, Netflix, etc. Large market cap, high volume, and high volatility.  Easy to catch $10+ moves in price. Hope this helps Happy trading"


You are planning on buying a car that is 50% of your salary. Add your student debt to that and your total debt is >50% of your salary. I would suggest getting a few credit cards to build up credit, but can you manage that? Buying a 25k car with 55k salary is overspending. Get a second-hand car for 7k or so. Plus, buying a new car is not smart either, from a pricing standpoint, if you really want a new car, buy one that is 1 to 2 years old.


I'd imagine in this extreme edge case it would round down to $0.   I can't fathom what makes $10.02 or $153.02 any different from $0.02.


With margin accounts you will be able to use the proceeds from a closed trade INSTANTLY.  Without margin accounts this is the time you close the trade + 3 business days for clearing. In practice this means 4-5 days if there is a weekend or holiday involved between those 3 business days. This ties up your capital for an unfavorable amount of time, where as a margin account lets you continue to use the capital over and over again for more opportunities. You CANNOT sell to open a position in cash accounts. This means no short selling. This means no covered calls or spreads and MANY other strategies. These are the real differences you'll notice in a margin account vs a cash account.  Then there are the myriad of regulations that dictate how much cash you should keep in your account for any margin position.


so what do you think of this article? we hope you can take the time to post your comments and reactions below. that way, we can help all those who are planning to sign up for credit repair services or are interested to take matters into their own hands in terms of paying off their credit obligations, once and for all.


As poolie mentioned, you should get online access to your account. This will do a couple of things: Also, consolidate any super you have with different companies. Now.


These are all factually correct claims. S-Corporation is a pass-through entity, so whatever gain you have on the corporate level - is passed to the shareholders. If your S-Corp has capital gains - you'll get your pro-rata share of the capital gains. Interest? The same. Dividends? You get it on your K-1. Earned income? Taxed as such to you. I.e.: whether you earn income as a S-Corp or as a sole proprietor - matters not. That's the answer to your bottom line question. The big issue, however, is this: you cannot have more than 25% passive income in your S-Corp. You pass that limit (three consecutive years, one-off is ok) - your S-Corp automatically converts to C-Corp, and you're taxed at the corporate level at the corporate rates (you then lose the capital gains rates, personal brackets, etc). This means that an S-Corp cannot be an investment company. Most (75%+) of its income has to be earned, not passive. Another problem with S-Corp is that people who work as self-proprietors incorporated as S-Corp try to abuse it and claim that the income they earned by the virtue of their own personal performance shouldn't be taxed as self-employed income. IRS frowns upon such a position, and if considerable amounts are at stake will take you all the way up to the Tax Court to prove you wrong. This has happened before, numerously. You should talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA/Attorney licensed in your state) to educate you about what S-Corp is and how it is taxed, and whether or not it is appropriate for you.


"This is an old question, but a new product has popped up that provides an alternative answer. There is a website called stockpile.com that allows you to purchase ""stock gift certificates"" for others.  These come in both electronic and traditional physical form.  This meets my question's original criteria of a gift giver paying for stock without having any of the recipient's personal information and thus maintaining the gift's surprise. I should note a few things about this service: Despite these limitations I wanted to post it here so others were aware of it as an option.  If no other alternative will work and this is what it takes to get a parent interested in teaching their child to invest, then it's well worth the costs."


"I got that tip from the book ""Getting More"". It's probably the same style as this book. I read it thinking that the ideas are corny. And then I applied the ideas and for six months, my life was just plain better. It wore off as I forgot the lessons."


Yes! Look at any graph or chart covering the last 100 years.  The graph goes up. It will continue to grow unless there is an extinction event and the population gets reduced.  Corporations will continue to grow to meet the needs of the ever expanding population.


"Couple other things if you are doing a quick flight to ""get to a meeting""........ First to board so you can continue to work while everyone else gets on the plane.... free internet, newspapers, coffee etc. so you don't have to log in, sign up, pay with a credit card etc. .... first to leave so you can get to your meeting.... as well as bigger seats so you aren't cramped, your suit doesn't get wrinkled... and you don't have some mouth breather looking at your phone / laptop while you work."


Find a lawyer or law firm who wants to represent you and talk to them.


Congratulations on seeing your situation clearly! That's half the battle. To prevent yourself from going back into debt, you should get rid of any credit cards you have and close the accounts. Just use your debit card. Your post indicates you're not the type to splurge and get stuff just because you want it, so saving for a larger purchase and paying cash for it is probably something you're willing to do. Contrary to popular belief, you can live just fine without a credit card and without a credit score. If you're never going back into debt, you don't need a credit score. Buying a house is possible without one, but is admittedly more work for you and for the underwriters because they can't just ask the FICO god to bless you -- they have to actually see your finances, and you have to actually have some. (I realize many folks will hate this advice, but I am actually living it, and life is pretty good.) If you're in school, look at how much you spend on food while on campus. $5-$10/day for lunch adds up to $100-$200 over a month (M-F, four weeks). Buy groceries and pack a lunch if you can. If your expenses cannot be reduced anymore, you're going to have to get a job. There is nothing wrong with slowing down your studies and working a job to get your income up above your expenses. It stinks being a poor student, but it stinks even more to be a poor student with a mountain of debt. You'll find that working a job doesn't slow you down all that much. Tons of students work their way through school and graduate in plenty of time to get a good job.  Good luck to you! You can do it.


"Good for you! At your age, you should definitely consider investing some of your hard-earned and un-needed money in stocks with the long-term goal of having your retirement funded. The time horizon that you'd have would be vastly superior to that of millions of others, who will wait until their thirties or even forties to begin investing in stocks, giving your compound interest prospects the extra time anyone needs for a spectacular vertical incline in your later years. Make sure to sign up to automatically re-invest the dividend payouts of your stocks, please. (If you don't already know how being young and investing well in your early years is more powerful than starting out ten to twenty years later, do a little research on ""Compound Interest""). Make sure you monitor your investments. Being young means you have time to correct your investments (sell and buy other assets) if the businesses you initially selected are no longer good investments."


Good marketing is bottom up marketing - finding out what the customers want and giving it to them and not pissing them off . Bad marketing is top down marketing - telling the customers what they will buy , spying on the customers and manipulating the customers . Good marketing involves giving the customers a good deal . This usually involves giving something for free - good advertisement - and something at a reasonable price along with good product and good service .


The partition is more or less ok, the specific products are questionable. Partition. It's usually advised to keep 2-3 monthly income liquid. In your case, 40-45 kEUR is ca. 24-27 kEUR netto, i.e. 2000-2250 a month, thus, the range is 4-7 kEUR, as you are strongly risk-averse then 7k is still ok. Then they propose you to invest 60% in low-risk, but illiquid and  15% in middle or high risk which is also ok. However, it doesn't have to be real estate, but could be. Specifics. Be aware that a lot (most?) of the banks (including local banks, they are, however, less aggressive) often sell the products that promise high commissions to them (often with a part flowing directly to your client advisor). Especially now, when the interest rates are low, they stand under extra pressure. You should rather switch to passively managed funds with low fees. If you stick up to the actively managed funds with their fees, you should choose them yourself.


Sushi a Barcellona è un’usanza giapponese: il suo nome originale nyotaimori che può essere chiamato Naked Sushi a Barcellona. Di questa tradizione non si sa molto: nata intorno al XVII secolo, si pensa che fosse offerta agli uomini per esaltare le fragranze e i sapori dei cibi riscaldati dal calore del corpo umano e per permettere loro di vivere un’esperienza fuori dal comune, ovviamente di tipo erotico.


"The company was paying ""only"" $1 a share in dividends, compared to $10 a share in earnings. That is a so-called payout ratio of 10%, which is low. A more normal payout ratio would be 40%, something like $4 a share. If a $13 stock had a $4 dividend, the dividend yield would be about 30%, which would be ""too high,"" meaning that the price would go up to drive down the resulting yield. Even $1 a share on a $13 stock is a high dividend of about 7%, allowing for appreciation to say, the $20-$25 range. Graham was a great believer in the theory that management should pay out ""most"" of its earnings in dividends. He believed that by holding dividends so far below earnings, the company was either being ""stingy,"" or signalling that the $10 a share of earnings was unsustainable. Either of these would be bad for the stock. For instance, if $1 a share in dividends actually represented a 40% payout ratio, it would signal management's belief that they could normally earn only $2.50 a year instead of $10."


People who provide services like that are called debt councilors or debt advisors. They help you to organize your debts, advise you in prioritizing them and also help you to negotiate or legally challenge any unreasonable levies.


"Instead of ""stocks"" I would refer to that asset class as ""equity.""  Instead of bonds, I would refer to that asset class as ""fixed income.""  Given that more general terminology, GICs would fit into fixed income."


Yeah that all can definitely be true as well, in fact we both 100% agree on symptoms of low growth. However personally I believe there are always ways to reinvest and build your business. I mean look at AAPL, they allocated $100~ billion into their own Nevada hedge fund buying up high quality debt like it's a fire sale. Some companies create their own VC firms combatting disruptive innovation. We can argue about this all we want but share buybacks can signify a lot of things at the end of the day haha. My main point with the comment above was that the buybacks inflating EPS makes it more difficult to identify true earnings growth of a company.   So serious question, do you know of any ways to filter that out and identify real earnings growth?


Honestly, more start-up companies that grow into huge firms should have succession plans that include the founder handing the CEO reins to a professional executive, while they shift over to the Head of Product/Strategy role. Let someone with experience handle corporate governance, shareholder/board relations, HR policy, risk management, financial controls, etc. The founder built their company through their product vision, being a CEO of a multi-billion company is an entirely different skill set.  Really, the Google founders are the ideal model for this. Put your ego aside and let Eric Schmidt handle the CEO stuff, you guys focus on our next moves and making the product the best.


i've ordered on-line for store pickup a handful of times.....WHAT A FUCKING NIGHTMARE (and i even tried multiple stores to see)    always one person working, disappearing for 5-10 minutes while trying to track down orders, 10+ ppl in line. the last time i just left and vowed to:  NEVER AGAIN, fuck you Wally World


Actually quite the opposite. I've had three PS3's in the last 2 years with a decent library of games to go with it. I just don't pretend that Sony is very innovative or even competent these days. They JUST got a decent online store going in the last 2 weeks with their Day One full games when that should have been priority at the launch. They've completely misunderstood and misinterpreted online culture because they've been pushing physical media Blu Ray so hard in the last few years and that has been their only real focus. The world already switched to digital distribution and now they are going to have a hell of a time play catch up.  Edit: They've also neglected to capitalize on what they do have to a great extent like pushing a full library of ps2 games and cherry picking the re-releases of ps1 games. They don't own the properties, but they aren't exactly pushing their 3rd parties too hard about it either.


It did help her though, she divorced her abusive husband and raised 7 children as a maid. Her eldest daughter, My mother, graduated college, got married, and worked for NIH. Two of her sons went into the Army, another daughter went into the Navy. My parents got divorced due to my fathers alcoholism, i ended up being raised by my grandmother purely due to my mother's illness, an autoimmune illness with no defined cause. My grandmother will be passing along a very expensive house she bought that would likely have been sold years before the gentrification of the area had she not had medicaid to assist with the bills for caring for my mother. Or the monumental amount spent caring for my aunt who went blind and died from cancer. None of this process is possible without the outside help. If there are no programs for people in these situations to take advantage of, then even fewer make it out.   This is my point, there are a ton of forces that act upon you and your life, and I see others not be able to scrounge the assistance needed to deal with their situations. I spent some time going to a SOME clinic for my dentist, seeing men and women who had much worse mental disabilities than my depression, and mine was crippling and caused me to never finish college. I have known people trying their hardest to deal with situations as bad or worse than mine, that don't get the right break. I can sympathize with those who wont take their meds, because I've felt what just some antidepressants do to you, numbing you to the point that nothing matters, a cure as bad as the problem, its just other people think it looks better. I want programs to continue to exist, to be the rungs of the ladder for those trying their best to get out, no not all will, but what's the other option right now? Leave them in it? I have yet to see another path that isn't just leaving people in the shit hole that isn't always entirely their fault.   It's a big ugly problem that you can only solve piecemeal, and may never be fully solved. Some may fail by circumstance, some may fail by personal failing, but removing the ladders, removing the help wont solve anything.


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Ideally, one would contribute the maximum amount you're allowed to both the TSP and an IRA. For the 2015 tax year, that would be $18,000 for the TSP and $5,500 for the IRA (if you're 50 or older, then you can add an additional catch up amount of $6,000 to the TSP and $1,000 to the IRA). If, like most people, you cannot contribute the maximum to both, then I would recommend the TSP over an IRA, until you've maximized your TSP. Unquestionably, you should contribute at least enough to the TSP to get the maximum agency match. Beyond that, there is a case to be made to contribute to an IRA for certain investors. Benefits of TSP, compared to IRA: Benefits of IRA, compared to TSP: So, for an investor who wants simplicity, I would recommend just doing the TSP (unless you can invest more, in which case an IRA is a smart choice). For a knowledgeable and motivated investor, it can make sense to also have an IRA to gain access to asset classes not in the TSP's basic index funds.


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One theory I've heard on INTC is that it's part of a widely held pair trade with [QCOM](http://www.google.com/finance?q=QCOM), which does appear near the top of the list on the [opposite list of GS VIP long holdings](http://www.marketfolly.com/2012/05/goldman-sachs-vip-list-most-important.html). I don't own INTC or QCOM, but this trade doesn't make much sense to me. While INTC is lagging in mobile, it still has exposure to it, and its [valuation is at the lowest level in 10 years](http://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/price#series=type:company,id:INTC,calc:price,,id:INTC,type:company,calc:pe_ratio&zoom=10&startDate=&endDate=&format=real&recessions=false). A pure long play on QCOM or even AAPL seems like it makes much more sense for this thesis, and avoids having to pay INTC's 3.3% dividend. Disclosure: I don't own INTC, QCOM. Long AAPL.


"Yes, that's true, but notice what you've done here. You have given two reasons *why* ""management is unable or unwilling to spend on innovation that could generate future earnings to shareholders"". You have expanded on rather than contradicted the statement made by the authors of the article."


I would always presume that given a choice of doing what is in its own self interest verses in the customer's interest, a bank will ALWAYS do the former rather than the latter. Banks are in the business of making money, always presume that their policies, processes and contractual terms will be slanted to maximize their ability to make money.  It's not being evil or anything, it's just business, they are under no obligation to be altruistic or do what's best for you at the expense of their profits. So, especially since it's not exactly a hardship, I would always make extra principal payments using a separate check and clearly mark it as an extra principal payment.


I'd start by looking at how and where socket connections are used. What threads are running, what does the CPU profile of the program look like. Black box testing combined with a fairly quick audit of the codebase (you have to be familiar with the language already, of course) isn't too difficult for most OSS.


>Managers do not directly create value for the company.  Oh my. Of course they do. Now I can't say that all of them do, there are certainly bad managers out there that destroy value. But it's management's goal to organize the labor and resources in the most efficient way possible, thus creating value. If you put 100 workers in a factory and leave them alone for a week they're not going to know what the hell to do. They need someone to direct them, and make sure they stay the course. An entrepreneur is needed to create a business model that inputs land, labor and capital, and outputs a product or service that people want.


The literal answer to your question is that a number of different types of mutual funds did not have significant downturns in 2008. Money Market Funds are intended to always preserve capital. VMMXX made 2.77% in 2008. It was a major scandal broke the buck, that its holders took a 3% loss. Inverse funds, which go up when the market goes down, obviously did well that year (RYARX), but if you have a low risk tolerance, that's obviously not what you're looking for. (and they have other problems as well when held long-term) But you're a 24-year-old talking about your retirement funds, you should have a much longer time horizon, at least 30 years. Over a period that long, stocks have never had negative real (inflation-adjusted) returns, dating back at least to the civil war. If you look at the charts here or here, you can see that despite the risk in any individual year, as the period grows longer, the average return for the period gets tighter and tighter. If you look at the second graph here, you see that 2011 was the first time since the civil war that the trailing 30-year return on t-bills exceeded that for stocks, and 1981-2011 was period that saw bond yields drop almost continuously, leading to steady rise in bond prices. Although past performance is no guarantee of future results, everything we've seen historically suggests that the risk of a broad stock-market portfolio held for 30 years is not that large, and it should make up the bulk of your holdings. For example, Vanguard's Target retirement 2055 fund is 90% in stocks (US + international), and only 10% in bonds.


Considering that household debt as a proportion of GDP is around 45.5% and that I’m easily persuaded that a sizable portion of that 45.5% isn’t creditworthy to begin with, I’d assume a crash is on the horizon in their housing market. That being said, I have a general distrust of China and its business practices and that bleeds over into my opinion. We’ll see what happens.


How is suggesting to them that they smoke cannabis instead of taking addictive pills that destroy lives a bad thing? There is a huge opiate crisis in the country. It's a massive problem where I live. We don't have a cannabis problem.  People who think the choice of an addict not getting high and getting high are fooling themselves if they think 99% of addicts are going to choose sobriety. That's like preaching abstinence only education. Kids are going to fuck.   In places where medical marijuana has been introduced the use of opiates plummets because they go for whatever drug is the path of least resistance. What I recommend is that people who are addicted to opiate and can't get off of them because they want the high, but the high keeps them physically addicted is that they replace that high with something that doesn't keep them physically addicted.   That isn't calling them weak or stupid or any other thing with a negative connotation that you've concocted in your head that I didn't say. It's smart and it works in places where that is an option.


Firstly 795 is not even. Secondly - generally you would pay tax on the sale of the 122 shares, whether you buy them back or not, even one minute later, has nothing to do with it. The only reason this would not create a capital gains event is if your country (which you haven't specified) has some odd rules or laws about this that I, and most others, have never heard of before.


Agriculture is a great sector to get into right now.  The average farmer in US and Canada are at or near retirement age (well past 60). And because most farmers are old, the sector really hasn't changed much. They're proud to say that what they do is passed down for generations.  The sector is ready for new blood and ripe for a revolution to increase productivity. All that is missing is the capital needed.


The link does not work - try [this link](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/08/21/how-target-plans-to-replace-10-billion-in-sales.aspx) instead.  Ad for the idea to have your own brands, it may work, or not. It's all about makin good product and people want to buy. So, a lot of competition.


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If you took a fixed loan, but paid it off at the accelerated rate, you would ultimately pay less total dollars in interest. So compare the actual amount paid in interest over the course of the loan rather than the interest rate itself.  That should be your answer. Also, plan on failing in your plan to pay it off and see how that will affect you.


"I'm an SF resident. Trust me when I say that the vast majority of this city's residents are VERY sick of the cabs here. Most of the time they won't take you to the part of town that you want to go to (eg. outer Richmond, sunset, etc.), and when they do, it isnt uncommon for them to claim that their card reader is ""busted"" and make you head to an atm with the meter running to pay in cash or they call the cops.  And the safer driver claim is bullshit. Every cab that I've been in tends to go like 60 mph on geary while road raging and scares the shit out of me. No uber/lyft driver has ever done that."


Personally, I have a little checkbook program that I use to keep track of my spending and balance. Like you -- and I presume like most people -- I have certain recurring bills: the mortgage, insurance payments, car payment, etc. I simply enter these into the checkbook program about a month before the bill is due. Then I can run a transaction list that shows the date, amount, and remaining balance after each transaction. So if I want to know how much money I really have available to spend, I just look for the last transaction before my next payday, and see what the balance will be on that day. Personally, I always keep a certain amount of pad in my account so if I made a mistake and entered an incorrect amount for a check, or forgot to enter one completely, I don't overdraw the account. (I like to keep $1000 in such padding but that's way more than really necessary, it's very rare that I make a mistake of more than $100.) In my case, I don't enter electric bills or heating bills because I don't know the amount until I get the bill, and the amounts fall well within my padding, and for just two bills I can factor them in in my head. BTW I wrote this program myself but I'm sure there are similar products on the market. I used to use a spreadsheet and that worked pretty well. (Mainly I wrote the program because I have a tiny side business that I have to keep tax records for even though it makes almost no money.) You could in principle do it on paper, but the catch to that is that when you write payments on your paper ledger in advance of actually writing the check, you will often be writing down payments out of order, and so it becomes difficult to see what your balance is or was or will be on any given date. But a computer system can easily accept transactions out of order and then sort them and re-do the balance calculations in a fraction of a second.


You can use trade volume for divergence and convergence studies


"Holy crap you really bought what was being sold.  For 8 years I watched as my gun owning friends, some I would call 2nd amendment ""enthusiasts"" go crazy as they talked about all the ways their gun owning rights were threatened by that man in the white house.   All the while gun and ammo sales went like gangbusters.  He acted once (twice?) to expand gun rights and, to my knowledge, did nothing to set them back.    For 8 years FUD was spread throughout the ""2nd amendment community"" while gun and ammo manufacturers profited like crazy and nothing actually threatened them and the NRA was turned into a parody of itself.  It's ...  Odd."


"Yes, we're on the same page.   But what if incremental improvements in materials, actuators, etc give us a 3D printer with diamond-scribe cutters that *can* machine a block of metal? Cooling will be a problem, but consumers are building liquid-cooled computers and even oil-bath computers and LN2-cooled systems.   A few breakthroughs, and then it's just about commoditizing the machinery. Pricing may never get to ""Let's get one for Timmy for his birthday"" level, but a $75,000 investment isn't unheard of for a small shop.   The next tipping point would be carbon-fiber and nanomaterials. Maybe we'll figure out how to lay down strands of carbon tubes in a commercial environment. Then a 3D printer builds up the part instead of cutting it out of a block. Or consider a new resin that could be injection-molded into a dynamic mold. We only recently discovered aerogels and green/white technology - not a stretch to consider Bakelite+ that would be strong enough to hold a stator for an industrial motor.   SF authors of the 50s should've known better about flying cars. These were smart men, and if they had simply considered the issues of energy density vs. lifting a metric ton of metal they quickly would've seen that they are simply impractical thanks to the laws of physics.   And us not living on the moon isn't an issue of technology. We just stopped going."


I guess if your sport is Polo it might be $5,000/year, or you have membership at private ski hills or golf clubs.  But most people aren't paying anywhere near that to play soccer or baseball or hockey for a year.


To me that says nothing good about the manager that said it. You can't quantify everything, and managing the intangibles is a big part of what a manager's supposed to do. If they're just dealing in numbers, they're just a bad approximation of an accountant.


And how is that abuse, those are their benefits.  If they choose to use them to do drugs or eat food they would still get them either way.  These people are NOT entitled to them.    If they bought the food and didn't eat it, is that abuse too?  I fully understand that's not the intent but at the end of the day how you choose to use the benefits you are entitled to is on you, land of the free right?


Yep.  I mostly use Amazon for product research and comparison.  Amazon's prices were always in the ballpark, but now they are often the highest on the Internet.  An extra search or two will get you lower prices somewhere else.  Do not make Amazon your first stop for anything.


There is an element of, hiring a new person is expensive to do, and involves various commitments with respect to that person (space for them to work, equipment, healthcare, etc.) - which can make it more sensible to pay employees overtime instead of hiring extra staff.  On the other hand, if it really is running like that for years, someone's an idiot.


With an annuity, you invest directly into an annuity with money you have earned as wages/salary/etc. You pay for it, and trade your payments into the annuity for guaranteed payments from the annuity issuer in the future. The more you pay in before the annuity payments begin, the more you will receive for your annuity payment. With a pension, most often you invest implicitly, rather than directly, into the pension. Rather than making a cash contribution on a regular basis, it is likely that your employer has periodically invested into the pension fund for you, using monies that would otherwise have been paid to you if there were no pension system. This is why your pension benefits are often determined based on years of service, your rate of pay, and similar factors.


Shhh...  I have an idea.  Hey let's you and me - the only owners of the public gold mines we don't mine fully to keep prices high - appear to make more gold available by making a swap agreement tied with pricing deals designed to have the affect of keeping prices high.  Then maybe the government won't demand the public gold mines back that they only sold to us with the caveat we actually mine them fully.


You check your 401(k) retirement account, making sure your portfolio is carefully balanced. You scan your bank and credit card statements from time to time to verify the charges. These are things responsible people do.  >But there’s a good chance you’ve spent time recently on a chore you didn’t sign up for: finding out if hackers possibly stole information about you from Equifax Inc.,  That's where you're wrong, kiddo. Why would I need to freeze my credit? Because someone else was stupid?  Ah, hahaha, ha. nope.


While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started as a relative moderate price insurance, it quickly became expensive, unaffordable, tax for those who don't want/need it, and hard to get as in some states you have only one choice (or no choices very soon).  It destroys and destroyed the medical profession. Doctors have no control on how and what they get paid for their work. You can't be an independent doctor and what you paid is very little, not worth your time in many cases.  It's even costly for the insurance companies and many of them dropped from the program.  Trump and I are NOT(!) against National healthcare system.  Both Trump and me want to fix the system and make it reasonable, better and fair.


"They aren't necessarily trustworthy. Many institutions claim to have a ""Chinese Wall"" between their investment banking arms and analysis arms. In practice, these walls have sometimes turned out to be entirely imaginary. That is, analysis is published with an eye to what is good for their investment banking business. One of the most notorious cases of this was Henry Blodget, an analyst with Merrill Lynch during the dot-com bubble. Blodget became a star analyst after he correctly predicted Amazon would hit $400/share within a year. However some of his later public analysis dramatically conflicted with his private comments. Famously when he started covering GoTo.com, rating it as ""neutral to buy"", he was asked  ""What's so interesting about Goto except banking fees????"" Blodget replied, ""nothin"". Eventually he was permanently banned from the securities industry."


It's best to start hard then get nicer if you want.  Make a quick example of anyone who gives you grief or tests you. Others will then quickly fall in line. Some people are like children and need a firm hand.  Firm, Fair, and Frank.  A little Machiavellian I know but speaking from experience it works.


Did you just completely skip the link I posted earlier about a company working on this very thing? Also, you keep on moving the targets to continue your objections. You were the one that said $12/hr. I showed how a machine could be a cost effective alternative. People are working on these machines *right now*. It may take a decade for market penetration, but this is happening.  I don't expect my level of job to be impacted by it for a long, long time, but there will be pressure applied to the job market itself.


"> Who gets control of your wealth when you pass away then?  If someone has no remaining heirs in his/her generation then he/she can leave the money to the charity/non-profit of choice.  Of course, it would be illegal to set up the ""give lots of money to Mr. Burns descendants"" endowment."


Since there are no details (rightfully so). You need to know how it will make money, period. Snap chat sounded like a weird idea, but it got super popular and is valued very high. But guess what - it doesn't know how to make money. Which is why the value has been so volatile and going down. You need to know how your idea will *very specifically* make money. Details about your target audience, how many people does it include, how you will attract them, why they would want your product or service over someone else's, how you will give it to them, how much they would pay, how often would it be needed. And you need to know how much money it will cost you to make that money so figure out the costs you need to know the exact resources that you will need, how much they will cost, how long it will take to even begin execution, and how long you expect it will be until you are cash flow positive. There's a lot more but hopefully that's a starting point for you since you seem to not any real research done


Regarding the opportunity cost comparison, consider the following two scenarios assuming a three-year lease: Option A: Keep your current car for three years In this scenario, you start with a car that's worth $10,000 and end with a car that's worth $7,000 after three years. Option B: Sell your current car, invest proceeds, lease new car Here, you'll start out with $10,000 and invest it.  You'll start with $10,000 in cash from the sale of your old car, and end with $10,000 plus investment gains. You'll have to estimate the return of your investment based on your investing style.   Option C: Use the $10k from proceeds as down payment for new car In this scenario you'll get a reduction in finance charges on your lease, but you'll be out $10,000 at the end. Overall Cost Comparison To compare the total cost to own your current car versus replacing it with a new leased car, first look up the cost of ownership for your current car for the same term as the lease you're considering.  Edmunds offers this research and calls it True Cost to Own.   Specifically, you'll want to include depreciation, fuel, insurance, maintenance and repairs.  If you still owe money you should also factor the remaining payments.  So the formula is: Cost to keep car = Depreciation + Fuel + Insurance + Maintenance + Repairs On the lease side consider taxes and fees, all lease payments, fuel, and maintenance.  Assume repairs will be covered under warranty.  Assume you will put down no money on the lease and you will finance fees, taxes, title, and license when calculating lease payments.  You also need to consider the cost to pay off your current car's loan if applicable.  Then you should subtract the gains you expect from investing for three years the proceeds from the sale of your car. Assume that repairs will be covered under warranty.  The formula to lease looks like: Lease Cost = Fuel + Insurance + Maintenance + Lease payments - (gains from investing $10k) For option C, where you use the $10k from proceeds as down payment for new lease, it will be: Lease Cost = Fuel + Insurance + Maintenance + Lease payments + $10,000 A somewhat intangible factor to consider is that you'll have to pay for body damage to a leased car at the end of the lease, whereas you are obviously free to leave damage unrepaired on your own vehicle.


According to the tax reform framework, changes to the current tax code would eliminate important provisions, such as the state and local tax deduction, while nearly doubling the standard deduction and eliminating personal and dependency exemptions. NAR believes the result would all but nullify the incentive to purchase a home for most, amounting to a de facto tax increase on homeowners, putting home values across the country at risk and ensuring that only the top 5 percent of Americans have the opportunity to benefit from the mortgage interest deduction.  This isn't good and serves no benefit. You would THINK someone with a background in real Estate would know this. It appears not.  There would also be a rise in rents as taxes go up.


Assuming your tax status in India is Non-Resident. The funds are deposited in an NRE account, there is nothing that needs to be done. If you have any income in India, then you would need to file a tax return.


A negative balance in your Debit Account means you owe money to the bank - and yes, it probably means you have used more than what you had in your account ( overdraft ).


I just switched (from the abandoned, but good MS Money) to Moneydance 2010


Look. I don't contest that Sony is an *immense* company, nor that they make a lot of shit. You're obviously right, and the stuff I wrote sounds ignorant from your perspective. Got it.  And I'm not saying Sony isn't selling a bunch of hardware -- the PS3 has slowly made up for its ridiculous launch -- but things are changing. Sony isn't the market leader it once was. The kids don't *all* have Playstations anymore, neither do they have Walkmans.  What I am saying, though, is that once I have Netflix on my PS3, why should I buy a PS4? Sony could have been their own damn Netflix, but they end up making just the machine Netflix runs on -- and making it physically painful to get Netflix to install and run. *That's* my point about software killing hardware.


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Anderson Consulting was spun off and IPO'd in 2001 to get cash for consulting and non-consulting partners. (KPMG also spun off its consulting group in 2001 and E&Y spun off in 2000, PWC sold off its consulting in 2002). At the time is was a cash grab, within a few years every of the Big5 had formed new consulting groups.


"The Trustee has allowed me to act as his ""agent"", continuing to pay   bills, and take care of much of the administrative affairs for my   mother's estate since I did all of it for years before she passed   away. I was not paid for any of this work. ... The expenses were more than $30K last year, and there is still a punch list to go this year. The trust should reimburse your expenses and deduct them on the trust tax return. Since the Trust owned the property in 2015, and I will receive ownership this month, can last year's expenses incurred for the Trust be deducted again future income for my property this year?  Not exactly. The trust will file its own tax return and will report the income/loss attributed to the beneficiaries per the trust rules. What is attributed to you will flow to your Schedule E. From there you own it and if it is a passive activity where the loss is limited - you can carry it forward and offset with future gain. The trustee will have to deal with all the paperwork. Do 1099-misc forms need to be filed for the contractors who worked to get it ready for rental? It is my understanding that since 2010 (and before 2010) landlords who are not in real-estate trade or business are not required to send out 1099. But it won't hurt if you do, also. In any case - for all of these issues you should talk to a tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State)."


More wisdom from the armchair economist who can't answer a simple question. And I see you still haven't found your balls yet. Don't worry. They'll drop some day.  Or wait, do you need reminding of what the question is? Memory can be hard when you're slow.


If you fail, what's going to happen? Corporate jobs are going to think you lack ambition and the ability to work?   Tbf, it is what it is. There are plenty of high skilled jobs you just need to acquire the skills and experience these jobs are looking for. Hit the ground running and get internships asap, have a curiosity that can't be quenched. Go to career counselor, go to office hours etc.   Plan it out and go full steam, don't slack.