"Michael McGowan's answer is correct. The HDHP is like conventional insurance -- it is not like a ""health care plan"" that we're all used to. I.e. you don't want to have it pay out -- if it pays out, something bad has happened to you. (Just like you hope to never make a claim on your homeowner's, disability, or AD&D insurance -- that means something bad happened to you.) There are minor exceptions -- some HDHPs may cover preventive care, immunizations, etc to some extent. The bonus in the case of the HDHP is that you get to put money to cover the deductible into a tax deferred account. The HSA is effectively a self insurance fund with the HDHP as backup. Here's a concrete example. Say you have an HDHP with a $2500 deductible. The monthly premium is $500. You put $3000 into your HSA. Scenario 1: You remain mostly healthy throughout the year. You have a single doctor's visit, the doctor's office submits a claim to your insurance. The insurance doesn't pay because you haven't met your deductible, and you get a bill for $150. You write the doctor a check for $150 out of your HSA. Here, you've spent $6000 on your HDHP premiums, contributed $3000 to your HSA, and spent $150 of that on health care. At the end of the year, your HSA balance is $2850. In the following year, assume you plan to contribute another $3000 to your HSA. You can increase your deductible on the HDHP to $5000 (since you'll have $6000 in your HSA to cover out of pocket costs) and your monthly premium might go down to $400. Scenario 2: You are hospitalized for a week. The hospital submits a $15000 claim to your insurance. The insurance pays $12500 since your deductible is met after $2500. The hospital sends you a bill for $2500 for the balance. You write a check to the hospital out of your HSA. Again, you've spent $6000 on your HDHP premiums and contributed $3000 to your HSA. At the end of the year, your HSA balance is $500. Scenario 3: You are hospitalized for two days in December 2011, and then again for two days in January 2012. Your deductible reset on January 1, 2012. The hospital submits two claims to your insurance: one in 2011 for $5000 and one in 2012 for $5000. The insurance company pays $2500 on the first one and you get a bill for the other $2500. Same thing for the second one -- you've got to meet the deductible all over again. You write the hospital a check from your HSA to pay the first one. Then you've only got $500 left in your HSA. But you were planning to make another $3000 HSA contribution for 2012 anyway, so you make the contribution, write a $2500 check to pay the second bill, and you've now got a balance of $1000 in your HSA -- and since you've met the deductible for 2012 you should have no more out of pocket expenses. (Assuming your plan doesn't have copays.)"


• you have to mine the uranium (or other elements), destroying land, releasing sediments in the air and it does use fossil fuels and water. not to mention the extensive refining process after that • once the lifespan of the nuclear plant is over, it just sits there, you can't do anything with it • have to store the used rods for thousands to hundreds of thousands of years  I studied this kind of stuff in school, nuclear isn't as clean as you would hope. even EVs aren't as clean as they make them out to be (still better than internal combustion).   however I'm not familiar with MSRs, but I expect there to be trade offs as well. nothing is perfect


You could use a money transfer service like Western Union or the equivalent.


I love giving non-answer answers.  It will depend on you.  Suppose you are embarrassed by driving older cars, your significant other doesn't like having you drive an older car, you don't really maintain the car well, it develops a variety of problems, acquires a few dents and you really worry about reliability.  Then the value of the car will probably drop rather quickly below the blue book value and you should sell it. On the other hand, if you don't care how the car looks, it runs pretty well (fewer repairs than you would expect), you maintain it yourself (aka cheaply) and do a good job at that, and have plenty of friends who owe you a favor and will give you a ride if your car won't start, there will probably never be a time that the value to you drops below the 'official' blue book value (what others will pay), so you would drive it until the engine drops out of the chassis.  The blue book value represents some kind of rough consensus about what a car of that age and exterior condition is worth to the typical person; it will be the discrepancy between the 'typical' person and you that determines whether you'll sell. An illustration of this:  I know a few people who (1) don't care what their car looks like and (2) are very handy at repairs.  These people started out by buying cheap used cars and ran them until they basically fell to pieces.  However, even though their 'taste' in cars didn't changes, as their incomes increased, it finally reached the point where doing their own repairs was too much of a time sink, so the value of really old cars dropped in their minds and they shifted to buying newer cars and selling them before they completely fell apart.  That's why this is a hard question to answer.


Using the standard loan formula with 21% APR nominal, compounded weekly. Calculate an adjusted loan start value by adding 31 - 7 = 24 extra days of daily interest (by converting the nominal compounded weekly rate to a daily rate). For details see Converting between compounding frequencies Applying the standard formula r (pv)/(1 - (1 + r)^-n) = 189.80 So every weekly payment will be 189.80 Alternatively Directly arriving at the same result by using the loan formula described here,  The extension x is 31 - 7 = 24 daily fractions of an average week (where 7 daily fractions of an average week equal one average week). As before, the weekly payment will be 189.80 Both methods are effectively the same calculation.


"An Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) is a special type of mutual fund that is traded on the stock exchange like a stock.  To invest, you buy it through a stock broker, just as you would if you were buying an individual stock. When looking at a mutual fund based in the U.S., the easiest way to tell whether or not it is an ETF is by looking at the ticker symbol.  Traditional mutual funds have ticker symbols that end in ""X"", and ETFs have ticker symbols that do not end in ""X"".   The JPMorgan Emerging Markets Equity Fund, with ticker symbol JFAMX, is a traditional mutual fund, not an ETF.  JPMorgan does have ETFs; the JPMorgan Diversified Return Emerging Markets Equity ETF, with ticker symbol JPEM, is an example.  This ETF invests in similar stocks as JFAMX; however, because it is an index-based fund instead of an actively managed fund, it has lower fees. If you aren't sure about the ticker symbol, the advertising/prospectus of any ETF should clearly state that it is an ETF.  (In the example of JPEM above, they put ""ETF"" right in the fund name.)  If you don't see ETF mentioned, it is most likely a traditional mutual fund. Another way to tell is by looking at the ""investment minimums"" of the fund.  JFAMX has a minimum initial investment of $1000.  ETFs, however, do not have an investment minimum listed; because it is traded like a stock, you simply buy whole shares at whatever the current share price is.  So if you look at the ""Fees and Investment Minimums"" section of the JPEM page, you'll see the fees listed, but not any investment minimums."


India and the United States have a tax treaty agreement whereby double taxation is avoided. However check with your accountant in the US who should be able to guide you further in this regard. It is now easier to transfer money out of India. As long as the source of the money is legal and can be verified. So if you decide to sell a property, get payments by way of documented bank transactions like cheques and avoid cash deals. Once taxes are paid money can usually be transferred out.


I wouldn't start a bidding war if I were you. Sometimes you may get potentially bad tenants who cannot find a property anywhere else offering more money just to get in a place. If you know nothing else about these people how can you guarantee they will keep paying the rent once they get in. The things you should be doing is checking the prospective tenant's employment and income status, making sure they are able to easily pay the rent. You should check their credit report to see if they have a history of bad debts. And you should be checking with their previous landlords or real estate agents to see if they caused any damages to their previous properties. You should create a form that prospective tenants can fill out providing you with all the essential information you are after. Get them so sign a statement that gives you authority to ask information about them with other people (their previous landlords/ real estate agents, and their employers). Have a system set out on how you will assess all applicants and for the information the applicants need to provide you with. Treat it as a business.


Borrow the lot (as your family recommended)! The extra money will come in useful when you want to buy a house and move back to the area where your employer is. The government loan in the UK is a fantastic system, just a shame they are charging you so much in tuition fees...


Here's something you don't hear too often: in this country there are 22 million children under the age of 5 who are obese. What are the economic implications of this? In ten years a significant portion of our population will have been diabetic for 15 years. There are medical costs associated with taking care of 20 year olds who need amputations and extreme medical care, and there are costs associated with a significant portion of our population underemployed because they are disable.


"He's paying the interest and you're paying the principal. If you're making minimum monthly payments, you'll still be doing the same thing 25-30 years from now. I think Parker's advice was very, very good, but I'd like to add to it a little of my own. Whatever dollar amount your son is sending to you as payment, encourage him to continue doing that. Only instead of paying you, have him put that money into a savings plan of some kind. You mentioned that he's struggling now, yet able to come up with approximately (my best guess) $200/mo. I guarantee you that if he puts that $200/mo back into his pocket, he'll still be struggling every month yet have nothing to show for it. My suggestion changes nothing in his daily life, yet gives him $2400 at the end of every year.  I was in a somewhat similiar situation as your son, only to the tune of $13,000. About 20 years ago, I got a loan and bought a new truck in which to use to go back and forth to work every day. The first 5 months the payments to the bank went as planned. Then my wife announces that ""we're"" pregnant. So my parents figured it would be best to just pay off my loan to the bank, avoiding any further interest charges, and take that truck payment and put it away for a rainy day. At 33 y/o, with my first child on the way, I finally started saving some of my money. It was good advice on their part because the rainy days came! They never asked me to pay them back, however I did offer. I've been tucking away $300-400/mo in the bank every month since then because I just got into the habit. Good thing I did too. In the past 10 years I've had to bury both of my parents, one sister and two wives and I'll tell ya, one thing that was comforting was the fact that I had the money. The little truck I bought 20 years ago is now my son's. It has around 260,000 miles on it now. When he trades it in for a newer vehicle, I will probably loan him the money and have him make payments to me rather than the bank. I, too, am not one to pay interest if I can help it. If he defaults, he's my son. I just won't buy him another vehicle! Or maybe he'll get into the same habit of saving money the same way I did. Like JohnFx said, money loaned to family should be regarded as a gift, otherwise you'll end up losing your money AND your family member! Hope some of this helps you make your decision."


Calling insider trading theft is a pretty big stretch. I think it should remain illegal as it's not great for markets and undermines investor faith, if the people that bought stock from this guy wanted the stock they would have gotten it anyways.


If they are truly long term investments I would not put a stop loss on them. The recent market dive related to the Brexit vote is a prime example of why not to have one. That was a brief dive that may have stopped you out of any or all of your positions and it was quite short lived. You would likely have bought your positions back (or new positions entirely) and run the risk of experiencing a loss over what turned out to be a non event. That said, I would recommend evaluating your positions periodically to see if they still make sense and are performing the way you want.


What's it like being all the way up on that pedestal without having a clue what you're talking about? Are you dizzy? Do you have to apply extra Sunscreen to your upturned nose?  When you read that one Wikipedia article, and 3 Forbes links are you just overwhelmed with the strength you just acquired, or have you felt this Supreme power all along?   We have so many questions! Please answer them with vague, nondescript platitudes and more questions please. That would be awesome.


"I have to disagree with Scott's point about bank's ability to reimburse you for money withdrawn by people who stole your debit-card - that is only limited to transactions taken place after you reported the lost of the card (http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre04.shtm).  In the event that someone got into your banking account and conduct transactions without your knowledge, you are pretty screwed unless you can prove it wasn't you who did the transaction.  The same goes for people whose debit card was ""copied"" (e.g. by swiping through those hacked ATM) - the bank's insurance policy doesn't kick in until you report loss. Mint.com is very nice website and too bad it doesn't work for Canadians.  I instead opt'd for Yodlee (moneycenter.yodlee.com) which is the engine behind Mint but works for Canadians (but without all the social network aspects/features).  These sites are good for aggregating your various personal financial info online, but none of them are good enough (yet) for me to ditch my Microsoft Money - oh wait, MS has decided to discontinue the product and I need to look another one... Chris"


Because most commerical buildings where these data centers are installed require year round cooling, even during the winter. Aside of the perimeter, the vast majority of the spaces are cooled due to heat gains from solar, lighting, and equipment. The heat from the data center cannot be harnessed aside of providing some of this heating, or to help with the heating of domestic water. Overall, exceptionally little of it is useful.


You are either VAT registered or you are not VAT registered.  If you are not VAT registered, then you are not allowed to charge customers VAT, and you cannot reclaim VAT that you are paying. You are however allowed to deduct the cost of goods including VAT from your expenses. So if you buy a computer for £1000 + £200 VAT, and you can deduct the computer as an expense to reduce your profits that you pay income tax for, then the expense is £1,200 and not just £1,000.  If you are VAT registered, then you MUST charge every customer 20% VAT. Business customers don't mind at all, but private customers will be happier if you don't charge VAT because your bills will be a lot lower. You take all the VAT that you received, then subtract all the VAT that you paid for business expenses and that you have invoices for, and send the remainder to HMRC four times a year. (The reason that businesses don't mind paying VAT is because they can in turn deduct the VAT they pay you from the VAT that they received and for every pound they give you, they give one pound less to HMRC). Note that when you have expenses that are deductible from your profits, you can now only deduct the cost excluding VAT. On the other hand, the VAT you receive doesn't count as income and doesn't lead to profits that you need to pay income tax for. It's your decision whether you want to be VAT registered or not, unless your revenue exceeds some limit (somewhere between £70,000 and £80,000 per year) where you must register for VAT.


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"Historically, most economists considered a sustained negative interest rate impossible for just the reason you describe: an investor could outperform a bond with a negative interest rate by simply hoarding cash. For background, see Wikipedia. Experimentation by central banks in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis, however, demonstrates that slightly negative interest rates are possible. First of all, note that the ""zero lower bound"" on interest rates has everything to do with the existence of cash as an alternative. It's a lower bound on the nominal interest rate, rather than the real interest rate—that is, on the rate before adjusting for inflation. In most situations, the real interest rate is more economically meaningful, as it's the real interest rate that measures the market's preference for ""stuff now"" as opposed to ""stuff later."" There's nothing in principle or in practice to stop a negative real interest rate: there are always some people who want stuff now and some people who want stuff later; a negative real interest rate just means that people who want stuff later are more dominant in the market. As I stated earlier, what creates the ""zero lower bound"" is the existence of cash as an alternative to bonds. Even though that lower bound applies, it's not strict: hoarding cash in large quantities can be difficult and expensive, especially when central banks are doing their best to prevent you from doing it. Consequently, investors who strongly prefer ""stuff later"" to ""stuff now"" are willing to pay a slightly negative nominal interest rate on bonds in order to avoid those costs. If it were significantly negative, however, you're right that no sane investor would buy such a bond."


"The problem with your math is that your assumptions are all sorts of fucked up. You have him living in a 700 sqft apartment in Sunnyvale but paying $1400 in Indianapolis (I live here). $1400 in Indy is enough to rent a 3 bedroom house, or a 3 bedroom luxury apartment downtown. And a front end dev isn't going to be making 70K in Indy with 5 years experience. That's the average of salaried employees in Indy, web developers make more, my friend's starting webdev job out of a no name local college here was 70K. With 5 years experience you can find a job paying a lot more than that. Your salary scale is automatically going to be skewed since tech pays more and a greater percentage of the population is going to be in tech in SF than Indy. The dude would probably be making more like 90k if he was competent. And paying $500 a month for a 700 sqft apartment. If he had some money for a down payment, for $1400 a month he could afford the mortgage of like a 300K house, and could actually be putting that money into an investment rather than sinking that money into rent. Good luck buying a house in SF for less than 1M. But for sport, let's assume he doesn't buy a home and is renting a small apartment. So he is now paying only $6000 a year for housing and is making 20K more than your estimate which after taxes is like what, at least 16K in take home money, plus the 11K he is paying less in rent than you assumed? So he is actually making 27K more than you are assuming in your math, and now instead of making 20K less a year than he would in SF, he is making 7K more. Again, if he was smart and bought a house, which isn't possible for 99% of people in SF, the monetary gain isn't even close.  And don't get me started on the ""perks"" of California. People from Cali all seem to be under the assumption that things like nature, restaurants, and entertainment only exist in California."


> since it's not their money (it's ours)  What money are you talking about? Taxpayer money? USPS doesn't receive any taxpayer money.  > If they can't even run something simple as the post office without nearly going out of business, healthcare is an impossibility.  So Medicare is impossible?


Most national banks are required by the regulations of their host countries to hold significant reserves in the form of government debt. A default would likely wipe out their capital and your common stock would become worthless. The common stock only has positive value today because of the option value based on the possibility the host country will evade a default.


This is not the answer you were hoping for.  I recommend that you stay out of it and let your parents do what they want with their money.  They are obviously very good savers and very thrifty with their money. At this point, they likely have more money than they need for the rest of their lives, even if it doesn't grow.  It sounds like your parents are the kind of people that would worry too much about investing in the stock market. If you invest them heavily in stocks, it will go down at some point, even if only temporarily.  There is no need to put your parents through that stress and anxiety.  At some point in the (hopefully distant) future, you will likely inherit a sizable sum. At that point, you can invest it in a more intelligent way.


"Why not do both? The object is to ""squirrel"" away as much money as possible. The 401k has the advantage of being a payroll deduction. The IRA, if you can save the money, gives you more control. When you change jobs, you can ""roll over"" your first 401k into either your IRA or your second job's 401k. Note: There are legal limits on total contributions to IRA and 401ks. I've forgotten what they are, so find out for yourself. There may also be income limits, but ones that don't apply to most 23-year olds, unless they own their own company or work for say, Goldman Sachs."


> Earth has witnessed a surge in average temperature at a rate that’s unparalleled in the last **10,000** years  not true  e.g. how long have we had thermometers?  how long have people measured?  who has certified accuracy of the instruments?  how many times have the climate types been caught manipulating/falsifying the available data?


"That's the spin, but in practice it's meaningless for 90% of dry product. If they apply this to certain product categories it will lead to higher costs due to more product getting thrown away. Like I said, for fresh products y'all just don't buy shit that doesn't look perfect, and having stuff on the shelves past what we currently have it will make what's out there look bad... unless we just ignore what ""use by"" actually means and do it the old way regardless. Which is probably what will happen."


"One additional penalty is you will be put on the CAIVRS (""cavers"") for your default on the FHA mortgage which will preclude you from FHA financing in the future. When purchasing the multifamily unit it is an FHA requirement that you occupy one of the units.   Lastly, I would advise against FHA due to elevated costs.  Conventional options have 95% financing options, and don't have mortgage insurance that lasts forever, like FHA does."


"I would say that all of the reasons you list in your question are valid, and I would add the following... You are in the landscaping business, not the accounting business. If you manage everything in spreadsheets, at least one of you has to become the bookkeeper and leave the landscaping to the others. Spreadsheets are ""agnostic"" in how you use them, so you have to turn them into an accounting system, which means you're now not only more of a bookkeeper, but you're also more of a developer, too, and even less of a landscaper. Accounting software is already developed by developers who understand accounting. Using it requires you to only perform the data entry tasks, and then you can focus on the landscaping, customer service, sales and marketing, etc., things that actually contribute to your business.  It is still good for you to understand basic accounting principles. Specialized accounting software will guide you through the process of learning and help you avoid making many of the costly mistakes you might have made in that learning process."


"Things I would specifically draw your attention to: the contract typically allows for an ""option"" to purchase; it does not typically compel purchase, although this is seen the purchase price is negotiated before anything gets signed the option to buy is typically available to the renter for the period of the lease contract (ie., if it's a 12 month contract the renter can opt to buy at any time in that 12 months) the amount of rent paid over time that will be applied to the purchase price is negotiated up-front before anything gets signed rent is paid at a slight premium (as Joe notes, if the rent should be $1000 per month, expect to pay $1200 per month) if the renter walks away they walk away empty handed; they do not get back the premium Having said all that - it's a contract negotiated between renter and seller and all of this is negotiable.  See also, ehow for a good overview."


You're not going to like this answer.  You might be able to get out of the car. You probably won't be able to get out of the loan.  Option #1 - Sell the car privately (you'll get more in a private sale) and get a private loan for the difference between the sale price and what you owe.  Option #2 - If you go to a dealership that advertises that they will take any trade no matter how much you owe, they will roll your balance, less your trade in value, into your new loan. So for example, Let's say you buy a car for and borrow $20,000. The dealership gives you $6,000 for your trade because that's what they do that leaves $9,000 on your loan and you will end up borrowing $29,000 to buy a $20,000 car. Dealerships can be surprisingly accommodating but a lot of car buyers don't understand the terms of what they're getting into. I actually knew someone a few years ago who left a dealership with a new car and couldn't tell you anything about the deal beyond her monthly payment.  Option #3 - Hang on to the car and throw every extra penny at it to get the balance down on the loan until you can get it to the point where you can sell it, trade it in or refi it without putting out a big one time cash payment.


Go to glassdoor.com & do some research.  “Corrupt Middle Management Not Noticed By Christian Owners ”         Current Employee - Senior Underwriter  in  Cincinnati, OH  Pros  Don't have to do much to get paid. Slackers are rewarded.  Cons   Middle and top management below the owners and their direct reports are corrupt. They violate the rules they make everyone else follow and look to pad their own pockets off of the profits earned by those below them. Notice that ONLY the Interns think this is a great company. Over the past 5 years, with the change in human resources management the company consistently lets go of top knowledge and top performers...who are over the age of 45. Advice to Management  Clean house, starting with top human resources leadership. Those at the top of human resources are incompetent. That's why you pay so much for consultants and nothing changes. Read the reviews - the benefits are not even comparable to what other companies offer. So much money is spent for consultants to do Total Rewards work. Top human resources leadership doesn't respect anyone, including the rest of the C-Suite and the owners themselves. Other executives are called names and their lack of political savvy is commented on in front of staff level employees regularly. They describe themselves as the puppet masters; guess who the puppets are? The owners are too good of a family, have done too much good for Cincinnati and have too good of a company to let these corrupt human resources leaders tarnish their good name and strong business.   Doesn't Recommend   Neutral Outlook   Tl;dr: Looks like interns get paid 15/hour, & it'll be a good intro on how to deal with corrupt, conservative management.


"First lets understand what convexity means: Convexity -  convexity refers to non-linearities in a financial model. In other   words, if the price of an underlying variable changes, the price of an   output does not change linearly, but depends on the second derivative   (or, loosely speaking, higher-order terms) of the modeling function.   Geometrically, the model is no longer flat but curved, and the degree   of curvature is called the convexity. Okay so for us idiots this means: if the price of ABC (we will call P) is determined by X and Y. Then if X decreases by 5 then the value of P might not necessarily decrease by 5 but instead is also dependent on Y (wtf$%#! is Y?, who cares, its not important for us to know, we can understand what convexity is without knowing the math behind it). So if we chart this the line would look like a curve. (clearly this is an over simplification of the math involved but it gives us an idea) So now in terms of options, convexity is also known as gamma, it will probably be easier to talk about gamma instead of using a confusing word like convexity(gamma is the convexity of options). So lets define Gamma: Gamma - The rate of change for delta with respect to the underlying asset's price. So the gamma of an option indicates how the delta of an option will change relative to a 1 point move in the underlying asset. In other words, the Gamma shows the option delta's sensitivity to market price changes. or Gamma shows how volatile an option is relative to movements in the underlying asset. So the answer is: If we are long gamma (convexity of an option) it simply means we are betting on higher volatility in the underlying asset(in your case the VIX). Really that simple? Well kinda, to fully understand how this works you really need to understand the math behind it. But yes being long gamma means being long volatility. An example of being ""long gamma"" is a ""long straddle"" Side Note: I personally do trade the VIX and it can be very volatile, you can make or lose lots of money very quickly trading VIX options. Some resources: What does it mean to be ""long gamma"" in options trading? Convexity(finance) Long Gamma – How to Make a Long Gamma Position Work for You Delta - Investopedia Straddles & Strangles - further reading if your interested. Carry(investment) - even more reading."


The person writing the check has already signed and endorsed it. The depositer's signature is not to confirm the check's validity, but to demonstrate that the check was depisited to the correct Fred Smith's account, and permit charges to be brought if, eg, Fred Bonzo Smith tries to steal Fred Gnorph Smith's check.


Nobody owes anyone else a living, or preservation of a business model.  [Creative destruction](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction) is good for progress.  Note that it is already the case that physical retailers charge less online for picking up the exact same item in the same store.  For example Walmart will sell you an iPod touch for $189 for same day instore pickup, but if you walked into the store and bought it from the shelves they charge $199.  I don't use Amazon because I'm probably one of the only honest Californians and don't want the hassle of working out use taxes.  If Amazon did collect sales tax I would consider them.  The correct solution is of course to get rid of sales tax everywhere as it imposes a huge burden to collect and is [regressive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax).


I think this might help explain the dip at 40 in the numbers as well. People who worked their asses off through their thirties decided to try something else at 40 and skew the numbers. Could be something else but that was my thought.


level 1 is very challenging. The work itself is not confusing or anything, it is just a lot of volume of information to memorize, most of which is available within a few seconds on google, which is why I don't think it is really necessary to memorize that much data.


If you too are looking to clean your rain gutters then hiring professionals for the job is a good option. This is because these professionals hold expertise in such services and can help you avoid water damages and need of replacements.


There was a time that a rule of thumb stated your stock allocation should be 100-your age. That rule suggests that you are at 65%stock/35% bond/cash. If you are comfortable having this money 100% invested, the best advice would be dollar cost averaging, anything more specific would suggest market timing.


"> You are giving poor and uneducated people a lot more agency than they really have.  I mean that's sort of the social contract isn't it?  At some point we all agree that humans reach the ""age of reason"" and are responsible for their decisions.  What are the implications to say that uneducated don't have agency?  Should we use government force to ensure they make good decisions?  If they don't have agency should they be allowed to make their own reproductive decisions?  I'm not really sure how to take the implications of your argument.  >Also teen pregnancy are at historical lows        I'm referring to early 20's as well.  I'm not sure how you can view the pregnancy (and birth) rates of those in poverty over time but it would be interested to see.  I've seen some statistics that indicate that women in poverty have 15% more children than the rest of us, which by itself would create a perpetually growing under class."


You know, I shop local when I can, but for big mass produced stuff I often go the Amazon route. It is quicker, easier, and usually cheaper. I wouldn't use this in a store I liked a lot, but a Best Buy type, where they have displays laid out to a scientific formula, christmas music playing two months early to Pavlov me into a shipping mood, and set their TVs on HD then non-HD channels in a effort into making me perceive a bigger quality difference than actually exists? It is nice to have a counter tactic. Scan scan scan I say...


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Price, whether related to a stock or ETF, has little to do with anything.  The fund or company has a total value and the value is distributed among the number of units or shares.   Vanguard's S&P ETF has a unit price of $196 and Schwab's S&P mutual fund has a unit price of $35, it's essentially just a matter of the fund's total assets divided by number of units outstanding. Vanguard's VOO has assets of about $250 billion and Schwab's SWPPX has assets of about $25 billion. Additionally, Apple has a share price of $100, Google has a share price of $800, that doesn't mean Google is more valuable than Apple.  Apple's market capitalization is about $630 billion while Google's is about $560 billion.  Or on the extreme a single share of Berkshire's Class A stock is $216,000, and Berkshire's market cap is just $360 billion.   It's all just a matter of value divided by shares/units.


Yes, an investment can be made in a company before IPO. The valuation process is similar as that done for arriving at IPO or for a normal listed company. The difference may be the premium perceived for the idea in question. This would differ from one investor to other. For example, whether Facebook will be able to grow at the rate and generate enough revenues and win against competition is all a mathematical model based on projections. There are quite a few times the projection would go wrong, and quite a few times it would go correct. An individual investor cannot generally borrow from banks to invest into a company (listed or otherwise) (or for any other purpose) if he does not have any collateral that can be kept as security by the bank. An individual can get a loan only if he has sufficient collateral. The exceptions being small personal loans depending on one's credit history. The Private Equity placement arm of banks or firms in the business of private equity invest in start-up and most of the time make an educated guess based on their experience. More than half of their investments into start-ups end up as wiped out. An occasional one or two companies are ones that they make a windfall gain on.


Like Ganesh, I've used XE Trade - however I still do, fairly often.  I have never had a single problem with them regardless of the method I used to move money -- Draft, Wire, ACH, bill payment through online banking, etc. The type of trade I do most often is online bill payment to ACH -- i.e. I pay through my banking site and they pay through ACH.  There's no fee and it takes 2 business days to go through.  I do mainly CAD to USD conversions and I lose about 1.25 cents on the rate -- for example, if the CAD is worth 95 cents US, converting $100 CAD would get me $92.75 USD.  The banks usually take 2.5% or so, so it's 50% savings. It was free and pretty simple to sign up, all online -- and besides the standard info all they required was for me to upload a scan of a bank statement. As for an API, I have no idea if they have one.


Seems like I see an article like this posted at least once a month. We already know they're holding cash overseas. We already know it's because of taxes. No, Americans are not entitled to that money. No, the govt wouldn't actually spend it all on schools and hospitals and infrastructure. Yes, we need to reform the tax code.


No, most check deposits are processed that way. Banks transmit the pictures of the checks between themselves, and allow business customers to deposit scans for quite some time now. I see no reason for you to be concerned of a check being in a dusty drawer, it's been deposited, cannot be deposited again. If you're concerned of forgery - well, nothing new there.


If you really did have a large share size, a market order would move the price more so in your desired direction. Although your cost basis would be less ideal. Just use limit orders and scale in to a position. You can also exercise puts to be short stock


"Personally, I avoid making business deals with friends and relatives. There's just too much of a possibility that things can go wrong.  Let's assume that you're honest people and you have no intention of cheating your mother-in-law. Still, all sorts of things could happen that could make it difficult for you to repay the loan. You could lose your job. You could get some big medical expense. Etc. Then what happens? Then your financial problems become family problems. There's a strong temptation when people borrow from relatives to make paying the loan the lowest priority in their budget. ""I know I promised to pay \$X per month, but things are really tight right now and Mom should understand."" Maybe she does understand and can manage without it. But maybe not. And then it becomes a family fight. ""You promised you'd pay it back."" ""And we will, we're having a hard time right now. Can't you just give us a break?"" Etc. Or she might have some extra expense, and say, ""Hey, can't you pay a little more this month? I really need some extra cash."" ""I'm sorry, we're struggling just to make the regular payments, we can't."" ""Well I was willing to loan you all this money. The least you could do is pay me back when I need it."" Etc. You can end up ruining family relationships over money. Your wife can find herself in the position of having to choose whether to side with her mother or her husband. Etc. I'm sure plenty of people do things like this and it works out just great. But there are big risks. And by the way, apparently this was your idea, not your mother-in-laws. I wonder what her reaction is. Is she eager to help out her daughter and son-in-law and had nothing in particular to do with the money anyway? Or is she feeling very imposed on? It's one thing to ask relatives to let you borrow their car for the weekend. Asking someone to loan you $50,000 is a very big request. If one of my kids asked me to loan them $50,000 from my retirement fund, I'd consider that a very presumptuous request. (Unless they needed the money for life-saving surgery for my grandchild or some such.)"


It is obvious that Putin is not afraid of breaking any rules, he shows that he can be just like american presidents - do whatever he wants even if Russians and the world says NO. I don't think a war will start but who knows how far things can get.


But unfortunately telling the interviewer that you learned everything you need for the job at the public library will get you laughed out of any interview.  But I've met a lot of self educated programmers (I'm a programmer) that are awesome and I've met a lot of college educated programmers that I wouldn't let make my coffee.


But now you have cash on hand that wasn't used to pay debt, no change in net worth. In fact, if you refuse to pay your mortgage for two years until you're kicked out of your underwater house, your net worth goes up.


Yes it is possible. It would depend on Banks policies whether they would lend. Quite a few large corporations borrow money in one country for business needs in other country


"> A trucking company making millions of dollars a year on US highways derives more value from the roads than I do.   Trucking companies run on very slim margins (typical for a commoditized business) and the vast majority of benefit is captured by other players, employees, and the government (in the form of taxes).   Moreover, you appear to be confusing revenue and profits.  > Honestly anyone who says that they don't need to pay for roads because of their level of benefit from them is limited and I will call you a liar. Unless you are living in a box in the woods 100s of miles away from civilization you absolutely rely on the road system even if you never set foot on it.   Nobody ever said this. You are inventing an argument in order to counter it. Silly.  > Though at the same time a national highway system was something no business would ever make as it derives too little value for an individual business for the scale required to reach enough of the market. This is a perfect example of a project that is good for society but won't see the tab picked up by business voluntarily.   Sure. Again, you are way off on a tangent though. Nobody here has argued against infrastructure nor taxes required to fund them.   > It is foolish to assume your market value increases do not rely on infrastructure to happen. As much as paper-trading inflates value, for the most part, it is still tied to some kind of real work (or rather the expectation of) being done somewhere. That assumption of ability for a corporation to serve it's shareholders is based on the fact that companies have infrastructure needs handled and that expanding delivery to three new markets won't be hampered because the company must first complete the highway to serve these markets.  Again, you seem confused about the argument. We are not arguing about the basis of stock valuations and appreciation (which you happen to be wrong on, btw). We are talking about the relative value of infrastructure gained by the wealthy vs. non-wealthy. Replace ""stock market"" with ""30 year US Treaury Bonds"". Actually, don't... the next thing I'll see from you is some kind of comment about how infrastructure forms the basis for interest rates.  >The existence of infrastructure not only supports the market but allows you to exploit it. The internet here makes a great example. Prior to funding and a push by the government to standardize military and academic networks and technology as well as make microprocessors more powerful in order to stay ahead in tech race we had a mish mash of proprietary networks with very poor abilities to use them. Today we have the internet. A largely private system today however it would not exist without the involvement and funding from the government for the multiple programs that led to it's existence.  Great. Nobody ever said otherwise.  > If the taxes really outweighed utility businesses would not operate in the area at all. The thing is, they don't and taxes are not preventing businesses from growing.   I said personal utility. I personally employ 40 families. I pay considerable taxes for them. They pay income and sales taxes on top of that. It's a huge amount of money the government receives that they wouldn't have had I not chosen to go into business.  Incidentally, this brings up another point. Doesn't the government owe me something for generating that many jobs? Why am I not getting a tax break?  > Yes but that is because unless you are doing it ALL yourself then you did not generate that $10. As a business owner you are in charge of managing resources to help generate that $10, you yourself however did not generate that $10. You had employees, and contractors, and people managing your building, payroll and yes even taxes. Every person involved in getting the product or service from idea to the door are all part of that $10. If your efforts in that co-ordination are netting you 15% of the total then you are beating the market already and I am not sure what your problem is. If you are looking to double or triple your investments you are looking for Las Vegas not Wall St or Main St.  I see you don't understand how business works.  > I think the issue I see among people with your opinion is a failure to understand 2nd and 3rd order effects. Your bubble extends to what you do in your daily life and the parts of it you visibly see and touch. The world you see and touch every day is supported and made comfortable by a whole system and people whom you will never see or know.   The issue I see among people with your opinion is that it is naive and obviously not based in any real world experience. If you had ever actually run a business, you would realize how many people get paid before you do (including the government). You have maybe a 5% chance of making an above average wage and you fight like hell every day to stay afloat.   I encourage you to open your eyes and try to see the perspective of people who are actually making a difference in this world, and not the political lowlifes and lowlife leeches who have a vested interest in seeing to it that you believe something that simply isn't true."


Wait I'm confused maybe you can explain  I'm in the federal reserve and I buy a hundred pounds of coin material for 180 dollars. I put that material into a magic penny machine and get a hundred pounds of pennies. My hundred pounds of pennies will now have a value of 100 dollars.    I had a hundred pounds of mass worth $180 and now have a hundred pounds of mass worth $100.  Where did the 80 dollars go?


>And this is bad why? What is the total funding? What is the total return? Do you have the necessary facts to evaluate this?  Yes, I have. The public picks up generally, about 75% of the total cost of a major sports complex and in the past 20 years, U.S. cities have spent upwards of $20bn on major venues alone. Not included are the hundreds of smaller venues such as arenas and ice hockey facilities that almost never produce the sorts of economic benefits promised. Some, such as the Meadowlands in New Jersey aren't even paid off before the next one is being built. And that's not including sizeable and ongoing tax breaks. Sports teams are pretty profitable organizations - why does the public have to foot the bill?


Well I found out the hard way one way Best Buy might not be getting enough business:  they don't open until 1000.  Other stores in my area open either 0800 or 0900.  Granted Best Buy may have other problems, but now I don't even think of them when I need an item that morning for a job (electronic installations) because of those hours.


"It has to do with humidity (or dew point) and is partly meant to be a scale to judge how hot it ""feels"".  When you have high humidity, the sweat from your body will not evaporate as efficiently.  The evaporation is necessary to remove heat from your body, so without it you feel hotter.  With 100% relative humidity, the air is fully saturated and NONE of your sweat will evaporate."


I read your question that you have a comfortable amount toward retirement.  If not, pad your retirement accounts if possible. If your loan rate is locked at 2.67%, invest that money in the market and pay the loan as agreed.  So long as you feel comfortable in your employment and income status for the next few years, I would bet you will get a lot more out of your cash investing in diversified, low cost funds or ETFs that you will save in interest on that loan. Finally, if you decide to lower your debt instead of increasing investments (based on your tolerance for risk) why not pay more on the mortgage?  If you owe most of your mortgage and it is typically long term, you might cut many years off of the mortgage with a large payment.


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It's not the city it's the Port Authority. It's a special multistate police force. The PA is the reason the tapanzee bridge was built in such a dumb spot. The bridge had to be built 25 miles from the statue of liberty so the state of ny could collect the tolls. If it was built within 25 miles the PA is in charge.


On the contrary. Outsourcing to India and investing in India in general is quite profitable and strategically appealing.  1. India's Silicon Valley alone is incomparable to that of the States'.   2. Country is indisputably more advanced than people think. 3. Their call centre alone is known and classified as one of their strongest proficiencies.   4. Not to mention the strongest argument of all, they have their own production lines for almost everything. Thus, not importing anything but rather exporting and sharing its advanced products. 5. One of the most (if not the most) IT savvy countries in the world.   Only argument for the above post is the potential obstacle of discrepancies of culture between the outsourcing country and India. India may not be as diverse as would be preferred in order to rid the possibility of potential bottlenecks with regards to diversity.


They pick only one brand/supplier for a product. That cuts a whole lot of waste, guarantees their suppliers that Aldi will buy large and buy often so they can save money. Also their stores are smaller than some Walgreens, which means cheaper over head and less employees needed per store


It's been their strategy for years, I have colleagues who've worked in the packaging design departments for both Lidl and Aldi and it's blatantly obvious. When the briefs come in, designers are instructed to base the new design on a leading exisiting product's design, they have minimal time to design it and success is based on the careful balance of 'reminds consumer of brand, but is defensively differentiated.' So in other words make it close enough that it looks like and existing product but different enough that you could point out as many differences as there are similarities.   It's considered a pretty shady practice in the industry.


"It is possible and it depends on your strategy. As short selling interest rates are annual and levied monthly at a prorated rate. Interest rates are also low in general, with the exception of hard to borrow stocks. Therefore you can maintain a short position for weeks on end and notice nothing. Months even, if the position itself has already gained in your favor. There is no additional fee for opening the short position. Although some brokers have a ""locate"" fee, if it is hard to borrow the stock and they need to go find some shares to short. So you can do it as much as you like."


It seems smart to me to have a profitable business with a troubled future take today's profits to pay tomorrow's biggest expense. Those pensions won't be ignored when USPS is bleeding even more profusely in the future and the Government will have to bail them out; these payments only soften the blow.   The pension payment requirement only serves to make the long-term effects of the USPS poor retirement choices apparent today rather than later.


"Well if they offer free shipping that would be one thing and regardless if they raise the total cost that will likely result in fewer sales.  Of course, I'm not sure what the alternatives are for ""elderly people who live hundreds of miles from a pharmacy."""


You are very correct, rebalancing is basically selling off winners to buy losers. Of course the thinking is that selling a winner that has already increased 100% on the basis that it has doubled so it is likely to go down in the near future. However, just look at Apple as an example, if you bought Apple in June 2009 for $20 (adjusted price) and sold it as part of rebalancing when it rose to $40 (adjusted price) in September 2010, you would have missed out on it reaching over $95 2 years later. Similarly you look to rebalance by buying assets which have been battered (say dropped by 50%) on the basis that it has dropped so much that it should start increasing in the near future. But many times the price can fall even further. A better method would be to sell your winners when they stop being winners (i.e. their uptrend ends) and replace them with assets that are just starting their winning ways (i.e. their downtrend has ended and are now starting to Uptrend). This can be achieved by looking at price action and referring to the definitions of an uptrend and a downtrend. Definition of an uptrend - higher highs and higher lows. Definition of a downtrend - lower lows and lower highs.


"I've heard a franchisee's outlet be described as a ""franchise"" before, although I agree it sounds a bit off.  I was excited for the second half of that sentence because I thought it would expose some hilarious cultural misunderstanding but no:   > including the payment of royalties  Just good old embezzlement."


You should not buy soley for the dividend. The price of BHP is going down for a reason. If you hold until the full years dividend is paid you will make 11% (which is $110 if you bought $1000 worth of shares), but if the share price keeps dropping, you might lose 50% on the stock. So you make $110 on dividends but lose $500 on stock price drop. A perfect way to lose money.


No, you can not claim any sort of tax benefit. The main problem is that your parent is not living with you, though even if they were, they would also have to be dependent on you. I cannot find a good definition of 'dependant', but from what I can find, they must have only a trivial amount of income and must rely on you for at least 50% of their living expenses. Useful links include: Note that your parent may (but probably won't) be required to pay taxes on the money you submit to them. I have no experience whatsoever with Indian tax law, just pointing this out as a possibility.


"What kind of financial aid?  Today, most ""financial aid"" consists of loans.  Methinks it better for you to be ineligible for ""financial aid"" and be able to pay enough that they can cover the difference with their own sweat (their own income) rather than deliberately spending the money and forcing them to take out ""low interest"" student loans to pay part of the bill. Have you played with FAFSA to see what happens?"


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If you have the ability to pay online with a guaranteed date for the transaction, go for it. My bank will let me pay a bill on the exact date i choose. When using the mail, of course, this introduces a level of risk.  I asked about rates as the US currently has a near zero short term rate. At 3.6%, $10,000, this is $30/month or $1/day you save by delaying. Not huge, but better in your pocket than the bank's.


Thanks for sharing. I honestly didn't know about that. At the same time, I have to point out that Detroit is certainly an outlier from the rest of the country. Their housing market appears to have **really** hit rock bottom, so I assume it is the same in the neighboring communities. Some houses in the city itself were selling for like $5, so it stands to reason they had nowhere to go but up.


"You could buy options. I do not know what your time horizon is but it makes all the difference due to theta burn. There are weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly and even longer duration options called leaps. You have decided how long of a time frame. You also have to see what the implied volatility is for the underlying because if you think hypothetically that the price of the spy is 100 dollars currently. Today is hypothetically a Thursday and you buy a weekly option expiring on Friday ( the next day) of strike 100.5 and the call option is priced at .55 cents and you buy it. This means that the underlying has to move .5 dollars in one day to be considered in the money but at time 0, the option should only be worth its intrinsic value which is the underlying, (Say the SPY moved 55 cents up from 100 to 100.55), (100.55) minus the strike (100.5) = 5 cents, so if you payed 55 cents and one day later at expiration its worth 5 cents ,you lost almost 91% of your money, rather with buying and holding you lose a lot less. The leverage is on a 10x scale typically. That is why timing is so important. Anyone can say x stock is going to go up in the future, but if you know ****when**** you can make a killing if it is not already priced into the market. Another thing you can do is figure out how much MSFT contributes to the SPX movement in terms of points. What does a 1% move in MSFT doto SPX. If you can calculate that and you think you know where MSFT is going, you can just trade the spy options synthetically as if it were microsoft. You could also buy msft stock on margin as a retail investor, but be careful. Like Rhaskett said, look into an etf that has microsoft. The nasdaq has a nasdaq-100 which microsoft is in called the triple Q. The ticker is qqq. PowerShares QQQ™, formerly known as ""QQQ"" or the ""NASDAQ- 100 Index Tracking Stock®"", is an exchange-traded fund based on the Nasdaq-100 Index®. Best of luck and always understand what you are buying before you buy it, JL"


"In the grand scheme of things, Earth is going to be a barren rock and Sol will have turned into a red giant.    ""In our lifetimes"" is a decent measure of ""very long time"" when you're talking about things like economics and Moore's Law."


seriously money is debt has to be the most ridiculous comparison i've ever heard. that statement implies commutativity and certainly i would never say debt is money. i could take on debt to get money, but the debt itself is a liability and not an asset.  your last paragraph about fiat money is correct, but i should say that with modern financial markets price discovery isn't some magic voodoo thing.


"So you are back to saying that the price Walmart charges for each item depends on the income level of the purchaser.  That's not fair, so neither are taxes based on the income levels of taxpayers.  I don't think road sweepers should be subsidized so they can drive a Rolls Royce car. And I don't think they should be allowed to live in a Rolls Royce location unless they can afford to compensate those they exclude from it.  The fact they currently are is outrageous as it causes a shrunken economy and excessive inequalities.    Real estate bubbles are caused by not have a LVT. Obviously there could be no ""bubble"" as it would have already been taxed away."


Go to bankrate dot com. They will have a lot of metrics there that might give you an idea and rate each category. Capitalization and profitability metrics. May not be as granular as what you are looking for though.


"There obviously is not such a list of companies, because if there were the whole world would immediately invest in them. Their price would rise like a rocket and they would not be undervalued anymore. Some people think company A should be worth x per share, some people think it should be worth y. If the share price is currently higher than what someone thinks it should be, they sell it, and if it is lower than they think it should be they buy it. The grand effect of this all is that the current market price of the share is more or less the average of what all investors together think it should currently be worth. If you buy a single stock, hoping that it's undervalued and will rise, you may be right but you may equally well be wrong. It's smarter to diversify over lots of stocks to reduce the impact of this risk, it evens out.  There are ""analysts"" who try to make a guess of which stocks will do better, and they give paid advice or you can invest in their funds -- but they invariably do worse than the average of the market as a whole, over the long term. So the best advice for amateurs is to invest in index funds that cover a huge range of companies and try to keep their costs very low."


Uh why?  That's just going to make games cost more and take longer to make. More so its very likely this console gets any real market share.  As if its x86 based it's basically forced to compete with Xbox and PS graphics wise.


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What's a good proxy for the return of the market when utilizing CAPM for a WACC build up? I know I could rip data from Domadaran, but I'd like to calculate it for myself. Maybe S&P 500 earnings yield plus the 10yr? Also don't like taking the round assumption of 7%.


I'd certainly take a look at companies like UK Forex for transferring funds internationally.  Even if you get free wire transfers, the currency rates banks offer can be bad. My experience was transferring from NatWest to an Australian bank - saved my self hundreds of pounds by not using their swift service.


Correct.  Prior to 2011, new members under the pension plans in IL had automatic annual step-ups of 3%.  Historic, annual pension payouts are growing at 2x the rate of inflation for anyone grandfathered in.  Not to mention that many are taking multiple pensions or have [previously used tricks like taking a job for 1 day to raise their lifetime pension income payout level](http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/opinion/editorials/ct-teacher-pension-court-edit-0324-20150323-story.html?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F).  The unions and democrats basically raped the state and the taxpayer has been clueless until the chickens came home to roost.  The state is so blue/democratic that Gov. Rauner is almost at a disadvantage by default.  He's fighting an uphill battle.


This is fraud and could lead to jail time. The vast majority of people cannot obtain such loans without collateral and one would have to have a healthy income and good credit to obtain that kind of loan to purchase something secured by a valuable asset, such as a home. Has this been done before?  Yes, despite it being the US, you may find this article interesting.     Hopefully, you see how the intent of this hypothetical situation is stealing.


I used to use Quicken, but support for that has been suspended in the UK.  I had started using Mvelopes, but support for that was suspended as well!  What I use now is an IPhone app called IXpenseit to track my spending.


Other answers are already very good, but I'd like to add one step before taking the advice of the other answers... If you still can, switch to a 15 year mortgage, and figure out what percentage of your take-home pay the new payment is.  This is the position taken by Dave Ramsey*, and I believe this will give you a better base from which to launch your other goals for two reasons: Since you are then paying it off faster at a base payment, you may then want to take MrChrister's advice but put all extra income toward investments, feeling secure that your house will be paid off much sooner anyway (and at a lower interest rate). * Dave's advice isn't for everyone, because he takes a very long-term view.  However, in the long-term, it is great advice.  See  here for more. JoeTaxpayer is right, you will not see anything near guaranteed yearly rates in mutual funds, so make sure they are part of a long-term investing plan. You are not investing your time in learning the short-term stock game, so stay away from it.  As long as you are continuing to learn in your own career, you should see very good short-term gains there anyway.


Think of your stupid, most incompetent friend.  Now think if you want them to support themselves, if you want to personally support them for the rest of their lives, or if you want them to die so they aren't a burden.  That's really what it all boils down to.  Even if we make the assumption that the person's bad results are due to their stupid decisions (not due to their stupid biology but their stupid choices),  then the answer is what?  They die, somebody else takes care of them, they take care of themselves.  If taking care of yourself requires a really good brain, excellently made choices, and a superior work attitude, then a lot of people will fail.   If taking care of yourself can be done with a poor brain, a variety of bad choices, and a simple willingness to work, then a lot of people will succeed.


ETFs offer the flexibility of stocks while retaining many of the benefits of mutual funds. Since an ETF is an actual fund, it has the diversification of its potentially many underlying securities. You can find ETFs with stocks at various market caps and style categories. You can have bond or mixed ETFs. You can even get ETFs with equal or fundamental weighting. In short, all the variety benefits of mutual funds. ETFs are typically much less expensive than mutual funds both in terms of management fees (expense ratio) and taxable gains. Most of them are not actively managed; instead they follow an index and therefore have a low turnover. A mutual fund may actively trade and, if not balanced with a loss, will generate capital gains that you pay taxes on. An ETF will produce gains only when shifting to keep inline with the index or you yourself sell. As a reminder: while expense ratio always matters, capital gains and dividends don't matter if the ETF or mutual fund is in a tax-advantaged account. ETFs have no load fees. Instead, because you trade it like a stock, you will pay a commission. Commissions are straight, up-front and perfectly clear. Much easier to understand than the various ways funds might charge you. There are no account minimums to entry with ETFs, but you will need to buy complete shares. Only a few places allow partial shares. It is generally harder to dollar-cost average into an ETF with regular automated investments. Also, like trading stocks, you can do those fancy things like selling short, buying on margin, options, etc. And you can pay attention to the price fluctuations throughout the day if you really want to. Things to make you pause: if you buy (no-load) mutual funds through the parent company, you'll get them at no commission. Many brokerages have No Transaction Fee (NTF) agreements with companies so that you can buy many funds for free. Still look out for that expense ratio though (which is probably paying for that NTF advantage). As sort of a middle ground: index funds can have very low expense ratios, track the same index as an ETF, can be tax-efficient or tax-managed, free to purchase, easy to dollar-cost average and easier to automate/understand. Further reading:


It is fine to think about options you may have when X to Y years down the road you move out of the condo. The reason you move may be kids, or job opportunities,  or a shorter commute, or wanting to move back to Germany. The thing is that nobody can tell you what the investment situation may be when you move out of the unit. You may want to sell, you may need to sell; but the market may say no way to sell and get back what you owe - so you have to become a landlord. Or the prices could go through the roof, and selling makes the most sense. In those ten years the local market could crater because the water system is full of lead (see Flint Michigan), or the biggest industry moves. Other bad things could be overbuilding so that there are too many condos on the market. On the good side the neighborhood could become the place that young people graduating college in the mid 2020s want to live. Of course you can't ask them because they are currently in 6th grade. Decide what make sense for you now. What is the likelihood that you will have to move in 2-3 years. What about 3-7 years.  I would only start evaluating the investment part if I had lived there awhile and now had to plan what to do when we are ready to move out a year or two from then.


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What you are suggesting will not work. Banks have strict guidelines about what they can and cannot do with an FHA loan property. Remember the FHA is only an insurance policy to the bank saying that if you default they will cover a high percentage of the loan.  The bank won't take the risk of violating their insurance policy and the government refusing to pay them off if you default. Instead, consider doing a creative sale on your property, maybe a rent to own deal or owner financing. As long as you pay the mortgage the bank won't even know you don't live there and you can rent the house out to someone who eventually will buy it after the timeframe expires. Meanwhile you can go and get a new home or condo either thru regular financing or owner financing(search the internet to see how to do this) and you can use owner financing until you complete the sale of the first house. Otherwise just tough it out in the house you are in until the time expires and then sell. You made no mention of the property value but I am assuming if you bought it 3 years ago that you may have a little equity. Pleas note that if you sell at that time though you will likely have to come out of cash because your equity won't cover the realtor fee and closing cost. But if you do the rent to own I suggested earlier you can sell at a slightly higher price making sure you can cover those cost. I realize this answer is a little out the box but I deal with people who don't want properties all day and I have completed transactions like this many times. Good Luck and God Bless!


The amount of money spent on compliance to prevent insider trading alone probably dwarfs the cost it may impose on the markets.   But separately from that, the information that insider has is obviously going to get out, right? If it were spread through word of mouth heterogeneously and not released to all market participants at once, you eliminate or greatly diminish the value of ultra high frequency trading, which has become a useless arms race that probably doesn't add much value to society.  In the world of information, there's no clear marking that says *public* and *non-public*, but rather many shades between. I just don't think it's really worth pursuing except in the case of actual company insiders. We should be focusing our limited energy elsewhere, in my opinion.


"If you're in the US then no.  You cannot enter a binding contract therefore you will not get a loan from a bank. Cosigner or no cosigner, anything to do with a loan and a bank will not involve you.  Your parents can get a loan, then they can give you the money, then you can pay them for their payments, but none of that means the loan has anything to do with you.  It's their loan, if they default it's on them. Given your age, you probably will ignore everyone else's advice here about this trip being a bad idea if you can't afford it, but you should reconsider it.  You will be paying for this trip long after the fun and excitement has worn off.  This is the cycle that sends alot of families into bankruptcy, and it's a horrible habit to learn so young.  ""Loan"" shouldn't even be in your vocabulary dealing with anything other than a library book."


But that's the point. Financial analysts may have to make adjustments to get closer to some idea of true value. Auditors should assure comparability by testing adherence to sometimes arbitrary rules that at least are common (if the world outside the US doesn't exist, or the world doesn't include the US).


I can personally recommend MoneyWell. I've been using it for about a month now, and version 1.5 that was just released is a great upgrade from the previous version. The developer was very responsive during the open beta period, and from what I understand an iPhone version is in the works. (and no, I don't work for the publisher!) That aside, I've used a few other packages. I tried out iBank, which was fairly nice, but the account downloading functionality left a lot to be desired. I come from a MS Money background, and I am used to a seamless, reliable download scheme, and iBank's was (unfortunately) neither. Otherwise the interface was very nice. I had settled on MoneyDance before I found MoneyWell, and it's a pretty nice package. Unfortunately it's a Java application and doesn't adhere to most OSX interface practices. While the account downloading is substantially better than iBank's, the ugly interface made moving away from it fairly easy once I found something that had feature parity.


"If you do not want to learn basic history of what ""russia"" was 300 year ago, I can tell you only that Ukraine is totally different country from that ""Nigeria with snow"" as Moscow emigre Sergei Brin called it"


Except for the fact that you've said nothing but racist bullshit for 2 days. So I can say for sure that's not it, even though I hear you have black friends.   Seriously, how long are you going to spend trying to convince me that your stupid racist ideas are not as retarded as you are? You're wrong and a racist. Go away.


"This might get closed as an ""opinion"" question. Tough to say up front.  You are kind to be willing to do this, and if just you and GF, it would be simple, split the costs the same as the ratios of your incomes. Say you have twice her income. You pay 2/3 of bills and she pays 1/3. In effect, you are subsidizing her, but this is often the case for working married couples, one earning more than another.  But, this will mean subsidizing the friend as well. In theory, he has 1BR, and should pay 1/2 rent, 1/3 utilities and common food, etc. If he makes 1/2 your income, and so does GF, for simple math, he'll pay 1/4 of rent and utilities. That's an emotional issue, will you be ok with that? You'll be subsidizing a friend, instead of having a stranger pull their own weight."


"The three basic needs are food, clothing, and shelter. Housing falls into the third category. Because it is ""basic,"" housing takes up a large part of one's disposable income. The rule of thumb is that you shouldn't spend more than 25% of your income on rent or mortgages. And that is income BEFORE taxes. Anything much more than that takes up too much of one's budget. You simply CAN'T double housing's share of the budget from 25% to 50%. Whereas, it's easy to go from 1% to 2% for say, a cellphone upgrade. In the long run, housing prices are constrained by the size of people's housing budgets, which in turn are tied to incomes. Nowadays, that includes FOREIGN buyers. So there may be a case where west coast housing prices are driven up by Asian buyers, or Florida housing by buyers from Latin America, driving Americans out of local markets."


Because someone smarter than you by 50 IQ points (a quant) will depart their larger position long before you have a chance to see it coming. Your stop losses are useless as the market will open with the issue below your sell price. Your trade even if place at the same mine would settle after theirs. don't piss in the tall grass with the big dogs. If they are wrong or right does not matter you will be haircut or whipsawed.


"Going private does not mean that the company buys its own shares, only that the freely traded shares are bought up by a private entity (this can be management => ""management buy-out"" or it can be a private investor). The stock is then not traded publicly and the company gets rid of a whole slew of compliance obligations.   In your stated example the company would essentially convert all its stock to treasury stock, which does not pay dividends and has no voting rights. From what I gather from some googling this would actually imply that the company would liquidate itself since it now has no capital anymore. Not sure on this though, an accountant might be able to help here..."


The gold standard didn't work because of the following process:  * Start with 10oz of Gold. * Deposit in Bank A * Bank lends out 9 oz of Gold Certificates * Gold certificates deposited in Bank B * Bank B lends out 8oz of Gold Certificates * etc.  Now at the end of all this we have a lot of gold certificates.  This is called the [Money Multiplier](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_multiplier) effect.  What if someone wants to take their gold certificates and buy a boat made in Europe?  Well.  If they spend 5 gold certificates on that boat then the certificates land in the European bank who requests gold to be shipped from America to pay for it.    Suddenly America's bank reserves collapse and there is a very sharp credit contraction as all the banks stop lending because they are out of reserves that back their gold certificates.  If the person had actual coins he was using to buy the boat, only his consumption would be reduced and it wouldn't cause damage throughout the whole financial system.  So basically wherever you have fractional reserve banking, gold backed monetary systems will fail.  Anywhere you criticize fractional reserve banking your theory will be basically ignored because criticizing banking gets you nowhere in economics career-wise.  Praising derivatives and all sorts of hair-brained financial innovations will win you awards and prizes and guest appearances on CNBC though.


"It depends on the role you take. If you go into front office investment banking, there's no avoiding horrible hours as an analyst (slightly less terrible as associate, less terrible still as VP, etc.).  If you're doing corporate finance for for a F500 or otherwise large company, it doesn't have to be terrible -- from what I understand, you'll get busy periodically but for the most part your schedule is consistent and you have agency over your weekends.  ""Finance"" is a broad term that encompasses many different roles at many different institutions. In general, the closer to the ""client"" you are, the less hours you can expect in general (simply because even large corporations' M&A departments do far fewer transactions per month / year than do investment banking groups). But no, you don't have to expect 80-100 hour weeks by virtue of going into ""finance""."


"You don't mention what kind of insurance you're talking about, but I'll just address one angle on the question. For some kinds of insurance, such as health insurance (in the US), auto insurance, and homeowner's insurance, you may be insuring against an event that you would not be able to pay for without the insurance.  For instance, if you are at fault in a car accident and injure someone, they could sue you for $100,000.  A lot of people don't have $100,000.  So it's not even a matter of ""I'll take the risk of having to pay it when the time comes""; if the time comes, you could lose virtually everything you own and still have to pay more from future earnings.  You're not just paying $X to offset a potential loss of $Y; you're paying $X to offset a potential derailment of your entire life.  It is plausible that you could assign a reasonable monetary value to that potential ""cost"" that would mean you actually come out ahead in the insurance equation. It is with smaller expenses (such as insuring a new cellphone against breakage) that insurance becomes harder to justify.  When the potential nonfinancial ""collateral damage"" of a bad event are less, you must justify the insurance expenses on the financial consequences only, which, as you say, is often difficult."


No, but I have blinds that I close at night, and I don't live in a house made of glass to make it easier for them to see everything all at once.   Most importantly, I don't put video cameras in the windows and send the feed to Facebook trusting they'll do the right thing with it.


"Respectfully, I am of the opinion that you are mixing issues.  Paying a mortgage off early vs investing is a question that's been well discussed at Money.SE. If you project a higher tax adjusted return on the investments than your current mortgage rate, invest. Else, pay the mortgage down.  If the rent covers the mortgage, you can maintain the investing. It doesn't matter for this discussion if the rent produces a profit, so long as all expenses are covered.  Renting aside, in the US, now, my mortgage is 3.5%. 2.6% after taxes. So long as I expect a return well above this level long term, I'll stay investing, and let the mortgage die its slow death. Another decade or so.  I'm sorry I can offer a formula, it's ""less"" ""about the same"" or ""more."" The mortgage is fixed, right? But the market return is unknown."


This is what I said:  > The rich allocated the resources necessary for you to travel, live your life, and contribute to society, yes.  I never once implied they weren't being compensated for doing that, however, treasuries do have a very, very low yield compared to other investments. Their appeal is their safety, not their yield.


"What other cities can offer in a tight package, Detroit can only offer if Amazonians are wiling accept major compromises and hour drives.   Detroit proper is exceptionally weak on the talent Amazon needs, so you have to include the suburbs. Even then, it's nowhere near the most educated metro. So, then, you have to start saying, ""...but Ann Arbor..."" That's close to an hour away in traffic.   Detroit can offer land, but there are all sorts of issues with it as locals are well aware: high taxes, high crime, remediation needed. Plus the schools are poor, so many Amazonians would end up living deep in the suburbs and driving to work, rather than walking or riding transit.  The airport is another issue. It's an OK airport, but it's about as convenient as Denver's (it's not convenient).   Transit, as you mentioned, is another issue. Transit in Detroit is absolutely sub par.   No matter how you weigh the priorities, Detroit always ends up weaker than one or more of the alternatives. Add to that the reality that many people do not want to move to or live in Detroit...  >we'd be on par with most other metros  This is what locals want to believe, but many also seem to be of the wrong opinion that Detroit will be up to the level of Seattle in a handful of years. Detroit is nowhere near competitive at this point."


The other answers touch on why having two-factor auth or some other additional system is not worth it compared to simple reactive systems (cancelling lost cards, reversing fraudulent charges etc), but it should also be noted that this goal can be achieved with a method similar to what you describe.  My bank (TD Canada Trust) has an app (I'm on android) that gives you a notification immediately after your card is charged (even test charges like at the gas station).  It's really simple, does not slow down authorization, and makes fraud detection super easy.  (I'm sure some other banks have similar apps).


NB - I live in Surrey and bought my house in January 2014. If you don't have a very social life, it does pay to stay outside London. Places outside London are cheap and you will get a better deal in relation to houses or flats as compared to London. I feel very priced out of the market regarding London mortgages I will strongly question you logic behind this ? Why only London ? Why not live in the commuter belt outside London. Good places to reside, good schools, nice neighbourhood and away from the hustle and bustle of London. Many of my colleagues commute from Cambridge and Oxford daily into Central London and they laugh at people who want to buy a house in London, just for the sake of buying a house. It seems that the housing market is generally in a bubble due to being distorted by the finance market London house market is different from the rest of UK. People from overseas tend to invest in London property market, so it is always inflated. Even the property tax hasn't deterred many. I could look into buying somewhere and renting it out You are trying to join the same people, because of whom you have been put out of the housing market. I strictly question this logic unless your mortgage is less than the rent you pay and what rent you get. Buy a roof over your head first, then think of profiting from property.


Please don't forget survivorship bias. the same strategy and don't get lucky; we just never hear about them. Of course the most successful one is going to be the most well known, even if it's just lucky. You can never actually know.


There are ups and downs to doing this.  This isn't a taxable gain, because it's borrowed money that will be repaid. Whether there are restrictions or not depends upon your contract with the seller and your bank. If the concessions are for health & safety related repairs, your bank may require you to complete the work before closing or within a certain period of time. Overall: Upsides Downsides


Which is exactly why politicians get away with murder in this arena.  People need and want simple answers.  They will grab onto the first person who offers them a simple answer, even if the answer has nothing whatever to do with the problem.


To the best of my knowledge, there's no firm date requirement. The fiscal year for the US Federal Government starts on October 01, but if my memory serves me right, last time a budget was approved before the fiscal year started was during the Clinton administration.


Ditto Bill and I upvoted his answer. But let me add a bit. If everyone knew exactly what the risk was for every investment, then prices would be bid up or down until every stock (or bond or derivative or whatever) was valued at exactly risk times potential profit. (Or more precisely, integral of risk times potential profit.) If company A was 100% guaranteed to make $1 million profit this year, while company B had 50% change to make a $2 million profit and 50% to make $0, and every investor in the world knew that, then I'd expect the total price of all shares of the two stocks to stabilize at the same value. The catch to that, though, is that no one really knows the risk. The risk isn't like, we're going to roll a die and if it comes up even the company makes $1 million and if it comes up odd the company makes $0, so we could calculate the exact probability. The risk comes from lack of information. Will consumers want to buy this new product? How many? What are they willing to pay? How capable is the new CEO? Etc. It's very hard to calculate probabilities on these things. How can you precisely calculate the probability that unforeseen events will occur? So in real life prices are muddled. The risk/reward ratio should be roughly sort of approximately linear, but that's about the most one can say.


I'm not sure it's a great idea to help spread ideas about that way of thinking by putting that whole ideology in a Reddit title and then upvoting it.    I know the idea is presumable supposed to be to shame Marc Fabor, but if I was a racist who wanted to help spread this kind of vision of America, I would also upvote it because it's helping to promote a racist philosophy.


"Many of my friends said I should invest my money on stocks or something else, instead of put them in the bank forever. I do not know anything about finance, so my questions are: First let me say that your friends may have the best intentions, but don't trust them. It has been my experience that friends tell you what they would do if they had your money, and not what they would actually do with their money. Now, I don't mean that they would be malicious, or that they are out to get you.  What I do mean, is why would you take advise from someone about what they would do with 100k when they don't have 100k. I am in your financial situation (more or less), and I have friends that make more then I do, and have no savings. Or that will tell you to get an IRA -so-and-so but don't have the means (discipline) to do so. Do not listen to your friends on matters of money. That's just good all around advise. Is my financial status OK? If not, how can I improve it? Any financial situation with no or really low debt is OK. I would say 5% of annual income in unsecured debt, or 2-3 years in annual income in secured debt is a good place to be. That is a really hard mark to hit (it seems). You have hit it. So your good, right now. You may want to ""plan for the future"". Immediate goals that I always tell people, are 6 months of income stuck in a liquid savings account, then start building a solid investment situation, and a decent retirement plan. This protects you from short term situations like loss of job, while doing something for the future.   Is now a right time for me to see a financial advisor? Is it worthy? How would she/he help me? Rather it's worth it or not to use a financial adviser is going to be totally opinion based. Personally I think they are worth it. Others do not. I see it like this. Unless you want to spend all your time looking up money stuff, the adviser is going to have a better grasp of ""money stuff"" then you, because they do spend all their time doing it. That being said there is one really important thing to consider. That is going to be how you pay the adviser. The following are my observations. You will need to make up your own mind.  Free Avoid like the plague. These advisers are usually provided by the bank and make their money off commission or kickbacks. That means they will advise you of the product that makes them the most money. Not you.  Flat Rate These are not a bad option, but they don't have any real incentive to make you money. Usually, they do a decent job of making you money, but again, it's usually better for them to advise you on products that make them money. Per Hour These are my favorite. They charge per hour. Usually they are a small shop, and will walk you through all the advise. They advise what's best for you, because they have to sit there and explain their choices. They can be hard to find, but are generally the best option in my opinion.   % of Money These are like the flat rate advisers to me. They get a percentage of the money you give them to ""manage"". Because they already have your money they are more likely to recommend products that are in their interest. That said, there not all bad. % or Profit These are the best (see notes later). They get a percentage of the money they make for you. They have the most interest in making you money. They only get part of what you get, so there going to make sure you get the biggest pie, so they can get a bigger slice. Notes In the real world, all advisers are likely to get kickbacks on products they recommend. Make sure to keep an eye for that. Also most advisers will use 2-3 of the methods listed above for billing. Something like z% of profit +$x per hour is what I like to see. You will have to look around and see what is available.  Just remember that you are paying someone to make you money (or to advise you on how to make money) so long as what they take leaves you with some profit your in a better situation then your are now. And that's the real goal."


Savings accounts have lower fees. If you don't anticipate doing many transactions per month, e.g. three or fewer withdrawals, then I would suggest a savings account rather than a checking account. A joint account that requires both account holder signatures to make withdrawals will probably require both account holders' signature endorsements, in order to make deposits. For example, if you are issued a tax refund by the U.S. Treasury, or any check that is payable to both parties, you will only be able to deposit that check in a joint account that has both persons as signatories. There can be complications due to multi-party account ownership if cashing versus depositing a joint check and account tax ID number. When you open the account, you will need to specify what your wishes are, regarding whether both parties or either party can make deposits and withdrawals. Also, at least one party will need to be present, with appropriate identification (probably tax ID or Social Security number), when opening the account.  If the account has three or more owners, you might be required to open a business or commercial account, rather than a consumer account. This would be due to the extra expense of administering an account with more than two signatories. After the questioner specified interest North Carolina in the comments, I found that the North Carolina general banking statutes have specific rules for joint accounts: Any two or more persons may establish a deposit account...   The deposit account and any balance shall be as joint tenants...   Unless the persons establishing the account have agreed with the bank   that withdrawals require more than one signature, payment by the bank   to, or on the order of (either person on) the account satisfys the bank's obligation I looked for different banks in North Carolina. I found joint account terms similar to this in PDF file format, everywhere, Joint Account: If an item is drawn so that it is unclear whether one payee’s   endorsement or two is required, only one endorsement will be    required and the Bank shall not be liable for any loss incurred by the   maker as a result of there being only one endorsement. also  Joint accounts are owned by you individually or jointly with others.   All of the funds in a joint account may be used to repay the debts of   any co-owner, whether they are owed individually, by a co-owner,   jointly with other co-owners, or jointly with other persons or   entities having no interest in your account. You will need to tell the bank specifically what permissions you want for your joint account, as it is between you and your bank, in North Carolina.


I agree with you 100%!  >they've all just taken advantage so that wages haven't kept up and they've essentially pocketed the difference, or passed it on to their customers. Now people have less money to buy health insurance, and those near the bottom will now have to rely on the government to assist with providing health insurance.  I think this is exactly what is happening today.   > That last part is important, though, I would need to get all the breaks my employer gets for providing myself with health insurance.  I believe up until Obamacare, people couldn't. Also, as a general rule a business can claim a tax deduction for the salary, wages, commissions, bonuses, and other compensation it pays to its employees.