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I don't think any open source trading project is going to offer trial or demo accounts. In fact, I'm not clear on what you mean by this. Are you looking for some example data sets so you can see how your algorithm would perform historically? If you contact whatever specific brokers that you'd like to interface with, they can provide things like connection tests, etc., but no one is going to let you do live trades on a trial or demo basis. For more information about setting this sort of thing up at home, here's a good link: < http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~abrock/algotrading/index.html >. It's not Python specific, but should give you a good idea of what to do.

Algorithmic trading in linux using python

A matching pension scheme is like free money. No wait, it actually IS free money. You are literally earning 100% interest rate on that money the instant you pay it in to the account. That money would have to sit in your credit card account for at least five years to earn that kind of return; five years in which the pension money would have earned an additional return over and above the 100%. Mathematically there is no contest that contributing to a matching pension scheme is one of the best investment there is. You should always do it. Well, almost always. When should you not do it?

Pay off credit card debt or earn employer 401(k) match?

Here are a few things that you could try. But note that they are all capable of failing. They will just reduce the chance of you personally having a lost decade. First a quibble: John Bogle advocates a total stock market index (something like Vanguard's VTSMX) instead of an S&P fund, as the latter represents "only" 85% or so of the US market's total capitalization. Smaller companies behave slightly differently than members of the S&P, so this might provide a small help. Bogle also advocates holding some bonds in addition to equities. I'll expand on that below. Account for dividends. Just because the value of the index is the same as its value 10 or 20 years ago doesn't necessarily mean that decade was lost. The companies in the S&P are currently paying out an annualized dividend of about 2%. Even if the actual value of the index doesn't change, you're still getting that 2% per year. Include bonds. As I mentioned above, Bogle recommends holding some bonds. I have seen two common rules. One is to never have less than 20% of your total holdings in bonds, and never have more than 80% of your total holdings in bonds. The other popular rule is to hold your age in bonds. For example, I'm about 30, so I should keep about 30% of my holdings in bonds. Regardless of the split, rebalance periodically to keep yourself at that split. What effect would holding bonds have on a lost decade? To make the math easy, let's say you split your holdings evenly between an S&P fund and 10 year Treasuries. Coincidentally, 10 year T-notes have the same 2% yield as the S&P dividends. If you're getting that on half your holdings, and nothing on the other half, you're netting 1% per year. Not great, but not totally lost. To illustrate the effect of rebalancing, use my example of a 70/30 stock/bond split. The S&P lost about 50% of its value from its peak to the bottom of the market in early 2008. If you only held stock, you would need the market to increase in value by 100% in order for you to recover that value. If 30% of your holdings are in bonds, and you rebalance at exactly the bottom of the stock market, you only need the stock index to increase in value by about 80% from the bottom in order to make you whole again. I mention those two to emphasize that your investment return is not just a function of the price of a stock index. Dollar cost average. It's rare that you will actually face the situation of putting (say) $100,000 into the market all at once, let it sit for 10-20 years, then take it all out at once. The situation you face is closer to putting about $1000 into the market every month for 100 months. If you do that, then you're getting a different price for each purchase you make. Your actual return will be a weighted average of the return from each of those purchases. But note that this could help or hurt you. Using the chart Victor showed in his answer, if your lost decade is from one peak to the next peak, your average price will be below the price you would have entered and left at. So this helps. But if your lost decade is from trough to trough, then your average price is higher than the start and end price, so this has hurt you. Those are the two extreme cases, and the general case will be somewhere in between. And you can use these regular purchases to help you carry out your regular rebalancing. Foreign equities. Since you mention the S&P500 specifically, I assume that you are in the United States. The US equities is approximately 45% of the world equities market. So even if the S&P500 has a lost decade, it's unlikely that the rest of the world will also have a lost decade at the same time. For comparison, the Tokyo Stock Exchange is the third largest in the world (behind the US's NYSE and NASDAQ); the market cap of the TSE is less than 20% that of the combined market cap of the NYSE and the NASDAQ, which puts it at about 10% of the world's market cap. When the Nikkei had its lost decades, no one else had a lost decade. Note that buying foreign equities is more expensive than buying domestic, and it exposes you to fluctuations in the exchange rate of the currencies. But the benefit of diversification probably outweighs those downsides. And obviously it's easier to diversify away from Japan than it is to diversify away from the United States. But there are people who advocate holding exactly the market weight of every country in the world.

How should one structure a portfolio given the possibility that a Total Stock Market Index might decline and not recover for a long time?

At any given time there are buy orders and there are sell orders. Typically there is a little bit of space between the lowest sell order and the highest buy order, this is known as the bid/ask spread. As an example say person A will sell for $10.10 but person B will only buy at $10.00. If you have a billion shares outstanding just the space between the bid and ask prices represents $100,000,000 of market cap. Now imagine that the CEO is in the news related to some embezzlement investigation. A number of buyers cancel their orders. Now the highest buy order is $7. There isn't money involved, that's just the highest offer to buy at the time; but that's a drop from $10 to $7. That's a change in market cap of $3,000,000,000. Some seller thinks the stock will continue to fall, and some buyer thinks the stock has reached a fair enterprise value at $7 billion ($7 per share). Whether or not the seller lost money depends on where the seller bought the stock. Maybe they bought when it was an IPO for $1. Even at $7 they made $6 per share. Value is changing, not money. Though it would be fun, there's no money bonfire at the NYSE.

When a stock price goes down, does the money just disappears into thin air?

Its pretty much always a positive to have large institutional investors. Here's a few cases where I can see an argument against large institutional investors: In recent years, we've seen corporate raiders and institutional investors that tend to influence management in ways that are focused on short term gain. They'll often go for board seats and disrupt the existing management team. It can serve as a distraction and really hurt morale. Institutional investors also have rules in their prospectus that they are required to abide by. For example, some institutional investors will not hold on to stock below $5. This really affected major banking stocks, some of which ended up doing reverse stock splits to keep their share price high. Institutional investors will also setup specific funds that require a stock to be listed as part of an index (i.e. the SPY, DJIA etc.,). When a stock is removed from an index, big investors leave quickly and the share price suffers. In recent months, companies like Apple have made their share price more affordable to attract retail investors. It gives an opportunity for retail to feel even more connected to the company. I'm not sure how much this affects overall sales... Generally, a good stock should be able to attract both retail and institutional investors. If there's not a good mix, then its usually a sign that somethings amiss.

Why are stocks having less institutional investors a “good thing”?

VAT = Value Added Tax (as an Aussie think "GST") This is applicable in Britain. Basically, if you were in Britain, and if you could claim VAT as a deduction, that invoice is not sufficient proof to make the claim. But you're in Oz so it doesn't apply to you in any case. For work-related deductions like book purchases, see http://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/content.asp?doc=/content/00216829.htm&pc=001/002/068/001/002&mnu=&mfp=&st=&cy=1 Issues such as the books being second hand or purchased online are not cited in the instructions as relevant/limiting factors. In fact, if you really want to get into the nitty gritty, you could claim the work-related proportion of your internet access fees as a deduction (question D5 instructions, above, cover that as well).

Can used books bought off Amazon be claimed as a tax deduction in Australia?

Some banks would allow you to export your transactions as CSV (they call it Excel export, but in many cases it's actually just CSV). However, I would not expect any bank to bother with creating anything like command-line access - return on such investment would be too low. There are other ways to get information out of the banks, I'm sure - providers like Yodelee must be using something to fetch financial data - but those usually not for general public access. Also, you can use something like mint.com to aggregate you banking data if you bank doesn't do good export and then export it from there. They have CSV export too. If you need to do any actions though, I don't think there's anything like you are looking for.

Are there any banks with a command-line style user interface?

There are two distinct questions that may be of interest to you. Both questions are relevant for funds that need to buy or sell large orders that you are talking about. The answer depends on your order type and the current market state such as the level 2 order book. Suppose there are no iceberg or hidden orders and the order book (image courtesy of this question) currently is: An unlimited ("at market") buy order for 12,000 shares gets filled immediately: it gets 1,100 shares at 180.03 (1,[email protected]), 9,700 at 180.04 and 1,200 at 180.05. After this order, the lowest ask price becomes 180.05 and the highest bid is obviously still 180.02 (because the previous order was a 'market order'). A limited buy order for 12,000 shares with a price limit of 180.04 gets the first two fills just like the market order: 1,100 shares at 180.03 and 9,700 at 180.04. However, the remainder of the order will establish a new bid price level for 1,200 shares at 180.04. It is possible to enter an unlimited buy order that exhausts the book. However, such a trade would often be considered a mis-trade and either (i) be cancelled by the broker, (ii) be cancelled or undone by the exchange, or (iii) hit the maximum price move a stock is allowed per day ("limit up"). Funds and banks often have to buy or sell large quantities, just like you have described. However they usually do not punch through order book levels as I described before. Instead they would spread out the order over time and buy a smaller quantity several times throughout the day. Simple algorithms attempt to get a price close to the time-weighted average price (TWAP) or volume-weighted average price (VWAP) and would buy a smaller amount every N minutes. Despite splitting the order into smaller pieces the price usually moves against the trader for many reasons. There are many models to estimate the market impact of an order before executing it and many brokers have their own model, for example Deutsche Bank. There is considerable research on "market impact" if you are interested. I understand the general principal that when significant buy orders comes in relative to the sell orders price goes up and when a significant sell order comes in relative to buy orders it goes down. I consider this statement wrong or at least misleading. First, stocks can jump in price without or with very little volume. Consider a company that releases a negative earnings surprise over night. On the next day the stock may open 20% lower without any orders having matched for any price in between. The price moved because the perception of the stocks value changed, not because of buy or sell pressure. Second, buy and sell pressure have an effect on the price because of the underlying reason, and not necessarily/only because of the mechanics of the market. Assume you were prepared to sell HyperNanoTech stock, but suddenly there's a lot of buzz and your colleagues are talking about buying it. Would you still sell it for the same price? I wouldn't. I would try to find out how much they are prepared to buy it for. In other words, buy pressure can be the consequence of successful marketing of the stock and the marketing buzz is what changes the price.

Can we estimate the impact of a large buy order on the share price?

There's the question whether knowledge about unannounced products is actually "material" if everyone (the public) knows that something new will be released. If you work at Apple on the development of the iPhone 8, that's not material. If you worked at Apple and you knew that they stopped developing new phones, that would be very, very, very material information. The important thing as far as the stock market is concerned is what sales look like, and that's not something you know as a product developer.

Does material nonpublic information cover knowledge of unannounced products?

According to the US Mint, the Government does still have a gold reserve stored mostly in Fort Knox in Kentucky, but there is some in New York and Colorado too. Some facts from their site: That last point is an interesting one. They are basically saying, yes we have it, and no you can't see it. Some conspiracy buffs claim no one has been allowed in there to audit how much they have in over 50 years leading them to speculate that they are bluffing. Although the dollar is no longer tied to the gold standard, throwing that much gold into the market would definitely add fuel the volatility of the finance world, which already has it's share of volatility and isn't hungry for more.The impact on the price of the dollar would be quite complicated and hard to predict.

Does the USA have a Gold reserve?

This is what is called a Structured Product. The linked page gives an overview of the relative pros and cons. They tend to hold the bulk of funds in bonds and then used equity index futures and other derivatives to match returns on the S&P, or other indices tracked. All combine to provide the downside protection. Note that your mother did not receive the dividends paid by the constituent companies. She only received the capital return. Here is a link to Citigroup (Europe) current structured product offerings. Here is a link to Fidelity's current offerings of structured products. Here is Investopedia's article detailing the pitfalls. The popularity of these products appears to be on the wane, having been heavily promoted and sold by the providers at the time your mother invested. Most of these products only provide 100% protection of capital if the market does not fall by a specified amount, either in successive reporting periods or over the life of the product. There are almost as many terms and conditions imposed on the protection as there are structured products available. I have no personal experience buying this type of product, preferring to have the option to trade and receive dividend income.

What is this type of risk-free investment called?

I think it's only a choice of terminology. Typically with a money market account has check-writing privileges whereas a savings account does not. In terms of rates, this blog has a good list of high interest yield savings accounts. http://www.hustlermoneyblog.com/best-bank-rates/ Disclosure: I am not affiliated with this blog. I just think it is a good resource to compare the rates across different banks.

Money market account for emergency savings

Why do people keep talking about 401K's at work? That is NOT dollar cost averaging. DCA refers to when you have a large sum of money. Do you invest it all at once or spread it out over several smaller purchases over a period of time? There really isn't a "when" should I use it. It is simply a matter of where your preferences lie on the risk/reward scpectrum. DCA has lower risk and lower reward than lump sum investing. In my opinion, I don't like it. DCA only works better than lump sum investing if the price drops. But if you think the price is going to drop, why are you buying the stock in the first place? Example: Your uncle wins the lottery and gives you $50,000. Do you buy $50,000 worth of Apple now, or do you buy $10,000 now and $10,000 a quarter for the next four quarters? If the stock goes up, you will make more with lump-sum(LS) than you will with DCA. If the stock goes down, you will lose more with LS than you will with DCA. If the stock goes up then down, you will lose more with DCA than you will with LS. If the stock goes down then up, you will make more with DCA than you will with LS. So it's a tradeoff. But, like I said, the whole point of you buying the stock is that you think it's going to go up! So why pick the strategy that performs worse in that scenario?

Dollar-cost averaging: How often should one use it? What criteria to use when choosing stocks to apply it to?

As someone in the very same position as you here is what I suggest: Have $1,000 for each possible large expense you currently have. For example, house, car, pregnant wife, etc. As someone who only has a car (living at home still) I only have $1,000 in my eFund (emergency fund). The ABSOLUTE rest of my money goes to paying off the loans as soon as possible. I mean ever single dollar. There is no point for investing unless you have a really good return on investment. I am not too sure how common returns of 6.8% are, but that seems above average. If in fact you're just stashing it in a bank account at ~1%, you're doing it wrong. Getting out of debt is not only just about the financial benefits but the emotional benefits too. It feels really nice to not owe anybody anything. Good luck man! P.S. Try using a tracker like ReadytoZero to show how much you're losing a day by remaining in debt. This will better help you understand if your investments are making you money or losing your money.

To pay off a student loan, should I save up a lump sum payoff payment or pay extra each month?

Transfer your savings to a dollar-based CD. Or even better, buy some gold on them.

What to do with south african currency free fall

Americans are snapping, like crazy. And not only Americans, I know a lot of people from out of country are snapping as well, similarly to your Australian friend. The market is crazy hot. I'm not familiar with Cleveland, but I am familiar with Phoenix - the prices are up at least 20-30% from what they were a couple of years ago, and the trend is not changing. However, these are not something "everyone" can buy. It is very hard to get these properties financed. I found it impossible (as mentioned, I bought in Phoenix). That means you have to pay cash. Not everyone has tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash available for a real estate investment. For many Americans, 30-60K needed to buy a property in these markets is an amount they cannot afford to invest, even if they have it at hand. Also, keep in mind that investing in rental property requires being able to support it - pay taxes and expenses even if it is not rented, pay to property managers, utility bills, gardeners and plumbers, insurance and property taxes - all these can amount to quite a lot. So its not just the initial investment. Many times "advertised" rents are not the actual rents paid. If he indeed has it rented at $900 - then its good. But if he was told "hey, buy it and you'll be able to rent it out at $900" - wouldn't count on that. I know many foreigners who fell in these traps. Do your market research and see what the costs are at these neighborhoods. Keep in mind, that these are distressed neighborhoods, with a lot of foreclosed houses and a lot of unemployment. It is likely that there are houses empty as people are moving out being out of job. It may be tough to find a renter, and the renters you find may not be able to pay the rent. But all that said - yes, those who can - are snapping.

Are there Cashflow Positive Investment Properties in the USA?

I'll read between the lines: you're (justifiably) feeling smart about how you manage your money: debt-free, smart about your spending, saving for retirement, etc. But you're looking at all those fancy cars and feeling a little left out. And Americans especially have a love for automobiles -- it's not just transportation, a car is a status symbol. Yes, some of those people afford their cars just fine. But a lot of people out there are AWFUL about saving and spend recklessly. Americans are notoriously bad at saving for retirement, for example. So if they aren't saving, where does that money go? They buy stuff they don't need. They live paycheck-to-paycheck. They run up debt. They buy cars. Overspending on cars is so easy to do: leases have low payments, or you can get a 6 year loan. There are many financial tricks for people that think only in terms of monthly payments. So instead of lamenting that the grass is greener as all those BMWs whiz by, smile deeply and enjoy that feeling of sleeping well at night instead of stressing out about the next credit card bill and car payment waiting for you in the mailbox. (And at the same time, if you really want a luxury car and want that to be a priority, you can make it happen and not go broke. Get a late model year certified pre-owned vehicle just out of lease, for example. Saves a ton of money, is still under warranty, and satisfies the lust for luxury.)

Who can truly afford luxury cars?

Edit: I discovered Bitcoin a few months after I posted this answer. I would strongly recommend anyone interested in this question to review it, particularly the myths page that dispels much of the FUD. Original answer: Although it is not online, as a concept the Totnes Pound may be of interest to you. I live quite close to this village (in the UK) and the system it promotes does work well. According to the Transition Town Totnes website this means that it is "a community in a process of imagining and creating a future that addresses the twin challenges of diminishing oil and gas supplies and climate change , and creates the kind of community that we would all want to be part of." If you are looking for a starting place to introduce a new type of currency, perhaps in response to over-dependence on oil and global trade, then reading about the Transition Towns initiative could provide you with the answers you're looking for.

Do you know of any online monetary systems?

You can't blame companies like 'Legal Claimant Services' for making a profit by providing this service. That is capitalism and it is the way of the world. It is just like any other business you can do yourself - from making dinner to cutting your own grass. If you choose to do it yourself, you save money but you also do the work. When I got my letter telling me about a claim, I automatically went online to do some research. That's how I found this site and information that led me to validate the claim. I then chose to follow a few simple instructions and keep all of the claim instead of giving away 30%.

Legitimate unclaimed property that doesn't appear in any state directory?

If one takes a slightly more expansive view of the word "saving" to include most forms of durable asset accumulation, I think the reason some do and most don't is a matter of a few factors, I will include the three that seem obvious to me: Education Most schools in the US where I live do not offer personal finance courses, and even when they do, there is no opportunity for a student to practice good financial habits in that classroom setting. I think a simple assignment that required students to track every penny that they spend over the period of a few months would help them open their eyes to how much money is spent on trivial things that they don't need. Perhaps this would be more effective in a university setting where the students are usually away from home and therefore more responsible for the spending that occurs on their own behalf. Beyond simple education about personal finances, most people have no clue how the various financial markets work. If they understood, they would not allow inflation to eat away at their savings, but that's a separate topic from why people do not save. Culture Since much of the education above isn't happening, children get their primary financial education from their parents. This means that those who are wealthy teach their children how to be wealthy, and those who are poor pass on their habits to children who often also end up poor. Erroneous ideas about consumption vs. investment and its economic effects also causes some bad policy encouraging people to live beyond their means and use credit unwisely, but if you live in a country where the average person expects to eat out regularly and trade in their automobiles as soon as they experienced their highest rate of depreciation, it can be hard to recognize bad financial behavior for what it is. Collective savings rates reflect a lot of individuals who are emulating each other's bad behavior. Discipline Even when someone is educated about finances, they may not establish good habits of budgeting regularly, tracking spending, and setting financial goals. For me, it helps to be married to someone who has similar financial goals, because we budget monthly and any major purchases (over $100 or so) must be agreed upon at the beginning of the month (with obvious exceptions for emergencies). This eliminates any impulsive spending, which is probably 90% of the battle for me. Some people do not need to account to someone else in order to spend wisely, but everyone should find a system that works for them and helps them to maintain some financial discipline.

Why don't people generally save more of their income?

The first moment of trading usually occurs even later than that. It may take a few hours to balance the current buy/sell orders and open the stock. Watch CNBC when a hot IPO is about to open and you'll see the process in real time. If you miss it, look at a one day Yahoo chart to see when the open occurred.

Can I buy IPO stock during the pre-market trading on the day of IPO?

That's a tricky question and you should consult a tax professional that specializes on taxation of non-resident aliens and foreign expats. You should also consider the provisions of the tax treaty, if your country has one with the US. I would suggest you not to seek a "free advice" on internet forums, as the costs of making a mistake may be hefty. Generally, sales of stocks is not considered trade or business effectively connected to the US if that's your only activity. However, being this ESPP stock may make it connected to providing personal services, which makes it effectively connected. I'm assuming that since you're filing 1040NR, taxes were withheld by the broker, which means the broker considered this effectively connected income.

How do I treat the income from an ESPP I sold now that I am a non-resident alien?

Imagine that a fund had a large exit load that declined over several years. If you wanted to sell some or all of your investment in that fund you would face a large fee, unless you held it a long time. You would be hesitant to sell because waiting longer would save you money. That is the exact opposite of a liquid investment. Therefore the ideal level for a liquid fund is to have zero exit load.

Unable to understand logic behind why there is no exit load on liquid fund

Sorry in advance, but this will be long. Also, it sounds like your friend is a tool. I hope this "friend" is not also your financial advisor... they would be encouraging you to make a very poor investment decision. They also don't know how to do financial math. For what it's worth, I am not wrong. I have correctly answered a set of changing questions as you have asked them... Your friend is answering based on a third, completely different investment model, which you proposed in the edit to your last post. If that's what you meant all along, then you should have been more clear in the questions you were asking. Please let me layout the following: How the previous questions//investment proposals were built How to analyze this current proposal What your other option is Why the other option is best in a 'real world' market The First Question My understanding of the initial proposal was to take out a $10,000 loan, invest the proceeds, and expect to not have any money of your own tied up in this. Because that OP did not specify that this is an interest-only loan (you still haven't in any of your questions), the bank will require you to make payments back to them each month that include principal and interest. Your "friend" is talking about the total interest paid being the only cost of a loan. While that is (almost) true, regardless of what your friend says, significantly more cash is involved in making sure that all the payments are made on time---unless you set up an interest-only loan. But with the set up laid out in this post, and with the assumptions I specified there, the principal payments must be included because the borrower has to pay back the bank and isn't not tying up any of their own money. In that case, my initial analysis is correct--your breakeven is in the low teens for an annual required return. The Second Proposal Your second proposal... before any edits... refined things a little bit, to try to capture the any possible returns by not selling something. As I indicated there, (with what was an exaggerating assumption), the lack of clarity makes for an outlandish required return. The Second Proposal...with edits, or the one proposed above I will get to the one proposed above in a second, but first let me highlight a few problems with your friend's analysis. Simple interest: the only place (in the US at least) that will lend with simple interest is student loans. Any loan that you actually take out will be compound interest. Not an interest only loan: your "friend" is not calculating interest correctly. Since this isn't an interest-only loan, the principal balance will reduce every time you make a payment, by ~$320-$340 each month. This substantially reduces the total interest paid, to $272.79 over the total 24 months. "Returns": I don't know what country, or what business your friend works in, but "returns" are a very ambiguous concept. Investopedia defines returns as gains or losses. (I wish I could inhabit the lala land that your friend lives in when returns are always positive). TheFreeDictionary.com defines a return for finance as "The change in the value of a portfolio over an evaluation period, including any distributions made from the portfolio during that period." When you have not made it clear that any other money is being used in this investment plan (as was the case in scheme #1 and scheme #2a,) the loan still has to be paid. So, clearly the principal must be included in the return calculations. How to evaluate this proposed investment scheme Key dimensions: Loan ($8,000 ... 24 months ... 0.27% monthly rate... monthly compounding... no loan origination fees) Monthly payment (PMT in Excel yields $344.70). Investment capital (starting = $8,000) Monthly Return (Investment yields... we hope it's positive!) Your monthly contribution from your salary Taxes = 10%. Transaction Fees = $20 Go and lookup how to build an amortization table for a loan in Excel. Your life will be infinitely better for it. Now, you get this loan set up and invested into something... (it costs $20 to buy the assets). So you've got $7980 chugging away earning interest. I calculate that your break even, with you paying in $344.70 of your own money each month is 1.81% annually, or 3.42% over the 24 month life of this scheme. That is using monthly compound interest for the payments, because that's what the real world would use, and using monthly compounding of the investments' returns. Your total interest expense would be $272.79. This seems feasible. But let's talk about what your other option is, given that you're ready to spend $344.70 each month on an investment. Your other option I understand the appeal of getting $8,000... right away... to invest in something. But the risk behind this is that if the market goes down (and markets do) you're stuck paying a fixed amount for your loan that is now worth less money. Your other option is to take your $344.70, and invest it step-by-step. (You would want to skip a month or two buying assets in the market, so that you can lessen transaction costs). This has two advantages: (1) you save yourself $272 in interest. (2) When the market goes down, you still win. With this strategy, you still win when the market goes down because of what is commonly called "dollar cost averaging". When the market is up, your investments are also up. When the market goes down, your previous investments decrease in value but you can invest new money at the lower rates. Why the step-by-step, invest your own money strategy is better At low rates (when you're looking for your break-even), the step-by-step model outperforms the loan. At higher rates of return (~4% + per year), you get the benefit of having the borrowed money earning more gains. In fact, for every continuous (meaning set... not changing month-to-month) interest rate that you can dream up that is greater than about 4% per year, the borrowed money earns more. At 10% per year, the borrowed money will earn about $500 more over the 2 years than your step by step investment would. BUT I recognize that you might feel like the market will always go up. That's what everyone thinks. And that's alright. But have one really bad month, or a couple of just-not-great-months, and your fixed 'loan' portfolio will underperform. Have a few really bad months, and your portfolio could be substantially reduced in value... but you would still be paying the same amount for it each month. And if that happened (say your assets declined -3% in 3 of the 24 months...) You'd be losing money relative to the step-by-step portfolio.

Complete Opposite Calculations and Opinions - Using Loan to Invest - Paying Monthly Installments with Monthly Income

A stock split can force short sellers of penny stocks to cover their shorts and cauuse the price to appreciate. Example: Someone shorts a worthless pump and dump stock, 10,000 shares at .50. They have to put up $25,000.00 in margin ($2.50 per share for stocks under $2.50). The company announces a 3 to 1 split. Now the short investor must come up with $50,000.00 additional margin or be be "bought in". The short squeeze is on.

Since many brokers disallow investors from shorting sub-$5 stocks, why don't all companies split their stock until it is sub-$5

I don't think there is a legal requirement that you need a separate bank account. Just remember that you can only take money from your LLC as salary (paying tax), as dividend (paying tax), or as a loan (which you need to repay, including and especially if the LLC goes bankrupt). So make very sure that your books are in order.

UK limited company and personal bank account

It looks like fair-market value when you receive your virtual currency is counted as income. And you're also subject to self-employment tax on that income. Here's an FAQ from the IRS: Q-8: Does a taxpayer who “mines” virtual currency (for example, uses computer resources to validate Bitcoin transactions and maintain the public Bitcoin transaction ledger) realize gross income upon receipt of the virtual currency resulting from those activities? A-8: Yes, when a taxpayer successfully “mines” virtual currency, the fair market value of the virtual currency as of the date of receipt is includible in gross income. See Publication 525, Taxable and Nontaxable Income, for more information on taxable income.Q-9: Is an individual who “mines” virtual currency as a trade or business subject to self-employment tax on the income derived from those activities? A-9: If a taxpayer’s “mining” of virtual currency constitutes a trade or business, and the “mining” activity is not undertaken by the taxpayer as an employee, the net earnings from self-employment (generally, gross income derived from carrying on a trade or business less allowable deductions) resulting from those activities constitute selfemployment income and are subject to the self-employment tax. See Chapter 10 of Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business, for more information on selfemployment tax and Publication 535, Business Expenses, for more information on determining whether expenses are from a business activity carried on to make a profit. You'd of course be able to offset that income with the expense of mining the virtual currency, depreciation of dedicated mining equipment, electricity, not sure what else. Edit: Here's a good resource on filing taxes with Bitcoin: Filling in the 1040 Income from Bitcoins and all crypto-currencies is declared as either capital gains income or ordinary income, for example from mining. Income Ordinary income will be declared on either your 1040 (line 21 - Other Income) for an individual, or within your Schedule C, if you are self-employed or have sole-proprietor business. Capital Gains Capital gains income, or losses, are declared on Schedule D. Since there are no reported 1099 forms from Bitcoin exchanges, you will need to include your totals with Box C checked for short-term gains, and with Box F checked for long-term gains. Interesting notes from that article, your first example could actually be trickier than expected if you started mining before there was a Monero to USD exchange. Also, there can also be capital gains implications from using your virtual currency to buy goods, which sounds like a pain to keep track of.

Income At the Sell or Reception?

Of course, you've already realized that some of that is that smaller estates are more common than larger estates. But it seems unlikely that there are four times as many estates between $10 and $11 million as above that range. People who expect to die with an estate subject to inheritance tax tend to prepare. I don't know how common it is, but if the surviving member of a couple remarries, then the new spouse gets a separate exemption. And of course spouses inherit from spouses without tax. In theory this could last indefinitely. In practice, it is less likely. But if a married couple has $20 million, the first spouse could leave $15 million to the second and $5 million to other heirs. The second spouse could leave $10 million to a third spouse (after remarrying) and another $5 million to children with the first spouse. All without triggering the estate tax. People can put some of their estate into a trust. This can allow the heirs to continue to control the money while not paying inheritance tax. Supposedly Ford (of Ford Motor Company) took that route. Another common strategy is to give the maximum without gift tax each year. That's at least $14k per donor and recipient per year. So a married couple with two kids can transfer $56k per year. Plus $56k for the kids' spouses. And if there are four grandchildren, that's another $112k. Great-grandchildren count too. That's more than a million every five years. So given ten years to prepare, parents can transfer $2 million out of the estate and to the heirs without tax. Consider the case of two wealthy siblings. They've each maxed out their gifts to their own heirs. So they agree to max out their gifts to their sibling's heirs. This effectively doubles the transfer amount without tax implication. Also realize that they can pretransfer assets at the current market rate. So if a rich person has an asset that is currently undervalued, it may make sense to transfer it immediately as a gift. This will use up some of the estate exemption. But if you're going to transfer the asset eventually, you might as well do so when the value is optimal for your purpose. These are just the easy things to do. If someone wants, they can do more complicated things that make it harder for the IRS to track value. For example, the Bezos family invested in Amazon.com when Jeff Bezos was starting it. As a result, his company could survive capital losses that another company might not. The effect of this was to make him fabulously rich and his parents richer than they were. But he won't pay inheritance tax until his parents actually transfer the estate to him (and I believe they actually put it in a charitable trust). If his company had failed instead, he still would have been supported by the capital provided by his parents while it was open (e.g. his salary). But he wouldn't have paid inheritance tax on it. There are other examples of the same pattern: Fred Smith of FedEx; Donald Trump; Bill Gates of Microsoft; etc. The prime value of the estate was not in its transfer, but in working together while alive or through a family trust. The child's company became much more valuable as a result of a parent's wealth. And in two of those examples, the child was so successful that the parent became richer as a result. So the parent's estate does count. Meanwhile, another company might fail, leaving the estate below the threshold despite a great deal of parental support. And those aren't even fiddles. Those children started real companies and offered their parents real investment opportunities. A family that wants to do so can do a lot more with arrangements. Of course, the IRS may be looking for some of them. The point being that the estate might be more than $11 million earlier, but the parents can find ways to reduce it below the inheritance tax exemption by the time that they die.

Estate taxes and the top 1 percent by net worth

As others have said, please talk to a professional adviser. From my quick research, domain names can only be amortized as 197 intangible if it's used for the taxpayer's business. For example, if Corp A pays $200,000 for corpa.com and uses that to point to their homepage, they can amortize it over 15 years as a 197 intangible. (Please refer to this IRS memo https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/201543014.pdf.) The above memo does not issue any guidance in your case, where domains are purchased for investment or resale. Regarding domain names, the U.S. Master Depreciation Guide (2016) by CCH says: Many domain names are purchased in a secondary market from third parties [...] who register names and resell them at a profit. These cost must be capitalized because the name will have a useful life of more than one year. The costs cannot be amortized because a domain name has no useful life. So your decision to capitalize is correct, but your amortization deductions may be challenged by the IRS. When you sell your domain, the gain will be determined by how you treat these assets. If you treat your domains as 197 intangibles, and thus had ordinary deductions through amortization, your gain will be ordinary. If you treated them as capital assets, your gain will be a capital gain. Very conceptually, and because the IRS has not issued specific guidelines, I think holding domain names for resale is similar to buying stock of a company. You can't amortize the investment, and when you sell, the gain or loss is a capital gain/loss.

Treatment of web domain ownership & reselling for tax purposes: Capital asset, or not?

Patti - I realize, of course, that you pose an either/or question. It seems the question closes the door on other potential solutions.

What should I do with $4,000 cash and High Interest Debt?

Good tax people are expensive. If you are comfortable with numbers and computers, you can do it better yourself.

In US, is it a good idea to hire a tax consultant for doing taxes?

Contrary to popular belief, you can build your credit (if that is important to you) without paying a penny in interest. This is done through the responsible use of credit cards, paying the bill in full each month without accruing any interest charges. If I were you, I would pay off the loan today, if possible. After that, if you decide you need to build up your credit, apply for a credit card. If you have difficulty with that, you can get a small secured credit card or retail store credit card until you have enough history to get a regular credit card.

Should I pay off my car loan within the year?

Lots of good advice so far. Here's some meta-advice. Read through everything here twice, and distill out what the big picture ideas are. Learn about what you need to know about them. Pick a strategy and/or long term goals. Work toward them. Get advice from many many places and distill it. This is currently known as crowd-sourcing but I've been doing it all my life. It's very effective. No one will ever care as much about your money as you. Some specific things I haven't seen mentioned (or not mentioned much):

What options do I have at 26 years old, with 1.2 million USD?

When calculating the NPV, is there anything I need to do in between the project start date outlay (Nov 2017), and the first cash inflow (July 2019). Do I need to discount the cashflow to the present, and if so, how? Yes, you need to discount every cash flow to the present time, not just the first one. When discounting cash flows, the appropriate discount rate needs to represent the opportunity cost of the initial cash outlay. Meaning if you were to use that money for something else, what rate of return would you expect? You could be safe and assume only a risk-free return (like 2-3%) or use the average rate of return of other investments (e.g. 10-15%). Another common approach is to use your cost of capital if you're raising funds for the project, or would instead have use the funds to pay off existing debt. Once you find a relevant discount rate, then just discount each cash flow by dividing them by e^rt, where r is the annualized discount rate (e.g. 0.10 for 10%) and t is the decimal number of years between now and the cash flow (e.g. 1.5 for 18 months)

Calculating NPV for future cash inflows

Uncertainty has very far reaching effects. Oil is up ~100% since February and down ~40% from it's 52 week high (and down even more on a longer timeline). It's not exactly a stable investment vehicle and moves a few percent each day on basically nothing. A lot of securities will be bouncing around for the next couple weeks at least while folks remain uncertain about what the "brexit" will actually mean.

Why does the Brexit cause a fall in crude oil prices?

You can try manager.io. It has a desktop, cloud and server edition that should fit your needs.

Good book-keeping software?

Imagine you have a bank account with $100 in it. You are thinking about selling this bank account, so ask for some bids on what it's worth. You get quotes of around $100. You decide to sell it, but before you do, you take $50 out of it to have in cash. Would you expect the market to still pay $100 for the account? The dividend is effectively the cash being withdrawn. The stock had on account a large amount of cash (which was factored into it's share price), it moved that cash out of it's account (to its shareholders), and as a result the stock instantly becomes priced lower as this cash is no longer part of it, just as it is in the bank account example.

What accounted for DXJR's huge drop in stock price?

You setup a self-directed solo 401k by paying a one time fee for a company to setup a trust, name you the sole trustee, and file it with the IRS. None of these companies offer TPA because it opens them up to profit leaching liability. After you have your trust setup, you can open a brokerage account or several with any of the big names you want (Vanguard, Fidelity, Ameritrade, etc), or just use the money to flip houses, do P2P lending, whatever, the world is your investment oyster. If the company has recurring fees you need to ask what is going on because if they aren't offering TPA services, then what the heck could they be charging you for? I did see one company, I think it was IRA Financial Group, that had the option of having a CPA do TPA for you for a recurring fee, but I would pass on that. The IRS administration requirements are typically just the 5500-EZ that you have to file as a hard copy by July 31 if your investments are worth more than $250k, on December 31. Yes, you have to get the actual form from the IRS, write on it with a pen and mail it to them every year, barbaric. You can either have your accountant do it or do it yourself. If you're below $250k just google solo 401k rule change two or three times a year and don't try to launder money. If anything, the rules will loosen with time, I don't imagine the Republican Congress cracking down on small business owners any time soon.

Where can I find a Third Party Administrator for a self-directed solo 401K?

Do you have a smart phone? Check out the Clark Howard Podcast. I listen every day. Of course you can listen from your computer but its far easier to consume from a pod catcher

Best way for for soon to turn 18 to learn about money?

Dividends are not fixed. A profitable company which is rapidly expanding, and thus cash-strapped may very well skip dividends, yet that same fast growth makes it valuable. When markets saturate, and expansion stops, the same company may now have a large free cash flow so it can pay dividends.

What gives non-dividend stocks value to purchasers? [duplicate]

Parents are eminently capable of gifting to their children. If it's a gift call it a gift. If it's not a gift, it's either a loan or a landmine for some future interpersonal familial interaction (parent-child or sibling-sibling). I an concerned by some phrasing in the OP that it is partially down this path here. If it's a loan, it should have the full ceremony of a loan: written terms and a payment plan (which could fairly be a 0% interest, single balloon payment in 10 years or conditional on sale of a house or such; it's still not a gift).

Should I charge my children interest when they borrow money?

At the bottom of Yahoo! Finance's S & P 500 quote Quotes are real-time for NASDAQ, NYSE, and NYSE MKT. See also delay times for other exchanges. All information provided "as is" for informational purposes only, not intended for trading purposes or advice. Neither Yahoo! nor any of independent providers is liable for any informational errors, incompleteness, or delays, or for any actions taken in reliance on information contained herein. By accessing the Yahoo! site, you agree not to redistribute the information found therein. Fundamental company data provided by Capital IQ. Historical chart data and daily updates provided by Commodity Systems, Inc. (CSI). International historical chart data, daily updates, fund summary, fund performance, dividend data and Morningstar Index data provided by Morningstar, Inc. Orderbook quotes are provided by BATS Exchange. US Financials data provided by Edgar Online and all other Financials provided by Capital IQ. International historical chart data, daily updates, fundAnalyst estimates data provided by Thomson Financial Network. All data povided by Thomson Financial Network is based solely upon research information provided by third party analysts. Yahoo! has not reviewed, and in no way endorses the validity of such data. Yahoo! and ThomsonFN shall not be liable for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Thus, yes there is a DB being accessed that there is likely an agreement between Yahoo! and the providers.

How websites like Google have access to stock market data?

Standard options are contracts for 100 shares. If the option is for $0.75/share and you are buying the contract for 100 shares the price would be $75 plus commission. Some brokers have mini options available which is a contract for 10 shares. I don't know if all brokers offer this option and it is not available on all stocks. The difference between the 1 week and 180 day price is based on anticipated price changes over the given time. Most people would expect more volatility over a 6 month period than a 1 week period thus the demand for a higher premium for the longer option.

Put Option Pricing

The typical case would be - as you expected - that the interest goes down equally dramatically, and you would pay much less interest. Note that that does not remove your obligation to pay the full 1000 every month - even though you could argue that you are 90 months ahead in paying, you still need to deliver 1000 a month, until it is fully paid. Some mortgages are made differently - they do not allow that. Basically, if you pay a large amount at once, it is considered a 'pre-payment' for the next x month. As a result, you are now x months ahead (and could stop paying for that much time), but your interest stays high. The latter type 'protects' the bank against 'losing' the interest income they already planned for. As a balance, those type of mortgages are typically slightly cheaper (because the bank is in a better position). You did not specify a country; in Germany, typically all mortgages are of the second type; but - you can get 1.35% mortgages... In the US, most are the first. You need to check which type you have, best before you pay a large amount. In the latter case, it is better to invest that money and use it to pay off as soon as you reach the threshold; in the first case, any extra payoff is to your advantage.

does interest payment on loan stay the same if I pay early

Or it could be a Robinhood user just messing around with their free commissions. I've seen "people that work for organizations" and other analysts go crazy over some completely benign activity. It is like playing poker with a newbie, unpredictable.

Why do I see multiple trades of very small quantities?

I'd suggest changing the subject when your friends talk about real estate to save your sanity and friendship. There's a difference between "belief" and "knowledge". Arguing with a believer isn't a very productive course of action, and will ultimately poison the friendship. Reality is a harsh mistress.

Why can't house prices be out of tune with salaries

For stock splits, let's say stock XYZ closed at 100 on February 5. Then on February 6, it undergoes a 2-for-1 split and closes the day at 51. In Yahoo's historical prices for XYZ, you will see that it closed at 51 on Feb 6, but all of the closing prices for the previous days will be divided by 2. So for Feb 5, it will say the closing price was 50 instead of 100. For dividends, let's say stock ABC closed at 200 on December 18. Then on December 19, the stock increases in price by $2 but it pays out a $1 dividend. In Yahoo's historical prices for XYZ, you will see that it closed at 200 on Dec 18 and 201 on Dec 19. Yahoo adjusts the closing price for Dec 19 to factor in the dividend.

How does Yahoo finance adjust stock data for splits and dividends?

While Rocky's answer is correct in the big picture there is another factor here to keep in mind: The disruption while you're waiting to resolve it. If a fraudster gets your card and drains your account you'll get your money back--but there will be a period while they are investigating that it won't be available. For this reason I avoid debit card transactions and only use credit cards. If the fraudster gets your credit card you might lose access while they investigate but you don't lose access to your bank account.

How safe is a checking account?

In general I'd say, yeah, if you can pay cash, pay cash. If you pay cash, then by definition you pay zero interest. If you get a loan, you'll pay interest. Most people get a loan to buy a car because they don't have the cash. Possible reasons not to pay cash when you could: One: Technically you can pay cash, but if you did, you would have little or no reserve for emergencies. Like if the car costs, say, $20,000.00, and you have $20,010.00 in your bank account, then technically you could afford to pay cash, but you probably shouldn't, because you don't want to have just $10 left. What if tomorrow something comes up? Two: Arguably, you have a place to invest money that pays more than the interest on the loan. Like say you can get a car loan for, whatever the going rate is today, say 6%. And you know a place to invest your money that is very safe and almost guaranteed to pay 10%. It would make sense to borrow to buy the car, invest the cash, and then withdraw money from the investment to make the payments on the car. You'd end up 4% ahead. There are a lot of catches to that strategy, though. The biggest is that the more the investment pays, the more likely that it is risky. If you thought the investment would pay 10% but it ends up paying only 4%, then you will lose money by this strategy. Also, there's the psychological element: Many people SAY and fully INTEND to invest their money, but then find other things they want to buy and so spend it instead. If you pay cash, you're committed.

Why not pay in full upfront for a car?

Simply put, 100% stock dividend is 1:1 or 1 for 1 bonus share, as explained above, if you held 100 shares after 1:1 bonus you would have 200 shares (100 original, another 100 as bonus). The impact on the stock price is that the price becomes 1/2 the price of the stock before bonus (supply has doubled). 1:1 bonus is nor exactly like a 2:1 / 2 for 1 stock split, in a split the face value if the share would also go down. In effect, any bonus share is not of any fundamental value to the shareholder, as the companies usually capitalize reserves from previous year/years this way as the value of the company does not change fundamentally. In effect the company is taking your money and giving you shares instead.

What does “100% stock dividend” mean?

Getting the right diversity of investments helps buffer you from some of the short term market swings. If you need advice it's worth spending a small part of that money on a consultation with a financial adviser, who can talk to you about your goals, your time horizon, and your risk tolerance and recommend a good starting distribution. (Free advice from brokers risks being biased by their commissions.) Once you have that plan, uou need to decide how to execute it. Low-fee index funds are a good way to get started until you learn more, and for many of us that's all we ever need. Then you need to decide whether to invest it all at once or dollar-cost average. I've heard arguments both ways; DCA does mean you risk missing some immmediate gains, but also reduces your risk of buying at a temporary high and taking some immediate losses. For me DCA seemed to make sense, but that's another decision for you to make.

Strategy for investing large amount of cash

Given a routing number / account number, it's easy to print a check with those details. All you need is a MICR font. No EFT needed. I would recommend that instead, you get his account information, and set up a direct withdrawal. Of course, then you could potentially use HIS account fraudulently, but that would be true even if he just wrote you a check.

Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT

Everything would depend on whether the calculation is being done using the company's all-time high intraday trading price or all-time high closing price. Further, I've seen calculations using non-public pricing data, such as bid-offer numbers from market makers, although this wouldn't be kosher. The likelihood is that you're seeing numbers that were calculated using different points in time. For the record, I think Apple has overtaken Microsoft's all-time highest market cap with a figure somewhere north of $700 billion (nominal). Here's an interesting article link on the subject of highest-ever valuations: comparison of highest market caps ever

Highest market cap for a company from historical data

EVERYONE buys at the ask price and sells at the bid price (no matter who you are). There are a few important things you need to understand. Example: EVE bid: 16.00 EVE ask: 16.25 So if your selling EVE at "market price" you are entering an ask equal to the highest bid ($16.00). If you buy EVE at "market price" you are entering a bid equal to the lowest ask price ($16.25). Its key to understand this rule: "An order executes ONLY when both bid and ask meet. (bid = ask)." So a market maker puts in a bid when he wants to buy but the trade only executes when an ASK price meets his BID price. When you see a quote for a stock it is the price of the last trade. So it is possible to have a quote higher or lower then both the bid and the ask.

Does a market maker sell (buy) at a bid or ask price?

Regarding transferring a residential investment property into your SMSF, no you cannot do it. You cannot transfer residential property into your SMSF from a related party. You can only transfer Business Real Property (that is commercial or industrial property) into a SMSF from a related party. You can buy new residential property inside your SMSF, and you can also borrow within the fund (using a non-recourse loan) to help you buy it, or you could buy it as tenants-in-common with your SMSF (that is you own say 50% in your own name and 50% under the SMSF). Regarding self-managing the investment properties held in your SMSF, yes you can, but you should make sure all your paperwork is in order (all your t's crossed and your i's dotted). You can even charge your SMSF for managing the properties, but this should be at market rates (not more).

Can I transfer my investment property into a SMSF?

Companies absolutely know who ALL their shareholders are. Ownership is filed on Form 3/4 and in 10-Q/Ks. Look there. Guidelines for required disclosure are as follows: 1) Individuals must disclose when their ownership exceeds 5%; 2) Non-individual legal entities (read: companies; e.g. a hedge fund) must disclose when their ownership exceeds 10% (Form 13-F); and 3) All Officers and Directors Notice the word "required." For example, a entity (individual/company) may file "confidentiality letter" (which allows them to delay disclosing ownership) with the SEC as they are building a position. So at any given point in time the information that is publicaly available may not be "up-to-date." And in all cases beneficial owner(ship).

How do you find out who the investors are in a U.S. stock? e.g. how ownership may be concentrated?

I'm surprised by all these complicated answers. Yes @Victor, you can create a form that asks people to put down their financial information but you want to be careful and not put off potential tenants by asking for too many details. Depending on the OP's typical tenants, an extensive background and credit check may not be necessary. For example, if I have proof that someone is a graduate student at the local university, that's usually good enough for me because I am willing to bet that they will follow my contract. Bidding war doesn't sound doable, you advertise a price correct? You can only be haggled down not up. So my suggestion is to look at other rental advertisements in the area. Compare what you're offering (location, quality of house, cleanliness, amenities, etc) to the competition and price accordingly. If you're getting a flood of interest, then you're probably pricing below the average price in your area. Or you live in an area where demand is just much higher than supply, in which case you can also raise your rent.

Multiple people interested in an Apartment

I think the answers you're going to receive are all going to be a bit subjective. Looking at it from a high-level point of view, having this budget nailed down lets you analyze: Now you've got your budget, stick to it! This is really the most important part. You've done your homework, now make sure you don't exceed it without a good reason. If you're under budget in any given month, have a plan on what to do with the excess funds. If you go over budget on a certain area, you can react accordingly. I, personally, recommend hiring a financial planner. Ours has been a huge help with looking further down the line than we had been originally. If you show up to your first meeting with an FP and have this budgetary breakdown ready to go, you'll probably get a high-five. Well done, you!

I've tracked my spending and have created a budget, now what do I do with it?

The highest growth for an investment has historically been in stocks. Investing in mature companies that offer dividends is great for you since it is compound growth. Many oil and gas companies provide dividends.

I'm 20 and starting to build up for my mortgage downpayment, where should I put my money for optimal growth?

I'm surprised at the tone of the answers to this question! Trading with insider information is corruption and encourages fraud. As in many areas, there's an ethical line where behavior the gap between "ok" and "illegal" or unethical is thin. The classic local government insider information example is when the local councilman finds out that a highway exit is being constructed in an area that consists mostly of farmland. Knowing this, he buys out the farmers at what they think is a premium, and turns around for 10x profit a few months later. In that context, do you think that the councilman acting on that insider information is committing a crime or ethical lapse? Most people say yes. Even in this case, the line is thin. If the same councilman has his finger on the pulse of growth patterns in the area, and realizes that the terrain makes a certain area a prime candiate for a highway and exit, buying up land would not be criminal -- but it would be risky as it creates a perception that he is abusing his position.

Why is Insider Trading Illegal?

It might be possible to sue you successfully if someone brought evidence that your brother was absolutely totally unsuitable to drive a car because of some character flaw, and without your financial help he wouldn't have been able to afford a car. So helping a brother to buy a car, if that brother is a drinking alcoholic, or has only a faked driver's license and you know it, that could get you into trouble. A not unsimilar situation: A rental car company could probably be sued successfully if they rented a car to someone who they knew (or maybe should have known) was disqualified from driving and that person caused an accident.

Am I liable for an auto accident if I'm a cosigner but not on the title, registration, or insurance policy?

Probably not. I say probably because your credit card's terms of service may treat certain purchases (I'm thinking buying traveler's checks off-hand) as cash advances. See also this question.

Is it possible to be subject to cash withdrawal even if you don't use ATM?

Technically, no. According to the dictionary, a folio is a single sheet, and a portfolio is a folder or case for keeping your folios. In finance, your collection of investments is called your portfolio, probably because your broker (before the digital age) would keep the records of what each of his clients held in separate portfolios. However, I have seen the word folio used as a short colloquialism for portfolio, and if you google "investment folio" you will see it used this way, mainly in trademarked names of financial firms.

Is “folio” an acceptable contraction of “portfolio”?

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

Capital Gains in an S Corp

Better in terms of what? less taxes paid? or more money to save for retirement? In terms of retirement, it would be better for you to keep the condo you currently have for at least two reasons: You wouldn't incur the penalties and fees from buying and selling a home. Selling and buying a home comes with a multitude of fees and expenses that aren't included in your estimation. You aren't saddled with a mortgage payment again. You aren't paying a mortgage payment right now. If you set aside the amount you would be paying towards that, it more than covers your taxes, with plenty left over to put towards retirement.

Mortgage or not?

You pay tax on the entire amount, not just the capital gains. When cashing out such a plan you would pay the top marginal tax rate on the full amount plus another 10% in penalties. It is very likely that the additional income, of the balance withdrawal, will increase your top marginal rate. It is impossible to come up with a precise answer as we don't know the following: However, you can take a concept away from this that is important: You will be taxed and penalized on the entire 401K balance, not just the capital gain. In the "best case" scenario, that is you had little or no income in a given year. Under current tax law you would owe about 31% of your 401K balance in taxes. As this is such an inefficient use of money most authors recommend against it except in the case of extreme circumstances.

What is the tax levied against stock portion cashed out of 401k?

I'm not sure if there are nuances between countries and appreciate your question is specifically about the US, but in the UK, mobile phone contracts, including SIM only, as seen by the chat in this experion website chat shows that mobile contracts are included in credit ratings for 6 years.

Does a SIM only cell phone contract help credit rating?

Growth is how well the investment will grow on average. In the long term, this is a sure thing. Volatility is how much the value will jerk up and down in the short term. Do you want both... Or neither? When are you going to use the money? If it's IRA money you can't touch for 30 years, it really ought to be in the market, since growth is hugely important, and volatility is not a big concern. You're in it for the very long game, and volatility will average out, leaving pure growth. If the market drops 25% in 6 months, who cares? Stocks go up, stocks go down. It has 29 years to recover, and it will. If you are planning to buy a house in 6 months, you want that money in something like a CD, because volatility could be devastating: an untimely 25% drop in stock price could really, really suck.

Are Certificates of Deposit worth it compared to investing in the stock market?

You are not the person or entity against whom the crime was committed, so the Casualty Loss (theft) deduction doesn't apply here. You should report this as a Capital Loss, the same way all of the Enron shareholders did in their 2001 tax returns. Your cost basis is whatever you originally paid for the shares. The final value is presumably zero. You can declare a maximum capital loss of $3000, so if your net capital loss for the year is greater than that, you'll have to carry over the remainder to the following years. IRS publication 547 states: Decline in market value of stock. You can't deduct as a theft loss the decline in market value of stock acquired on the open market for investment if the decline is caused by disclosure of accounting fraud or other illegal misconduct by the officers or directors of the corporation that issued the stock. However, you can deduct as a capital loss the loss you sustain when you sell or exchange the stock or the stock becomes completely worthless. You report a capital loss on Schedule D (Form 1040). For more information about stock sales, worthless stock, and capital losses, see chapter 4 of Pub. 550.

Are assets lost in a bankruptcy valued at the time of loss, or according to current value?

Yes, the "based on" claim appears to be true – but the Nobel laureate did not personally design that specific investment portfolio ;-) It looks like the Gone Fishin' Portfolio is made up of a selection of low-fee stock and bond index funds, diversified by geography and market-capitalization, and regularly rebalanced. Excerpt from another article, dated 2003: The Gone Fishin’ Portfolio [circa 2003] Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX) – 15% Vanguard Small-Cap Index (NAESX) – 15% Vanguard European Stock Index (VEURX) – 10% Vanguard Pacific Stock Index (VPACX) – 10% Vanguard Emerging Markets Index (VEIEX) – 10% Vanguard Short-term Bond Index (VFSTX) – 10% Vanguard High-Yield Corporates Fund (VWEHX) – 10% Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities Fund (VIPSX) – 10% Vanguard REIT Index (VGSIX) – 5% Vanguard Precious Metals Fund (VGPMX) – 5% That does appear to me to be an example of a portfolio based on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), "which tries to maximize portfolio expected return for a given amount of portfolio risk" (per Wikipedia). MPT was introduced by Harry Markowitz, who did go on to share the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. (Note: That is the economics equivalent of the original Nobel Prize.) You'll find more information at NobelPrize.org - The Prize in Economics 1990 - Press Release. Finally, for what it's worth, it isn't rocket science to build a similar portfolio. While I don't want to knock the Gone Fishin' Portfolio (I like most of its parts), there are many similar portfolios out there based on the same concepts. For instance, I'm reminded of a similar (though simpler) portfolio called the Couch Potato Portfolio, made popular by MoneySense magazine up here in Canada. p.s. This other question about asset allocation is related and informative.

Any Experience with the Gone Fishin' Portfolio?

A "balance transfer" is paying one credit card with another. You probably get offers in the mail to do this all of the time. As other posters have noted, however, this usually comes with finance fees rather than the rewards that you get for normal purchases because it's written into your credit card agreement as a different class of transaction with different rules. I'm not sure if it's urban legend or true, but I have heard stories that suggest there were some "loop holes" in the earliest credit card reward plans that allowed for something like what you want. I doubt that any plan ever allowed exactly what you've written, but I've heard stories about people buying gift cards from merchants and then using the gift cards to pay their bill. This loop hole (if it ever existed) is closed now, but it would have allowed for essentially infinite generation of rewards at no cost to the cardholder. The banks and credit card companies have a lot of years of experience at this sort of thing now, so the threshold for you finding something that works and conforms with the cardholder agreement is pretty small.

(Theoretical) Paying credit cards with other credit cards

I am going to keep things very simple and explain the common-sense reason why the accountant is right: Also, my sister in law owns a small restaurant, where they claim their accountant informed them of the same thing, where a portion of their business purchases had to be counted as taxable personal income. In this case, they said their actual income for the year (through their paychecks) was around 40-50K, but because of this detail, their taxable income came out to be around 180K, causing them to owe a huge amount of tax (30K ish). Consider them and a similarly situated couple that didn't make these purchases. Your sister in law is better off in that she has the benefit of these purchases (increasing the value of her business and her expected future income), but she's worse off because she got less pay. Presumably, she thought this was a fair trade, otherwise she wouldn't have made those purchases. So why should she pay any less in taxes? There's no reason making fair trades should reduce anyone's tax burden. Now, as the items she purchased lose value, that will be a business loss called "depreciation". That will be deductible. But the purchases themselves are not, and the income that generated the money to make those purchases is taxable. Generally speaking, business gains are taxable, regardless of what you do with the money (whether you pay yourself, invest it, leave it in the business, or whatever). Generally speaking, only business losses or expenses are deductible. A purchase is an even exchange of income for valuable property -- even exchanges are not deductions because the gain of the thing purchased already fairly compensates you for the cost. You don't specify the exact tax status of the business, but there are really only two types of possibilities. It can be separately taxed as a corporation or it can be treated essentially as if it didn't exist. In the former case, corporate income tax would be due on the revenue that was used to pay for the purchases. There would be no personal income tax due. But it's very unlikely this situation applies as it means all profits taken out of the business are taxed twice and so small businesses are rarely organized this way. In the latter case, which is almost certainly the one that applies, business income is treated as self-employment income. In this case, the income that paid for the purchases is taxable, self-employment income. Since a purchase is not a deductible expense, there is no deduction to offset this income. So, again, the key points are: How much she paid herself doesn't matter. Business income is taxable regardless of what you do with it. When a business pays an expense, it has a loss that is deductible against profits. But when a business makes a purchase, it has neither a gain nor a loss. If a restaurant buys a new stove, it trades some money for a stove, presumably a fair trade. It has had no profit and no loss, so this transaction has no immediate effect on the taxes. (There are some exceptions, but presumably the accountant determined that those don't apply.) When the property of a business loses value, that is usually a deductible loss. So over time, a newly-purchased stove will lose value. That is a loss that is deductible. The important thing to understand is that as far as the IRS is concerned, whether you pay yourself the money or not doesn't matter, business income is taxable and only business losses or expenses are deductible. Investments or purchases of capital assets are neither losses nor expenses. There are ways you can opt to have the business taxed separately so only what you pay yourself shows up on your personal taxes. But unless the business is losing money or needs to hold large profits against future expenses, this is generally a worse deal because money you take out of the business is taxed twice -- once as business income and again as personal income. Update: Does the business eventually, over the course of the depreciation schedule, end up getting all of the original $2,000 tax burden back? Possibly. Ultimately, the entire cost of the item is deductible. That won't necessarily translate into getting the taxes back. But that's really not the right way to think about it. The tax burden was on the income earned. Upon immediate replacement, hypothetically with the exact same model, same cost, same 'value', isn't it correct that the "value" of the business only went up by the amount the original item had depreciated? Yes. If you dispose of or sell a capital asset, you will have a gain or loss based on the difference between your remaining basis in the asset and whatever you got for the asset. Wouldn't the tax burden then only be $400? Approximately, yes. The disposal of the original asset would cause a loss of the difference between your remaining basis in the asset and what you got for it (which might be zero). The new asset would then begin depreciating. You are making things a bit more difficult to understand though by focusing on the amount of taxes due rather than the amount of taxable gain or loss you have. They don't always correlate directly (because tax rates can vary).

Does U.S. tax code call for small business owners to count business purchases as personal income?

a free $50 looks too good to be true. As others already pointed out, these offers are common to many cards that want you to build loyalty towards a particular company (e.g. airlines cards give lots of mileage for a decent initial spend). Should I get this card for the $50? Why and/or why not? How much do you spend on Amazon, or are planning to do so in future? This offer has been around for ages (earlier they used to offer much smaller amounts of $20 for signing up) and you never saw it. So probably, you won't be really using the site frequently. In that case, its just a matter of whether $50 is worth the hassle for you to sign up and then later cancel (if you don't want to manage another new card). The hit to credit score is likely to be minimal unless you do such offers often. As such, for a person who rarely buys on Amazon I wouldn't advise you to sign up for this card, there are better rewards cards that are not as tied to a particular site (such as Chase Freedom, Discover etc.) If however, you are a regular shopper but just never noticed this prompt earlier; then it is worthwhile to get this - or even consider the Prime version, which you will get or be automatically upgraded to if the account has Prime membership. That gives 5% back instead of 3% on Amazon.

Is Amazon's offer of a $50 gift card a scam?

There are two reasons for incorporating a business in Canada - limiting liability and providing some freedom in structuring your taxes. Since you are asking about taxes, I will restrict myself to that topic. First of all, remember that if you don't make much money, there isn't much tax to save by clever structuring of your affairs. And if you do incorporate, you will pay taxes as a corporation, and pay taxes again on your salary paid from that corporation. It can still be advantageous, because the small business tax rate is less that the higher tax brackets of personal taxes, and you don't have to pay out all of the profit as salary. If you don't incorporate, you still must pay taxes on your net income from the business. (See brian's answer.) Definitely keep track of your income and expenses, even if you don't plan on making money, in case you get audited. If the CRA wants to call your hobby a business, you will need to show that you haven't made any profit. I am just giving you a few bits of advice because this subject is complicated. Too complicated for an answer on this site. If you are still interested, go to your local library and get some books on the subject.

Should I file taxes or Incorperate a personal project?

We don't have a good answer for how to start investing in poland. We do have good answers for the more general case, which should also work in Poland. E.g. Best way to start investing, for a young person just starting their career? This answer provides a checklist of things to do. Let's see how you're doing: Match on work pension plan. You don't mention this. May not apply in Poland, but ask around in case it does. Given your income, you should be doing this if it's available. Emergency savings. You have plenty. Either six months of spending or six months of income. Make sure that you maintain this. Don't let us talk you into putting all your money in better long term investments. High interest debt. You don't have any. Keep up the good work. Avoid PMI on mortgage. As I understand it, you don't have a mortgage. If you did, you should probably pay it off. Not sure if PMI is an issue in Poland. Roth IRA. Not sure if this is an issue in Poland. A personal retirement account in the US. Additional 401k. A reminder to max out whatever your work pension plan allows. The name here is specific to the United States. You should be doing this in whatever form is available. After that, I disagree with the options. I also disagree with the order a bit, but the basic idea is sound: one time opportunities; emergency savings; eliminate debt; maximize retirement savings. Check with a tax accountant so as not to make easily avoidable tax mistakes. You can use some of the additional money for things like real estate or a business. Try to keep under 20% for each. But if you don't want to worry about that kind of stuff, it's not that important. There's a certain amount of effort to maintain either of those options. If you don't want to put in the effort to do that, it makes sense not to do this. If you have additional money split the bulk of it between stock and bond index funds. You want to maintain a mix between about 70/30 and 75/25 stocks to bonds. The index funds should be based on broad indexes. They probably should be European wide for the most part, although for stocks you might put 10% or so in a Polish fund and another 15% in a true international fund. Think over your retirement plans. Where do you want to live? In your current apartment? In a different apartment in the same city? In one of the places where you inherited property? Somewhere else entirely? Also, do you like to vacation in that same place? Consider buying a place in the appropriate location now (or keeping the one you have if it's one of the inherited properties). You can always rent it out until then. Many realtors are willing to handle the details for you. If the place that you want to retire also works for vacations, consider short term rentals of a place that you buy. Then you can reserve your vacation times while having rentals pay for maintenance the rest of the year. As to the stuff that you have now: Look that over and see if you want any of it. You also might check if there are any other family members that might be interested. E.g. cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. If not, you can probably sell it to a professional company that handles estate sales. Make sure that they clear out any junk along with the valuable stuff. Consider keeping furniture for now. Sometimes it can help sell a property. You might check if you want to drive either of them. If not, the same applies, check family first. Otherwise, someone will buy them, perhaps on consignment (they sell for a commission rather than buying and reselling). There's no hurry to sell these. Think over whether you might want them. Consider if they hold any sentimental value to you or someone else. If not, sell them. If there's any difficulty finding a buyer, consider renting them out. You can also rent them out if you want time to make a decision. Don't leave them empty too long. There's maintenance that may need done, e.g. heat to keep water from freezing in the pipes. That's easy, just invest that. I wouldn't get in too much of a hurry to donate to charity. You can always do that later. And try to donate anonymously if you can. Donating often leads to spam, where they try to get you to donate more.

28 years old and just inherited large amount of money and real estate - unsure what to do with it

Are there banks where you can open a bank account without being a citizen of that country without having to visit the bank in person? I've done it the other way around, opened a bank account in the UK so I have a way to store GBP. Given that Britain is still in the EU you can basically open an account anywhere. German online banks for instance allow you to administrate anything online, should there be cards issued you would need an address in the country. And for opening an account a passport is sufficient, you can identify yourself in a video chat. Now what's the downside? French banks' online services are in French, German banks' services are in German. If that doesn't put you off, I would name such banks in the comments if asked. Are there any online services for investing money that aren't tied to any particular country? Can you clarify that? You should at least be able to buy into any European or American stock through your broker. That should give you an ease of mind being FCA-regulated. However, those are usually GDRs (global depository receipts) and denominated in GBp (pence) so you'd be visually exposed to currency rates, by which I mean that if the stock goes up 1% but the GBP goes up 1% in the same period then your GDR would show a 0% profit on that day; also, and more annoyingly, dividends are distributed in the foreign currency, then exchanged by the issuer of the GDR on that day and booked into your account, so if you want to be in full control of the cashflows you should get a trading account denominated in the currency (and maybe situated in the country) you're planning to invest in. If you're really serious about it, some brokers/banks offer multi-currency trading accounts (again I will name them if asked) where you can trade a wide range of instruments natively (i.e. on the primary exchanges) and you get to manage everything in one interface. Those accounts typically include access to the foreign exchange markets so you can move cash between your accounts freely (well for a surcharge). Also, typically each subaccount is issued its own IBAN.

Easiest way to diversify savings

If you don't have other installment loans on your credit report, adding this one could help your credit. That could potentially help you get a better interest rate when you apply for a mortgage. There are positive and negative factors. Positive: Negative:

New car: buy with cash or 0% financing

You could not have two stocks both at $40, both with P/E 2, but one an EPS of $5 and the other $10. EPS = Earnings Per Share P/E = Price per share/Earnings Per Share So, in your example, the stock with EPS of $5 has a P/E of 8, and the stock with an EPS of $10 has a P/E of 4. So no, it's not valid way of looking at things, because your understanding of EPS and P/E is incorrect. Update: Ok, with that fixed, I think I understand your question better. This isn't a valid way of looking at P/E. You nailed one problem yourself at the end of the post: The tricky part is that you have to assume certain values remain constant, I suppose But besides that, it still doesn't work. It seems to make sense in the context of investor psychology: if a stock is "supposed to" trade at a low P/E, like a utility, that it would stay at that low P/E, and thus a $1 worth of EPS increase would result in lower $$ price increase than a stock that was "supposed to" have a high P/E. And that would be true. But let's game it out: Scenario Say you have two stocks, ABC and XYZ. Both have $5 EPS. ABC is a utility, so it has a low P/E of 5, and thus trades at $25/share. XYZ is a high flying tech company, so it has a P/E of 10, thus trading at $50/share. If both companies increase their EPS by $1, to $6, and the P/Es remain the same, that means company ABC rises to $30, and company XYZ rises to $60. Hey! One went up $5, and the other $10, twice as much! That means XYZ was the better investment, right? Nope. You see, shares are not tokens, and you don't get an identical, arbitrary number of them. You make an investment, and that's in dollars. So, say you'd invested $1,000 in each. $1,000 in ABC buys you 40 shares. $1,000 in XYZ buys you 20 shares. Their EPS adds that buck, the shares rise to maintain P/E, and you have: ABC: $6 EPS at P/E 5 = $30/share. Position value = 40 shares x $30/share = $1,200 XYZ: $6 EPS at P/E 10 = $60/share. Position value = 20 shares x $60/share = $1,200 They both make you the exact same 20% profit. It makes sense when you think about it this way: a 20% increase in EPS is going to give you a 20% increase in price if the P/E is to remain constant. It doesn't matter what the dollar amount of the EPS or the share price is.

Different ways of looking at P/E Ratio vs EPS

There are indeed various strategies to make money from this. As Ben correctly said, the stock price drops correspondingly on the dividend date, so the straightforward way doesn't work. What does work are schemes that involve dividend taxation based on nationality, and schemes based on American Options where people can use market rules to their advantage if some options are not exercised.

Can I get a dividend “free lunch” by buying a stock just before the ex-dividend date and selling it immediately after? [duplicate]

The IRS isn't going to care how you filed for benefits - they're effectively the high man on the totem pole. The agency that administers the SNAP program is the one who might care. File the 1040 correctly, and then deal with SNAP as you note. Do deal with SNAP, though; otherwise they might be in trouble if SNAP notices the discrepancy in an audit of their paperwork. Further, SNAP doesn't necessarily care here either. SNAP defines a household as the people who live together in a house and share expenses; a separated couple who neither shared expenses nor lived together would not be treated as a single household, and thus one or both would separately qualify. See this Geeks on Finance article or this Federal SNAP page for more details; and ask the state program administrator. It may well be that this has no impact for him/her. The details are complicated though, particularly when it comes to joint assets (which may still be joint even if they're otherwise separated), so look it over in detail, and talk to the agency to attempt to correct any issues. Note that depending on the exact circumstances, your friend might have another option other than Married Filing Jointly. If the following are true: Then she may file as "Head of Household", and her (soon-to-be) ex would file as "Married Filing Separately", unless s/he also has dependents which would separately allow filing as Head of Household. See the IRS document on Filing Status for more details, and consider consulting a tax advisor, particularly if she qualifies to consult one for free due to lower income.

Separated spouse filed for SNAP benefits as single. Does this affect ability to file taxes jointly?

The one thing I would like to add to Ben's answer is that you will be lucky to get out of this with no proceeds. So that 30-40K paid for the timeshare maybe a total loss. If this purchase was financed with the timeshare used as collateral you may need to pay it off prior to being released. One tactic I heard used is to offer the sales team, that sold you the timeshare, a bonus for selling yours instead of one out of inventory. Assuming their commission is typically 25% of the sales price, you might consider offering them 40% or some higher figure. Doing it this way, you will have all the slick marketing on your side probably generating the highest amount of revenue possible. Timeshares are really bad deals. If you know this you can score some cheap vacations by attending their seminars and continuing to say no. The wife and I recently got back from a nice trip to Aruba mostly paid for with airline points, and a 2 hour timeshare tour.

How to find a reputable company to help sell a timeshare?

What prevents a company from doing secondary public stock offerings on regular basis? The primary goal of a company doing secondary public offering is to raise more funds, that can be utilized for funding the business. If no funding is needed [i.e. company has sufficient funds, or no expansion plans], this funding creates a drag and existing shareholder including promoters loose value. For example with the current 100 invested, the company is able to generate say 125 [25 as profit]. If additional 100 is taken as secondary public offering, then with 200, the company should mark around 250, else it looses value. So if the company took additional 100 and did not / is not able to deploy in market, on 200 they still make 25 as profit, its bad. There are other reasons, i.e. to fight off hostile acquisition or dilute some of promoters shares etc. Thus the reasons for company to do a secondary PO are few and doing it often reduces the value for primary share holders as well as minority share holders.

Why would a public company not initiate secondary stock offerings more often?

Invest in mutual funds for these reasons. Diversification. Mutual funds give you an efficient way to diversify your portfolio, without having to select individual stocks or bonds. Low cost. Convenience. Professional management.

What are the benefits of investing in mutual funds?

You are comparing a risk-free cost with a risky return. If you can tolerate that level of risk (the ups and downs of the investment) for the chance that you'll come out ahead in the long-run, then sure, you could do that. So the parameters to your equation would be: If you assume that the risky returns are normally distributed, then you can use normal probability tables to determine what risk level you can tolerate. To put some real numbers to it, take the average S&P 500 return of 10% and standard deviation of 18%. Using standard normal functions, we can calculate the probability that you earn more than various interest rates: so even with a low 3% interest rate, there's roughly a 1 in 3 chance that you'll actually be worse off (the gains on your investments will be less than the interest you pay). In any case there's a 3 in 10 chance that your investments will lose money.

Calculate investment's interest rate to break-even insurance cost [duplicate]

I would say people are generally talking about the prime lending rate. I have heard the prime lending rate defined as "The rate that banks charge each other when they borrow money overnight." But it often defined as the rate at which banks lend their most creditworthy customers. That definition comes with the caveat that it is not always held to strictly. Either definition has the same idea: it's the lowest rate at which anyone could currently borrow money. The rate for many types of lending is based upon the prime rate. A variable rate loan might have an interest rate of (Prime + x). The prime rate is in turn based upon the Federal Funds Rate, which is the rate that the Fed sets manually. When the news breaks that "the Fed is raising interest rates by a quarter of a point" (or similar) it is the Federal Funds Rate that they control. Lending institutions then "fall in line" and adjust the rates at which they lend money. So to summarize: When people refer to "high" or "low" or "rising" interest rates they are conceptually referring to the prime lending rate. When people talk about the Fed raising/lowering interest rates (In the U.S.) they are referring specifically to the Federal Funds Rate (which ultimately sets other lending rates).

When people say 'Interest rates are at all time low!" … Which interest rate are they actually referring to?

Generally speaking personal loans have higher rates than car loans. During fairly recent times, the market for car loans has become very competitive. A local credit union offers loans as low as 1.99% which is about half the prevailing mortgage rate. In comparison personal loans are typically in the 10-14% range. Even if it made mathematical sense to do so, I doubt any bank would give you a personal loan secured by a car rather than car loan. Either the brain would not work that way; or, it would simply be against company policy. These questions always interest me, why the desire to maximize credit score? There is no correlation between credit score and wealth. There is no reward for anything beyond a sufficiently high score to obtain the lowest rates which is attained by simply paying one's bills on time. One will always be limited by income when the amount able to borrow is calculated regardless of score. I can understand wanting to maximize different aspects of personal finance such as income or investment return percentage, etc.. By why credit score? This is further complicated by a evolving algorithm. Attempts to game the score today, may not work in the future.

car purchase loan versus car collateral loan

There are many reasons, which other answers have already discussed. I want to emphasize and elaborate on just one of the reasons, which is that it avoids double taxation, especially on corporate earnings. Generally, for corporations, its earnings are already taxed at around 40% (for the US - including State income taxes). When dividends are distributed out, it is taxed again at the individual level. The effect is the same when equity is sold and the distribution is captured as a capital gain. (I believe this is why the dividend and capital gain rates are the same in the US.) For a simplistic example, say there is a C Corporation with a single owner. The company earns $1,000,000 before income taxes. It pays 400,000 in taxes, and has retained earnings of $600,000. To get the money out, the owner can either distribute a dividend to herself, or sell her stake to another person. Either choice leads to $600,000 getting taxed at another 20%~30% or so at the individual level (depending on the State). If we calculate the effective rate, it is above 50%! Many people invest in stock, including mutual funds, and the dividends and capital gains are taxed at lower rates. Individual tax returns that contain no wage income often have very low average tax rates for this reason. However, the investments themselves are continuously paying out their own taxes, or accruing taxes in the form of future tax liability.

Why are capital gains taxed at a lower rate than normal income?

Credit card companies are businesses. Businesses will make any decision that makes them money. So does it make them money to cancel your account? It's a simple cost-benefit analysis: you having an account with them will probably give them some benefit for very little cost to them. The only real cost associated with an open account is someone who uses the card but doesn't pay, but they're pretty sure you won't be doing that.

Will a credit card issuer cancel an account if it never incurs interest?

If you have the money to pay cash for the car. Then 0 months will save you the most money. There are of course several caveats. The money for the car has to be in a relatively liquid form. Selling stocks which would trigger taxes may make the pay cash option non-optimal. Paying cash for the car shouldn't leave you car rich but cash poor. Taking all your savings to pay cash would not be a good idea. Note: paying cash doesn't involve taking a wheelbarrow full of bills to the dealer; You can use a a check. If cash is not an option then the longest time period balanced by the rates available is best. If the bank says x percent for 12-23 months, y percent for 24-47 months, Z percent for 48 to... It may be best to take the 47 month loan, because it keeps the middle rate for a long time. You want to lock in the lowest rate you can, for the longest period they allow. The longer period keeps the required minimum monthly payment as low as possible. The lower rate saves you on interest. Remember you generally can pay the loan off sooner by making extra or larger payments. Leasing. Never lease unless you are writing off the monthly lease payment as a business expense. If the choice is monthly lease payments or depreciation for tax purposes the lease can make the most sense. If business taxes aren't involved then leasing only means that you have a complex deal where you finance the most expensive part of the ownership period, you have to watch the mileage for several years, and you may have to pay a large amount at the end of the period for damages and excess miles. Plus many times you don't end up with the car at the end of the lease. In the United States one way to get a good deal if you have to get a loan: take the rebate from the dealer; and the loan from a bank/credit Union. The interest rate at banking institution is a better range of rates and length. Plus you get the dealer cash. Many times the dealer will only give you the 0% interest rate if you pay in 12 months and skip the rebate; where the interest paid to the bank will be less than the rebate.

Optimal term/number of months for car finance or lease?

I had a cat growing up--most of the time I was the one who got her supplies. It was never an issue.

I'm 13. Can I buy supplies at a pet store without a parent/adult present?

If you know with 100% certainty what the market will do, then invest it all at the best time. If not, spread it out over time to avoid investing it all at the worst possible time.

Does dollar cost averaging really work?

You should talk to a financial fiduciary (make sure they are a fiduciary, not all planners are) about investing your money. Even ultra safe investments such as treasury bonds will beat the 1% interest rate offered by your savings account (the yield on the 5 year treasury is currently around 2%).

Should we park our money in our escrow account?

Here's my take on it (and quite a few people might disagree) - student loans aren't bankruptable, so they'll stay with you forever. So if you want to reduce your risk over time and have a funded emergency fund and some cash put aside for, say, a car or another major expense, then I'd try to throw money at the student loan to get rid of it quickly.

Should I pay off my 50K of student loans as quickly as possible, or steadily? Why?

There are a couple of misconceptions I think are present here: Firstly, when people say "interest", usually that implies a lower-risk investment, like a government bond or a money market fund. Some interest-earning investments can be higher risk (like junk bonds offered by near-bankrupt companies), but for the most part, stocks are higher risk. With higher risk comes higher reward, but obviously also the chance for a bad year. A "bad year" can mean your fund actually goes down in value, because the companies you are invested in do poorly. So calling all value increases "interest" is not the correct way to think about things. Secondly, remember that "Roth IRA fund" doesn't really tell you what's "inside" it. You could set up your fund to include only low-risk interest earning investments, or higher risk foreign stocks. From what you've said, your fund is a "target retirement date"-type fund. This typically means that it is a mix of stocks and bonds, weighted higher to bonds if you are older (on the theory of minimizing risk near retirement), and higher to stocks if you are younger (on the theory of accepting risk for higher average returns when you have time to overcome losses). What this means is that assuming you're young and the fund you have is typical, you probably have ~50%+ of your money invested in stocks. Stocks don't pay interest, they give you value in two ways: they pay you dividends, and the companies that they are a share of increase in value (remember that a stock is literally a small % ownership of the company). So the value increase you see as the increase due to the increase in the mutual fund's share price, is part of the total "interest" amount you were expecting. Finally, if you are reading about "standard growth" of an account using a given amount of contributions, someone somewhere is making an assumption about how much "growth" actually happens. Either you entered a number in the calculator ("How much do you expect growth to be per year?") or it made an assumption by default (probably something like 7% growth per year - I haven't checked the math on your number to see what the growth rate they used was). These types of assumptions can be helpful for general retirement planning, but they are not "rules" that your investments are required by law to follow. If you invest in something with risk, your return may be less than expected.

Shouldn't a Roth IRA accumulate more than 1 cent of interest per month?

If a stock is trading for $11 per share just before a $1 per share dividend is declared, then the share price drops to $10 per share immediately following the declaration. If you owned 100 shares (valued at $1100) before the dividend was declared, then you still own 100 shares (now valued at $1000). Generally, if the dividend is paid today, only the owners of shares as of yesterday evening (or the day before maybe) get paid the dividend. If you bought those 100 shares only this morning, the dividend gets paid to the seller (who owned the stock until yesterday evening), not to you. You just "bought a dividend:" paying $1100 for 100 shares that are worth only $1000 at the end of the day, whereas if you had just been a little less eager to purchase right now, you could have bought those 100 shares for only $1000. But, looking at the bright side, if you bought the shares earlier than yesterday, you get paid the dividend. So, assuming that you bought the shares in timely fashion, your holdings just lost value and are worth only $1000. What you do have is the promise that in a couple of days time, you will be paid $100 as the dividend, thus restoring the asset value back to what it was earlier. Now, if you had asked your broker to re-invest the dividend back into the same stock, then, assuming that the stock price did not change in the interim due to normal market fluctuations, you would get another 10 shares for that $100 dividend making the value of your investment $1100 again (110 shares at $10 each), exactly what it was before the dividend was paid. If you didn't choose to reinvest the dividend, you would still have the 100 shares (worth $1000) plus $100 cash. So, regardless of what other investors choose to do, your asset value does not change as a result of the dividend. What does change is your net worth because that dividend amount is taxable (regardless of whether you chose to reinvest or not) and so your (tax) liability just increased.

At what price are dividends re-invested?

There is a highly related question which is much easier to answer: what normally value-increasing news about a company would cause that company to fall in value in the public stock market? By answering that, we can answer your question by proxy. The answer to that question being: anything that makes investors believe that the company won't be able to maintain the level of profit. For example, let's say a company announces a 300% profit growth compared to the previous year. This should push the stock upwards; maybe not by 300%, but certainly by quite a bit. Let's also say that this company is in the business of designing, manufacturing and selling some highly useful gadget that lots of people want to buy. Now suppose that the company managed such an profit increase by one of: In scenario 1 (firing the engineering department), it is highly unlikely that the company will be able to come up with, manufacture and sell a Next Generation Gadget. Hence, while profit is up now, it is highly likely to go down in the months and years coming up. Because stock market investors are more interested in future profits than in past profits, this should push the value of the company down. In scenario 2 (selling off the machinery), the company may very well be able to come up with a Next Generation Gadget, and if they can manufacture it, they might very well be able to sell it. However, no matter how you slice it, the short-term costs for manufacturing either their current generation Gadget, or the Next Generation Gadget, are bound to go up because the company will either need to rent machinery, or buy new machinery. Neither is good for future profits, so the value of the company again should go down in response. In scenario 3 (their product getting a large boost), the company still has all the things that allowed them to come up with, produce and sell Gadgets. They also have every opportunity to come up with, manufacture and sell Next Generation Gadgets, which implies that future profits, while far from guaranteed, are likely. In this case, the probability remains high that the company can actually maintain a higher level of profit. Hence, the value of the company should rise. Now apply this to a slightly more realistic scenario, and you can see why the value of a company can fall even if the company announces, for example, record profits. Hence, you are looking for news which indicate a present and sustained raised ability to turn a profit. This is the type of news that should drive any stock up in price, all else being equal. Obviously, buyer beware, your mileage may vary, all else is never equal, nothing ever hits the average, you are fighting people who do this type of analysis for a living and have every tool known available to them, etc etc. But that's the general idea.

What kind news or information would make the price of a stock go up?

In Australia anyone thinking about retirement should be concentrating on superannuation. Contribution is compulsory (I think the current minimum contribution rate is 9.5% of salary) and both contributions and investment returns are very tax efficient. The Government site is quite comprehensive - http://www.australia.gov.au/topics/economy-money-and-tax/superannuation - have a read and come back with any specific questions.

What is the most common and profitable investment for a good retirement in Australia?

Junk Bonds (aka High Yield bonds) are typically those bonds from issues with credit ratings below BBB-. Not all such companies are big risks. They are just less financially sound than other, higher rated, companies. If you are not comfortable doing the analysis yourself, you should consider investing in a mutual fund, ETF, or unit trust that invests in high yield bonds. You get access to "better quality" issues because a huge amount of the debt markets goes to the institutional channels, not to the retail markets. High yield (junk) bonds can make up a part of your portfolio, and are a good source of regular income. As always, you should diversify and not have everything you own in one asset class. There are no real rules of thumb for asset allocation -- it all depends on your risk tolerance, goals, time horizon, and needs. If you don't trust yourself to make wise decisions, consult with a professional whom you trust.

Are junk bonds advisable to be inside a bond portfolio that has the objective of generating stable income for a retiree?

No, if your brokers find out about this, even though it is unlikely, you will be identified as a pattern day trader. The regulations do not specify a per broker limit. Also, it's like a credit history. Brokers are loosely obligated to inform other brokers that a client is a pattern day trader when transferring accounts.

Can I trade more than 4 stocks per week equally split between two brokers without “pattern day trading” problems?

In many ESPP programs (i.e. every one I've had the opportunity to be a part of in my career), your purchase is at a discount from the lower of the stock prices at the start and end of the period. So a before-tax 5% return is the minimum you should expect; if the price of the stock appreciates between July 1 and December 31, you benefit from that gain as well. More concretely: Stock closes at $10/share on July 1, and $11/share on December 31. The plan buys for you at $9.50/share. If you sell immediately, you clear $1.50/share in profit, or a nearly 16% pre-tax gain. If the price declines instead of increases, though, you still see that 5% guaranteed profit. Combine that with the fact that you're contributing every paycheck, not all at once at the start, and your implied annual rate of return starts to look pretty good. So if it was me, I'd pay the minimum on the student loan and put the excess into the ESPP.

Is this Employee Stock Purchase Plan worth it when adding my student loan into the equation?