At what point should I begin paying off student loans? All great answers. The only thing I didn't see mentioned was that student loans are not dischargable in a bankruptcy. So for example if you took money that could have gone to student loans and poured it into other debt, then for some reason declared bankruptcy later, your student load debt would remain while other debt would be discharged; essentially that money would have been better spent on the student loan. This isn't to advocate that you should pay down student loans with the intent of declaring bankruptcy, or that this makes it a better decision necessarily, just a factor that is sometimes forgotten.


Can I buy a new house before selling my current house? As the other answers suggest, there are a number of ways of going about it and the correct one will be dependent on your situation (amount of equity in your current house, cashflow primarily, amount of time between purchase and sale). If you have a fair amount of equity (for example, $50K mortgage remaining on a house valued at $300K), I'll propose an option that's similar to bridge financing: Place an offer on your new house. Use some of your equity as part of the down payment (eg, $130K). Use some more of your equity as a cash buffer to allow you pay two mortgages in between the purchase and the sale (eg, $30K). The way this would be executed is that your existing mortgage would be discharged and replaced with larger mortgage. The proceeds of that mortgage would be split between the down payment and cash as you desire. Between the closing of your purchase and the closing of your sale, you'll be paying two mortgages and you'll be responsible for two properties. Not fun, but your cash buffer is there to sustain you through this. When the sale of your new home closes, you'll be breaking the mortgage on that house. When you get the proceeds of the sale, it would be a good time to use any lump sum/prepayment privileges you have on the mortgage of the new house.  You'll be paying legal fees for each transaction and penalties for each mortgage you break. However, the interest rates will be lower than bridge financing. For this reason, this approach will likely be cheaper than bridge financing only if the time between the closing of the two deals is fairly long (eg, at least 6 months), and the penalties for breaking mortgages are reasonable (eg, 3 months interest). You would need the help of a good mortgage broker and a good lawyer, but you would also have to do your own due diligence - remember that brokers receive a commission for each mortgage they sell. If you won't have any problems selling your current house quickly, bridge financing is likely a better deal. If you need to hold on to it for a while because you need to fix things up or it will be harder to sell, you can consider this approach.


What are the benefits of opening an IRA in an unstable/uncertain economy? Regarding investing in gold vs. stocks, I don't think I could say it better than Warren Buffett: You could take all the gold that's   ever been mined, and it would fill a   cube 67 feet in each direction. For   what that's worth at current gold   prices, you could buy all -- not some   -- all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 Exxon   Mobils, plus have $1 trillion of   walking-around money. Or you could   have a big cube of metal. Which would   you take? Which is going to produce   more value?


How do I build wealth? Many CEOs I have heard of earn a lot more than 200k. In fact a lot earn more than 1M and then get bonuses as well. Many wealthy people increase there wealth by investing in property, the stock market, businesses and other assets that will produce them good capital growth. Oh yeh, and luck usually has very little to do with their success.


What do I need to start trading in the NSE (National Stock Exchange)? Yes, you can open a Trading Account at one place and a Demat Account at another place. Therefore you can open Trading Account at Sharekhan and Demat Account at OBC. However, it would be more convenient for you if both the accounts are opened at the same place which would reduce unnecessary work after every transaction.


How can I determine which stores are regarded as supermarkets for a rewards credit card? Each company that has an account with the credit card network has to classify themselves as a particular type of business.  The credit card company uses that classification to catagorize the transaction on your statement. If you buy a T-shirt at a grocery, amusement park, gas station, or resturant; the transaction will be labeled by the vendor type.  Look at recent credit card statements, even if they are from different cards, to see how the stores you want to know about are classified.


Why does Bank of America sometimes refer to itself as Banc of America on some documents? From https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Banc: Banq (also Banc, banc-corp, bancorp, or bancorporation) is an intentionally erroneous spelling of the word bank, but pronounced the same way. It has been adopted by companies which are not banks but wish to appear as such, and satisfy legal restrictions on the usage of the word bank. ... For instance, if the original company is known as Bank of America, then the new investment banking entity may be known as Banc of America Securities LLC. If the original company is known as Bank of Manhattan, then its insurance business might be known as "Banc of Manhattan Insurance" and its holding company might be called "Manhattan Bancorp". This practice originates from legal necessity: Under the laws of most states, a corporation may only use the word "bank" in its name if it has obtained a banking charter under state or federal banking laws. So, "Banc of America" is the subsidiary of BoA that doesn't have appropriate licenses to be called "bank". Wonders of complex regulation :)


How is stock price determined? Yes, stock price is determined by the last trade price. There are always going to be people who have put in a price to buy a stock (called a bid price) and people who have put in a price to sell a stock (called an ask price). Based on your example, if the last trade price for the stock was $1.23, then you might have the following bid prices and ask prices: So if you put in a limit order to buy 100 shares at $100, you would buy the 40 shares at $1.23, the 15 shares at $1.24, and the 45 shares $1.25.  The price of the stock would go up to $1.25. Conversely, if you put in a limit order to sell 100 shares at $0.01 (I don't think any broker would allow a sell price of $0.00), you would sell 30 shares at $1.22, 20 shares at $1.21, and 50 shares at $1.20.  The price of the stock would go down to $1.20.


Buying a house, how much should my down payment be? The reason to put more money down or accept a shorter maximum term is because the bank sweetens the deal (or fails to sour it in some fashion).  For example, typically, if there is less than 20% down, you have to pay an premium called "Private Mortgage Insurance", which makes it bad deal. But I see banks offering the same rate for a 15%-year mortgage as for a 30-year one, and I think: fools and their money.  Take the 30-year and, if you feel like it pay more every month.  Although why you would feel like it, I don't know, since it's very difficult to get that money back if you need it.


How can I pay for school to finish my degree when I can't get a student loan and have bad credit? Here's what you can do: roll up your sleeves and get to work.  Work 2 or 3 jobs while you take 12 credit hours.  Live in the cheapest available housing (that is reasonably safe).  Have no social life.  Wake up, work, class, eat, work, study, sleep. Every day.  Don't eat at restaurants.  Eat only simple meals at home.   Every meal.  Have a car payment?  Get rid of your car and use public transit or get the cheapest running car possible.   One year of nothing but focused effort on paying for and finishing school.  If you can't earn enough to cover 14K on top of your basic living expenses, then you aren't working hard enough, or you have extenuating circumstances that make finishing your degree at this time infeasible.


Where can I find the nominal price of a stock prior a split into multiple companies? When Hewlett Packard split they changed their name to HP Inc. and spun off Hewlett Packard Enterprise as a new corporation. This means HP Inc. has the same stock history and ticker (HPQ) as Hewlett Packard did so that's the one you want to search for. As you noticed this also means it's impossible to search for old Hewlett Packard's stock performance alone. One free service that seems to show the unadjusted historical stock price of HPQ is Google finance: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3AHPQ


What is a good asset allocation for a 25 year old? In my opinion, the key variable for you (and others) is not age, but "vintage." Your "age" suggests that you were born in the mid-1980s, in the middle of a bull market. The most remunerative investing periods for you are likely to be in your childhood (past) and middle age (forties and early fifties). Also your, "old-old" period (around age 80, in the 2060s), if you live that long. For now, you can, and perhaps should invest cautiously, like today's 40-year olds, with a heavy emphasis on bonds. The main difference between you and them is that you can shift to stocks in about ten years, in your mid to late 30s, while they will find it harder to do so when approaching old age.


Is it accurate to say that if I was to trade something, my probability of success can't be worse than random? In theory, in a perfect world, what you state is almost true. Apart from transaction fees, if you assume that the market is perfectly efficient (ie: public information is immediately reflected in a perfect reflection of future share value, in all share prices when the information becomes available), then in theory any transaction you would choose to take is opposed by a reasonable person who is not taking advantage of you, just moving their position around. This would make any and all transactions completely reasonable from a cost-benefit perspective.  ie: if the future value of all dividends to be paid by Apple [ie: the value of holding a share in Apple] exactly matches Apple's share price of $1,000, then buying a share for $1,000 is an even trade. Selling a share for $1,000 is also an even trade. Now in a perfectly efficient market, which we have assumed, then there is no edge to valuing a company using your own methods. If you take Apple's financial statements / press releases / reported information, and if you apply modern financial theory to evaluate the future dividends from Apple, you should get the same $1,000 share price that the market has already arrived at. So in this example, why wouldn't you just throw darts at a printout of the S&P 500 and invest in whatever it lands on? Because, even if the 'perfectly efficient market' agrees on the true value of something, different investments have different characteristics. As an example, consider a simple comparison of corporate bonds: Corporations make bond offerings to the public, allowing individual investors to effectively lend money to the corporation, for a future benefit. For simplicity, assume a bond with a 'face value' (the amount to be repaid to the investor on maturity) of $1,000 has these 3 defining characteristics: (1) The price [What the investor pays to acquire it]; (2) Interest payments [how much, if any, the corporation will pay to the investor before maturity, and when those payments will be made]; and (3) a bond rating [which is a third party assessment of how risky the bond is, based on the 'health' of the corporation]. Now if the bond rating agency is perfect in its risk assessment, and if the price of all bond's is fair, then why does it matter who you loan your money to? It matters because different people want different things out of their investments. If you are waiting to make a down payment on a house next year, then you don't want risk - you want to be certain that you will get your cash back, even if it means lower returns. So, even though a high-risk bond may be perfectly priced, it should only be bought by someone willing to bear that risk. If you are retired, and you need your bonds to pay you interest regularly as your sole source of income, then of course a zero-coupon bond [one that pays no interest] is not helpful to you. If you are young, and have a long time to invest, then you may want risk, because you have time to overcome losses and you want to get the most return possible. In addition, taxes are not universal between all investors. Some people benefit from things that would be tax-heavy to their neighbors. For example in Canada, there is a 'dividend tax credit' which reduces the taxes owing on dividends received by a corporation. This credit exists to prevent 'double-taxation', because otherwise the corporation would pay its ~30% of tax, and then a wealthy investor would pay another ~45% of tax. Due to the mechanics of how the credit is calculated, however, someone who makes less money, gets an even lower tax bill than they normally would. This means that someone making under the top tax bracket in Canada, has a tax benefit by receiving dividends. This means that while 2 stocks may be both fairly priced, if one pays dividends and the other doesn't [ie: if the other company instead reinvests more heavily in future projects, creating even more value for shareholders down the road], then someone in the bottom tax brackets may want the dividend paying stock more than the other. In conclusion: Picking investments yourself does require some knowledge to prevent yourself from making a 'bad buy'; this is because the market is not perfectly efficient. As well, specific market mechanics make some trades more costly than they should be in theory; consider for example transaction fees and tax mechanics. Finally, even if you assume that all of the above is irrelevant as a theoretical idea, different investors still have different needs. Just because $1,000,000 is the 'fair' price for a factory in your home town, doesn't mean you might as well convert your retirement savings to buy it as your sole asset.


UK university student finance - should I use my sponsorship money to pay the debt? Borrow the lot (as your family recommended)! The extra money will come in useful when you want to buy a house and move back to the area where your employer is. The government loan in the UK is a fantastic system, just a shame they are charging you so much in tuition fees...


Real Estate: Please review my recent investment (with numbers from recent purchase) Okay so I am going to break this answer into a couple sections: Okay so first things first. Did you get a good deal? This is challenging to answer for a number of reasons. First, a good deal is relative to the buyers goals. If you're attempting to buy an asset that provides passive income then maybe you met your goal and got a good deal. If you're attempting to buy an asset that provides long term growth, and you purchased above market (I'm speculating of course) then you may have made a bad deal. So how do you determine if you got a good deal? Does your "Gross Rental Multiplier" equal that or is less than that of the average GRM in your area. The lower the better.  So how do you use the GRM to determine if you're getting a good deal? Divide your purchase price by the average city (or area) GRM and that will tell you what you should be getting annually in rent.  You can also use the GRM to determine if a future purchase is over or under priced. Just replace purchase price with asking price.  Alright, so these are the tools you can use to decide if you made a bad business deal or not. There are many ways to skin a cat so to speak. These are the tools I use BEFORE I purchase a home. Many people are penny wise and pound foolish. Take your time when making large purchases. It's OKAY to say PASS.  Okay next thing is this new purchase you're looking at. The number one rule when working a franchise is you don't open a second store until you have a perfect working model to go off of. If you've never had to file a tax return for your current rental. Then you need to wait. If you've never read your local and state rental laws. Then you need to WAIT. If you've never had to leave an event early, wake up in the middle of the night, or get a text while you're on a date from one of your tenants. THEN YOU NEED TO WAIT. Give it a year or two. Just learn the unknown about rental properties. Use your first as your test bed. It's WAY more cheaper then if you make a bad mistake and roll it over multiple properties.  Finally I will leave you with this. No one on this site, myself included, knows everything there is to know about real estate. Anyone that claims they do, send their ass packing. This is a complex COMPLEX business. There is always something to learn and if you don't have the passion to continue learning then hand it off to someone who does. There is tax law, rental law, city repair law, contract law and this doesn't even include the stuff that makes you money, like knowing how to leverage low or no money down loans.  Please take some time and go out and learn.  Good luck! -AR


What taxes are assessed on distributions of an inherited IRA? All transactions within an IRA are irrelevant as far as the taxation of the  distributions from the IRA are concerned. You can only take cash from an IRA, and a (cash) distribution from a Traditional IRA is taxable as ordinary income (same as interest from a bank, say) without the advantage of any of the special tax rates for long-term capital gains or qualified dividends even if that cash was generated within the IRA from sales of stock etc. In short, just as with what is alleged to occur with respect to Las Vegas, what happens within the IRA stays within the IRA. Note: some IRA custodians are willing to make a distribution of stock or mutual fund shares to you, so that ownership of the 100 shares of GE, say, that you hold within your IRA is transferred to you in your personal (non-IRA) brokerage account. But, as far as the IRS is concerned, your IRA custodian sold the stock as the closing price on the day of the distribution, gave you the cash, and you promptly bought the 100 shares (at the closing price) in your personal brokerage account with the cash that you received from the IRA. It is just that your custodian saved the transaction fees involved in selling 100 shares of GE stock inside the IRA and you saved the transaction fee for buying 100 shares of GE stock in your personal brokerage account. Your basis in the 100 shares of GE stock is the "cash_ that you imputedly received as a distribution from the IRA, so that when you sell the shares at some future time, your capital gains (or losses) will be with respect to this basis. The capital gains that occurred within the IRA when the shares were imputedly sold by your IRA custodian remain within the IRA, and you don't get to pay taxes on that at capital gains rates. That being said, I would like to add to what NathanL told you in his answer. Your mother passed away in 2011 and you are now 60 years old (so 54 or 55 in 2011?). It is likely that your mother was over 70.5 years old when she passed away, and so she likely had started taking Required Minimum Distributions from her IRA before her death. So, You should have been taking RMDs from the Inherited IRA starting with Year 2012. (The RMD for 2011, if not taken already by your mother before   she passed away, should have been taken by her estate, and distributed to her heirs in accordance with her will, or, if she died intestate, in accordance with state law and/or probate court directives). There would   not have been any 10% penalty tax due on the RMDs taken by you on the grounds that you were not 59.5 years old as yet; that rule applies to owners (your mom in this case) and not to beneficiaries (you in this case). So, have you taken the RMDs for 2012-2016? Or were you waiting to turn 59.5 before taking distributions in the mistaken belief that you would have to pay a 10% penalty for early wthdrawal?  The penalty for not taking a RMD is 50% of the amount not distributed; yes, 50%. If you didn't take RMDs from the Inherited IRA for years 2012-2016, I recommend that you consult a CPA with expertise in tax law. Ask the CPA if he/she is an Enrolled Agent with the IRS: Enrolled Agents have to pass an exam administered by the IRS to show that they really understand tax law and are not just blowing smoke, and can represent you in front of the IRS in cases of audit etc,


Why do Americans have to file taxes, even if their only source of income is from a regular job? For two reasons: 1- People are entitled to deductions and credits that your employer cannot possibly know. Only you as an individual know about your personal situation and can therefore claim these deductions and credits by filing income tax returns. 2- Me telling you that you made $100,000 last year is not the same as telling you that you made $125,000 last year, but someone took $25,000 out of your pocket. Tax season is the one time of the year when citizens know exactly what chunk of their hard earned money was taken by the government, creating more collective awareness about taxation and giving politicians a harder time when they propose raising taxes.


Why would a stock opening price differ from the offering price? The offering price is what the company will raise by selling the shares at that price.  However, this isn't usually what the general public sees as often there will be shows to drive up demand so that there will be buyers for the stock.  That demand is what you see on the first day when the general public can start buying the stock.  If one is an employee, relative or friend of someone that is offered, "Friends and Family" shares they may be able to buy at the offering price. Pricing of IPO from Wikipedia states around the idea of pricing: A company planning an IPO typically appoints a lead manager, known as   a bookrunner, to help it arrive at an appropriate price at which the   shares should be issued. There are two primary ways in which the price   of an IPO can be determined. Either the company, with the help of its   lead managers, fixes a price ("fixed price method"), or the price can   be determined through analysis of confidential investor demand data   compiled by the bookrunner ("book building"). Historically, some IPOs both globally and in the United States have   been underpriced. The effect of "initial underpricing" an IPO is to   generate additional interest in the stock when it first becomes   publicly traded. Flipping, or quickly selling shares for a profit, can   lead to significant gains for investors who have been allocated shares   of the IPO at the offering price. However, underpricing an IPO results   in lost potential capital for the issuer. One extreme example is   theglobe.com IPO which helped fuel the IPO "mania" of the late 90's   internet era. Underwritten by Bear Stearns on November 13, 1998, the   IPO was priced at $9 per share. The share price quickly increased   1000% after the opening of trading, to a high of $97. Selling pressure   from institutional flipping eventually drove the stock back down, and   it closed the day at $63. Although the company did raise about $30   million from the offering it is estimated that with the level of   demand for the offering and the volume of trading that took place the   company might have left upwards of $200 million on the table. The danger of overpricing is also an important consideration. If a   stock is offered to the public at a higher price than the market will   pay, the underwriters may have trouble meeting their commitments to   sell shares. Even if they sell all of the issued shares, the stock may   fall in value on the first day of trading. If so, the stock may lose   its marketability and hence even more of its value. This could result   in losses for investors, many of whom being the most favored clients   of the underwriters. Perhaps the best known example of this is the   Facebook IPO in 2012. Underwriters, therefore, take many factors into consideration when   pricing an IPO, and attempt to reach an offering price that is low   enough to stimulate interest in the stock, but high enough to raise an   adequate amount of capital for the company. The process of determining   an optimal price usually involves the underwriters ("syndicate")   arranging share purchase commitments from leading institutional   investors. Some researchers (e.g. Geoffrey C., and C. Swift, 2009) believe that   the underpricing of IPOs is less a deliberate act on the part of   issuers and/or underwriters, than the result of an over-reaction on   the part of investors (Friesen & Swift, 2009). One potential method   for determining underpricing is through the use of IPO Underpricing   Algorithms. This may be useful for seeing the difference in that "theglobe.com" example where the offering price is $9/share yet the stock traded much higher than that initially.


Should I pay half a large balance this month before I get my CC statement? Utilization is near real-time. What that means is that what is reported is what is taken in terms of debt-to-income (DTI) ratios. When a mortgage broker pulls your credit, they will pull the latest balances with the minimum payments. This is what is taken to determine DTI along with your gross monthly income. If you do not pay your account in full before the statement date, then you more than likely will have to wait an additional statement cycle before it reports to the credit bureaus. Therefore, your utilization is dynamic and the history of your utilization month-to-month is not recorded forever. Only the current balance. What is maintained and reported is your payment history. So you want to never be late if you want to be approved anytime soon for a mortgage. A lower DTI will not help your interest rate. As long as you stay away from the maximum DTI for the mortgage vehicle you are attempting to be approved for (VA, FHA, Conventional, etc), then your DTI should not be a concern. If you are borderline at the time of underwriting, you can take the opportunity and pay off the balances. The mortgage company can then do what is called a credit supplement which entails contacting those lenders where you have proven you have a zero balance and manually input the zero balance cards, that have not yet reported to the bureaus, in your final application to the mortgage company for underwriting approval.


Buying a house for a shorter term If there are a lot of houses for sale, can you be sure that in a year or two you can sell yours? How long does the average house in that area stay on the market before it is sold? What percentage of houses never get sold?  If it can't be sold due to the crowded market you will be forced to rent the house. The question for you then is how much rental income can you get? Compare the rental income to your monthly cost of owning, and managing the house.  One benefit to buying a house in a market that is easy to rent a house would be if you are forced to move quickly, then you aren't stuck being 3 months into a 12 month lease.  Keep in mind that markets can change rather dramatically in just a few years. Housing costs were flat for much of the 90's, then rocketed up in the first half of the last decade, and after a big drop, they are one a slow climb back up. But the actual path they are on depends on the part of the US you are in.  The rule of thumb in the past was based on the fact that over a few years the price would rise enough overcome the closing costs on the two transactions. Unfortunately the slow growth in the 90's meant that many had to bring checks to closing because the equity gained wasn't enough to overcome the closing costs due to low down payment loans.   The fast growth period meant that people got into exotic loans to maximize the potential income when prices were going up 10-20% a year.  When prices dropped some found that they bought houses they couldn't afford, but couldn't sell to break even on the transaction. They were stuck and had to default on the mortgage.  In fact I have never seen a time frame when the rule of thumb ever applied.


How is a probability cone read? A number of ways exist to calculate the chances of a particular outcome. Options, for example, use current price, cost of money, and volatility among other factors to price the chance of an underlying asset reaching a certain price in a certain timeframe.  A graphical forecast simply puts these calculations into a visual format. That said, it appears the image you offer shows the prediction as it existed in the past along with how the stock has done since.  A disclaimer - The odds of a fair die being rolled to a given number are 1 in 6. It's a fact. With stocks, on the other hand, models try to simulate real life and many factors can't be accounted for.


Disputing Items to Improve Credit Report Disputing the remark seems unlikely to move your score, since it is just that -- a remark.  It's hard to say whether the scoring models can/do read the remarks and incorporate them (somehow) into the scoring metric itself. Disputing the revolving account that should be reported as closed is a different matter.  The question there would be what the status of that account is/was.  In other words, is it showing as an open collection or some other status which would indicate the creditor still has a pending claim?  If so, disputing it might have some effect, although nobody would be able to tell you for certain or even how much your score might be affected. If, as you say, that account should have been part of the bankruptcy package then getting that corrected could be important enough to achieve what you're looking for.  You can try it and see, but even if the effect is minor, you still want your credit report to be a true reflection of the facts. I hope this helps. Good luck!


Paying extra on a mortgage. How much can I save? [duplicate] If you're truly ready to pay an extra $1000 every month, and are confident you'll likely always be able to, you should refinance to a 15 year mortgage. 15 year mortgages are typically sold at around a half a point lower interest rates, meaning that instead of your 4.375% APR, you'll get something like 3.875% APR.  That's a lot of money over the course of the mortgage.  You'll end up paying around a thousand a month more - so, exactly what you're thinking of doing - and not only save money from that earlier payment, but also have a lower interest rate.  That 0.5% means something like $25k less over the life of the mortgage.  It's also the difference in about $130 or so a month in your required payment. Now of course you'll be locked into making that larger payment - so the difference between what you're suggesting and this is that you're paying an extra $25k in exchange for the ability to pay it off more slowly (in which case you'd also pay more interest, obviously, but in the best case scenario).  In the 15 year scenario you must make those ~$4000 payments.  In the 30 year scenario you can pay ~$2900 for a while if you lose your job or want to go on vacation or ... whatever. Of course, the reverse is also true: you'll have to make the payments, so you will.  Many people find enforced savings to be a good strategy (myself among them); I have a 15 year mortgage and am happy that I have to make the higher payment, because it means I can't spend that extra money frivolously. So what I'd do if I were you is shop around for a 15 year refi.  It'll cost a few grand, so don't take one unless you can save at least half a point, but if you can, do.


What one bit of financial advice do you wish you could've given yourself five years ago? I wish I would have:


Canadian personal finance software with ability to export historical credit card transactions? Yodlee and Mint are good solutions if you don't mind your personal financial information being stored "in the cloud". I do, so I use Quicken. Quicken stores whatever you give to it for as long as you want: so the only question is how to get the credit card transactions you want into it? All my financial institutions allow me to view my credit card statements for a year back, and download them in a form Quicken can read. So you can have a record of your transactions from a year ago right now, and in a year you will have two year's worth.


Ordering from Canada, charged in CAD or USD? Typically, businesses always charge their 'home' currency, so if the shop is in Canada, you will pay Canadian Dollars. Normally you don't have any choices either. Your credit card company will convert it to your currency, using the current international currency exchange rate (pretty good), plus a potential fee between 0 and 5% - depending on your credit card (not so good). If it is a significant amount, or you plan to do that more than once, and if you have multiple credit cards, check first to see which one has the lowest international fee; 0% is not uncommon, but neither is 3 or 4%. If it's a 10$ thingy, it's probably not worth the time; but 4% of 1000 is already 40$... As of right now, the currency exchange rate is 1.33, so you would pay ~75 USD; plus the potential fee, 0$ - 4$. Understand that this exchange rate is floating continuously; it probably won't change much, but it will change.


Why does ExxonMobil's balance sheet show more liabilities than assets? I believe you are missing knowledge of how to conduct a ratio analysis. Understanding liquidity ratios, specifically the quick or acid-test ratio will be of interest and help your understanding. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/acidtest.asp Help with conducting a ratio analysis. http://www.demonstratingvalue.org/resources/financial-ratio-analysis Finally, after working through the definitions, this website will be of use. https://www.stock-analysis-on.net/NYSE/Company/Exxon-Mobil-Corp/Ratios/Liquidity


Taking a car loan vs cash and effect on credit score Imagine that your normal mode of using credit gets you a score of X. As time goes by your score trends upward if the positive items (length of credit) outweigh your negative items. But there are no big increases or decrease in your score. Then you make a one time change to how you use credit. If this is a event that helps your score, there will be a increase in your score. If it is bad thing your score will drop. But if you go back to your standard method of operating your score will drift back to the previous range. Getting a car loan for a few months to get a bump in your credit score, will not sustain your score at the new level indefinitely. Overtime the impact will lessen, and the score will return your your normal range. Spending money on the loan just to buy a temporary higher credit score is throwing away money.


A guy scammed me, but he gave me a bank account number & routing number. Can I use that to take out what he owes me? You're potentially in very deep water here. You don't know who this person is that you're dealing with.  Before you'd even met him, he just gave you his banking info, seemingly without a second thought.   You have no idea what the sources of his money are, so what happens if the money is stolen or otherwise illegal?  If it is determined that you used any of that money, you'll be on the hook to return it, at the very least.  Who knows what the legal ramifications are either? So it sounds like you began spending his money before you had any kind of written agreement in place?  Doesn't that seem odd to you to have someone just so trusting as to not even ask for that? Was the source of the email about the $2500 from PayPal, or from him or his advisor?  PayPal always sends you a notice directly when funds are received into your account, and even if they were going to put a temporary hold on them for whatever reason (sometimes they do that), it would still show up in your account. I would HIGHLY (can I be more emphatic?) advise you not to go anywhere NEAR his bank account until or unless you can absolutely verify who he is, where his money comes from, and what the situation is. If you start dipping into his account, whether you think you're somehow entitled to the money or not, he could cry foul and have you arrested for theft. This is a very odd situation, and for someone who says he's normally cautious and skeptical, you sure let your guard down here when you started spending his money without making any serious effort to confirm his bona fides. Just because he passes himself off as smart and the "doctor type" doesn't mean squat.  The very best scammers can do that (ever see the movie "Catch Me If You Can", based on a true story?), so you have no basis for knowing he's anything at all. I am thoroughly confused as to why you'd just willfully start using his money without knowing anything about him.  That's deeply disconcerting, because you've opened yourself up to a world of potential criminal and civil liability if this situation goes south. If this guy was giving you money as an investment in your business and you instead used some of that money for your own personal expenses then you could land in very serious trouble for co-mingling of funds.  Even if he told you it was okay, it doesn't sound like there's anything in writing, so he could just as easily deny giving you permission to use the money that way and have you charged with embezzlement. You need to step back, take a deep breath, stop using his money, and contact a lawyer for advice.  Every attorney will give you a free consultation, and you need to protect yourself here. Be careful, my friend.  If this makes you suspicious then you need to listen to that voice in your head and find a way to get out of this situation.


For insurance, why should you refuse $4,000/year for only 10 years and prefer $500/year indefinitely? The breakeven amount isn't at 8 years. You calculated how many years of paying $500 it would take to break even with one year of paying $4000. 8 x 10 years = 80 years. So by paying $500/year it will take you 80 years to have spent the same amount ($40000 total) as you did in 10 years. At this point it may seem obvious what the better choice is. Consider where you'll be after 10 years: In scenario #1 you've spent $5000 ($500*10) and have to continue spending $500/year indefinitely. In scenario #2 you've spent $40000 ($4000*10) and don't have to pay any more, but you currently have $35000 ($40000 - $5000) less than you did in scenario #1. If you had stayed with scenario #1 you could invest that $35000 at a measly 1.43% annual return and cover the $500 payments indefinitely without ever dipping into your remaining $35000. Most likely over the long term you'll do better than 1.43% per year and come out far ahead.


1099 Misc for taking care of foreign exchange students According to Intuit, you cannot claim the $50 charitable contribution, so the entire $2000 / month will be taxable instead of $1900. That's only an extra $35 if your combined tax rate is 35%. As TTT mentioned, do this for the experience, not for the money. My wife and I have been hosting international students for 10 years now. https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/3152069-i-received-a-1099-misc-employee-compensation-for-hosting-a-foreign-exchange-student-can-i-complete-a-schedule-c-for-the-expenses


Do Banks Cause Inflation?  What are other possible causes? No, it isn't generally believed that inflation is caused by individual banks printing money.  Governments manage money supply through Central Banks (which may, or may not, be independent of the state). There are a number of theories about money supply and inflation (from Monetarist, to Keynesian, and so on). The Quantity Theory of Inflation says that long-term inflation is the result of money-supply but short-term inflation is related to events/local conditions. Short-term inflation is a symptom of economic change.  It's like a cough for a doctor.  It simply indicates an underlying event. When prices go up it encourages new producers to enter the market, create new supply which will then act to lower prices.  In this way inflation is managed by ensuring that information travels throughout the economy.  If prices go up for specific goods, then - all things being equal - supply should go up since the increase implies increasing demand.  If prices go down then this implies demand has gone down and so producers will reduce supply. Obviously this isn't a perfect relationship.  There is "stickiness" which can be caused by a whole bunch of market conditions (from banning of short-selling, to inelasticity of demand/supply). Your question isn't about quantitative easing (which is a state-led way of increasing money-supply and which could increase inflation but is hoped to increase expenditure and investment) so I won't cover that here. The important take-away is that inflation is an essential price signal to investors and business people so that they can assess market cycles.  Without it we would end up with vast over- or under-supply and much greater economic disruption.


Any advantage to exercising ISO's in company that is not yet public? As far as I know, the AMT implications are the same for a privately held company as for one that is publicly traded.  When I was given my ISO package, it came with a big package of articles on AMT to encourage me to exercise as close to the strike price as possible.  Remember that the further the actual price at the time of purchase is from the strike price, the more the likely liability for AMT.  That is an argument for buying early.  Your company should have a common metric for determining the price of the stock that is vetted by outside sources and stable from year to year that is used in a similar way to the publicly traded value when determining AMT liability. During acquisitions stock options often, from what I know of my industry, at least, become options in the new company's stock.  This won't always happen, but its possible that your options will simply translate.  This can be valuable, because the price of stock during acquisition may triple or quadruple (unless the acquisition is helping out a very troubled company). As long as you are confident that the company will one day be acquired rather than fold and you are able to hold the stock until that one day comes, or you'll be able to sell it back at a likely gain, other than tying up the money I don't see much of a downside to investing now.


What happens to bonds values when interest rates rise? [duplicate] You can look at TIPS (which have some inflation protection built in). Generally short term bonds are better than long if you expect rates to rise soon. Other ways that you can protect yourself are to choose higher yield corporate bonds instead of government bonds, or to use foreign bonds. There are plenty of bond funds like Templeton Global or ETFs that offer such features. Find one that will work for you.


Why don't institutions share stock recommendations like Wall Street analysts? Primarily because they don't want big price movements when they are in the market. If they spook the markets, either they have to buy at a higher price, or they sell at a lower price or they decrease the price of their holdings(which isn't always a big factor). The 3 situations they didn't want to be in the first place. And the most important thing is most analysts are dumb bozos, whom you should ignore. They tout because they want to increase their exposure in your eyes, so that they may land a job in one of those big investment companies, or they might be holding stocks and want to profit from it. Frankly speaking if you take advice from the so called analysts, be prepared to say goodbye to your money some day, mayn't be always. One near case maybe Carson Block from Muddy Waters, but he does his homework properly.


Pros/cons for buying gold vs. saving money in an interest-based account? What you are seeing is the effects of inflation. As money becomes less valuable it takes more of it to buy physical things, be they commodities, shares in a company's stock, and peoples time (salaries).  Just about the only thing that doesn't track inflation to some degree is cash itself or money in an account since that is itself what is being devalued.  So the point of all this is, buying anything (a house, gold, stocks) that doesn't depreciate (a car) is something of a hedge against inflation. However, don't be tricked (as many are) into thinking that house just made you a tidy sum just because it went up in value so much over x years. Remember 1) All the other houses and things you'd spend the money on are a lot more expensive now too; and 2) You put a lot more money into a house than the mortgage payment (taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc.) I'm with the others though. Don't get caught up in the gold bubble. Doing so now is just speculation and has a lot of risk associated with it.


Side work and managing finances? I have done similar software work. You do not need an LLC to write off business expenses. The income and expenses go on Schedule C of your tax return. It is easy to write off even small expenses such as travel - if you keep records. The income should be reported to you on a 1099 form, filled out by your client, not yourself.  For a financial advisor you should find one you can visit with personally and who operates as a "fee-only" advisor. That means they will not try to sell you something that they get a commission on. You might pay a few $hundred per visit. There are taxes that you have to pay (around 15%) due to self-employment income. These taxes are due 4 times a year and paid with an "estimated tax" form. See the IRS web site, and in particular schedule SE. Get yourself educated about this fast and make the estimated tax payments on time so you won't run into penalties at the end of the year.


How can I make a profit by selling a stock short? Being "long" - expecting the price to go up to make a profit - is a two step process:  1) buy 2) sell Being "short" - expecting the price to go down to make a profit - is a 5 step process:  1) borrow someone else's asset 2) sell their asset on the open market to somebody else a third party 3) pocket the proceeds of the sell for your own account 4) buy an identical asset for a cheaper price 5) return this identical asset to the person that let you borrow their asset if this is successful you keep the difference between 3) and 4)


Is 6% too high to trade stocks on margin? That seems a little high in my experience.  I've used a home equity line of credit instead, as the rates are much lower (~3.5%).


Need to change cash to cashier's check without bank account (Just arrived to the US) the easiest thing would be to go to walmart and stock up on 1000$ money orders paying a 70 cents fee for each. your landlord would almost certainly accept money orders, but double check first just in case. i say stock up because you can't get a money order for more than 1000$ and they usually won't let you buy more than 3 per day. alternatively, you can probably open a bank account using your ssn and your passport.  look for any bank offering "free" checking, and they should be able to give you a few "starter" checks on the spot when you open the account. in any case, they can certainly get you a cashier's check for free or a small fee.  side note: if you want to shop around for a checking account, look for a bank or credit union offering a "kasasa" account.


Simple and safe way to manage a lot of cash As your question appears in the second half, so will my answer.  Like you, I will provide some background.  I remember buying gasoline for $1.759 per gallon.  I am so old that I remember buying gasoline for $0.759 per gallon.  I recently paid $2.759 per gallon.  You claim that your  relative is not getting a very good return.  Some would suggest that, at $2.759 per gallon, I am not getting a very good price on gasoline.  Rates, yields, returns and the price of gas are not what they once were.  It is actually difficult to get a pretty bad return relative to the current market.  I suspect your relative is no longer getting what he used to get but he is getting a fair return. About record keeping.  Your Uncle Sam benefits at your expense when you keep poor records.  There are substantial penalties for failing to report everything.  Most high school graduates can manage one checking account, one savings account, several charge cards and about 20 CDs and stocks at different institutions with little more than the following:  a) a wall calendar b) a shoe box and c) a stack of 3 by 5 cards.  Don't misplace the shoe box.  If you can use a spreadsheet, it is even easier.  Backup your data. There are a several reasons why you shouldn't consolidate all his cash and put it in a single mutual fund account and then put together a mix of investments that work well for him.  - you are doing it backwards 1st put together a mix of investments that work well for him 2nd consolidate the assets.  Your phrasing suggests a general lack of understanding  - most CDs have penalties for early withdrawal.   - while you enjoy managing your 401K in a single online account, your older relative might not be as comfortable with a lack of paper statements (see shoe box above)  Let me tell you a little about my 401K.  x% blue chip, y% small cap, z% bonds, w% foreign stock.  Once a quarter, I change my current contribution to re-balance current value towards my target percentages.  Every 30 months or so, I consider changing my asset allocation.  The allocation considers my age, my spouses age, our childrens ages, my risk tolerance and my intermediate view of the markets.  Your mileage my vary. to recap


Is This Money Laundering? or is this a form of money laundering? May not be, generally the amounts involved in money laundering are much higher. So if there are quite a few such transactions then yes it could be money laundering. It could also be for circumventing taxes, depending on country regulations one may try to do this to get around gift taxes etc. In this specific case it looks more of link harvesting / SEO optimization. Take a low cost item that is often searched and link to other product. if you see the company link on Amazon; Cougar takes you to shoes. So maybe on its own Cougar shoes does not rank high, so link it with similar name brand in different segment and try to boost the link.


Investing in real estate when the stock market is high, investing in stocks when it's low? The right time to buy real estate is easy to spot. It's when it is difficult to get loans or when real estate agents selling homes are tripping over each other. It's the wrong time to buy when houses are sold within hours of the sign going up. The way to profit from equities over time is to dollar-cost average a diversified portfolio over time, while keeping cash reserves of 5-15% around. When major corrections strike, buy a little extra. You can make money at trading. But it requires that you exert a consistent effort and stay up to date on your investments and future prospects.


Is Weiss Research, Inc. a legitimate financial research company? This company was a reputable rating agency for many years. See Weiss Research website, ratings section for a very different perspective on Martin Weiss's work than the websites with which he is now associated. I checked both links provided, and agree with the questioner in every way: These appear to be highly questionable investment research websites. I use such strong terms based on the fact that the website actually uses the distasteful pop-up ploy,  "Are you SURE you want to leave this site?" Clearly, something changed between what Weiss Ratings was in the past (per company history since 1971) and what Martin Weiss is doing now. Larry Edelson seems to have been associated exclusively with questionable websites and high pressure investment advice since 2007. From 1996 through the present, he worked as either an employee or contractor of Weiss Research. Let's answer each of your questions.  On June 22, 2006, the Commission instituted settled administrative   proceedings against Weiss Research, Inc., Martin Weiss, and Lawrence   Edelson (collectively, “Respondents”) for violations of the Investment   Advisers Act of 1940 in connection with their operation of an   unregistered investment adviser and the production and distribution of   materially false and misleading marketing materials. Full details about Weiss Ratings operations, including its history from 1996 through 2001, when it operated in compliance with securities laws, then from 2001 through 2005, which was when the SEC filed charges for regulatory violations, are available from the June 2006 U.S. SEC court documents PDF. Finally, this quantitative assessment, "Safe With Martin Weiss? (December 2010) by CXO Advisory (providers of "objective research and reviews to aid investing decisions") for its readers concluded the following: In summary, the performance of Martin Weiss’ premium services in   aggregate over the past year is unimpressive. The study methodology was good, but I recommend reading the article (I posted the URL) to fully understand what caveats and assumptions were done to reach that conclusion.


Will I be paid dividends if I own shares? Yes, as long as you own the shares before the ex-dividend date you will get the dividends. Depending on your instructions to your broker, you can receive cash dividends or you can have the dividends reinvested in more shares of the company. There are specific Dividend ReInvestment Plans (or DRIPs) if you are after stock growth rather than income from dividend payments.


When are investments taxed? An investment is sold when you sell that particular stock or fund. It doesn't wait until you withdraw cash from the brokerage account. Whether an investment is subject to long term or short term taxes depends on how long you held that particular stock. Sorry, you can't get around the higher short term tax by leaving the money in a brokerage account or re-investing in something else. If you are invested in a mutual fund, whether it's long or short term depends on when you buy and sell the fund. The fact that the fund managers are buying and selling behind your back doesn't affect this. (I don't know what taxes they have to pay, maybe you really are paying for it in the form of management fees or lower returns, but you don't explicitly pay the tax on these "inner" transactions.) Your broker should send you a tax statement every year giving the numbers that you need to fill in to the various boxes of your income tax form. You don't have to figure it out. Of course it helps to know the rules. If you've held a stock for 11 1/2 months and are planning to sell, you might want to consider waiting a couple of weeks so it becomes a long term capital gain rather than short term and thus subject to lower tax.


Mutual fund invests in mostly the same stuff as ETF, but has much higher expense ratio? (biotech sector) Index funds, like IBB, generally lack active management, which equates to lower expenses. This is simply because the target index, the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index in the case of IBB, is composed of known quantities. This means there won't be stock pickers or analysts constantly swapping holdings, increasing the turnover rate of the portfolio and increasing capital gains; costs that are offset by higher expense ratios in more actively managed funds.


What is inflation? Money itself has no value. A gold bar is worth (fuzzy rushed math, could be totally wrong on this example figure) $423,768.67. So, a 1000 dollars, while worthless paper, are a token saying that you own %.2 of a gold bar in the federal reserve. If a billion dollars are printed, but no new gold is added to the treasury, then your dollar will devalue, and youll only have %.1 percent of that gold bar (again, made up math to describe a hypothetical). When dollars are introduced into the economy, but gold has not been introduced to back it up, things like the government just printing dollars or banks inventing money out of debt (see the housing bubble), then the dollar tokens devalue further. TL;DR: Inflation is the ratio of actual wealth in the Treasury to the amount of currency tokens the treasury has printed.


Using Marine Traffic (AIS) to make stock picks? You can. Speculating on marine traffic is more closely tied to oil trades and ocean shipping container rates, than trades on any particular companies. But companies heavily tied to ocean shipping can be ripe for speculation. The baltic dry index is created for this analytical purpose, and that information can be used as an indicator to hedge or speculate in container freight swap agreements.  The Guggenheim Shipping Exchange Traded Fund also serves as a proxy for maritime shipping profitability, but it is just a bundle of several publicly traded marine shipping companies shares.


Stocks: Where can I find a list of bankrupt/diluting stocks in the US? The only recommendation I have is to try the stock screener from Google Finance : https://www.google.com/finance?ei=oJz9VenXD8OxmAHR263YBg#stockscreener


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


Why would a restaurant offer a very large cash discount? Why would such a large discount make business sense to the restaurant? The legit reasons could be;   Or can I assume that the restaurant is trying to avoid leaving a paper trail so that they could avoid paying tax? The illegal reasons could be;


Do the activities of my LLC need to be limited to a particular field? No. When you file your Articles of Organization, simply state that your business will operate under the law. You don't need to give any further specification.


Is investing in an ETF generally your best option after establishing a Roth IRA? ETFs are a type of investment, not a specific choice. In other words, there are good ETFs and bad. What you see is the general statement that ETFs are preferable to most mutual funds, if only for the fact that they are low cost. An index ETF such as SPY (which reflects the S&P 500 index) has a .09% annual expense, vs a mutual fund which average a full percent or more.  sheegaon isn't wrong, I just have a different spin to offer you. Given a long term return of say even 8% (note - this question is not a debate of the long term return, and I purposely chose a low number compared to the long term average, closer to 10%) and the current CD rate of <1%, a 1% hit for the commission on the buy side doesn't bother me. The sell won't occur for a long time, and $8 on a $10K sale is no big deal. I'd not expect you to save $1K/yr in cash/CDs for the years it would take to make that $8 fee look tiny. Not when over time the growth will overshaddow this.  One day you will be in a position where the swings in the market will produce the random increase or decrease to your net worth in the $10s of thousands. Do you know why you won't lose a night's sleep over this? Because when you invested your first $1K, and started to pay attention to the market, you saw how some days had swings of 3 or 4%, and you built up an immunity to the day to day noise. You stayed invested and as you gained wealth, you stuck to the right rebalancing each year, so a market crash which took others down by 30%, only impacted you by 15-20, and you were ready for the next move to the upside. And you also saw that since mutual funds with their 1% fees never beat the index over time, you were happy to say you lagged the S&P by .09%, or 1% over 11 year's time vs those whose funds had some great years, but lost it all in the bad years.  And by the way, right until you are in the 25% bracket, Roth is the way to go. When you are at 25%, that's the time to use pre-tax accounts to get just below the cuttoff.  Last, welcome to SE.    Edit - see sheegaon's answer below. I agree, I missed the cost of the bid/ask spread. Going with the lowest cost (index) funds may make better sense for you.  To clarify, Sheehan points out that ETFs trade like a stock, a commission, and a bid/ask, both add to transaction cost. So, agreeing this is the case, an indexed-based mutual fund can provide the best of possible options. Reflecting the S&P (for example) less a small anual expense, .1% or less.


How do I build wealth? Another possibility is that a lot of it is bought using borrowed money. Especially if much of your own money is in the stock market, it may be beneficial to take out a loan to buy something compared to selling other assets to raise the same amount of cash. Even going by the likely relatively conservative £200K/year before taxes, you are looking at a very nice house going for perhaps around 3-5 years' worth of pre-tax income. Let's say you have good contacts at the bank and can secure a loan for £500K at 3.5% interest (not at all unreasonable if you make half that before taxes in a single year and purchase something that can be used as collateral for the money borrowed; with a bit of negotiating, I wouldn't be surprised if one could push the interest rate even lower, and stock in a publicly traded company can also trivially be used as collateral). That's less than £1500/month in interest, before any applicable tax effects -- less than 10% of the before-tax income. And like @Victor wrote, I think it's reasonable to say that especially if the company is publicly traded, the CEO makes more than £200K/year. Given an income of £200K/year and assuming 30% taxes on that amount (the marginal tax would likely be higher, and this includes e.g. interest expense deductions), the money left over after taxes and interest payments on a £500K 3.5% debt is still about £10K/month. Even with a pretty rapid amortization schedule and even if the actual tax rate is higher, that leaves quite a bit of money to be socked away in savings and other investments.


Do I even need credit cards? If you are in the U.S., without credit cards, you probably don't have a credit history. Without a credit history, you won't be able to get a loan/mortgage, and even if you do, you'll get it on very unfavorable terms. Depending on where you live you might even have great difficulty renting an apartment. So, the most important reason to have credit cards is to have a good credit score. People have already listed other advantages of having credit cards, but another thing that wasn't mentioned is fraud protection. Credit cards are better protected against fraud than debit cards. You probably shouldn't use debit cards online unless you must. Also, without a credit card or credit history, some simple and important liberties like renting a car while you are travelling might be denied to you. So, in conclusion, it's bizarre, but in modern America you need credit cards, and you need them bad.


How important is disability insurance, e.g. long-term, LTD? Employer offers none The reason to have disability insurance is to replace your income if you become disabled and are no longer able to work.  For this purpose, it is kind of similar to life insurance where you want to replace your income to take care of people that depend on your income if you die, but now you are included in the people that depend on your income.   If your employer doesn't provide any disability insurance then it would be wise to look for some Long Term disability insurance.  Short Term disability is more expensive than long term and it is USUALLY better and cheaper to have a good emergency fund to provide for a short term disability such as being sick for a month and not able to work than to buy short-term.  As a web developer - you should be able to get long term disability insurance at a reasonable cost, unless you have some dangerous hobbies like forest fire fighting or shark juggling.


How late is Roth (rather than pretax) still likely to help? My simplest approach is to suggest that people go Roth when in the 15% bracket, and use pre-tax to avoid 25%. I outlined that strategy in my article The 15% solution.  The monkey wrench that gets thrown in to this is the distortion of the other smooth marginal tax curve caused by the taxation of social security. For those who can afford to, it makes the case to lean toward Roth as much as possible.  I'd suggest always depositing pretax, and using conversions to better control the process. Two major benefits to this. It's less a question of too late than of what strategy to use.


How will I pay for college? There are some useful comments about the tradeoffs of the decisions in front of you.  Intertwined with the financial choices, hopefully you can see a map opening up.   Make a little chart if it helps.  Benefit and Cost.  If you're looking for financial options, you will have to also add more columns to that chart:  Option and Cost. An example is the comment on making connections with rich kids.  Trust fund babies are everywhere in this country.  Did you know any rich kids while growing up?  How were those rich kids you knew of back then... in your school... in your town?  How did they treat you?  Were you ever invited to their parties or gatherings?  Now there's an opportunity for the privilege to pay a lot of money to sit in a classroom next to them?  Even in the early days of American history with merit based millionaires... tycoons who made it rich by the seat of their pants.  At fancy dinner parties and soirees, a new term emerged to put each other again out of reach: old money (the deserving) and new money (uncultured climbers).   That's my bias.  You'll have some of your own.  What is important to YOU has to come through because these days, the price tag of any higher education implies a considerable piece of your life's timeline will be committed to... something.  Make sure you get what you feel is worth that commitment. Take stock of what has been said here by the others, but put a value on those choices and seriously consider what you're willing to pay for... and what you're not.  There is no formula for your success as there's been thousands of exceptions... ESID (Every Situation is Different).


What does it mean if a company pays a quarterly dividend? How much would I get quarterly? Google is a poor example since it doesn't pay a dividend (and doesn't expect to), so let's use another example with easy numbers. Company X has a stock price of $100, and it pays a quarterly dividend (many companies do). Let's assume X pays a dividend of $4. Dividends are always quoted in annual terms, as is dividend yield. When a company says that they pay "quarterly dividends," it means that the company pays dividends every quarter, or every 3 months.  BUT, if a company has a $4 dividend, you will not receive $4 every quarter per share. You will receive $4/4 = $1 per share, every quarter. So over the course of a fiscal year, or 4 quarters, you'll get $1 + $1 + $1 + $1 = $4 per share, which is the annual dividend.  The dividend yield = annual dividend/stock price. So in this case, company X's div. yield will be $4/$100 * 100 = 4%. It's important to note that this is the annual yield. To get the quarterly yield, you must divide by 4. It's also important to note that the yield fluctuates based on stock price, but the dividend payment stays constant unless the company states an announcement. For a real world example, consider Intel Corp. (TICKER: INTC) http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=INTC The share price is currently $22.05, and the dividend is $0.84. This makes the annual yield = $0.84/$22.05 * 100 = 3.80%. Intel pays a quarterly dividend, so you can expect to receive $0.21 every quarter for every share of Intel that you own. Hope that clears it up!


What's the best way to make money from a market correction? The best way to make money during a market correction is to be a financial services company handling transactions for people who think they can beat the market, and charging a percentage commission on each transaction, while keeping your own money somewhere nice and safe, stable and low-fee.


Should I change 401k investment options to prepare for rising interest rates? I see that you're invested in a couple bond funds. You do not want to be invested in bonds when the Fed raises rates. When rates climb, the value of bond investments decline, and vice-versa. So that means you should sell bonds before a rate hike, and buy them before a rate drop.


Buying a small amount (e.g. $50) of stock via eToro “Social Trading Network” using a “CFD”? As many people here have pointed out, a CFD is a contract for difference. When you invest in stock at eToro, you buy a CFD reflecting a bid on the price movement of the underlying stock, however, you do not actually own the stock or hold any rights shareholders have. The counterparty to the CFD is eToro. When you close your position, eToro shall pay you the amount representing the difference between your buy and sell price for each stock.  I suggest you read the following article about CFDs, it explains everything clearly and thoroughly: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/stocks/09/trade-a-cfd.asp#axzz2G9ZsmX3A As some of the responders have pointed out, and as is mentioned in the article, a broker can potentially misquote the prices of underlying assets in order to manipulate CFDs to their advantage. However, eToro is a highly reputable broker, with over 2 million active accounts, and we guarantee accurate stock quotes. Furthermore, eToro is regulated in Europe (Germany, UK, France, etc.) by institutions that exact strict regulations on the CFD trading sector, and we are obligated to comply with these regulations, which include accurate price quoting.  And of course, CFD trading at eToro has tremendous benefits. Unlike a direct stock investment, eToro allows you to invest as much or as little as you like in your favorite stocks, even if the amount is less than the relevant stock price (i.e. fraction stocks). For example:  if you invest $10 in Microsoft, and on the day of execution eToro’s average aggregated price was $30 after a spread of 0.1%, you will then have a CFD representing 0.33 stocks of Microsoft in your eToro account. In addition, with eToro you can invest in stock in the context of a social trading network, meaning that you can utilize the stock trading expertise of other trader to your advantage by following them, learning their strategies, and even copying their stock investments automatically. To put it briefly, you won’t be facing the stock market alone!  Before you make a decision, I suggest that you try stock trading with an eToro demo account. A free demo account grants you access to all our instruments at real market rates, as well as access to our social network where you can view and participate in trader discussions about trading stocks with eToro, all without risking your hard earned money. Bottom line – it’s free, there are no strings attached, and you can get a much firmer idea of what trading stocks with eToro is like. If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us through our site: www.etoro.com.


How can I work out how much a side-job contracting will be taxed for? Being self-employed, your "profit" is calculated as all the bills you send out, minus all business-related cost that you have (you will need a receipt for everything, and there are different rules for things that last for long time, long tools, machinery).  You can file your taxes yourself - the HRS website will tell you how to, and you can do it online. It's close to the same as your normal online tax return. Only thing is that you must keep receipts for all the cost that you claim.  Your tax: Assuming your gross salary is £25,000 and your profits are about £10,000, you will be paying 8% for national insurance, and 20% income tax. If you go above £43,000 or thereabouts, you pay 40% income tax on any income above that threshold, instead of 20%, but your national insurance payments stop.


Possible to use balance transfers to avoid interest with major credit cards? Sure of course you can do balance transfers like this but you are way late to the party and it has gotten to be pretty challenging finding new cards to transfer balances to. Before the current financial crisis in the US you could get enormous amounts of credit (2-5 times a person's annual income) and transfer balances to your bank account to collect interest . There were a bunch of ways to the transfer everything from direct deposit to your bank account to a balance transfer check payable to yourself to overpaying another credit card and requesting a refund. Over paying another account sets off a lot of red flags now days but other methods still work. The financial atmosphere has changed a lot and there are very few available cards with no balance transfer fees or capped fees and the interest rates are a lot lower now so it really isn't worth doing.


How to correct a tax return filed electronically and already approved? Simply file an amended return to correct the mistake. This happens all the time and is a standard procedure that every legitimate tax pro can handle. You can work it out with the tax pro about whose mistake it was and who should pay for the additional service.


When trading put options, is your total risk decreased if you are in a position to exercise the option? In absolute terms the risk is about the same.  If you own the stock and your put option goes in the money, then you have the option to get rid of your stock at yesterday's higher price.  If you don't, you can sell the option for a higher price than you paid for it. But, as you calculated yourself, the net gain or loss (in absolute terms, not percentage terms) is the same either way.


Why is it good to borrow money to buy a house? You can explore the scenarios in which it is better to rent or to buy using this application: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/BuyOrRentInvestmentReturnCalculator/ In the possibly unlikely scenario shown below, at the term of the mortgage (20 years) the tenant and the buyer have practically the same return on investment.  At this point the tenant's savings would be sufficient to buy a house equivalent to the buyer's, and this would be the advisable course of action (based on the figures alone).


Why is it not a requirement for companies to pay dividends? You have plenty of good answers, but I want to add something that might help you grow your intuition on stocks. There are a lot of differences between the example I am going to give and how the stock market actually runs, but the basic concepts are the same. Lets say your friend asks you if he can borrow some money to start up a company, in exchange you will have some ownership in this company. You have essentially just bought yourself some stock. Now as your friend starts to grow, he is doing well, but he needs more cash to buy assets in order to grow the company more. He is forced with an option, either give you some of the profits, or buy these assets sooner. You decide you don't really need the money right now, and think he can do a lot better with spending the money to buy stuff. This is essentially the same as a company electing to not pay dividends, but instead invest into the future. You as a stock holder are fine with it since you know the money is going toward investing in the future. Even if you never get paid a dividend, as a company grows, you can then turn around and sell the stock to someone else for more money then you gave originally. Of course you always take the risk of having the company failing and loosing some if not all of your investment, but that is just the risk of the market.


Should I replace bonds in a passive investment strategy The fact that some asset (in this case corporate bonds) has positive correlation with some other asset (equity) doesn't mean buying both isn't a good idea.  Unless they are perfectly correlated, the best risk/reward portfolio will include both assets as they will sometimes move in opposite directions and cancel out each other's risk.  So yes, you should buy corporate bonds.  Short-term government bonds are essentially the risk-free asset.  You will want to include that as well if you are very risk averse, otherwise you may not.  Long-term government bonds may be default free but they are not risk free.  They will make money if interest rates fall and lose if interest rates rise.  Because of that risk, they also pay you a premium, albeit a small one, and should be in your portfolio. So yes, a passive portfolio (actually, any reasonable portfolio) should strive to reduce risk by diversifying into all assets that it reasonably can.  If you believe the capital asset pricing model, the weights on portfolio assets should correspond to market weights (more money in bonds than stocks).  Otherwise you will need to choose your weights.  Unfortunately we are not able to estimate the true expected returns of risky assets, so no one can really agree on what the true optimal weights should be.  That's why there are so many rules of thumb and so much disagreement on the subject.  But there is little or no disagreement on the fact that the optimal portfolio does include risky bonds including long-term treasuries. To answer your follow-up question about an "anchor," if by that you mean a risk-free asset then the answer is not really.  Any risk-free asset is paying approximately zero right now.  Some assets with very little risk will earn a very little bit more than short term treasuries, but overall there's nowhere to hide--the time value of money is extremely low at short horizons.  You want expected returns, you must take risk.


What percent of my salary should I save? I disagree with the selected answer. There's no one rule of thumb and certainly not simple ones like "20 cents of every dollar if you're 35". You've made a good start by making a budget of your expected expenses. If you read the Mr. Money Mustache blogpost titled The Shockingly  Simple Math Behind Early Retirement, you will understand that it is usually a mistake to think of your expenses as a fixed percentage of your income. In most cases, it makes more sense to keep your expenses as low as possible, regardless of your actual income.  In the financial independence community, it is a common principle that one typically needs 25-30 times one's annual spending to have enough money to sustain oneself forever off the investment returns that those savings generate (this is based on the assumption of a 7% average annual return, 4% after inflation). So the real answer to your question is this: UPDATE Keats brought to my attention that this formula doesn't work that well when the savings rates are low (20% range). This is because it assumes that money you save earns no returns for the entire period that you are saving. This is obviously not true; investment returns should also count toward your 25-times annual spending goal. For that reason, it's probably better to refer to the blog post that I linked to in the answer above for precise calculations. That's where I got the "37 years at 20% savings rate" figure from. Depending on how large and small x and y are, you could have enough saved up to retire in 7 years (at a 75% savings rate), 17 years (at a 50% savings rate), or 37 years! (at the suggested 20% savings rate for 35-year olds). As you go through life, your expenses may increase (eg. starting a family, starting a new business, unexpected health event etc) or decrease (kid wins full scholarship to college). So could your income. However, in general, you should negotiate the highest salary possible (if you are salaried), use the 25x rule, and consider your life and career goals to decide how much you want to save. And stop thinking of expenses as a percentage of income.


Should I open a Roth IRA or invest in the S&P 500? A Roth IRA is simply a tax-sheltered account that you deposit funds into, and then invest however you choose (within the limits of the firm you deposit the funds with). For example, you could open a Roth IRA account with Vanguard.  You could then invest the $3000 by purchasing shares of VOO, which tracks the S&P 500 index and has a very low expense ratio (0.04 as of last time I checked).  Fidelity has a similar option, or Schwab, or whatever brokerage firm you prefer. IRAs are basically just normal investment accounts, except they don't owe taxes until you withdraw them (and Roth don't even owe them then, though you paid taxes on the funds you deposit).  They have some limitations regarding options trading and such, but if you're a novice investor just looking to do basic investments, you'll not notice.   Then, your IRA would go up or down in value as the market went up or down in value. You do have some restrictions on when you can withdraw the funds; Roth IRA has fewer than a normal IRA, as you can withdraw the capital (the amount you deposited) without penalty, but the profits cannot be withdrawn until you're retirement age (I won't put an actual year, as I suspect that actual year will change by the time you're that old; but think 60s). The reason not to invest in an IRA is if you plan on using the money in the near future - even as an "emergency fund".  You should have some money that is not invested aggressively, that is in something very safe and very accessible, for your emergency fund; and if you plan to buy a house or whatever with the funds, don't start an IRA.  But if this is truly money you want to save for retirement, that's the best place to start. **Note, this is not investment advice, and you should do your own homework prior to making any investment.  You can lose some or all of the value of your account while investing.


Is there a limit on the dollar amount of a personal check? As long as someone is willing to take it, you can write it!  I personally wrote a check for a new car.   The dealership didn't bat an eye.


Why don't banks give access to all your transaction activity? If you need access to your data beyond the online availability, you download the transactions and manage the archive yourself. Six months to eighteen months is generally enough time for most people to manage their own archived data. Big banks have the power to store and retrieve all the data online. Unfortunately, the older records are not frequently accessed. Why have these records online when they will be rarely accessed? Backing up data will take longer. Queries to retrieve data will take longer. Everything will take longer just so you can have records that 99% of customers will never access.


Can travel expenses be deducted from Form 1040A if they were used to gather material for a book? Hobby expenses are not tax deductible.  Business expenses are, but only if it's a bona fide business.  First they look at profitability: if you reported a net profit (i.e. paid taxes) in your first 3 years, they will believe you rant on Youtube for a living.   Remember, by the time they get around to auditing you, you'll likely be well into, or through, your third year.   There is an exception for farms.  Other than that, if you lose money year after year, you better be able to show that you look, walk and quack like a business; and one with a reasonable business reason for delayed profitability.  For instance Netflix's old business model of mailing DVDs had very high fixed infrastructure expense that took years to turn profitable, but was a very sensible model.  They're fine with that.  Pets.com swandived into oblivion but they earnestly tried. They're fine with that too.  You can't mix all your activities. If you're an electrician specializing in IoT and smart homes, can you deduct a trip to the CES trade show, you bet.  Blackhat conference, arguable.  SES?  No way.  Now if you had a second business of a product-reco site which profited by ads and affiliate links, then SES would be fine to deduct from that business.  But if this second business loses money every year, it's a hobby and not deductible at all.  That person would want separate accounting books for the electrician and webmaster businesses.  That's a basic "duck test" of a business vs. a hobby. You need to be able to show how each business gets income and pays expense separate from every other business and your personal life.  It's a best-practice to give each business a separate checking account and checkbook. You don't need to risk tax penalties on a business-larva that may never pupate.  You can amend your taxes up to 3 years after the proper filing date.  I save my expense reciepts for each tax year, and if a business becomes justifiable, I go back and amend past years' tax forms, taking those deductions.  IRS gives me a refund check, with interest!


How can I improve my credit score if I am not paying bills or rent? One of the other things you could do to improve your score would be along the lines of what Pete said in his answer, but using the current financial climate to your advantage. I'm not sure what interest rates are available to you in the UK, but I currently have 4 lines of credit aside from my house. One is a credit card I use for every day purchases and like you pay off immediately with every statement. The other three are technically credit cards, however all three were used to make purchases with 0% financing. The one was for a TV I bought that even gave me 5% off if I pay it off within 6 months. That cash has been sitting in my savings since the day I bought it. I'm making regular payments on all three, but not having to pay any interest. My credit score dropped 25 points with the one as it was an elective medical expense (Visian eye surgery), so for the time the balance is near my credit limit. However, that will bounce back up as the balance lowers. My score was also able to take that hit and still be very high. If you don't have 0% (or very close) available, your better bet would be to follow the other suggestions about saving for a sizable down payment, or other every day expenses like a cell phone.


Do I have to pay a capital gains tax if I rebuy different stocks? Probably.  It sounds like you're looking for a 1031-exchange for stocks and bonds.  From the wikipedia page for 1031-exchanges: To qualify for Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, the properties exchanged must be held for productive use in a trade or business or for investment. Stocks, bonds, and other properties are listed as expressly excluded by Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, though securitized properties are not excluded.  1031-exchanges usually are applicable in real estate.


Why don't banks give access to all your transaction activity? Although if you count only your data, it would be quite less 10 MB, multiply this by 1 million customers and you can see how quickly the data grows. Banks do retain data for longer period, as governed by country laws, typically in the range of 7 to 10 years.  The online data storage cost is quite high 5 to 10 times more than offline storage. There are other aspects, Disaster recover time, the more the data the more the time. Hence after a period of time Banks move the data into Archive that are cheaper to store but are not available to online query, plus the storage is not optimized for search. Hence retrieval of this data often takes few days if the regulator demands or court or any other genuine request for data retrieval.


Assessed value of my house You said the tax assessor gave you an appraised value, but I think you mean assessed value. This article YOUR HOME; Market vs. Appraisal: What's the Real Value? explains the differences pretty well.


Avoid Capital Gains on Rental Your question is best asked of a tax expert, not random people on the internet. Such an expert will help you ask the right questions.  For example you did not point out the country or state in which you live.  That matters.   First point is that you will not pay tax on 60K, its expensive to transact real estate, so your net proceeds will be closer to 40K.  Also you can probably the deduct the costs of improvements. You implied that you really like this rental property.  If that is the case, why would you sell...ever?  This home could be a central part of your financial independence plan.  So keep it until you die.  IIRC when it passes to your heirs, a new cost basis is formed thereby not passing the tax burden onto them. (Assuming the property is located in the US.)


Should I get an accountant for my taxes? Let me offer an anecdote to this -  I started helping a woman, widowed, retired, who had been paying $500/yr to get her taxes done. As I mentioned in my comment here, she got a checklist each year and provided the info requested. From where I sat, it seemed a clerk entered the info into tax software.  As part of the transition to me helping her, I asked the prior guy (very nice guy, really) for a quick consult. She took the standard deduction, but also showed a nice annual donation. Didn't take advantage of the QCD, donate directly from an IRA (she was over 70-1/2) to save on the tax of this sum. That could have saved her $500.  She was in the 15% bracket, with some room left for a Roth conversion. Converting just enough to 'fill' that bracket each year seemed a decent strategy as it would avoid the 25% rate as her RMDs rose each year and would push her to 25%. To both items the guy suggested that this was not his area, he was not a financial planner. Yes, I understand different expertise. With how simple her return was, I didn't understand the value he added.  If you go with a professional, be sure you have an understanding of what he will and won't do for you.


Do Square credit card readers allow for personal use? What I should have done in the first place was just ask them.  From their customer support team: Thanks for writing in and for your interest in Square. It is perfectly acceptable to use Square for personal business, such as a yard sale. You do not need to have a registered business to take advantage of Square and the ability to accept credit cards. Just please note that it is against our Terms of Service to process prepaid cards, gift cards or your own credit card using your own Square account. Additionally, you may not use Square as a money transfer system. For every payment processed through Square, you must provide a legitimate good or service. Please let me know if you have any additional concerns.


Does an employee have the right to pay the federal and state taxes themselves instead of having employer doing it? No, even businesses pay taxes quarterly.  So if you formed Nathan, LLC, or otherwise became self employed, you'd still have to file quarterly estimates and make tax payments.  This would cause taxes to be a much more high touch part of your life. However, you should ensure that you're claiming the proper exemptions etc to avoid excessive withholding.


Investing in dividend-yielding stocks with money borrowed from margin account? Is it safe to invest in a portfolio of dividend stocks yielding 7-9% with the money borrowed at 3-4% from one of these brokerages? Yes and no. It depends on your risk profile! Any investment has its risks of losing your capital, but not investing is a guaranteed risk, as you will be guaranteed to fall behind the rate of inflation. Regarding investing on margin, this can increase your gains but can also increase your loses. Regarding the stock market - when investing in stocks you should not only look at the dividend rate but also the capital gain or loss potential. Remember in regards to investing on margin, if the share price drop too much you can get a margin call no matter how much dividend you are getting. It is no use gaining 9% in dividend yield per year if you are losing 15% or more in capital each year. Also, what is the risk of the dividend rate being cut back or dividends not being paid at all in the future? These are some of the risks you should consider before investing and derive a risk management plan as part of your investment plan before you invest. No investment is totally safe or risk free, but it is less risky than not investing at all, as long as you understand the risks involved and have a risk management plan in place as part of your overall investment plan.


Foreign Earned Income Exclusion - Service vs. Product? As the name says, its for income earned in a Foreign country. If you have been paying US income tax on this while living in the US, nothing is going to change here. You should be informing yourself on how to avoid double taxation in your new country of residence. Passive income earned abroad (dividends, interest) also do not fall under this exemption.  The purpose of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion is to make it easy for expats who work abroad to avoid double income taxation without going through the complicated process of applying for tax credits. The US is the only industrial country that taxes its residents regardless of where they reside. That is also why it only goes to about $100,000 a year. If you are a high earner, they want to make it more difficult. Also as a side note, since you are going to be abroad for a year. I will point out that if you have more than $10,000 in foreign accounts at any point in the year you need to declare this in an FBAR form. This is not advertised as well as it should be and carries ridiculous penalties for non-compliance. I can't count the number of times I have heard a US expat say that they were unaware of this.


Dormant company, never paid taxes, never traded in UK - should I have notified the HMRC? You don't have to register for corporation tax until you start doing business: After you’ve registered your company with Companies House, you’ll need to register it for Corporation Tax. You’ll need to do this within 3 months of starting to do business. Since you haven't needed to do that yet, there also shouldn't be any need to tell HMRC you've stopped trading. So it should just be a question of telling Companies House - I guess it's possible they'll first want you to provide the missing accounts.


Why do some people go through contortions to avoid paying taxes, yet spend money on expensive financial advice, high-interest loans, etc? To some extent, I suppose, most people are okay with paying Some taxes. But, as they teach in Intro to Economics, "Decisions are made on the margin". Few are honestly expecting to get away with paying no taxes at all. They are instead concerned about how much they spend on taxes, and how effectively. The classic defense of taxes says "Roads and national defense and education and fire safety are all important." This is not really the problem that people have with taxes. People have problems with gigantic ongoing infrastructure boondoggles that cost many times what they were projected to cost (a la Boston's Big Dig) while the city streets aren't properly paved. People don't have big problems with a city-run garbage service; they have problems with the garbagemen who get six-figure salaries plus a guaranteed union-protected job for life and a defined-benefit pension plan which they don't contribute a penny to (and likewise for their health plans). People don't have a big problem with paying for schools; they have a big problem with paying more than twice the national average for schools and still ending up with miserable schools (New Jersey). People have a problem when the government issues bonds, invests the money in the stock market for the public employee pension plan, projects a 10% annual return, contractually guarantees it to the employees, and then puts the taxpayers on the hook when the Dow ends up at 11,000 instead of ~25,000 (California). And people have a problem with the attitude that when they don't pay taxes they're basically stealing that money, or that tax cuts are morally equivalent to a handout, and the insinuation that they're terrible people for trying to keep some of their money from the government.


Invest all at once after maxing out Roth IRA - or each time I contribute? If you are like most people, your timing is kind of awful.  What I mean by most, is all.  Psychologically we have strong tendencies to buy when the market is high and avoid buying when it is low.  One of the easiest to implement strategies to avoid this is Dollar Cost Averaging.  In most cases you are far better off making small investments regularly. Having said that, you may need to "save" a bit in order to make subsequent investments because of minimums.   For me there is also a positive psychological effect of putting money to work sooner and more often.  I find it enjoyable to purchase shares of a mutual fund or stock and the days that I do so are a bit better than the others.   An added benefit to doing regular investing is to have them be automated.  Many wealthy people describe this as a key to success as they can focused on the business of earning money in their chosen profession as opposed to investing money they have already earned.  Additionally the author of I will Teach You to be Rich cites this as a easy, free, and key step in building wealth.


Is the average true range a better measure of volatility than historical volatility ATR really looks at the volatility within the day -- So you would be able to see if the stock is becoming more or less volatile in daily trading.  This is often useful for charting and finding entry and exit locations.   Traditional historic volatility (as you cited) will give you a look at the long term volatility of the security.  The example of this is that there could be trends up or down but the same daily volatility (same ATR) There are methods that try to incorporate both intraday information along with historic volatility.  As for which is a better measure of volatility-- it depends on what you are using the measure for.