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The holdup is from the merchant. To protect themselves, a merchant requires payment before giving you your purchased item/service. That is why you are charged immediately. When getting a refund, the same reason applies. The merchant needs to ensure that you are returning the correct item, or that it is still good, or that you are not trying to defraud the merchant in some way. Once the merchant processes that refund, it is all over for them, and they have no recourse later if they find out they were cheated. That is why they wait a while: the delay gives them time to discover any problems.

Why does it take so long to refund to credit card?

Considering I'm putting 30% down and having my father cosign is there any chance I would be turned down for a loan on a $100k car? According to BankRate, the average credit score needed to buy a new car is 714, but they also show average interest rates at 6.39% for new-car loans to people with credit scores in the 601-660 range. High income certainly helps offset credit score to some extent. Not every bank/dealership does things the same way. Being self-employed you'd most likely be required to show 2 years of tax returns, and they'd use those as a basis for your income rather than whatever you have made recently. If using a co-signer, their income matters. Another key factor is debt to income ratio, if too much of someone's income is already spoken for by other debts a lender will shy away. So, yes, there's a chance, given all the information we don't know and the variability with lender policies, that you could be turned down for a car loan. How should I go about this? If you're set on pursuing the car loan, just go talk to some lenders. You'll want to shop around for a good rate anyway, so no need to speculate just go find out. Include the dealership as a potential financing option, they can have great rates. Personally, I'd get a much cheaper car. Your insurance premium on a 100k car will be quite high due to your age. You might be rightly confident in your earning potential, but nothing is guaranteed, situations can change wildly in short order. A new car is not a good investment or a value-retaining asset, so why bother going into debt for one if you don't have to? If you buy something in cash now, you could upgrade in a few years without financing if your earning prediction holds and would save quite a bit in car insurance and interest over the years between.

Will I be turned down for a car loan?

Financial Literacy is about learning about finance and money and how to use and manage them to give you better outcomes in life. Just like the more books you read and the more writing you do will improve your literacy, the more financial books you read, the more questions you ask and the more you participate in this forum and others like it, the more you will improve your financial literacy. The more financial literate you are the more you will be able to make informed decisions regarding your finances and the more you will be able to avoid financial scams.

What is “financial literacy” and how does one become “financially literate”?

Banks are in it to make money. But they're expected to provide a social good which powers our economy: secure money storage (bank accounts) and cashless transactions (credit/debit cards). And the government does not subsidize this. In fact, banks are being squeezed. Prudent customers dislike paying the proper cost of their account's maintenance (say, a $50/year fee for a credit card, or $9/month for a checking account) - they want it free. Meanwhile government is pretty aggressive about preventing "fine print" trickery that would let them recover costs other ways. However there isn't much sympathy for consumers who make trivial mistakes - whether they be technical (overdraft, late fee) or money-management mistakes (like doing balance transfers or getting fooled by promotional interest rates). So that's where banks are able to make their money: when people are imprudent. The upshot is that it's hard for a bank to make money on a prudent careful customer; those end up getting "subsidized" by the less-careful customers who pay fees and buy high-margin products like balance transfers. And this has created a perverse incentive: banks make more money when they actively encourage customers to be imprudent. Here, the 0% interest is to make you cocky about running up a balance, or doing balance transfers at a barely-mentioned fee of 3-5%. They know most Americans don't have $500 in the bank and you won't be able to promptly pay it off right before the 0% rate ends. (or you'll forget). And this works - that's why they do it. By law, you already get 0% interest on purchases when you pay the card in full every month. So if that's your goal, you already have it. In theory, the banks collect about 1.5% from every transaction you do, and certainly in your mind's eye, you'd think that would be enough to get by without charging interest. That doesn't work, though. The problem is, such a no-interest card would attract people who carry large balances. That would have two negative impacts: First the bank would have to spend money reborrowing, and second, the bank would have huge exposure to credit card defaults. The thing to remember is the banks are not nice guys and are not here to serve you. They're here to use you to make money, and they're not beneath encouraging you to do things that are actually bad for you. Caveat Emptor.

Is it possible for me to keep my credit card APR at 0% permanently?

One reason to not do that is if you consider that one of the loans is at risk of being called in early. e.g. You have a line of credit which is close to its limit, and the bank decides to reduce that limit, forcing you to quickly come up with the money to pay it down below the new limit, which can really throw a wrench into your plans.

Why would anyone want to pay off their debts in a way other than “highest interest” first?

The name of the Gilt states the redemption date, but not the original issue date. A gilt with 8.75% yield and close to its redemption date may have been issued at a time when interest rates were indeed close to 8.75%. For example in the early 1990s, the UK inflation rate was about 8%. One reason for preferring high or low coupon gilts is the trade off between capital gains and income, and the different taxation rules for each. If you buy a gilt and hold it to its maturity date, you know in advance the exact price that it will be redeemed for (i.e. £100). You may prefer to take a high level of income now, knowing you will make a capital loss in future (which might offset some other predictable capital gain for tax purposes) or you may prefer not to take income that you don't need right now, and instead get a guaranteed capital gain in future (for example, when you plan to retire from work). Also, you can use the change in the market value of gilts as a gamble or a hedge against your expectation of interest rate changes in future, with the "government guaranteed" fallback position that if your predictions are wrong, you know exactly what return you will get if you hold the gilts to maturity. The same idea applies to other bond investments - but without the government guarantee, of course.

How do UK Gilts interest rates and repayments work?

17.5 thousand miles/year is pretty high mileage. You could find an Accord or Civic of comparable age with much lower mileage than that, and it wouldn't be a stretch for someone (even with your limited credit history) to get a loan on an old car like that. You might try to have your parents cosign on a loan depending on their financial circumstances. That's how I bought my first car 13 years ago. The biggest surprise you might want to consider is the cost of full collision auto coverage which will be required by whatever bank you finance through. Get quotes for that before signing any papers. (I spent $2000 more on a motorcycle because the more powerful one cost $2000 less/year to insure just a few years after I bought that first car.) Speaking of which, another thing to consider given the nice LA weather is a motorcycle. The total cost of ownership is much lower than a car. You will probably not want to pursue that option if you do not have medical insurance, and you may not want to anyway.

New or Used Car Advice for Recent College Grad

You don't need a Visa to create or own US property. Your registered agent will be able to take care of most of this, and your new entity will use the registered agent's address where applicable, but you may need your own separate address which can be your office in the UK. If you want privacy then you'll want a separate address, which can also be a PO Box or an address the registered agent also provides. US corporations, especially in Delaware, have a lot more compliance issues than the LLC product. Delaware has a lot more costs for formation and annual reports than most other united states. There are definitely a lot of states to choose from, but more people will have information for Delaware.

Moving my online only business to the USA?

I have money withdrawn near when the bill is due (not early at all) and my credit score is top-notch. It's far, far more important that you don't pay late. I don't think paying early earns you brownie points with FICO. Now, if you have an interest-bearing checking account, and if you pay your balance in full each month, and are very, very organized, then paying at the last minute, but on time, lets you take full advantage of the free float that the credit card issuer gives you. If you have trouble rubbing two brain cells together when it comes to bills (like I do sometimes) then either set up auto-deduct from your checking account or pay the bill as soon as it comes in.

Should I pay off my credit card online immediately or wait for the bill?

Theoretically, it shouldn't matter which one you use. Your return should only depend on the stock returns in SGD and the ATS/SGD exchange rate (Austrian Schillings? is this an question from a textbook?). Whether you do the purchase "through" EUR or USD shouldn't matter as the fluctuations in either currency "cancel" when you do the two part exchange SGD/XXX then XXX/ATS. Now, in practice, the cost of exchanging currencies might be higher in one currency or the other. Likely a tiny, tiny amount higher in EUR. There is some risk as well as you will likely have to exchange the money and then wait a day or two to buy the stock, but the risk should be broadly similar between USD and EUR.

Stock not available at home country nor at their local market - where should I buy it

I think the other answers raise good points. But to your question, "How do I find an honest financial adviser" ask your friends and family. See who they talk to and confide in. Go meet that person, understand what they do and how they view things and if you gel, great. Honesty and strong ethics exist in individuals regardless of laws. What is it you're trying to accomplish? You just have some money you want to put aside? You want to save for something? You want to start a budget or savings plan? Your first step may be talking to a tax person, not an investment adviser. Sometimes the most significant returns are generated when you simply retain more of your earnings and tax people know how to accomplish that. You're just graduating university, you're just going to get your first job. You don't need to hunt for the right heavy hitter 30% gains generating financial adviser. You need to establish your financial foundation. Crawl, walk, then run. There are some basics (that transcend international borders). If you don't know much about investing, most (if not all) retirement and individual brokerage type accounts will give you access to some kind of market index fund. You don't need to multinationally diversify in to high fee funds because "emerging markets are screaming right now." Typically, over a few years the fees you pay in the more exotic asset classes will eat up the gains you've made compared to a very low fee market index fund. You can open free accounts at a number of financial institutions. These free accounts at these banks all have a list of zero commission zero load funds, all have something resembling an index fund. You can open your account for free, deposit your money for free, and buy shares in an index fund for free.

How do I go about finding an honest & ethical financial advisor?

If you are making regular periodic investments (e.g. each pay period into a 401(k) plan) or via automatic investment scheme in a non-tax-deferred portfolio (e.g. every month, $200 goes automatically from your checking account to your broker or mutual fund house), then one way of rebalancing (over a period of time) is to direct your investment differently into the various accounts you have, with more going into the pile that needs bringing up, and less into the pile that is too high. That way, you can avoid capital gains or losses etc in doing the selling-off of assets. You do, of course, take longer to achieve the balance that you seek, but you do get some of the benefits of dollar-cost averaging.

How to rebalance a portfolio without moving money into losing investments

With this level of income, you might consider a Solo 401(k). It would allow you a much higher level of contributions and is more appropriate for your savings than the limited IRA deposits. It also offers a considerable number of options not available for IRAs. A loan for example.

18 year old making $60k a year; how should I invest? Traditional or Roth IRA?

From what I have read from O'Neil to Van Tharp, etc, etc, no one can pick winners more than 75% of the time regardless of the system they use and most traders consider themselves successful if 60% of the trades are winners and 40% are losers. So I am on the side that the chart is only a reflection of the past and cannot tell you reliably what will happen in the future. It is difficult to realize this but here is a simple way for you to realize it. If you look at a daily chart and let's say it is 9:30 am at the open and you ask a person to look at the technical indicators, look at the fundamentals and decide the direction of the market by drawing the graph, just for the next hour. He will realize in just a few seconds that he will say to him or her self "How on earth do you expect me to be able to do that?" He will realize very quickly that it is impossible to tell the direction of the market and he realizes it would be foolhardy to even try. Because Mickey Mantle hit over 250 every year of his career for the first 15 years it would be a prudent bet to bet that he could do it again over the span of a season, but you would be a fool to try to guess if the next pitch would be a ball or a strike. You would be correct about 50% of the time and wrong about 50% of the time. You can rely on LARGER PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR OVER YEARS, but short hourly or even minute by minute prediction is foolish. That is why to be a trader you have to keep on trading and if you keep on trading and cut your losses to 1/2 of your wins you will eventually have a wonderful profit. But you have to limit your risk on any one trade to 1% of your portfolio. In that way you will be able to trade at least 100 times. do the math. trade a hundred times. lose 5% and the next bet gain 10%. Keep on doing it. You will have losses sometimes of 3 or 4 in a row and also wins sometimes of 3 or 4 in a row but overall if you keep on trading even the best traders are generally only "right" 60% of the time. So lets do the math. If you took 100 dollars and make 100 trades and the first trade you made 10% and reinvested the total and the second trade you lost 5% of that and continue that win/loss sequence for 100 trades you would have 1284 dollars minus commissions. That is a 1200% return in one hundred trades. If you do it in a roth IRA you pay no taxes on the short term gains. It is not difficult to realize that the stock market DOES TREND. And the easiest way to make 10% quickly is to in general trade 3x leveraged funds or stocks that have at least 3 beta from the general index. Take any trend up and count the number of days the stock is up and it is usually 66-75% and take any down trend and it is down 66-75% of the days. So if you bet on the the beginning of a day when the stock was up and if you buy the next day about 66-75% of the time the stock will also be up. So the idea is to realize that 1/3 of the time at least you will cut your losses but 2/3 of the time you will be up then next day as well. So keep holding the position based on the low of the previous day and as the stock rises to your trend line then tighten the stock to the low of the same day or just take your profit and buy something else. But losing 1/3 times is just part of "the unpredictable" nature of the stock market which is causes simply because there are three types of traders all betting at the same time on the same stock. Day traders who are trading from 1 to 10 times a day, swing traders trading from 1 day to several weeks and buy and hold investors holding out for long term capital gains. They each have different price targets and time horizons and THAT DIFFERENCE is what makes the market move. ONE PERSON'S SHORT TERM EXIT PRICE AT A PROFIT IS ANOTHER PERSONS LONG TERM ENTRY POINT and because so many are playing at the same time with different time horizons, stop losses and exit targets it is impossible to draw the price action or volume. But it is possible to cut your losses and ride your winners and if you keep on doing that you have a very fine return indeed.

Is candlestick charting an effective trading tool in timing the markets?

My primary concerns. There seems to still be a fair bit of distressed property (forclosures etc) on the market at current, which might well keep prices down for the next year or so that it takes to finish flushing that stuff out of the market. The gist I get from most experts/pundits is that There will be good deals around for while to come still I'd advise you wait. Go ahead and do the math to figure out what total you WOULD be paying would be, and charge yourself that much a mohth for rent in your current place, pocketing the difference in a savings account. You'll be able to get a feeling for what it's like to live with that kind of house payment, and if you can do it sans any room-mate (something you can't always count on) If you can manage it, then you have a much more realistic idea of what you can afford, AND you'll have saved up a bunch of money to help with a down-payment in the process. If for example your Mortgage plus taxes and insurance ends up running around say $1450 a month, plus another $150 for the HOA, well then, that's charging yourself $1600 a month for your 'rent' which means $1000 per month going into the bank, in two years that's nearly the same as what you have now in the $401K, and you'd have a really good idea if you can afford that much per month in housing costs. If you are bound and determined to do this now, then here's a few other things to consider. You might to shop around a bit to see how typical those HOA fees are. Yeah you don't have the expense and hassle of needing to mow the lawn, paint the place etc but still, 150 a month translates to around another 1.5 mortgage payments a year. You might be able to get around PMI by splitting the mortgage into two pieces and doing a 'purchase money second' of around 15-20% and 75-70% of the value for the main mortgage. That way the LoanToValue on your primary loan is under 80%, which could be worthwhile even if the interest rate on that second loan is a little higher (at least it's deductible, paying PMI is just money lost to you) although trying to do any kind of creative financing these days is a lot trickier

How big of a mortgage can I realistically afford?

Does the full time PHD student extend to 70-80 hours/week or more? If not, can you pick up an extra job to aid with living expenses? Also, whose name is the debt in? Is your wife paying to avoid the black mark on her credit record or her mother's? Basically what it looks like to me is that you guys currently have a car you cannot afford and that her mother doesn't seem to be able to afford either, at a ridiculous interest rate on top. Refinancing might be an option but at a payoff amount of 12k you're upside down even when it comes to the KBB retail value. I'm somewhat allergic to financing a deprecating asset (especially at a quick back of the envelope calculation suggests that she's already paid them around $18k if you are indeed three years into the loan). What I would be tempted to do in your situation is to attempt to negotiate a lower payoff to see if they're willing to settle for less and give you clean title to the car - worst thing they can say is no, but you might be able to get the car for a little less than the $12k, then preferably use your emergency money to pay off the car and put it up for sale. Use some of the money to buy her a cheaper car for, say, $4k-$5k (or less if you're mechanically inclined) and put the rest back into your emergency fund. The problem I see with refinancing it would be that it looks like you're underwater from a balance vs retail value perspective so you might have a problem finding someone to refinance it with you throwing some of your emergency money at it in the first place.

What to do with an expensive, upside-down car loan?

The Answer is yes according to multiple online sources and my local bank. This approach is a common technique to building your own home. You finance the land, build the simplest possible dwelling (say a garage with 1 bathroom/bedroom), refi into a mortgage and get cash back and then build your "real house" or add on, etc. This eliminates the banks demands that come with a "construction loan" and saves you 10s of thousands in the process (fees, contractors, scheduling, design, etc)

Refinance a land loan into a mortgage loan

I disagree with most of the answers here so far because they are either too risky or too conservative and don't take taxes and retirement into consideration. OP, keep in mind the higher the potential return, the greater the risk. You haven't stated your risk tolerance, but consider the following: Pick a certain percentage of your $10k to invest for the long term. Pick a low-cost index fund like the S&P500 Index. Historically this investment does well in the long run, and it gets you started in investing. Keep the balance, the money you will need for the short term, right where it is not earning much interest. Have you started saving for retirement? Consider starting a Roth IRA (if you are in the USA) with some of the money for tax advantages. It's up to you to decide how much you should invest and how much you need to keep on hand for emergencies or short-term needs. There are plenty related questions on this forum you can browse.

I have $10,000 sitting in an account making around $1 per month interest, what are some better options?

If you are trying to invest in closely held / private companies (things that don't trade on the stock market), you will run into a variety of regulatory problems. For various reasons, most private companies only raise funds with accredited investors. To be an accredited investor you basically have to have $1,000,000 in net worth - NOT including your primary residence, OR you have to make over $200,000 a year for the last two years and expect to keep making that much. This is a class distinction the Federal government created, you will see different but similar wealth and investment classes worldwide. So your best most organized opportunities are left out, unless you do qualify as an accredited investor. There are tons of other companies, things you will find locally, that will let you invest in their smaller time operations. (Think like a local yoga studio looking for $20,000 and willing to split the profits with you). But the problem here is lack of accountability, where partners skip town or just stop answering your calls, and the legal remedies cost you more than your claim. That being said there are people that provide capital to smaller publicly traded companies on the bulletin boards and pink sheets. They have opportunities do much better than the actual stock market investors in these companies, because you can negotiate contracts that let you cash out in their inevitable financing death spirals with very little risk to you. You can do these things as an individual or as a holding company, but the holding company will limit your liability to the amount your holding company invested, instead of your personal assets, in case your financing starts to incur liability with the company.

Start a Holding Company?

Anyone who claims they can consistently beat the market and asks you to pay them to tell you how is a liar. This cannot be done, as the market adjusts itself. There's nothing they could possibly learn that analysts and institutional investors don't already know. They earn their money through the subscription fees, not through capital gains on their beat-the-market suggestions, that means that they don't have to rely on themselves to earn money, they only need you to rely on them. They have to provide proof because they cannot lie in advertisements, but if you read carefully, there are many small letters and disclaimers that basically remove any liability from them by saying that they don't take responsibility for anything and don't guarantee anything.

Are Investment Research websites worth their premiums?

Stock price is determined by what's being asked for it, and what's being paid for it. The reported price is either a recent average, or is the last price at which a sale actually took place, depending on which you've asked for. Limit orders are an agreement between you and your brokerage, and have no direct effect on price. When and if their condition is triggered and the transaction takes place, the transaction is what's significant.

How is stock price determined?

A 15% discount does not necessarily mean it is a good investment. The stock price can go down at any point. 15% discount might mean you are getting a little better deal than the average cat.

How can I get the most value from my employer's ESPP?

i'm absolutely a newcomer in economics and i wish to understand how things work around finance. This is a pretty loaded question. To understand finance, you need the basics of economics. In almost every economics school in the country, you first study microeconomics and then economics. So, we'll start with micro. One of, if not the, most popular books is "Principles of Microeconomics" by Mankiw. This book covers the fundamentals of micro econ (opportunity, supply, demand, consumer choice, production, costs, basic game theory, and allocation of resources) in a clear and effective manner. It's designed for the novice and very easy to read. Like Mankiw's other book, "Principles of Macroeconomics" is also top notch. There is some overlap in key areas (i.e. opportunity cost, supply, demand, indifference curves, elasticity, taxation) because they are fundamental to economics and the overlap will always be there, but from there the book goes into key macro concepts like GDP, CPI, Employment, Monetary and Fiscal policy, and Inflation. An excellent intro primer indeed. Now that you have the fundamentals down, it's time to learn about finance. The best resource, in my opinion, is "Financial Markets" by Robert Shiller on Open Yale Courses. I've personally taken Prof. Shiller's class last semester, and the man is brilliant. The lectures cover every single aspect of finance and can turn the complete novice into a fairly experienced finance student. The first lecture also covers all the math required so you don't get lost at any point. Be warned, however, that the course is very deep. We used Fabozzi's textbook "Foundations of Financial Markets and Institutions," which is over 600 pages deep and we were required to know essentially all of it. Watch the videos and follow the readings and you'll be a finance whiz soon! Financial Markets on Open Yale And that's your roadmap to what you want. There are other economics books and it's true that the first few chapters of both Mankiw books are largely the same, but that's because any economics course always covers the basics first. If you want to look at other books, Krugman has written some good books as well. Be sure to read reviews because some books are meant for 2nd/3rd year econ students, so you don't want to get a too advanced book. At the novice level, we're interested in understanding the basic concepts so we can master Fabozzi. As for finance books - Fabozzi teaches you all the fundamentals of financial markets so you've got a powerful foundation. From there you can expand to more niche books such as books on investing or on monetary policy or whatever you want. Best of luck!

Economics Books

@Alex B's answer hits most of it, but leaves out one thing: most companies control who can own their non-public shares, and prohibit transfers, sales, or in some cases, even ongoing ownership by ex-employees. So it's not that hard to ensure you stay under 500 investors. Remember that Sharespost isn't an exchange or clearinghouse; it's basically a bulletin board with some light contract services and third-party escrow services. I'd guess that many of the companies on their "hot" list explicitly prohibit the sale of their non-public shares.

Can a bunch of wealthy people force Facebook to go public?

As someone who works for a company that deploys POS systems in Canada, I can tell you that your best bet would be to have a configuration option that lets the client decide what to do. If they have a business practice that would allow for a sale total to be $0.01 or $0.02, they should first evaluate their business practice. If you're building a POS system to deploy in Canada, I'm sure you have access to resources (potential clients) who would already know how they would want to handle this. Ask them.

What happens if a purchase is $0.02 in Canada?

Having been recently evicted she is unlikely to find any one willing to rent to her at anything close to reasonable terms. Any landlord that would consider it is likely to require a huge deposit. Her best solution may be a hotel/motel with weekly/monthly rates. It is generally much easier to get someone out of a hotel/motel for non payment than it is an actual apartment with a lease and landlord-tenant laws. But when you pay they take care of all utilities, and you can receive mail and register them as your permanent address for finding employment. Any other place that is willing to take someone who they know is a high risk for nonpayment/eviction is probably not going to be the type of place you want your children.

How can a person with really bad credit history rent decent housing?

Assuming United States; answer may be different elsewhere. The best instructions I have seen for this were on the webpage of one of the law firms making an organized business out of intra-family loans, but any lawyer who can deal with normal bank loans should be able to help you set this up and get it filed with the appropriate authorities to make it a legally binding mortgage. Shouldn't cost you much in legal time to do it. You will have to charge interest; your lawyer can tell you what the minimum and maximimum interest rates would be where you are. Your interest income will be taxable. The borrower may or may not be able to deduct the interest paid from their taxes. Of course if the borrower has any sense they'll want to get their own lawyer to review the terms of the agreement, and to tell them whether they can deduct it from taxes or not.

Simple loan with a mortage as collateral

First, I would recommend getting rid of this ridiculous debt, or remember this day and this answer, "you will be living this way for many years to come and maybe worse, no/not enough retirement". Hold off on any retirement savings right now so that the money can be used to crush this debt. Without knowing all of your specifics (health insurance deductions, etc.) and without any retirement contribution, given $190,000 you should probably be taking home around $12,000 per month total. Assuming a $2,000 mortgage payment (30 year term), that is $10,000 left per month. If you were serious about paying this off, you could easily live off of $3,000 per month (probably less) and have $7,000 left to throw at the student loan debt. This assumes that you haven't financed automobiles, especially expensive ones or have other significant debt payments. That's around 3 years until the entire $300,000 is paid! I have personally used and endorse the snowball method (pay off smallest to largest regardless of interest rate), though I did adjust it slightly to pay off some debts first that had a very high monthly payment so that I would then have this large payment to throw at the next debt. After the debt is gone, you now have the extra $7,000 per month (probably more if you get raises, bonuses etc.) to enjoy and start saving for retirement and kid's college. You may have 20-25 years to save for retirement; at $4,000 per month that's $1 million in just savings, not including the growth (with moderate growth this could easily double or more). You'll also have about 14 years to save for college for this one kid; at $1,500 per month that's $250,000 (not including investment growth). This is probably overkill for one kid, so adjust accordingly. Then there's at least $1,500 per month left to pay off the mortgage in less than half the time of the original term! So in this scenario, conservatively you might have: Obviously I don't know your financials or circumstances, so build a good budget and play with the numbers. If you sacrifice for a short time you'll be way better off, trust me from experience. As a side note: Assuming the loan debt is 50/50 you and your husband, you made a good investment and he made a poor one. Unless he is a public defender or charity attorney, why is he making $60,000 when you are both attorneys and both have huge student loan debt? If it were me, I would consider a job change. At least until the debt was cleaned up. If he can make $100,000 to $130,000 or more, then your debt may be gone in under 2 years! Then he can go back to the charity gig.

Is it okay to be married, 30 years old and have no retirement?

There are kind of two answers here: the practical reason an acquirer has to pay more for shares than their current trading price and the economic justification for the increase in price. Why must the acquirer must pay a premium as a practical matter? Everyone has a different valuation of a company. The current trading price is the lowest price that any holder of the stock is willing to sell a little bit of stock for and the highest that anyone is willing to buy a little bit for. However, Microsoft needs to buy a controlling share. To do this on the open market they would need to buy all the shares from people who's personal valuation is low, and then a bunch from people whose valuation is higher and so on. The act of buying that much stock would push the price up by buying all the shares from people who are really willing to sell. Moreover, as they buy more and more, the remaining people increase their personal valuation so the price would really shoot up. Acquirers avoid this situation by offering to buy a ton of stock at a substantially higher, single price. Why is Linkedin suddenly worth more than it was yesterday? Microsoft is expecting to be able to use its own infrastructure and tools to make more money with Linkedin than Linkedin would have before. In other words, they believe that the Linkedin division of Microsoft after the merger will be worth more than Linkedin alone was before the merger. This synergistic idea is the theoretical foundation for mergers in general and the main reason people use to argue for a higher price. You could also argue that by expressing an interest in Linkedin, Microsoft may be telling us something it knows about Linkedin's value that maybe we didn't realize before because we aren't as smart and informed as the people on Microsoft's board. But since it's Microsoft that's doing the buying in this case, I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is not the main effect. Given Microsoft's history, the idea that they buy expensive things because they have money to burn is more compelling than the idea that they have an insight into a company's value that we don't.

Why do people buy stocks at higher price in merger?

Companies do not support their stock. Once the security is out on the wild (market), its price fluctuates according to what investors think they are worth. Support is a whole different concept, financially speaking: Support or support level refers to the price level below which, historically, a stock has had difficulty falling. It is the level at which buyers tend to enter the stock. So it is the lowest assumed price for that stock. Once it reaches its price, buyers will rush to the stock, raising its price. The company wants to keep the stock price at acceptable levels, as it can be seen as the general view of the company's health. Also several employees/executives in the company have stock or stock options, so it is in their interest to keep their stock price up. A bond that goes down in value may indicate a believe the bond issuer (government in this case) won't honor the bond when it matures. As for bonds, there is a wealth of reading in this site: Can someone explain how government bonds work? Who sets the prices on government bonds? Basic understanding of bonds, values, rates and yields

Do governments support their own bonds when their value goes down?

Yes, I have done this and did not feel a change in cash flow - but I didn't do it a the age of 23. I did it at a time when it was comfortable to do so. I should have done it sooner and I strongly encourage you to do so. Another consideration: Is your companies program a good one? if it is not among the best at providing good funds with low fees then you should consider only putting 6% into your employer account to get the match. Above that dollar amount start your own ROTH IRA at the brokerage of your choice and invest the rest there. The fee difference can be considerable amounting to theoretically much higher returns over a long time period. If you choose to do the max , You would not want to max out before the end of the year. Calculate your deferral very carefully to make sure you at least put in 6% deferral on every paycheck to the end of the year. Otherwise you may miss out on your company match. It is wise to consider a ROTH but it is extremely tough to know if it will be good for you or not. It all depends on what kind of taxes (payroll, VAT, etc) you pay now and what you will pay in the future. On the other hand the potential for tax-free capital accumulation is very nice so it seems you should trend toward Roth.

Any experience with maxing out 401(k)?

My assumption here is that you paid nearly 32K, but also financed about 2500 in taxes/fees. At 13.5% the numbers come out pretty close. Close enough for discussion. On the positive side, you see the foolishness of your decision however you probably signed a paper that stated the true cost of the car loan. The truth in lending documents clearly state, in bold numbers, that you would pay nearly 15K in interest. If you pay the loan back early, or make larger principle payments that number can be greatly reduced. On top of the interest charge you will also suffer depreciation of the car. If someone offered you 31K for the car, you be pretty lucky to get it. If you keep it for 4 years you will probably lose about 40% of the value, about 13K. This is why it is foolish for most people to purchase a new vehicle. Not many have enough wealth to absorb a loss of this size. In the book A Millionaire Next Door the author debunks the assumption that most millionaires drive new cars. They tend to drive cars that are pretty standard and a couple of years old. They pay cash for their cars. The bottom line is you singed documents indicating that you knew exactly what you were getting into. Failing any other circumstances the car is yours. Talking to a lawyer would probably confirm this. You can attempt to sell it and minimize your losses, or you can pay off the loan early so you are not suffering from finance charges.

I bought a new car for a month and wanted to return it

In general, it is unusual for a credit check to occur when you are terminating a contract, since you are no longer requesting credit. If the credit check was a "hard pull" it will stay on your credit report for 2 years, but will only have an impact on your credit score for up to 12 months. If the check is a "soft pull" it has no impact on your credit score. Since you're past the 12 months boundary anyway, I wouldn't worry about it. That being said, please feel free to continue your investigation and report back if you can get Comcast to admit they performed the 2nd credit check. I'm sure we'd all be interested to hear their explanation for it.

Excessive Credit Check from Comcast

Until the CARD act, credit card rules required that merchants had no minimum purchase requirement to use a card. New rules permit a minimum but it must be clearly posted. Update - Stores can now refuse small credit card charges is an excellent article which clarifies the rules. It appears that these rules apply to credit, not debit cards. So to be clear - the minimum do not apply to the OP as he referenced using a debit card. "Superiority"? Hm. I'd be a bit embarrassed to charge such small amounts. Although when cash in my wallet is very low, I may have little choice. Note, and disclaimer, I am 48, 30 years ago when I started using cards, there were no POS machines. Credit card transactions had a big device that got a card imprint and the merchant looked up to see if your card was stolen in a big book they got weekly/monthly. Times have changed, and debit cards may be faster, especially if with cash you give the cashier $5.37 for a $2.37 transaction, but the guy entered $5 already. This often takes a manager to clear up.

Is it bad etiquette to use a credit or debit card to pay for single figure amounts at the POS

Note the above is only for shares. There are different rules for other assets like House, Jewellery, Mutual Funds, Debt Funds. Refer to the Income Tax guide for more details.

What are the tax implications of dividends that I receive from stocks (equity) that I hold?

There are two issues. The first is that you can manage all of your family's money. The second issue arises if you now "own" all of your family's money. As far as entities go, it is best to keep money or assets in as many different hands as possible. Right now, if someone sued you and won, they could take away not only your money, but your parents' and brother's money, under your name. Also, there are gift, estate and inheritance tax consequences to your parents and brother handing all their money to you. You should have three or four separate "piles" of money, one for yourself, one for your brother and one for each of your parents, or at least both of them as a couple. If someone sued one parent, the other parent, your brother and you are protected. You can have all these piles of money under your management. That is, your parents and brother should each maintain separate brokerage accounts from yours, and then give you the authorization to trade (but not withdraw from) their accounts. This could all be at the same brokerage house, to make the reporting and other logistics relatively easy.

Is it legal if I'm managing my family's entire wealth?

Now a days, your stocks can be seen virtually through a brokerage account. Back in the days, a stock certificate was the only way to authenticate stock ownership. You can still request them though from the corporation you have shares in or your brokerage. It will have your name, corporation name and number of shares you have. You have to buy shares of a stock either through a brokerage or the corporation itself. Most stock brokerages are legit and are FDIC or SIPC insured. But your risks are your own loses. The $10 you are referring to is the trade commission fee the brokerage charges. When you place an order to buy or sell a stock the brokerage will charge you $10. So for example if you bought 1 share of a $20 stock. The total transaction cost will be $30. Depending on the state you live in, you can basically starting trading stocks at either 18 or 21. You can donate/gift your shares to virtually anyone. When you sell a stock and experience a profit, you will be charged a capital gains tax. If you buy a stock and sell it for a gain within 1 year, you will taxed up to 35% or your tax bracket but if you hold it for more than a year, you will taxed only 15% or your tax bracket.

Basic questions about investing in stocks

It is barely possible that this is Citi's fault, but it sounds more like it is on the Costco end. The way that this is supposed to work is that they preauthorize your card for the necessary amount. That reserves the payment, removing the money from your credit line. On delivery, they are supposed to capture the preauthorization. That causes the money to transfer to them. Until that point, they've reserved your payment but not actually received it. If you cancel, then they don't have to pay processing fees. The capture should allow for a larger sale so as to provide for tips, upsells, and unanticipated taxes and fees. In this case, instead of capturing the preauthorization, they seem to have simply generated a new transaction. Citi could be doing something wrong and processing the capture incorrectly. Or Costco could be doing a purchase when they should be doing a capture. From outside, we can't really say. The thirty days would seem to be how long Costco can schedule in advance. So the preauthorization can last that long for them. Costco should also have the ability to cancel a preauthorization. However, they may not know how to trigger that. With smaller merchants, they usually have an interface where they can view preauthorizations and capture or cancel them. Costco may have those messages sent automatically from their system. Note that a common use for this pattern is with things like gasoline or delivery purchases. If this has been Citi/Costco both times, I'd try ordering a pizza or some other delivery food and see if they do it correctly. If it was Citi both times and a different merchant the other time, then it's probably a Citi problem rather than a merchant problem.

How is it possible that a preauth sticks to a credit card for 30 days, even though the goods have already been delivered?

(buy these when you expect the price to go down) You 'lock in' the price you can sell at. If the price goes down below the 'locked-in' price, you buy at the new low price and sell at the higher 'locked-in' price; make money. (buy these when you expect the price to go up) You 'lock in' the price you can buy at. If the price goes up above the 'locked-in' price, you buy at the 'locked-in' price and sell at the new higher price, make money.

Options for dummies. Can you explain how puts & calls work, simply?

Also keep note - some companies have a combined CEO/Chairman of the board role. While he/she would not be allowed to negotiate contracts or stock plans, some corporate governance analysts advocate for the separation of the roles to remove any opportunity for the CEO to unduly influence the board. This could be the case for dysfunctional boards. However, the alternate camps will say that the combined role has no negative effect on shareholder returns. SEC regulations require companies to disclose negotiations between the board and CEO (as well as other named executives) for contracts, employee stock plans, and related information. Sometimes reading the proxy statement to find out, for example, how many times the board meets a year, how many other boards a director serves on, and if the CEO sits on any other board (usually discouraged to serve on more than 2) will provide some insight into a well-run (or not well-run) board.

How much power does a CEO have over a public company?

Your question may have another clue. You are bullish regarding the real estate market. Is that for your city, your state, your nation or for the whole world? Unless you can identify particular properties or neighborhoods that are expected to be better than the average return for your expected bull market in real estate, you will be taking a huge risk. It would be the same as believing that stocks are about to enter a bull market, but then wanting to put 50% of your wealth on one stock. The YTD for the DOW is ~+7%, yet 13 of the 30 have not reached the average increase including 4 that are down more than 7%. Being bullish about the real estate segment still gives you plenty of opportunities to invest. You can invest directly in the REIT or you can invest in the companies that will grow because of the bullish conditions. If your opinion changes in a few years it is hard to short a single property.

Owning REIT vs owning real estate - which has a better hypothetical ROI?

Not long after college in my new job I bought a used car with payments, I have never done that since. I just don't like having a car payment. I have bought every car since then with cash. You should never borrow money to buy a car There are several things that come into play when buying a car. When you are shopping with cash you tend to be more conservative with your purchases look at this Study on Credit card purchases. A Dunn & Bradstreet study found that people spend 12-18% more when using credit cards than when using cash. And McDonald's found that the average transaction rose from $4.50 to $7.00 when customers used plastic instead of cash. I would bet you if you had $27,000 dollars cash in your hand you wouldn't buy that car. You'd find a better deal, and or a cheaper car. When you finance it, it just doesn't seem to hurt as bad. Even though it's worse because now you are paying interest. A new car is just insanity unless you have a high net worth, at least seven figures. Your $27,000 car in 5 years will be worth about $6500. That's like striking a match to $340 dollars a month, you can't afford to lose that much money. Pay Cash If you lose your job, get hurt, or any number of things that can cost you money or reduce your income, it's no problem with a paid for car. They don't repo paid for cars. You have so much more flexibility when you don't have payments. You mention you have 10k in cash, and a $2000 a month positive cash flow. I would find a deal on a 8000 - 9000 car I would not buy from a dealer*. Sell the car you have put that money with the positive cash flow and every other dime you can get at your student loans and any other debt you have, keep renting cheap keep the college lifestyle (broke) until you are completely out of debt. Then I would save for a house. Finally I would read this Dave Ramsey book, if I would have read this at your age, I would literally be a millionaire by now, I'm 37. *Don't buy from a dealer Find a private sale car that you can get a deal on, pay less than Kelly Blue Book. Pay a little money $50 - 75 to have an automotive technician to check it out for you and get a car fax, to make sure there are no major problems. I have worked in the automotive industry for 20 + years and you rarely get a good deal from a dealer. “Everything popular is wrong.” Oscar Wilde

Recent college grad. Down payment on a house or car?

Since no one else mentioned it, there are sometimes amazing deals that require being the first person to take advantage of them. I'm not talking about black Friday sales, I'm talking about the woman who decided to sell the Porsche (she had bought for her cheating husband) for $1000. You might not run into those types of deals often, but having liquid investments will allow you to take advantage of them instead of kicking yourself. I just bought some real estate with some of my emergency fund that needed several months before I could properly finance it due to some legal issues with the deed that needed to go through court because there was a deceased person on the title. I will make far more on the deal when it's done than I ever could have made with that money invested in the market.

What emergencies could justify a highly liquid emergency fund?

S-Corp are taxed very different. Unlike LLC where you just add the profit to your income with S-Corp you have to pay yourself a "reasonable" salary (on w-2) which of course is a lot more paperwork. I think the advantage (but don't hold me accountable for this) is if your S-Corp makes a lot more than a reasonable salary, then the rest of the money can be passed through on your personal return at a lower (corp) rate.

I am the sole owner of an LLC. Does it make a difference if I file as an S-Corp or a sole-member LLC?

If you are worried about elections think about writing some calls against your long positions to help hedge. If you have MSFT (@ $51.38 right now) you could write a MSFT Call for lets say $55. You can bank $170 per 100 shares (let's say you write it at 1.70) (MSFT 01/20/2017 55.00 C 1.73 +0.01 Bid: 1.69 Ask: 1.77) If MSFT goes down a lot you will have lost $170 less per 100 shares than you would have because you wrote an option for $170. You will in fact be break even if the stock falls to 49.68 on the Jan Strike Date. If MSFT goes up $3.50 you will have made $170 and still have your MSFT stock for a net gain of $520. $170 in cash for the premium and your stock is now worth $350 more. If MSFT goes up $3.62 or more you will have made the max $530ish and have no MSFT left potentially losing additional profit if the stock goes up like gang busters. So is it worth it for you to get $170 in cash now and risk the stock going up more than $5 between now and Jan. That is the decision to make here.

Dealing with event driven market volatility

Does the company see itself expanding into new product lines or new territories? What is the current predicted growth for the company's earnings for the next 5 years? These would generally be where I'd look for growth in companies. In the case of Costco, there may be a perception of the company as being a "safe" company as the market capitalization for the stock is over $50 billion which is rather large. Thus, there is something to be said for Costco providing a dividend and may well weather the current market for an idea compared to holding funds in money markets that are paying nothing in some cases. There is also something to be said for looking at the industry and sector values that Costco is in where on Yahoo! Finance, I find the P/E for the industry and sector to be 35.05 and 28.47, respectively. Thus, Costco isn't as inflated as the other stocks in the same ballpark for another idea here.

How can I understand why investors think a particular company should have a high PE ratio?

In a sense, yes. There's a view in Yahoo Finance that looks like this For this particular stock, a market order for 3000 shares (not even $4000, this is a reasonably small figure) will move the stock past $1.34, more than a 3% move. Say, on the Ask side there are 100,000 shares, all with $10 ask. It would take a lot of orders to purchase all these shares, so for a while, the price may stay right at $10, or a bit lower if there are those willing to sell lower. But, say that side showed $10 1000, $10.25 500, $10.50 1000. Now, the volume is so low that if I decided I wanted shares at any price, my order, a market order will actually drive the market price right up to $10.50 if I buy 2500 shares "market". You see, however, even though I'm a small trader, I drove the price up. But now that the price is $10.50 when I go to sell all 2500 at $10.50, there are no bids to pay that much, so the price the next trade will occur at isn't known yet. There may be bids at $10, with asking (me) at $10.50. No trades will happen until a seller takes the $10 bid or other buyers and sellers come in.

Why can low volume move a stock price drastically?

I am not sure what a Brazilian equivalent is but you could just do an ADR. Keep in mind that when you are investing in a foreign company there are certain currency risks that you may need to consider.

I am Brasilian resident, how to buy shares on NYSE?

A friend since July online and big business talks and trust/money forwards. Usually a question "is this a scam or legitimate?" is hard to answer since obviously scams are modelled after legitimate stories (or they'd easily fail). If there were bookmakers for "scam or legitimate", this one would easily gather odds of 10000:1. The only plausible reason for this to be legitimate would be to defraud the scam-or-legitimate bookmakers. At any rate, Exxon is a large company and has to obey labor laws. They cannot set up operations in a manner where their workers may not have access to their salary for prolonged times without easy remedy. Drop communications immediately, don't open them, don't read them. They hook you with emotional investment. They will redouble efforts if it appears you are slipping out of their reach. Explanations will become more plausible, more pressing, more emotionally charged. You are a big promising fish and they won't let you swim off without a serious struggle to rehook you. Hand your communication so far to law enforcement. That may help with not having to figure this out on your own.

A friend wants to use my account for a wire transfer. Is this a scam or is it legitimate?

So I did some queries on Google Scholar, and the term of art academics seem to use is target date fund. I notice divided opinions among academics on the matter. W. Pfau gave a nice set of citations of papers with which he disagrees, so I'll start with them. In 1969, Paul Sameulson published the paper Lifetime Portfolio Selection By Dynamic Stochaistic Programming, which found that there's no mathematical foundation for an age based risk tolerance. There seems to be a fundamental quibble relating to present value of future wages; if they are stable and uncorrelated with the market, one analysis suggests the optimal lifecycle investment should start at roughly 300 percent of your portfolio in stocks (via crazy borrowing). Other people point out that if your wages are correlated with stock returns, allocations to stock as low as 20 percent might be optimal. So theory isn't helping much. Perhaps with the advent of computers we can find some kind of empirical data. Robert Shiller authored a study on lifecycle funds when they were proposed for personal Social Security accounts. Lifecycle strategies fare poorly in his historical simulation: Moreover, with these life cycle portfolios, relatively little is contributed when the allocation to stocks is high, since earnings are relatively low in the younger years. Workers contribute only a little to stocks, and do not enjoy a strong effect of compounding, since the proceeds of the early investments are taken out of the stock market as time goes on. Basu and Drew follow up on that assertion with a set of lifecycle strategies and their contrarian counterparts: whereas a the lifecycle plan starts high stock exposure and trails off near retirement, the contrarian ones will invest in bonds and cash early in life and move to stocks after a few years. They show that contrarian strategies have higher average returns, even at the low 25th percentile of returns. It's only at the bottom 5 or 10 percent where this is reversed. One problem with these empirical studies is isolating the effect of the glide path from rebalancing. It could be that a simple fixed allocation works plenty fine, and that selling winners and doubling down on losers is the fundamental driver of returns. Schleef and Eisinger compare lifecycle strategy with a number of fixed asset allocation schemes in Monte Carlo simulations and conclude that a 70% equity, 30% long term corp bonds does as well as all of the lifecycle funds. Finally, the earlier W Pfau paper offers a Monte Carlo simulation similar to Schleef and Eisinger, and runs final portfolio values through a utility function designed to calculate diminishing returns to more money. This seems like a good point, as the risk of your portfolio isn't all or nothing, but your first dollar is more valuable than your millionth. Pfau finds that for some risk-aversion coefficients, lifecycles offer greater utility than portfolios with fixed allocations. And Pfau does note that applying their strategies to the historical record makes a strong recommendation for 100 percent stocks in all but 5 years from 1940-2011. So maybe the best retirement allocation is good old low cost S&P index funds!

Should I fund retirement with a static asset allocation or an age based glide path?

Adam Davis's answer is pretty good. However, I think he misses something with regard to the costs of a funeral. According to funeralplanning101.com, a traditional funeral can cost upwards of $15,000. Having just planned and paid for a funeral for an adult, I can assure you that this figure is low. I've heard "$10,000 - $30,000", and that seems a reasonable ball-park given my experience. Additionally, grief affects people differently. If your child died, would you be able to continue work afterwards? Most people can, but some people have to take extended leave (generally with no income) because of the emotional impact. Combined, these expenses can easily outstrip the savings for an average family. Almost by definition, insurance is not cost-effective; insurance companies profit by selling it to you, after all. But you may decide that it is appropriate to mitigate your risk by buying insurance. I do not have children and would likely not choose to insure them if I did. Nevertheless, other people may reasonably choose differently.

Why do people take out life insurance on their children? Should I take out a policy on my child?

Like almost all investing question: it depends! Boring companies generally appreciate slowly and as you note, pay dividends. More speculative investing can get you some capital gains, but also are more likely to tank and have you lose your original investment. The longer your time horizon, and the more risk you are willing to take, then it is reasonable to tilt towards, but not exclusively invest in, more speculative stocks. A shorter horizon, or if you have trouble sleeping at night if you lose money, or are looking for an income stream, would then tend towards the boring side. Good Luck

High dividend stocks

It's correct. Be sure of your personal opportunity cost and not that you're letting the tax tail wag the dog just to score "tax free". Your upside is $3,700 (single) or $7,000 (married) in taxes saved until you're out of the 0% zone. Is that worth not receiving an income? Even if your savings are such that you don't need to work for income for a fiscal year, how would this affect the rest of your career and lifetime total earning prospects? Now, maybe: Otherwise, I'd hope you have solid contacts in your network who won't be fazed by a resume gap and be delighted to have a position open for you in 2019 (and won't give you the "mother returning to the workforce" treatment in salary negotiations).

Avoiding Capital Gains Long Term

Having a good dividend yield doesn't guarantee that a stock is safe. In the future, the company may run into financial trouble, stop paying dividends, or even go bankrupt. For this reason, you should never buy a stock just because it has a high dividend yield. You also need some criteria to determine whether that stock is safe to buy. Personally, I consider a stock is reasonably safe if it meets the following criteria:

What are the risks of Dividend-yielding stocks?

Think of all the limit orders waiting in line, first organized by price, and then by the time the order was placed (earlier orders are closer to the front of the line). In order for your buy order to trade, there must be no other limit orders of 10.01 or higher, or the sellers order would have matched with them instead. So once your order is filled, the price is 10.00, even if just for a millisecond, because there was a trade at 10.00, even though the price might go right back up after the trade.

Does an Executed Limit Order Imply a Spot Price?

Things are the way they are because they got that way. - Gerald Weinberg Banks have been in business for a very long time. Yet, much of what we take for granted in terms of technology (capabilities, capacity, and cost) are relatively recent developments. Banks are often stuck on older platforms (mainframe, for instance) where the cost of redundant online storage far exceeds the commodity price consumers take for granted. Similarly, software enhancements that require back-end changes can be more complicated. Moreover, unless there's a buck (or billion) to be made, banks just tend to move slowly compared to the rest of the business world. Overcoming "but we've always done it that way" is an incredible hurdle in a large, established organization like a bank — and so things don't generally improve without great effort. I've had friends who've worked inside technology divisions at big banks tell me as much. A smaller bank with less historical technical debt and organizational overhead might be more likely to fix a problem like this, but I doubt the biggest banks lose any sleep over it.

Why don't banks give access to all your transaction activity?

Unless I'm missing something, this doesn't make sense at all. Why take out money at 3.25% (the Heloc) to reduce the balance on a 3% loan (the refi)? It would be better to move as much from the Heloc to the refi as possible to get the best rate. If this results in a lower monthly payment, keep paying the higher payment and you'll be better off.

Does it make sense to refinance a 30 year mortgage to 15 years?

This is fine, just have a plan before you go into it. Look up a co-ownership agreement contract off LegalZoom, they are like $15, or get a lawyer if you want. Decide if you want to be "Joint tenants" or "Tenants in common". You probably want to be joint tenants so that if one of you dies the property goes to the other person. Go through the agreement, make any changes you want, and then both sign it. These documents outline what happens if someone dies, or if you break up, or if you are allowed to sell your ownership, and anything else. Keep a record of who has paid what % of equity towards the house. Also look into tax laws, if the mortgage or house is only truly in 1 person's name they may get a tax break that the other person will not get. The co-ownership agreement is essentially the same agreement that happens when you're married, the only difference is that it happens automatically and implicitly when you're married. It's interesting that some people are saying this is a horrible idea when it's practically the same as the agreement you'd have if you were married. Whether you're single or married, if you own a house with another person and you break up, it's going to be a bit complicated. Get a contract in place beforehand so that things go as smoothly as possible. If you are both rational adults you shouldn't have any problems.

How can I legally and efficiently help my girlfriend build equity by helping with a mortgage?

More on a technical note, but the spread on an ETF tends to be worst at market open and near market close. (assuming the ETF constituents are traded on a synchronous basis.) If possible, it's often best to let market makers get up and running before allowing your order to flow into market.

Foolish to place orders before the market opens?

When people (even people in the media) say: "The stock market is up because of X" or "The stock market is down because of Y", they are often engaging in what Nicolas Taleb calls the narrative falacy. They see the market has moved in one direction or another, they open their newspaper, pick a headline that provides a plausible reason for the market to move, and say: "Oh, that is why the stock market is down". Very rarely do statements like this actually come from research, asking people why they bought or sold that day. Sometimes they may be right, but it is usually just story telling. In terms of old fashioned logic this is called the "post hoc, ergo proper hoc" fallacy. Now all the points people have raised about the US deficit may be valid, and there are plenty of reasons for worrying about the future of the world economy, but they were all known before the S&P report, which didn't really provide the markets with much new information. Note also that the actual bond market didn't move much after hearing the same report, in fact the price of 10 year US Treasury bonds actually rose a tiny bit. Take these simple statements about what makes the market go up or down on any given day with several fistfuls of salt.

What is the rationale behind stock markets retreating due to S&P having a negative outlook on the USA?

The average price would be $125 which would be used to compute your basis. You paid $12,500 for the stock that is now worth $4,500 which is a loss of $8,000 overall if you sell at this point.

How much is my position worth after 5-1 stock split?

Your credit card limit is nothing more than a simple number. When you purchase something, the merchant receives a number (i.e. the amount of the transaction) from your card company (e.g. Visa) in their bank account, and that number is subtracted from your limit (added to your balance). The amount is recorded, and isn't changed, so that's how they get the "exact" amount you paid. Transferring a number is easier than the retailer having to wait for cash to get from you to your card company to them. Moving numbers around is the basis of the modern financial system. And yes, it is always a risk to let someone else have your credit card number. An untrustworthy company/person may use it to charge you without your permission, or if they have your full details they could use it as if they were you. With a reputable retailer like Amazon, the main risk is data theft: If a security hole is found in Amazon's system, someone could steal your credit card info and misuse it.

How do credit card payments work? What ensures the retailer charges the right amount?

When using the Stochastic Indicator your basic aim is to buy (go long) when the stochastic becomes oversold (goes below 20%) and then the %K line crosses above the %D line at a market low, and to sell (go short) when the stochastic becomes overbought (goes above 80%) and then the %K line crosses below the %D line at a market high. Other indicators or candlestick patters can also be used to further confirm the trade. Below is a chart of a trade I recently took on GUD.AX using the Slow Stochastic in combination with support and resistance levels as well as a candlestick pattern. When I conducted my stock search on the evening of 28th July 2015, GUD was one of the results from the search that I particularly liked. The Slow Stochastic had just made a crossover in the oversold area just as the price was bouncing off its recent lows at the support line. But what I really like about this opportunity was that there was also a bullish reversal candle (a Hammer) at this short term market bottom. The high for the day was $8.34, so I placed a stop buy order to buy the stock tomorrow if the price opened or moved above this high of today. So I would only buy if the stock hit or moved above $8.35 during the next days trading. So if the stock opened and stayed below the previous day's high I would not buy the stock and my order would be canceled at the end of the day. This is very important because it stops you from getting into trades that don't go in the direction you want. If this happens then you could check the chart again after market close to see if it is still worthwhile to place a new order for the next day. On the 29th July 2015 the stock did open higher at $8.42 (which is where my order got executed) and closed at $8.46. So I ended up buying slightly above my target price but it did move higher on the day, so a successful entry overall. I had placed my initial stop loss at $8.09 (just below the low of the previous day of $8.10). If the trade had gone against me in the following days the most I would have lost was 1% of my total account capital. My target for this trade was $9.86 (just below the resistance line near $10), which would represent a 5% gain against my total account capital (or approx. 16.7% gain on the trade). So my win to loss ratio was 5:1. As you can see from the chart, the next day gapped up at the open and prices continued moving up strongly during the day. The next day was a slightly negative day, and then a few days later, on the 5th August 2015 my target price of $9.86 was reached (with a high of $9.88 for that day), so my order was closed for a total profit of 16.7% on the face value of the trade. However, as I bought on margin (using CFDs) my actual profit on the initial margin I had invested was 167%. My total time in the trade was 7 days, and I spent about an hour in the evening doing my searches and placing my orders, then less than 10 minutes managing the trade each evening after market close. The stock did go up a bit further after my profit target was reached, but the day after that the price started to fall as the price hit the resistance line and the Slow Stochastic did a crossover in the overbought area. Overall, this was a very ideal trade and I was very happy with it. Not all my trades reach my profit targets and I may get stopped out at a smaller profit or I might make a small loss (as I move my stops up as the price moves up). The key to successful trading over the long term is to keep you losses small and let your profits run (with my longer term trend trading I don't have profit targets and let my profits run until I get stopped out, but with my shorter term trading I do use a profit target usually 5 or 6 times the size of my initial stop). If you have an average win to average loss ratio of 3:1 or higher and have a success rate of 50% winners you will make money over the long term.

Stochastic Oscillator for Financial Analysis

Firstly, it isn't so generous. It is a win-win, but the bank doesn't have to mail me a free box of checks with my new account, or offer free printing to compete for my business. They already have the infrastructure to send out checks, so the actual cost for my bank to mail a check on my behalf is pretty minimal. It might even save them some cost and reduce exposure. All the better if they don't actually mail a check at all. Per my bank Individuals and most companies you pay using Send Money will be mailed a paper check. Your check is guaranteed to arrive by the delivery date you choose when you create the payment. ... A select number of companies–very large corporations such as telecoms, utilities, and cable companies–are part of our electronic biller network and will be paid electronically. These payments arrive within two business days... So the answer to your question depend on what kind of bill pay you used. If it was an electronic payment, there isn't a realistic possibility the money isn't cashed. If your bank did mail a paper check, the same rules would apply as if you did it yourself. (I suppose it would be up to the bank. When I checked with my bank's support this was their answer.) Therefore per this answer: Do personal checks expire? [US] It is really up to your bank whether or not they allow the check to be cashed at a later date. If you feel the check isn't cashed quickly enough, you would have to stop payment and contact whoever you were trying to pay and perhaps start again. (Or ask them to hustle and cash the check before you stop it.) Finally, I would bet a dime that your bank doesn't "pre-fund" your checks. They are just putting a hold on the equivalent money in your account so you don't overdraw. That is the real favor they do for you. If you stopped the check, your money would be unfrozen and available. EDIT Please read the comment about me losing a dime; seems credible.

How many days does Bank of America need to clear a bill pay check

Offset against taxable gains means that the amount - $25 million in this case - can be used to reduce another sum that the company would otherwise have to pay tax on. Suppose the company had made a profit of $100 million on some other investments. At some point, they are likely to have to pay corporation tax on that amount before being able to distribute it as a cash dividend to shareholders. However if they can offset the $25 million, then they will only have to pay tax on $75 million. This is quite normal as you usually only pay tax on the aggregate of your gains and losses. If corporation tax is about 32% that would explain the claimed saving of approximately $8 million. It sounds like the Plaintiffs want the stock to be sold on the market to get that tax saving. Presumably they believe that distributing it directly would not have the same effect because of the way the tax rules work. I don't know if the Plaintiffs are right or not, but if they are the difference would probably come about due to the stock being treated as a "realized loss" in the case where they sell it but not in the case where they distribute it. It's also possible - though this is all very speculative - that if the loss isn't realised when they distribute it directly, then the "cost basis" of the shareholders would be the price the company originally paid for the stock, rather than the value at the time they receive it. That in turn could mean a tax advantage for the shareholders.

What does it mean to be “offset against taxable gains”?

Dollar-Cost averaging will allow you to reduce your risk while the stock prices falls provided: You must invest a fixed amount $X on a fixed time scale (i.e. every Y days). By doing this you will be able to take advantage of the lowering price by obtaining more shares per period as the price falls. But at the same time, if it starts to rise, you will already have your pig in the race. Example: Suppose you wanted to invest $300 in a company. We will do so over 3 periods. As the price falls, your average dollar cost will as well. But since you don't know where the bottom is, you cannot wait until the bottom. By trying to guess the bottom and dumping all of your investment at once you expose yourself to a higher level of risk.

Advantages/disadvantages of buying stocks on dips vs buying outright?

An LLC is a very flexible company when it comes to taxation. You have three basic tax options: There are other good reasons to create an LLC (mainly to protect your personal assets) so even if you decide that you don't want to deal with the complications of an S-Corp LLC, you should still consider creating a sole proprietorship LLC.

Can I transfer self-employed income into LLC?

You just disclosed that you are new investor to the stock market. I'd advise that you first understand investing a bit better, as most will advise that investors need to be above a certain level before picking individual stocks. That said, most stocks trade in high enough volume and have low enough short interest that they don't fall under the category you seek. You want to first ask your broker if they have such a process, not all do. If so, they would need to provide you with the stocks that fall into this odd situation, specifically, the shares that have traders seeking to short the stock, but the stock is unavailable. Even then, the broker may have requirements that you don't fall into, minimum history with broker, minimum size account, etc. Worse, they are not likely to offer this for 100 shares, but may have a 1000 or higher share requirement. Are you willing to buy some obscure $50/sh priced stock to lend out at 1%/mo? The guy trying to short it is far smarter than both you and I, at least regarding this particular stock. This strategy is more appropriate for the 7 figure net worth investor. If any reader has actual experience with this, I'm happy to hear it. This response is from my recollection of two articles I read about 3 years ago, coincidence they both were published within weeks of each other.

If I have all this stock just sitting there, how can I lend it out to people for short selling?

I wouldn't classify your treatment as abuse. Medical billing has become more complex not less complex. You need to learn to ask even more questions regarding expenses, you probably need to see these price quotes in writing. You did several things correctly. Staying in-network generally is best because many plans have two deductible limits: In-network, and out-of-network. You need to make sure that the insurance company does credit you with having paid the new patient fee. That will qualify as an expense toward the deductible and your maximum out of pocket for the year. Some doctors offices don't send to insurance companies items that they know will not be covered, not remembering that these costs are critical under the High deductible plans with a health savings account. Doctors offices have problems determining how much the cost to you will be. It depends not just on the insurance company but also which type of plan you have, which sub-plan you have, and are you covered by more than one plan. Not to mention individual deductibles, family deductibles, and annual out-of-pocket amount. All this is wanted prior to the doctor seeing the patient. Most doctors offices will work with you, they know that each insurance plan treats each medical billing code differently, sometimes they make a mistake. Talk to them.

Insurance, healthcare provider, apparent abuse, lack of transparency

Unfortunately, if your taxes are too complicated for the 1040EZ form, then your tax situation is effectively unique and you need to try both options and see for yourself which one is better. If you do your taxes yourself, you may be more likely to do a more thorough job in digging everything up. You might even find that you can deduct some things that you hadn't thought of before. On the other hand, whenever I've gone to a tax professional, it's always been pretty much an all-or-nothing proposal. You sit down with them and hand them your records, they ask a couple simple questions, and they either give you your completed tax return on-the-spot or they have you come back in a week for a brief review of the final numbers. If they don't prepare your return on-the-spot, you can usually send additional items later on if you think of something that you forgot the first time around, but for the most part it's still a one-time shot. That said, I'm beginning to think the difference in monetary cost of completing even a mildly complex tax return is going to be insignificant, and the main factors to consider are the value of your own time and how much of the tax code you want to learn (because, in my experience, the software always refers to additional IRS forms or codes that are not automated in the software). In theory, your tax return should be the same regardless of whether you have a tax professional do your taxes or, if you do them yourself, which software you use. Given the same inputs, you should get about the same outputs. Even though that theory doesn't always hold exactly true, all the options should get you in the same ballpark--close enough that it doesn't make much difference in the grand scheme of things, unless your tax return is done incorrectly (e.g., you choose the wrong filing status or forget to take a major deduction). Suppose you're married and you or your spouse is a partner in an LLC. Maybe a tax professional wants to charge you $500 for your tax return (this will vary based on your circumstances). You could alternatively buy the tax software for $40-$300 and spend 20+ hours navigating through the interviews and reviewing tax codes for the decisions and worksheets that are not automated in the software. Depending on how much time you personally have to spend on the tax return, one option might be better than the other. Maybe you have to pay your in-house accounting person to use the tax software, or you have to pay an employee to cover for you while you use the software. Keep in mind that the tax professional and the tax software are probably deductible, whereas your time may not be. In the end, even if you save money up front, it might be a wash on the following year's tax return, especially after you consider the uncompensated time that you could have spent with your family, on your business.

Has anyone compared an in-person Tax Advisor to software like Turbo Tax?

This is (almost) a question in financial engineering. First I will note that a discussion of "the greeks" is well presented at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks_(finance) These measures are first, second and higher order derivatives (or rate of change comparisons) for information that is generally instantaneous. (Bear with me.) For example the most popular, Delta, compares prices of an option or other derived asset to the underlying asset price. The reason we are able to do all this cool analysis is because the the value of the underlying and derived assets have a direct, instantaneous relationship on each other. Because beta is calculated over a large period of time, and because each time slice covered contributes equally to the aggregate, then the "difference in Beta" would really just be showing two pieces of information: Summarizing those two pieces of information into "delta beta" would not be useful to me. For further discussion, please see http://www.gummy-stuff.org/beta.htm specifically look at the huge difference in calculation of GE's beta using end-of-month returns versus calculation using day-before-end-of-month returns.

Rate of change of beta

I started with lending club about a year ago. I love it. It has been insightful. Off topic, but I am in a loan to a guy who make 120K a year and is regularly late and has a pretty high interest rate. Crazy. You gain some economies of scale by going with a bigger note. I have $100 notes that I get hit for 2 or 3 cents for a fee, where $25 notes are always a penny. However, I don't think that should be your deciding factor. I scale my note purchases based on how much I like the status of the borrower. For example, I did $100 (which is currently my max) for a guy with a reasonable loan amount 16K, a stable work history (15+ years), a great credit history, and a great interest rate (16.9%). If one of those things were a bit out of "whack". I might go $50, two $25. I prefer 36 month notes, really 5 years to get out of debt? It is unlikely to happen IMHO. Keep in mind that if you invest $100 in a loan, then you get one $100 note. You can't break them up into 4 $25 notes. For that reason, if you are likely to want to sell the note prematurely, keep it at $25. The market is greater. I've had a lot of success using the trading account, buying further discounted notes for people who want out of lending club, or get spooked by a couple of late payments and a change in billing date. Another advantage of using the trading account is you start earning interest day 1. I've had new notes take a couple of weeks to go through. To summarize: There are some other things, but that is the main stuff I look at.

Peer to Peer Lending Small notes Vs Large Notes

It is in the bank's interest to sell the property for as much as they can (although it is doubtful they will put as much effort/time into selling it as the owner might). They will certainly not sell it for $1. The main reason for this is that the bank would prefer to own $100k, than a loan to them from a customer for $100k. Banks have to discount the value of loans to take into account the likelihood of the loan not being repaid. They classify certain loans as riskier than others, and these are discounted more heavily. An unsecured home loan to a customer that has already defaulted, has no collateral, and now needs to pay rent AND loan repayments would count as an extremely risky loan.

Will the ex-homeowner still owe money after a foreclosure?

Of course credit cards are viewed as credit. If you're using money on a credit card, you are not directly paying for your transactions on goods/services immediately: this is the act of borrowing credit to pay for them. Debit cards, on the other hand, work where the funds are taken from an account immediately (or subject to a small delay - but usually no more than 24 hours - depending on various factors). You should never miss credit card payments, as that will affect your credit rating. If you have unpaid money on your card this is debt - plain and simple. But to answer your question succinctly - yes, credit cards are a form of credit, as the name suggests. When you apply for a mortgage any unpaid credit (debt) is considered and would adversely affect you if you have such debts. The level to which it affects you depends on the amount of debt. This is how it works in the UK, but to my knowledge it is the same in the US and most other countries. Please clarify if you think this is incorrect.

Are credit cards not viewed as credit until you miss one payment?

littleadv gave a great answer, but neglected to mention one thing. Modern minted coins usually only contain a (high) percentage of a precious metal. For example pre-1965 quarters are 90% silver and 10% other, to maintain strength and durability. Rounds of silver bullion are usually .9999%, or fine, silver, which is considerably softer.

What are the differences between gold/siver “coin” vs. “round”?

Another factor that makes Buy to let more expensive is the risk involved. With a buy to let you are dependent on finding a tenant that will keep regular payments. if the property is left empty you need to finance the mortgage yourself putting you under financial strain and raising risk. Also as Chis mentioned they are regarded as a business enterprise, If the mortgage was to be taken by a business that would be very high risk for a bank as the business could dissolve leaving the bank out of pocket. Because of this it can be very difficult to get a buy to let through a business unless you are moving from a personal portfolio. For a regular mortgage these risks don't exist so this is reflected in lower interest repayments. It's because of these differences in risk that banks created buy to let so they can better manage those risks.

Difference between a mortgage and buy-to-let in UK

One thing you didn't mention is whether the 401(k) offers a match. If it does, this is a slam-dunk. The $303 ($303, right?) is $3636/yr that will be doubled on deposit. It's typical for the first 5% of one's salary to capture the match, so this is right there. In 15 years, you'll still owe $76,519. But 15 * $7272 is $109,080 in your 401(k) even without taking any growth into account. The likely value of that 401(k) is closer to $210K, using 8% over that 15 years, (At 6%, it drops to 'only' $176K, but as I stated, the value of the match is so great that I'd jump right on that.) If you don't get a match of any kind, I need to edit / completely rip my answer. It morphs into whether you feel that 15 years (Really 30) the market will exceed the 4% cost of that money. Odds are, it will. The worst 15 year period this past century 2000-2014 still had a CAGR of 4.2%.

Sanity check on choosing the term for a mortgage refinance

Technical Analysis assumes that the only relevant number(s) regarding a security is (are) price (and price momentum, price patterns, price harmonics, price trends, price aberrations, etc.). Technical is all based on price. Technical is not based on any of the fundamentals. Technical Analysis is for traders (speculators) not for long term investors. A long term investor is more concerned with the dividend payment history and such similar data as he makes his money from the dividend payments not from the changes in price (because he buys and holds, not buy low sell high).

Is technical analysis based on some underlying factors in the market or do they work simply because other people use them?

I don't know what you program during the day, but you could always try your hand a programming for iPhone, Android or Blackberry. Just spend an hour or two a night on a simple but useful application. Find something that matches a hobby interest of yours and come up with an app that would be beneficial to people of that hobby.

What ways are there for us to earn a little extra side money?

all other things being equal if you have two stocks, both with a P/E of 2, and one has an EPS of 5 whereas the other has an EPS of 10 is the latter a better purchase? What this really boils down to is the number of shares a company has outstanding. Given the same earnings & P/E, a company with fewer shares will have a higher EPS than a company with more shares. Knowing that, I don't think the number of shares has much if anything to do with the quality of a company. It's similar to the arguments I hear often from people new to investing where they think that a company with a share price of $100/share must be better than a company with a share price of $30/share simply because the share price is higher.

Different ways of looking at P/E Ratio vs EPS

Alas, institutions do not always act rationally, and being an outlier by never having debt may be bad enough. Therein is your problem. The question, then, is do you want to do business with institutions that are not acting rationally? While I cannot specifically speak to Canadian business practices, I have to imagine that in terms of credit history as a prerequisite to a lease, it can't be too different than America. It is possible to live without a credit score. This is typically done by those with enough resources that do not need to borrow money. To make transactions that commonly use credit scores, such as a lease, they will provide personal financial statements (balance sheets, personal income statements, bank statements, pay stubs, tax returns, etc...) to show that they are credit-worthy. References from prior landlords may also be beneficial. Again, the caveat is to elect to only conduct business with those individuals and institutions that are intelligent and rational enough to be able to analyze your financial position (and ability to pay) without a credit score. Therefore, you'll probably have better luck working with individual landlords, as opposed to corporate-owned rental complexes.

Might I need a credit score to rent, or for any other non-borrowing finances?

why would anyone buy a long-term bond fund in a market like this one, where interest rates are practically bottomed out? 1) You are making the assumption that interest rates has bottom out hence there is no further possibility of it going down further , i mean who expected Lehman Brother to go bankrupt 2) Long term investors who are able to wait for the bad times of the bond market to end and in the mean time dont mind some dividend payment of 2-3%

What's the difference between buying bonds and buying bond funds for the long-term?

The Wells Fargo scandal was and still is a big deal because Wells Fargo opened over 1.5 million unauthorized bank and credit card accounts. The credit card accounts were opened without authorization, which means people's credit scores and reports were pulled without permission. That is considered fraud and identity theft. Other than the legal side of it, by opening more bank accounts without authorization, it was showing "synthetic growth", which resulted in an inflated number when quarterly and annual performance numbers were reported. This caused people to invest more in Wells Fargo stock, not knowing that the growth in stock was not organic. After the scandal was uncovered, stocks decreased. However, the root cause of this can be traced to the culture at Wells Fargo, where customer service reps (i.e. bank tellers, and store operations employees) were faced with the challenges of meeting quotas that could be considered a stretch. As a result, faced with pressure from upper management, they opened unauthorized accounts. In addition, these unauthorized accounts cost consumers money either because credit cards had balances, or bank accounts did not meet a minimum balance. It is not about ending "up with 8 rows in their database instead of just 1 row" as OP wrote. It is about stealing consumer money and committing fraud and stealing the consumer's identity. *Suggestions and constructive criticism are welcomed in improving my answer.

Where was the huge scandal in the Wells Fargo scandal?

There are many good brokers available in the market and many spammers too. Personally I have been associated with FXCM since 2001 and have never faced any problem. But everyone has their own personal choice and I recommend you to make your own. But the question is how to find out which broker is a good broker and would provide you with a timely and reliable service? Online google check? Not really. There is so much competition between brokerage firms that they keep writing rubbish about each other on blogs and websites. Best thing is to is check with regulator's website. For US: NFA is a regulator for all forex firms. Information about any regulated forex firm could be found here. http://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/welcome.aspx For UK: Its FSA. Information on all regulated Uk based firm could be found here. http://www.fsa.gov.uk/register/firmSearchForm.do Remember in many countries its not compulsory for a forex firm to be regulated but being regulated ensure that the govt. has a watch on the operations of the firm. Also most of the firms out there provide accounts for large as well as small traders so there is nothing much to look for even if you are a small trader. Do keep in mind that if you are a US Citizen you are restricted by the US Govt. to trade only with a broker within US. You are not allowed to trade with any brokerage firm that is based outside the country. Forex Trading involves a significant amount of risk make sure you study the markets well and get yourself educated properly before risking your money. While I have made a lot of money trading forex I have seen a lot of people loosing everything. Please understand the risk and please make sure you only trade with the money which you can afford to loose.

Online Foreign Exchange Brokerages: Which ones are good & reputable for smaller trades?

Believe it or not, what they're asking you is not as unusual as you might think. Our company sells a tremendous amount of expensive merchandise over the Internet, and whenever there's something odd or suspicious about the transaction, we may ask the customer to provide a picture of the card simply to prove they have physical possession of it. This is more reassurance to us (to the extent that's possible) that the customer isn't using a stolen card number to order stuff. It doesn't help too much, but if the charge is disputed, at least we have something to show we made reasonable efforts to verify the ownership of the card. I think it's pretty thin, but that's what my employer does.

One company asks for picture of my debit card

It will usually take a week or two for changes to your withholding to take effect in payroll. However 0 deductions will withhold more per check than 3. So if at 0 deductions you are having to pay in April then I would suggest not changing your W2 to 3 deductions. Instead in the section for extra with holding add $25 per week. This should leave you with a more manageable return in April.

$65000/year or $2500 every two weeks: If I claim 3 exemptions instead of zero, how much would my take home pay be?

Your impression about banks and bankers is very wrong. Wall street banks can and often do lose in transactions. In fact, banks go bankrupt and/or require massive bailouts to survive because they sometimes lose a ton of money. The business of investment banking often involves bearing risk for customers, which, by definition, means they lose some of the time. Generally the risks they take on individual transactions are not large enough to bring the whole bank down, but sometimes they are. Banking is a job like any other, except that it has more risk than most. Anyway, to your point, how do underwriters make money on shares that fall in value before the sale? On the commission. The issuing company will normally pay the investment bank a percentage of the funds raised in the offering, regardless of the price. Of course, it's possible for the bank to still lose money if their contract stipulates a minimum price and they are not able to meet it. In that case, the bank may lose on that offering, contradicting your preconceived notion. By the way, one other question implicit in your post: Why was the secondary offering considered bad news? If the CEO and other insiders have private information that indicates that the stock is overvalued, then doing a secondary offering at the inflated price will greatly enrich them. Because this happens some times, investors are wary about secondary offerings. This makes companies that would otherwise do a secondary offering shy away from it, even if shares are not overpriced. Therefore if a company is doing a secondary offering, the market is likely to worry that the stock is overvalued even at a reduced price.

What are the benefits to underwriters in a secondary offering?

Easier to copy paste than type this out. Credit: www.financeformulas.net Note that the present value would be the initial loan amount, which is likely the sale price you noted minus a down payment. The loan payment formula is used to calculate the payments on a loan. The formula used to calculate loan payments is exactly the same as the formula used to calculate payments on an ordinary annuity. A loan, by definition, is an annuity, in that it consists of a series of future periodic payments. The PV, or present value, portion of the loan payment formula uses the original loan amount. The original loan amount is essentially the present value of the future payments on the loan, much like the present value of an annuity. It is important to keep the rate per period and number of periods consistent with one another in the formula. If the loan payments are made monthly, then the rate per period needs to be adjusted to the monthly rate and the number of periods would be the number of months on the loan. If payments are quarterly, the terms of the loan payment formula would be adjusted accordingly. I like to let loan calculators do the heavy lifting for me. This particular calculator lets you choose a weekly pay back scheme. http://www.calculator.net/loan-calculator.html

Car finance, APR rates and per week in adverts; help understanding them

If you can get a rate of savings that is higher than your debt, you save. If you can't then you pay off your debt. That makes the most of the money you have. Also to think about: what are you goals? Do you want to own a home, start a family, further your education, move to a new town? All of these you would need to save up for. If you can do these large transactions in cash you will be better off. If it were me I would do what I think is a parroting of Dave Ramsay's advice Congratulations by the way. It isn't easy to do what you have accomplished and you will lead a simpler life if you don't have to worry about money everyday.

Saving $1,000+ per month…what should I do with it?

In view of business, we have to book the entries. Business view, owner and business are different. When capital is invested in business by owner, in future business has to repay it. That's why, capital always credit. When we come about bank (business prospective) - cash, bank, fd are like assets which can help in the business. Bank is current asset (Real account) - Debit (what comes into the business) Credit (what goes out of the business) Hence credit and debit differs from what type of account is it.... credit - when business liables debit - what business has and receivables

Credit and Debit

Anything is negotiable. Clearly in the current draft of the contract the company isn't going to calculate or withhold taxes on your behalf - that is your responsibility. But if you want to calculate taxes yourself, and break out the fees you are receiving into several "buckets" on the invoice, the company might agree (they might have to run it past their legal department first). I don't see how that helps anything - it just divides the single fee into two pieces with the same overall total. As @mhoran_psprep points out, it appears that the company expects you to cover your expenses from within your charges. Thus, it's up to you to decide the appropriate fees to charge, and you are assuming the risk that you have estimated your expenses incorrectly. If you want the company to pay you a fee, plus reimburse your expenses, you will need to craft that into the contract. It's not clear what kind of expenses you need to be covered, and sometimes companies will not agree to them. For specific tax rule questions applicable to your locale, you should consult your tax adviser.

How can contractors recoup taxation-related expenses?

Dividends are declared by the board of directors of a corporation on date A, to stock holders of record on date B (a later date). These stockholders then receive the declared dividend on date C, the so-called payment date. All of these dates are announced on the first (declaration) date. If there is no announcement, no dividend will be paid. The stock typically goes down in price by approximately the amount of the dividend on the date it "goes ex," but then moves in price to reflect other developments, including the possibility of another declaration/payment, three months hence. Dividends are important to some investors, especially those who live on the income. They are less important to investors who are out for capital gains (and who may prefer that the company reinvest its money to seek such gains instead of paying dividends). In actual fact, dividends are one component of "total" or overall return. The other component is capital gains, and the sum of the two represents your return.

What are dividends, when are they paid, and how do they affect my position?

First is storage which is a big and a detrimental headache. Security is another big headache. Investing in precious metal has always been an investment opportunity in the countries in the east i.e. India and China because of cultural reason and due to absence of investment opportunities for the less fortunate ones. It isn't the case so in the West. Secondly what is the right an opportune moment is open to question. When the worlwide economy is up and running, that is probably the time to buy i.e. people would like to put money in use rather than store. The saying goes the other way when the economy is stagnating. Then there is also the case of waiting out the bad periods to sell your gold and silver. If you do want to buy precious metals then use a service like BullionVault, rather than doing those yourself. It takes care of the 2 big headaches, I mentioned earlier.

Pros & cons in Hungary of investing retirement savings exclusively in silver? What better alternatives, given my concerns?

On international stock exchanges, they trade Puts and Calls, typically also for currencies. If for example 1 NOK is worth 1 $ now, and you buy Calls for 10000 NOK at 1.05 $ each, and in a year the NOK is worth 1.20 $ (which is what you predict), you can execute the Call, meaning 'buying' the 10000 NOK for the contracted 1.05 $ and selling them for the market price of 1.20 $, netting you 12000 - 10500 = 1500 $. Converting those back to NOK would give you 1250 NOK. Considering that those Calls might cost you maybe 300 NOK, you made 950 NOK. Note that if your prediction is common knowledge, Calls will be appropriately priced (=expensive), and there is little to make on them. And note also that if you were wrong, your Calls are worth less than toilet paper, so you lost the complete 300 NOK you paid for them. [all numbers are completely made up, for illustration purposes] You can make the whole thing easier if you define the raise of the NOK against a specific currency, for example $ or EUR. If you can, you can instead buy Puts for that currency, and you save yourself converting the money twice.

How to invest in a currency increasing in value relative to another?

I guess it depends on your bank. My bank (Rabobank) recently did introduce this feature. You don't get a card per category, though. Instead you set up rules to match each expenditure to one of the existing pots.

Digital money pots?

As yet another explanation of why it does not really matter, you can look at this from the valuation point of view. Stock price is the present value of its future cash flows (be it free cash flow of the firm or dividends, depending on the model). Let's have a look at the dividends case. Imagine, the price of the stock is based on only three dividends streams $5 dollars each: dividend to be paid today, in year 1, and in year 2. Each should be discounted back to today (say, at 10%), except today's dividend, since today is now. Once that dividend is paid, it is no longer in the stream of cash flows. So if we just delete that first $5 from the formula, the price will adjust itself down by the amount of the dividend to $8.68. NOTE that this is a very simple example, since in reality cash flows streams are arguably infinite and because there are many other factors affecting stock price. But simply for your understanding, this example should provide you with the reason simply from the valuation perspective.

Is it better to miss the dividend and buy the undervalued stock?

Bank runs very complex software to detect suspicious activity - terrorism financing, money laundering, etc. How would a program know that some person's activity is suspicious? It uses a set of rules. That set might be imperfect (that likely was not intended) - there might be some rule that triggers a warning on your account dominating the fact you've been with them for 15 years. So it's highly likely that an imperfect program triggered a warning on your account and the bank employer didn't dismiss it.

Why does my bank suddenly need to know where my money comes from?

Construction loans are typically short term that then get rolled into conventional mortgages at the end of the construction period. Since the actual construction loan is short term, you cannot combine it with a long-term land loan as well. You could do the two separate loans up front to buy the land and finance the construction, then at the end roll both into a conventional mortgage to close out the land and construction loans. This option will only work if you do all three through the same lender. Trying to engage various lenders will require a whole new refinance process, which I very much doubt you would want to go through. These are sometimes called combo loans, since they aggregate several different loan products in one "transaction." Not a lot of places do land loans, so I would suggest first find a lender that will give you a land loan and set an appoint with a loan representative. Explain what you are trying to do and see what they can offer you. You might have better luck with credit unions as well instead of traditional banks.

Basic Info On Construction Loans

You can get an investment manager through firms like Fidelity or E*Trade to manage your account. It won't be someone dedicated exclusively to you, but you're in the range where they'd take you as a managed account customer. Another option would be to get a financial planner (CFP or something) help you to identify your needs and figure out what your investments portfolio should look like. This is not a whole lot of money, but is definitely enough to have an early retirement if managed and invested properly.

1.4 million cash. What do I do?

My understanding is that when you die, the stocks are sold and then the money is given to the beneficiary or the stock is repurchased in the beneficiaries name. This is wrong, and the conclusion you draw from michael's otherwise correct answer follows your false assumption. You seem to understand the Estate Tax federal threshold. Jersey would have its own, and I have no idea how it works there. If the decedent happened to trade in the tax year prior to passing, normal tax rules apply. Now, if the executor chooses to sell off and liquidate the estate to cash, there's no further taxable gain, a $5M portfolio can have millions in long term gain, but the step up basis pretty much negates all of it. If that's the case, the beneficiaries aren't likely to repurchase those shares, in fact, they might not even know what the list of stocks was, unless they sifted through the asset list. But, that sale was unnecessary, assets can be divvied up and distributed in-kind, each beneficiary getting their fraction of the number of shares of each stock. And then your share of the $5M has a stepped up basis, meaning if you sell that day, your gains are near zero. You might owe a few dollars for whatever the share move in the time passing between the step up date and date you sell. I hope that clarifies your misunderstanding. By the way, the IRS is just an intermediary. It's congress that writes the laws, including the tangled web of tax code. The IRS is the moral equivalent of a great customer service team working for a company we don't care for.

Death and Capital Gains Taxes (United States)