10 people live in country X in 10 separate households, 5 own their homes and the others rent unrelated property. Home ownership = 50% 10 people live in Country Y in 5 seperate households, 5 own their homes while the others rent from them. Home ownership = 50% One day, person 1 leaves his rented spot in one of the homes to opt for a new home elsewhere. Home ownership = 50%. It doesn't work out, so he moves back in with mom and dad. Home ownership = 50% Where am I making a mistake?


"Correct - I believe in freedom. Just because you ""work"" does not mean you now have the right to put a gun to someone else's head who adds more productivity to the country to take their money. I believe in productive work as that is the only way standard of livings will rise for all. If we had a bunch of people doing non productive work and expecting to make the same as productive work we would all be poor."


I haven't found a drop-in replacement for MS Money, but I've tried a few of the Mac desktop programs. I settled on Iggsoftware's iBank, which seems to do what I need it to do. It also appears to be able to import transactions from MS Money if you export your accounts as QIF files at the MS Money end, but I never tried it.


"Open standards need to be put in place by the open source community (including business interests), codified into a self-hosted option as a first class citizen *by law*, with a final sugar coated offering of hosted options managed by private enterprise. They can use the open source model as much or as little as they want.  With the Equifax scandal, we have little option but to include a ""nerd friendly"" secure version of this software that's available on the government's dime. And by government I mean ""we the people"", not ""big government""."


**Mortimer Sackler**  Mortimer David Sackler (December 7, 1916 – March 24, 2010) was an American physician and entrepreneur. With his brothers, Arthur and Raymond, he used his fortune from the pharmaceutical industry to become a prominent philanthropist.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/business/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.24


This is opinion, no right or wrong. Two schools of thought, one saying you should aim to be debt free, ASAP, the other suggests that when your borrowing expense is so much lower than expected market return, just keep investing.  With your mortgage, a variable, I trust the payment is recalculated so if you pay down half the loan, it will drop to half when the rate changes and new payment calculated, right? If not, you still have a high payment due until it's paid in full.  Me, I like the flexibility of going with the full term, and saving the money as long as rates are low. Even moderate inflation will make that payment fell like less over time, and there are funds whose dividends are above the mortgage rate. If/when rates rise, you can always pay down aggressively. I'm concerned that you don't have a good sense of your saving goals. You have less than a years income saved for the long term. To replace 80% of your income you need about 20 times your current income, or $4M. Of course, you get to subtract pension income or whatever Canada's social security system is (forgive my ignorance on this).


"Day trading is an attempt to profit on high frequency signal changes. Long term investing profits on low frequency changes. What is the difference? High Frequency Signal = the news of the day. This includes things like an earnings report coming out, panic selling, Jim Cramer pushing his ""buy buy buy"" button, an oil rig blowing up in the ocean, a terrorist attack in some remote region of the globe, a government mandated recall, the fed announcing an interest rate hike, a competitor announcing a new product, hurricanes, cold winters, a new health study on child obesity, some other company in the same sector missing their earnings, etc. Think daily red and green triangles on CNBC: up a buck, down a buck. Low Frequency Signal = The long term effectiveness of a company to produce and sell a product efficiently plus the sum of the high frequency signal over a long period of time. Think 200 day moving average chart of a stock. No fast changes, just, long term trends. Over time, the high frequency changes tend to negate each other. To me, long term investing is wiser because the low frequency signal is dominated by a companies ability to function well over time. That in turn is driven by the effectiveness of its leadership coupled with the skill and motivation of its employees. You are betting on the company and its people. Pseudo-random shorterm forces, which you can't control, play less of a role.  The high frequency signal, on the other hand, is dominated by sporadic and unpredictable forces that typically can't be controlled by the company. It has some tinge of randomness about it. Trying to invest on that random component is not investing at all, it is gambling (akin to ""investing"" in that next coin flip coming up heads) I understand the allure of high frequency trading. Look at the daily chart of a popular stock and focus on the up and down ticks. Mathematically, you could make a killing if you could just stack all those upticks on top of each other. If only it was that easy."


"There isn't really a clear way to answer this question objectively.  I'd offer my opinion that yes it is a good idea. You don't need very much money to start (I began investing on $200). To answer your second question, no there are never any ""sure things.""  Instead on focusing on making money, focus on learning how the markets work. Pick a few companies you know (perhaps in an industry you are familiar with) and buy one or two shares at a time. Watch the prices evolve over time and make note of the changes and always ask the question ""why did it go up/down"". Good luck."


Given your clarifying points, it sounds like you are running both businesses as one combined business. As such, you should be able to get just a single HST number and use that. However, let me please urge you to contact a professional accountant and possibly a lawyer, as it is very unusual to be performing these services without a business license, and you may be exposing yourself to civil penalties and placing your personal assets (e.g. your house) at risk. Additionally, it may be beneficial for you to run these as businesses as you can likely write off (more of) your expenses.


There are several factors that you need to consider: If you have already decided on the house.  Did you prequalify for the mortgage loan - If so, did you lock in the rate. If you have not already done than your research is still valid. Consider two calculators first - Affordability + Mortgage calculator Advice :  If you can afford to pay 20% down then please do, Lesser monthly mortgage payment, you can save approx 400 $ per month, the above calculator will give you an exact idea. If you can afford go for 15 years loan - Lower interest rate over 2-5 years period. Do not assume the average ROI will + 8-10%. It all depends on market and has variable factors like city, area and demand.  In terms of Income your interest payment is Tax deductible at the end of the year.


FI funds don't always drop in rising rate environments, and can outperform thanks to simple bond math and the way the indexes are built.  It's one of the places where it's very easy to argue in favour of some form of active management.


If I needed a safe-ish way to bank a lot of cash in vegas I'd exchange for high value chips at the local gambling establishments.  I have to imagine that's being done already for other less than legal enterprises.


Siri suffers from it working too well, I think. Yes, speech to text and text to speech is a relatively solved problem. But. That's only half of what Siri is doing.   When it translates your speech to text, it then transmits the text to servers that, in only seconds, parse the *meaning* of the text. That's a lot harder.   I tell Siri to set trimmers or remind me of things at certain times, etc. the brilliance of Siri is it understands what I meant in addition to what I said.


Actually the article seems to just constantly note the contradictions in findings saying that things may or may not be because of the wage increase, or maybe some other economic indicator.  So ... basically, pointless article with a click bait title.


Here is a list of threads in other subreddits about the same content:   * [You're more likely to achieve the American dream if you live in Denmark](https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/6zxabb/youre_more_likely_to_achieve_the_american_dream/) on /r/neoliberal with 1 karma (created at 2017-09-14 00:23:51 by xc89[author of both threads])   ----    ^^I ^^am ^^a ^^bot  ^^[FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/wiki/index)-[Code](https://github.com/PokestarFan/DuplicateBot)-[Bugs](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/comments/6ypgmx/bugs_and_problems/)-[Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/comments/6ypg85/suggestion_for_duplicatesbot/)-[Block](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/wiki/index#wiki_block_bot_from_tagging_on_your_posts)


"I am confused how you spin an ""infinite mileage warranty"" into something negative.  Even if they have found powertrain failures (to your point)... they are handling it and their customers about as well as anyone could.  Yes, it is good PR because that in-turn will increase sales / revenues / profits.  What company doesn't want to do that?  Perhaps you're in the anti-Tesla circle-jerk?"


This just happened to me with a Wells Fargo Bill Pay check.  WF put a stop payment on the check. The money was taken out of my account immediately yet it is going to take 3-5 days to reappear in the account.  I question these banking practices.  Georgia Bank and Trust Company of GA does not do this.  The Bill Pay check is processed just like a hand written check; when the check clears the bank your account is debited. If it is an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) then the money does come out of your account immediately, of course. These are acceptable banking practices to me.  I will be closing the Wells Fargo account.


Good journalism is expensive. Used to be, advertisers footed the bill for it. Not that way anymore, and regular people don't want to pay what good journalism costs -- they can't, actually, since it would be unaffordable. I really don't see a solution for journalism's survival, and it's really a shame.


The income and recurring costs will be shown at the end of each year, however the initial cost is recorded at the time they are incurred meaning at t=0 (Jan 2014) The first net profits/loss of 658500 is recorded at the end of Dec 2014 (t=1) And the remaining four ones at the end of 2015 (t=2) 2016 (t=3) 2017 (t=4) 2018 (t=5) -8000000 658500  658500 658500 658500 6658500 t=0) -8000000 t=1) 658500 t=2) 658500 t=3) 658500  t=4) 658500  t=5) 6658500


"Question 2 Some financial institutions can provide a way to invest small amounts with low or no cost fees over a period of time (like monthly, weekly, etc).  For instance, a few brokerages have a way to buy specific ETFs for no cost (outside of the total expense ratio). Question 3 When someone says that investing is like buying a lottery ticket, they are comparing an event that almost always has at least a 99.9% of no return (large winnings) to an event that has much better odds.  Even if I randomly pick a stock in the S&P 500 and solely invest in it, over the course of a given year, I do not face a 99.9% chance of losing everything. So comparing the stock market to a lottery, unless a specific lottery has much better odds (keep in mind that some of these jackpots have a 99.9999999% of no return) is not the same.  Unfortunately, nothing truly safe exists - risk may mutate, but it's always present; instead, the probability of something being safe and (or) generating a return may be true for a given period of time, while in another given period of time, may become untrue. One may argue that holding cash is safer than buying an index fund (or stock, ETF, mutual fund, etc), and financially that may be true over a given period of time (for instance, the USD beat the SPY for the year of 2008).  Benjamin Franklin, per a biography I'm reading, argued that the stock market was superior to gold (from the context, it sounds like the cash of his day) because of what the stock market represents: essentially you're betting on the economic output of workers.  It's like saying, in an example using oil, that I believe that even though oil becomes a rare resource in the long run, human workers will find an alternative to oil and will lead to better living standards for all of us. Do civilizations like the Mongolian, Roman, and Ottoman empires collapse?  Yes, and would holding the market in those days fail?  Yes.  But cash and gold might be useless too because we would still need someone to exchange goods with and we would need to have the correct resources to do so (if everyone in a city owns gold, gold has little value).  The only ""safe bet"" in those days would be farming skill, land, crops and (or) livestock because even without trading, one could still provide some basic necessities."


Credit cards also take a cut.  Canada's interac system (use your bank card at the POS to instantly transfer money from your bank to the store) costs merchants 15 cents per transaction.  Visa and Mastercard charge about 3% per transaction.  They justify this by saying that cards encourage people to spend more and stores can make bigger sales.  With cash, I am limited to what's in my pocket, but with visa or interac, if something is just a little more expensive than I'd planned on spending, it's no big deal, I just swipe the card, type my pin and have the product.  If the option is between a sale -x%, or no sale at all, the former beats the latter.  Square is offering a service that is convenient as hell, and they make it very easy to set up and use.  Convenience and ease of use are something that people are willing to pay for.


MoneyGram said that the person sending money should also be an Indian. There shouldn't be any such restriction. Can you check again what exactly the issue was? Is there another way so I can get money without any problem. You can try Bank Transfers or alternative remittance like Western Union


"Yeah, it's one thing for the buzzfeeds to collapse some thread into a listicle, but I certainly find it outrageous for someone to just steal an OP's post and put it elsewhere, and even more egregious in this case since it starts out ""A while back **I**..."""


> Example abound of rich kids who don't pan out and poor kids who make it.  This is not really very true.  Social mobility is not so common - if you're born in the poorest or riches 1% or 10% of the population, the chances are you'll spend your whole life in that demographic.  Figures are not so easy to come by on these particular margins, but it's easy to find studies that show 42 percent of American men raised in the bottom fifth of incomes stay there as adults, whilst just 8 percent rise to the top fifth. [[cite](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_mobility_in_the_United_States)] Yet it's really the poorest 1% and 10% we should be thinking about, and comparing them to the richest 1% and 10%, when we ask how fair our society is. They are surely less socially mobile.   Meanwhile, [UK statistics](http://www.lonegunman.co.uk/2009/12/11/statistics-on-social-mobility-and-belief-systems/):  * Privately educated candidates account for 7 per cent of the population, but occupy more than half of the top professional jobs. * 75 per cent of judges, 45 per cent of senior civil servants, and a third of MPs are privately educated. * More than 4 in 10 places and Oxford and Cambridge go to privately educated candidates. * 30 per cent of children on free school meals do not get good GCSEs. * Of students getting 3 As at A-Level, just 0.5 per cent were eligible for free school meals.


I prefer the TD Gold Elite Visa issued by TD Canada Trust.  The card offers a 1% cash back reward, and I can completely avoid the annual fee by maintaining a minimum balance in my TD bank account.  In addition to the 1% cash back, other features that I like on the card are: There are some other features (see complete list here), but those are the ones I care about. I used to carry both Aeroplan and Air Miles type of reward cards, but when I wanted to book a flight and discovered the hassle involved, the value of travel points evaporated as far as I was concerned.  I also decided I would never again pay an annual fee to earn rewards; it's counter-productive.


"At least in the US, a Cashier's Check is just like a regular personal check - only it's guaranteed by the bank itself, so the person accepting it can be pretty certain the check won't be returned for insufficient funds...if the check is genuine! Most banks therefore have a policy for cashier's checks that is very similar to their policies on regular checks and money orders: if you are a member with an account in good standing, they'll make all or part of the money available to you according to their fund availability policy, which is usually anywhere from ""immediately"" to 7-10 days. With amounts over $5,000, banks will tend to put a hold on the funds to ensure it clears and they get their money. If you are not a member then many banks will refuse to cash the check at all, unless the cashier's check is drawn on on that brand of bank. So if the cashier's check is issued by, say, Chase Bank, Chase banks will usually be willing to cash out the entire check to you immediately (with properly provided ID). Because the bank is guaranteed by them they are able to check their system and ensure the check is real and can clear the check instantly. This policy isn't just up to individual banks entirely, as it is defined by United States federal banking policies and federal regulations on availability of funds. If you really must cash the check without a holding period and won't/can't have a bank account of your own to perform this, then you will generally need to go into a branch of the bank that is guaranteeing the check to be able to cash it out fully right away. Note that since the check might be issued by a bank with no branch near you, you should have a back-up plan. Generally banks will allow you to setup a special/limited savings-only account to deposit your check, even if you don't have a checking account, so if no other option works you might try that as well. The funds availability policies are the same, but at least you'll be able to cash it generally in 10 days time (and then close the account and withdraw your money)."


The expense ratio reduces the return of the ETF; your scenario of paying 100.0015 is that of a load.  Most (all?) ETFs can be bought without paying a load (sales charge as a percent of amount invested), and some ETFs can be bought without paying a brokerage fee (fixed or variable charge for a buy transaction just like buying any other stock  through the brokerage) because the brokerage has waived it.  Your broker  might charge fees for both buying and selling shares in an ETF, but in any case, this is quite separate from the expense ratio.


As an F1 student, I have been investing (and occasionally buying and selling within few weeks) for several years, and I have never had problems (of course I report to IRS gains/losses every year at tax time). On the other hand, the officer in charge of foreign students at my school advised me to not run ads on a website and make a profit. So, it seems to me that investing is perfectly legit for a F1 student, as it's not considered a business activity. That's obviously my personal understanding, you may want to speak with an immigration attorney to be on the safe side.


"In many ways their business model wasn't different than Keurig (and I'm sure that's how this was pitched: ""We're going to be the K-Pods of Juice and make Billions!""), it's just all timing and execution. If you look at any of the many YouTube teardowns of the Juicero it was pretty obvious that they were if anything _losing_ money on each juicer sale.  The industrial design of the machine itself was executed in such a way that it was just incredibly expensive to manufacture. Beyond that we certainly seem to be in the midst of a large scale shift in eating habits. Where low carb diets were once pretty faddish, it's becoming more and more predominant and it doesn't get much more tall glass of carbs than juice."


"> President Trump killed the TPP? Yes, or no?  No, [the TPP was declared politically dead before President Trump was elected](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/09/29/mcconnell-the-trans-pacific-partnership-is-dead-until-a-president-revives-it/?utm_term=.73c9a7fbea04).  He did sign an executive order officially withdrawing but it had little meaning since the bill never had or was going to get congressional ratification.  > President Trump is killing and NAFTA and actively against it? Yes, or no?  No, although candidate Trump was strongly against the trade deal [President Trump has decided to ""renegotiate"" it](http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/26/politics/trump-nafta/index.html).  Preliminary glimpses of what this means [does not look anything like killing NAFTA or helping American workers](https://www.thenation.com/article/trumps-renegotiation-of-nafta-is-starting-to-look-a-lot-like-the-tpp/).  > President Trump reduced immigration? Yes or no?  No, at least not yet although [he has proposed legislation to do so](https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/08/02/president-donald-j-trump-backs-raise-act).  > President Trump reduced and kill many regulations? Yes or no?  Yes on this one but [almost all were put in place by the Obama administration and many hadn't even taken effect yet](https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2017/07/20/trump-admin-war-on-regulations-paid-off-n2357693).  > President Trump invests in infrastructure? Yes, or no?  No, while President Trump has promised $1 trillion in infrastructure spending [nothing has actually been produced except a bill that stripped transportation funding programs](https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2017/08/07/business/07reuters-usa-municipals-infrastructure.html).  > Presider Trump pull out from Wars, e.g. the CIA program to ""support the rebels in Syria""? Yes or no?  No, although you are right Trump stopped the support of Syrian rebels [he started to arm the Syrian Kurds](http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/10/middleeast/syria-us-turkey-trump-arms-kurds/index.html) and don't forget [he got directly involved in the war](http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/06/politics/donald-trump-syria-military/index.html)."


It's the buying and selling of the stock that causes the fluctuation in prices, not the news. People buy and sell all the time, and not just for newsworthy reasons.  They may have to send a child to college, or fix a roof, etc.  Or they may be technical traders looking for signals.  All kinds of reasons.


It's a big dance. Share price will go up or down based on a number of factors, many that have nothing to do with the company operations. If a CEO fixates on quarterly returns, that will cause long-term investors to want that CEO replaced, or to sell their shares. Unless a CEO is weak and can't explain the business to shareholders he shouldn't need to focus on quarterlies. If he does then shareholders short and long will take advantage of the bump in price to exit, thus depressing the valuation. Then new money comes in after CEO is replaced.


"Just to be clear to start, beta is a statistical property.  So if your beta is 0.8 over a period of time.  Stock X moved on average 0.8 for a point move in the index. We might hope this property is persistent and it seems to be fairly persistent (predictable) but it doesn't have to be. Also it is important to note this is not a lag in time.  Beta is a measure of the average size of a move in the stock at the same time as a move in the index.  In your example both the stock and index are measured at end of day.  You can say that the stock ""lags"" behind the index because it doesn't grow as quickly as the market when the market is growing, but this is not a lag in time just a lag in magnitude.   People do occasionally calculate betas between a stock and lagged in time market prices, but this is not the commonly used meaning of beta.  This might actually be a more useful measure as then you could bet on the future of the stock given what happened today in the market, but these ""betas"" tend to be much more unstable than the synchronized version and hard to trade on. When you calculated beta you choose a time scale, in this case daily.  So if your calculation is on a day-to-day basis then you have only tested the relationship on a day-to-day basis not, for instance, on a week-to-week basis.  Now day-to-day and week-to-week betas are often related and are generally reasonably close but they do not have to be.  There can be longer term effects only picked up on the longer scale.   Stock X could day-to-day with a (average) beta of 1 to the stock market, but could have even a negative beta year-to-year with the market if the stock is counter-cyclical to longer scale trends on the market.  So beta can change with the time scale used in the calculation."


The partnership agrees to pay each of you salaries and/or bonuses, typically based on the net profit brought in. You do have a legal document setting out the rules for this partnership, right? If so, the exact answer should be in there. If you don't or it isn't, you need a lawyer yesterday.


I think it's pretty clear they need a quality smart phone line since that's almost all people are buying anymore.  I don't know why they aren't making Android phones other than the market is already saturated and it's hard to stand out. The Windows Phone is almost certainly their best bet, but can they hang in there until MS's push to the win8 platform. If they can I expect the Windows Phone to do very well. Most Joe Consumers will be like OH well I have windows at home so I know that, and I doubt it will be any less intuitive than the Android interface or any more boring than the iPhone interface.


The same as you would save for anything else, buget and make sure your expenses are less than your income each week. Put away a little each week for the item you want to buy, and when you have saved up enough for the item you can buy it. In the mean time whilst you are saving for it, you can shop around to see where you can buy it at the lowest price.


**[Online advertising](http://www.makeyouradvertisement.com/)** is all around us. Sometimes it's specific, and sometimes it's in your experience. Sometimes it's valuable, and sometimes it's aggravating. As the web regularly become a free assistance, provided only by causes, so too does the designed side-effect of Online advertising. The purpose of this post is to discover the art of Online advertising by looking at people thought with respect to both the group and causes.


I believe it.  Violin lessons - $5k/year Piano lessons - $5K/year Sports - $5k/year (or more) daycare/kindergarten - $10-20-?/year (depending on where you live) private school (or higher taxes if you want a decent public school) - ??? a lot...   and either one of the parents has to go part time and lose income,you you have to hire someone to help (just taking kids to all the lessons is a second job...)


"I think Congress needs to spend less, there's likely billions of dollars in the budget that are unnecessary/could be used better. Second, my comment was to simplify the corporate tax code and make more income taxable (thus removing the ""tax cuts"" you mentioned)."


As a general rule of thumb, and assuming you have a choice, my advice is to pay cash for things things that depreciate, expenses, and consumables. Consider credit (even if you have cash) for things that will appreciate in value or generate cash flow. That is, use credit as leverage.


"> That's the fault of the consumer misunderstanding then.   Actually, no it's not. It's intentionally misleading, and any reasonable person you ask about this will say it's crazy and/or should be illegal.   If it's not intentionally misleading, then why not put the truth: ""50% chicken, 50% filler"" in large, friendly letters on the front?   And we both know the answer to that question."


The question is always one of whether people think they can reliably predict that the option will be a good bet. The closer you get to its expiration, the easier it is to make that guess and the less risk there is. That may either increase or decrease the value of the option.


"I'm really surprised at the answers here. Claims/year per region isn't a statistic that is meaningful here... you need to think about the risk factors and the purpose of the insurance. First, what does title insurance do? It protects you against defects in the deed -- defects that may crop up and mean that your mortgage is no longer valid. This is different from most forms of insurance -- the events that render your title invalid are events that may have happened years, decades or even centuries ago. A big part of the insurance policy and its cost is conducting research to assess the validity of a deed. The whole point of the insurance is to reduce claims by improving data associated with the ""chain of custody"" of the property. So how do you evaluate the risk of finding out about something that happened a long time ago, that nobody appears to know about? IMO, you have to think about risk factors that increase the probability that things were screwed up in the past: You need to have an informed discussion with your attorney and figure out if it makes sense for you. Don't dismiss it out of hand."


At SMSGATEWAYHUB operates under the firm “SUN Mobile Marketing” and is located in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India. We believe in customer satisfaction as topmost priority above anything or everything. We’re couple of dedicated individuals striving hard to deliver bulk sms service at best rates ever possible without compromising the quality. Sales : +91-731-6452444, +91-731-6450666 Support : +91-731-6007555 Email: support@smsgatewayhub.com


So let me see if I'm following.  You're only vaguely aware of the situation, unaware of the person we're discussing, and don't even seem to have read the article.   Why do you think your opinion holds weight? Sure, we could come up with a hypothetical where this makes sense, but that has nothing to do with the situation at hand.


Which was why I gave the example of the PA recognized waiver for leases.  PA landlord/tenant law requires 10 day notice to be given to the tenant prior to filing a court action.  PA courts have recognized, for decades, that this right can be waived.  Waiving your right to notice has been one of the standard clauses in PA leases for well over 3 decades.


The simplest way is you transfer the funds into your NRE account in India. From the NRE account transfer the funds to your brother-in-law and show the purpose as Loan. From 2012 onwards RBI has simplified things under FMEA and your brother-in-law can deposit/repay the loan back into the NRE account. Once the funds are in NRE account you can repatriate then whenever you like. This entire process requires less paperwork. The option you have suggested is also fine, however your brother-in-law needs to engage the services of a CA and he will authenticate the purpose of remittance to the Bank. Based on this certificate the Bank will transfer the funds outside of India.


Large volume just means a lot of market participants believe they know where the stock price will be (after some amount of time).  The fact that the price is not moving just means that about 50% of those really confident traders think the stock will be moving up, and about 50% of those really confident traders think the stock will be moving down.


You question is a bit scary to me. You show $2100 rent, and let's even assume that's 100%, i.e. never a vacancy. (Rule of thumb is 10% vacancy. Depending on area, a tenant may stay a year, but when they leave, you might need to have a bit of maintenance and miss 2 months rent) You count the mortgage and taxes, and are left with $500/mo. Where is the list of ongoing expenses? I suggest you put that $500/mo into a separate account and let us know a year from now if anything is left. To Anthony's point. I agree 100%, no one can tell you everything you need to know. But, whatever my answer, or his, other members with experience (similar or different) will add to this, and in the end you'll have a great overview. The truth is that it's easy for me to sit here and see what you may be missing. By the way, if you look at the 'rules of thumb' they will make your head spin. There are those who say the target is for the rent to be 2% of the value of the house. But, there are markets where this will never happen. There's another rule that says the expenses (besides mort/tax) should be planned at 50% of the rent, i.e. you should put aside $1000/mo for expenses over the long term. The new house will be lower of course, but in years past year 10 or so, this number will start to look reasonable.


I suppose I wouldn't have a choice in that case, assuming I hadn't packed a lunch like so many people seem to do for some odd reason...fortunately, even in that case, I am presented with choices other than McCrapples, some of which is actually edible.


The value premium would state the opposite in fact if one looks at the work of Fama and French. The Investment Entertainment Pricing Theory (INEPT) shows a graph with the rates on small-cap/large-cap and growth/value combinations that may be of interest as well for another article noting the same research. Index fund advisors in Figure 9-1 shows various historical returns up to 2012 that may also be useful here for those wanting more detailed data. How to Beat the Benchmark is from 1998 that could be interesting to read about index funds and beating the index in a simpler way.


If you're talking about an ETF trading on Arca, it's probably because of the opening auction: The match price is the price that maximizes the volume that can be executed within the Auction Collars. The Core Open Auction will use the match price closest to the closing price of the previous trading day (based on normal market hours) if more than one indicative match price is valid. The core opening auction doesn't really take the opening session activity into account, as you can see - the market runs an auction and whatever price clears the most volume, within certain limits, is the opening print.


I have sold cars before to individuals and always just received cash.  I would think as long as the amount is less than $10,000.00 and the buyer is serious they will get there with the cash.  Of course there is no possible way to guarantee the cash will not be counterfeit.


> Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, called Windows 8 “the beginning of a new era at Microsoft.”   I'm glad he said that, because it seems like Uncle Fester hasn't been right about anything since taking over.


Contrary to most other advise given here, I'd recommend (in your situation) not to invest in stock (yet). There are some 'hidden' cost to investing that will eat your profit and in the end, that's why you are investing. Banks will charge for buying, selling and maintaining stock as well as for cashing dividends. Depending on which bank or intermediary these costs will rise. So, my advise is to start playing with stock creating a virtual portfolio and track that. Just as duffbeer says, start saving. Also look at my answer here.


Not by you. Your bank might have to fill some reports for the IRS, but for the customer, nothing needs to be done. As long as the money is not income from illegal activity you don't need to worry about it.


I'd say that the assets are 'invested' in non-productive sectors of the economy such as the finance sector. Also in pure market speculation and in revolving corporate acquisitions which inflate the nominal money supply but don't increase either physical production or services delivered by one thimble or one minute.


If you have a trailer, you know how difficult it can be to tow a trailer safely and easily using standard factory equipment. If you are looking to improve your towing capability, and ensure that your trip is safe, you need to check out Hayman Reese tow bars and other safety equipment.


>“We want to help the people who may transition to a new job as a result of our technology the best way we know how: education.”  >As new technology destroys one kind of job, it creates opportunities for others. We’ll need fewer line cooks, they say, but more engineers and technicians. The problem isn’t that jobs are lost on net, it’s the resulting skills gap. Transitioning into new work can be difficult to navigate, especially for low-wage workers.  The argument that automation will only result in different jobs bothers me. Of course there will be a net loss in jobs. If replacing line cooks with robots results in an equal number of (higher paid) technicians and engineers, why spend the capital to replace the cheaper line cooks in the first place?  The problem *is* that the jobs lost are net.


Imaging driving a bicycle turned backwards, steering it with the steering wheel in the back, while trying to keep to the center of the road. Just keeping going down the road requires a huge degree of control, and constant small adjustments... If you get it trouble, and turn the wheel in the wrong direction, the trouble increases exponentially, ending in a huge crash.  Now the swirling road is futures market, the bicycle is your account, turning the steering wheel left and right is going long or short futures, with steering wheel angle being your position size.


>This is a socially good and useful function  I think that is highly dependant on how the corporation operates. If it leads to lower employment (for example by destroying most independent coffee shops) and the expatriation of profits then how is it good for a country? Corporate desire for profits goes far beyond capitalism into systematic illegal behaviour, it is the standard and is only altered when they're caught for a specific behaviour.


Phones set to automatically pick the carrier/network will go bounce around a lot internationally (probably due to signal strength). The phones probably saw the other networks providing stronger signal and so they switched. Manually picking the network should prevent this from happening, unless the network has towers on both sides of the border, then there's something fishy going on.   I'm not sure if Verizon does it, but AT&T messages you when you go somewhere not in your plan and tells you how much it will cost to use data and call. That could have alerted these people to the issue before they were charged hundreds of dollars.


lol @ savings accounts.  I don't use savings accounts. I just use checking for liquidity and invest everything else. Now if you have a job that prohibits trading on your own account that's understandable but if you have the knowledge might as well use it and make some $$$


While the standard measure of inflation, the CPI, has [severe problems](https://www.forbes.com/sites/perianneboring/2014/02/03/if-you-want-to-know-the-real-rate-of-inflation-dont-bother-with-the-cpi/), there are still a huge range of inflation statistics from the various M values to specific commodity prices. Regardless of the relative value of any of these, stealing pension funds is immoral, evil, and destabilizing.


Yeah, not to disparage solar, but solar.  It's not a good idea to have government pick winners and losers.  Without government picking oil decades ago we'd probably have solar already, without subsidies.  Without government picking automobiles (via government built interstate highways) we'd probably have a robust high speed passenger rail system.


I used a large portion of my 401k to pay off my credit card.  My intentions were to then use my extra cash flow to build up the 401k again.  Unfortunately I didn't learn my lesson and now I'm back to where I started, minus my 401k savings.  If I could do it again, I would have cut up the card, kept the 401k and pay it down slowly.  Good luck to you.  I hope you do better than I did.


Yes, it is a very good idea to start your credit history early.  It sounds like you have a good understanding of the appropriate use of credit, as a substitute for cash rather than a supplement to income.  As long as you keep your expenses under control and pay off your card each month, I see no problems with the idea. Try to find a card with no annual fees, a low interest rate if possible (which will be difficult at your age), and with some form of rewards such as cash back.  Look for a reputable issuing bank, and keep the account open even after you get a new card down the road.  Your credit score is positively correlated with having an account open for a long time, having a good credit usage to credit limit ratio, and having accounts in good standing and paid on time.


Vinyl is to hipsters as ceramic figurines are to old women.  I played vinyl when I was a kid, since that's all there was back then.  I got back into it several years ago, when you could still find good used records for under $1.  Those are all gone now.  You're paying $30-$40 for poorly pressed new records.  It's not worth it.  A few years ago I started buying used CDs.  They're selling for 25¢ to $1 these days.  CDs are - objectively and scientifically - better than records.  Look here if you don't believe me:   http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl)  I rip CDs to my server and select music using my tablet as a remote control.  It's pretty wonderful.  Oh yeah, I'm putting all those CDs into deep storage.  When the hipsters start going wild over vintage CDs about ten years from now, I'm going to sell them all and buy a nice new car.


It feels a bit like the entire system needs an overhaul, one wonders if a more automated economy and rising presence of AI will enable it or be an ethical barrier. It seems there's poor long-term planning for these sorts of issues where UBI is a last-ditch fix for a system that's no longer working for the working class.


"You've got it nailed down mostly and you found some really good insightful articles to help you understand the context here.  Dont misunderstand this... This issue is extremely complicated.  The one thing you are I think misunderstanding is that ""closing loopholes"" is a turn key solution and it really isn't. Loopholes are an extremely ambiguous term there's no list of loopholes out there to chase down and regulate for.  And even if there was once they were killed more would sprout up.  Most of the commenters here want to instead disincentivize loophole chasing by making the corp tax rate equal to those of other countries and removing repatriation tax so money made abroad can be brought back to the US."


"All right, I will try to take this nice and slow. This is going to be a little long; try to bear with me. Suppose you contribute $100 to your newly opened 401(k). You now have $100 in cash and $0 in mutual funds in your 401(k) (and $100 less than you used to somewhere else). At some later date, you use that money within the 401(k) to buy a single share of the Acme World All-Market Index Fund which happens to trade at exactly $100 per share on the day your purchase goes through. As a result, you have $0 in cash and exactly one share of that fund (corresponding to $100) within your 401(k). Some time later, the price of the fund is up 10%, so your share is now worth $110. Since you haven't contributed anything more to your 401(k) for whatever reason, your cash holding is still $0. Because your holding is really denominated in shares of this mutual fund, of which you still have exactly one, the cash equivalent of your holding is now $110. Now, you can basically do one of two things: By selling the share, you protect against it falling in price, thus in a sense ""locking in"" your gain. But where do you put the money instead? You obviously can't put the money in anything else that might fall in price; doing so would mean that you could lose a portion of your gains. The only way to truly ""lock in"" a gain is to remove the money from your investment portfolio altogether. Roughly speaking, that means withdrawing the money and spending it. (And then you have to consider if the value of what you spent the money on can fluctuate, and as a consequence, fall. What's the value of that three weeks old jug of milk in the back of your refrigerator?) The beauty of compounding is that it doesn't care when you bought an investment. Let's say that you kept the original fund, which was at $110. Now, since that day, it is up another 5%. Since we are looking at the change of price of the fund over some period of time, that's 5% of $110, not 5% of the $100 you bought at (which was an arbitrary point, anyway). 5% of $110 is $5.50, which means that the value of your holding is now at $115.50 from a gain first of 10% followed by another 5%. If at the same day when the original fund was at $110 you buy another $100 worth of it, the additional 5% gain is realized on the sum of the two at the time of the purchase, or $210. Thus after the additional 5% gain, you would have not $210 (($100 + $100) + 5%), nor $205 (($100 + 5%) + $100), but $220.50 (($110 + $100) + 5%). See how you don't need to do anything in particular to realize the beauty of compounding growth? There is one exception to the above. Some investments pay out dividends, interest or equivalent in cash equivalents. (Basically, deposit money into an account of yours somewhere; in the case of retirement plans, usually within the same container where you are holding the investment. These dividends are generally not counted against your contribution limits, but check the relevant legal texts if you want to be absolutely certain.) This is somewhat uncommon in mutual funds, but very common in other investments such as stocks or bonds that you purchase directly (which you really should not do if you are just starting out and/or feel the need to ask this type of question). In that case, you need to place a purchase order yourself for whatever you want to invest the dividend in. If you don't, then the extra money of the dividend will not be growing along with your original investment."


First thing that popped into my head was tanning salons.  You can be a member at differing levels of service (for different qualities of tanning beds) and you can also pay a one-time fee at an inflated price.  Basically, for the price of three (services) you could have unlimited access (to beds of the same type) by paying up front for a month.  All memberships in this arena come with pages of legal contract to sign, so having training in place for the documentation of this is important.  Enrolling individuals during peak business hours can be labor intensive, so prices insentivize individuals to 1) return hassle-free for more services and 2) pay all at once for said services.


> She did nothing to fix it.  You cannot really say that.  She took some shots.  I think she did a bad job, but she also seemed to slow the freefall of poorly managed company that never seemed to know what it wanted to become.


For the record, I am the original question-asker and I'm reporting back to say that the approach described in the accepted answer did not work. I am adding a new answer, rather than commenting on the accepted answer, because of the length of explanation required. I applied for an ITIN by filing a W-7 with all appropriate documentation, including a birth certificate, death certificate, and consular recognition of birth abroad (i.e., proof of U.S. citizenship). The IRS rejected the application, saying that people who are eligible for SSNs can't have ITINs. That placed me in an untenable situation, because even though the IRS said she was eligible for an SSN, the Social Security Administration said they never issue SSNs to dead people as a matter of policy.  So: Insult was added to injury. It is true that I should have applied for an SSN while she was alive, in which case it would have been a simple matter. I just paid the extra tax that was due because of her not counting as a dependent during the years for which I was filing. The amount was not worth fighting over further, or renouncing my U.S. citizenship.  Moral of story: Live, in all ways, as if there is no guarantee your children will be alive tomorrow. Because there is no such guarantee.


"Thanks for your question Dai. The circumstances under which these buyouts can occur is based on the US takeover code and related legislation, as well as the laws of the state in which the company is incorporated. It's not actually the case that a company such as Dell needs to entice or force every shareholder to sell. What is salient is the conditions under which the bidder can acquire a controlling interest in the target company and effect a merger. This usually involves acquiring at least a majority of the outstanding shares. Methods of Acquisition The quickest way for a company to be acquired is the ""One Step"" method. In this case, the bidder simply calls for a shareholder vote. If the shareholders approve the terms of the offer, the deal can go forward (excepting any legal or other impediments to the deal). In the ""Two-Step"" method, which is the case with Dell, the bidder issues a ""tender offer"" which you mentioned, where the current shareholders can agree to sell their shares to the bidder, usually at a premium. If the bidder secures the acceptance of 90% of the shares, they can immediately go forward with what is called a ""short form"" merger, and can effect the merger without ever calling for a shareholder meeting or vote. Any stockholders that hold out and do not want to sell are ""squeezed out"" once the merger has been effected, but retain the right to redeem their outstanding shares at the valuation of the tender offer. In the case you mentioned, if shareholders controlling 25% of the shares (not necessarily 25% of the shareholders) were to oppose the tender offer, there would be serveral alternatives. If the bidder did not have at least 51% of the shares secured, they would likely either increase the valuation of the tender offer, or choose to abandon the takeover. If the bidder had 51% or more of the shares secured, but not 90%, they could issue a proxy statement, call for a shareholder meeting and a vote to effect the merger. Or, they could increase the tender offer in order to try to secure 90% of the shares in order to effect the short form merger. If the bidder is able to secure even 51% of the shares, either through the proxy or by way of a controlling interest along with a consortium of other shareholders, they are able to effect the merger and squeeze out the remaining shareholders at the price of the tender offer (majority rules!). Some states' laws specify additional circumstances under which the bidder can force the current shareholders to exchange their shares for cash or converted shares, but not Delaware, where Dell is incorporate. There are also several special cases. With a ""top-up"" provision, if the company's board/management is in favor of the merger, they can simply issue more and more shares until the bidder has acquired 90% of the total outstanding shares needed for the ""short form"" merger. Top-up provisions are very common in cases of a tender offer. If the board/management opposes the merger, this is considered a ""hostile"" takover, and they can effect ""poison pill"" measures which have the opposite effect of a ""top-up"" and dilute the bidders percent of outstanding shares. However, if the bidder can secure 51% of the shares, they can simply vote to replace the current board, who can then replace the current management, such that the new board and management will put into place whatever provisions are amenable to the bidder. In the case of a short form merger or a vote to effect a merger, the shareholders who do not wish to sell have the right to sell at the tender price, or they can oppose the deal on legal grounds by arguing that the valuation of the tender offer is materially unfair. However, there are very few cases which I'm aware of where this type of challenge has been successful. However, they do not have the power to stop the merger, which has been agreed to by the majority of the shareholders. This is similar to how when the president is elected, the minority voters can't stop the new president from being inaugurated, or how you can be affected if you own a condo and the condo owners' association votes to change the rules in a way you don't like. Tough luck for you if you don't like it! If you want more detail, I'd recommend checking out a web guide from 2011 here as well as related articles from the Harvard Law blog here. I hope that helps!"


In the short term the market is a popularity contest In the short run which in value investing time can extend even to many years, an equity is subject to the vicissitudes of the whims by every scale of panic and elation. This can be seen by examining the daily chart of any large cap equity in the US.  Even such large holdings can be affected by any set of fear and greed in the market and in the subset of traders trading the equity. Quantitatively, this statement means that equities experience high variance in the short rurn. in the long term [the stock market] is a weighing machine In the long run which in value investing time can extend to even multiple decades, an equity is more or less subject only to the variance of the underlying value. This can be seen by examining the annual chart of even the smallest cap equities over decades.  An equity over such time periods is almost exclusively affected by its changes in value. Quantitatively, this statement means that equities experience low variance in the long run.


Money is no longer backed by gold. It's backed by the faith and credit of the issuing government. A new country,say, will first trade goods for dollars or other currency, so its ownership of gold is irrelevant. Its currency will trade at a value based on supply/demand for that currency. If it's an unstable currency, inflating too quickly, the exchange rate will reflect that as well.  More than that your question kind of mixes a number of issues, loosely related. First is the gold question, second, the question of currency exchange rates and they are derived, with an example of a new country. Both interesting, but distinct processes.


If you're creating an S-Corp for consulting services that you personally are going to provide, what would it give her to have 50% of the corporation when you're dead? Not to mention that you can just add it to your will that the corporation stock will go to her, and it will be much better (IMHO, talk to a professional) since she'll be getting stepped-up basis. Why aren't you talking to a professional before making decisions? It doesn't sound like a good way to conduct business.


a great piece dedicated to all secured business loan applicants out there. it offers information on what entrepreneurs should look for in start up financing deals to ensure that the lines of credit they will take out will surely suit the needs and budget of their respective shops and stores.


Like others mentioned you need to look at the big picture. Personally I'm not a fan of insurance based investments. They tend to have horrible track records and you're locked it and paying way to much money for them. I had one for a number of years and when I finally cancelled it I pulled out almost the exact amount I put in. So it basically grew at either zero or negative interest for 5+ years.  I ended up buying Term Life and took the difference and invested it in a Roth 401K. Much better use of my money. The reason why insurance people push these policies so hard is that they make insane commission on it over 2-3 years (I asked my insurance guy about it and he admitted that, plus doing some research you'll find that out as well). Hope this helps somewhat.


"It's just a rule of thumb, and so it's done from gross to make it easy. If you make $3300 a month, and spent $1000 a month on rent, you're at the limit of what you can afford. It's not like if it's 30.0001% you're screwed but if it's 29.999% everything's fine. Some rents won't include things (wifi, cable, utilities) that others do. Some locations will require you to spend more on transportation. So the real ""ok"" range is quite wide. But if you're at 60% of gross on rent, you literally cannot make that work because after deductions, you won't have any money for food. If you're at 10% of gross on rent, you probably have a lot more money left over than most people."


IMO, it's a good deal. Pre-paying 3% interest is better than accruing it at 1-2% per month. The other nice thing about it is that all of your payments hit the principal.


A 401k plan will ask you to name a beneficiary who will receive the funds if you don't withdraw them all before death. Usually, a primary beneficiary and a secondary beneficiary is requested. If you don't specify a beneficiary, your estate is the beneficiary by default.  Note that the name supplied to the 401k plan is who will get the money, and you cannot change this by bequeathing the money in your will. For example, if you neglected to change the beneficiary upon divorce, it is useless to say in your will that the money in the 401k plan goes to your new wife; the 401k plan will give it to your ex-wife who still remains the beneficiary of your 401k Money in a 401k plan is what is called income with respect to a decedent (IRD)  on which income tax is levied, and it is also is part of your estate and thus liable to be subject to estate tax.  The latter is true even if the 401k plan assets are not mentioned anywhere in your will, and even if the assets got sent to your ex-wife which is not what you wanted to have happen.  There are various estate tax exceptions for spouse beneficiaries (no  estate tax due now, but will be charged when the spouse passes away). With regard to income tax, the beneficiaries of a 401k plan (similarly IRAs, 403b plans etc) generally get to take the whole amount and pay the income  tax themselves. Edit in response to littleadv's comments: Each 401k plan is different, and some plans, especially the smaller ones, may prefer to distribute the  401k assets as a lump sum rather than allow the beneficiaries to withdraw  the money over several years (and pay income tax on the amount withdrawn each year). This is because there are far too many rules and regulations to trip over when making withdrawals over several years. The lump sum distribution can be transferred into a newly established  Inherited IRA (see the Nolo article linked to in @littleadv's answer for some details and some pitfalls to avoid) and the income tax is thus deferred until withdrawals occur.  Spouse  beneficiaries are entitled to more generous rules than non-spouse  beneficiaries. If your heirs are otherwise well provided for and you are in a  philanthropic mood (or you don't want to give 'em a dime, the ungrateful... who never call, not even on Father's Day!), one way of avoiding a  lot of tax is to make the beneficiary of your 401k be one or more of your favorite charities. In fact, if your testamentary inclination is to make some charitable bequests as part of your will, it is much more advantageous to give money from a tax-deferred account to the charity (size of estate is reduced, no income  tax paid by anyone on amount given), and bequeath assets in non-retirement accounts to one's heirs (bequests are not taxable income, and heirs get a step up in basis for assets that have appreciated) rather than the other way around (heirs pay income tax as they withdraw the money from tax-deferred  account) Estate planning is a complicated business, and you really should talk to a professional about such matters and not rely on advice from an Internet forum.


It would probably never make sense to do that. Why would you? You'll end up in the bankruptcy court either way, since you won't be able to pay off the loan, and you cannot maintain the monthly payments without getting into more debt. IRA is shielded from bankruptcies, in most States, so it will probably stay with you afterwards. In any case - it will provide you some income when you're old and cannot keep up working. Unfortunately, Federal student loans are also shielded, but the rest of you debt - isn't. I suggest trying to fix your budgets and see how you can improve your earnings to be able to maintain your payments. I can't understand how you could have racked up $140K student debt and have a career at which you earn $55K/year for an experienced employee.


"This would be on your credit for ~8 years.   If it goes according to your plan, it will take 6 months to a year to do the settlement by getting behind enough to let it go to collections and then settling.   The write-off will then be on your credit record for 7 years before it ""falls off"". Your cash out refinance would have to cover you for at least the next 8 years to be valuable. And you have a lot of assumptions to get there: In short, there's one way (or only a few ways) this works out well in your favor.  There are many ways that this has the chance to hurt you.    I don't like ""investments"" with those kind of odds."


I knew someone (in PA) who wanted to do specialty breads in her kitchen to sell at farmers markets. The health department nixed the idea due to a dog living in the house. (Which really isn't wrong. Just posting as an FYI)


ETFs don't need sell-side research (yes they do, no they don't).  They need to keep their fees minimal.  Mutual funds need equity research and they charge beefy fees to pay for it.  Look at the flows into mutual funds and the flows into ETFs and make your own mind up.  However, bear in mind that there will always be *some* demand for really good research.  It just probably isn't a growing field.  It will be a shrinking field where the best of the best do well and everyone else is playing a game of Survivor trying not to get kicked off the island.


.on intraday basis in stock market sensex start its trading at 15878, up 64 points, and Nifty is at 4752, up 18 points.today trend is expecting volatile.  1-Buy AANJANEYA @ 510 , stoploss 500 , target 518 - 526 - 538 – 550. 2-HUL buy above 410 with the target of 414 with the stop loss of 406.50.


Foreign stocks tend to be more volatile -- higher risk trades off against higher return potential, always. The better reason for having some money in that area is that, as with bonds, it moves out-of-sync with the US markets and once you pick your preferred distribution, maintaining that balance semi-automatically takes advantage of that to improve your return-vs-risk position. I have a few percent of my total investments in an international stock index fund, and a few percent in an international REIT, both being fairly low-fee. (Low fees mean more of the money reaches you, and seems to be one of the better reasons for preferring one fund over another following the same segment of the market.) They're there because the model my investment advisor uses -- and validated with monte-carlo simulation of my specific mix -- shows that keeping them in the mix at this low level is likely to result in a better long-term outcome than if i left them out. No guarantees, but probabilities lean toward this specfic mix doing what i need. I don't pretend to be able to justify that via theory or to explain why these specific ratios work... but I understand enough about the process to trust that they are on (perhaps of many) reasonable solutions to get the best odds given my specific risk tolerance, timeline, and distaste for actively managing my money more than a few times a year. If that.


**Here's a sneak peek of /r/misophonia using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/misophonia/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!**  \#1: [To the guy who sat next to me in the movie theatre and proceeded to eat a personal pizza...](https://np.reddit.com/r/misophonia/comments/65a5sy/to_the_guy_who_sat_next_to_me_in_the_movie/)   \#2: [lmao i made something](http://i.imgur.com/drjdaMK.jpg) | [8 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/misophonia/comments/5lt3nu/lmao_i_made_something/)   \#3: [YOU ARE A GODDAMN ADULT, CHEW WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED](https://np.reddit.com/r/misophonia/comments/6v8a1g/you_are_a_goddamn_adult_chew_with_your_mouth/)  ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| [^^Contact ^^me](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| [^^Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| [^^Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/6l7i0m/blacklist/)


Let me ask you another question: if that person stayed at home and made a widget instead, would exporting that widget benefit his home country? There is no difference, economically, between the two situations. A foreign worker sending home remittances is no different from a local manufacturer exporting their products. Both are earning export dollars for themselves and their home countries. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Clearly, the answer is yes - this is a good thing or a bad thing but we cannot know which in isolation. However, in general, foreign worker remittances are overwhelmingly beneficial for the host (which gets work done that otherwise would not be done) and the source (which gets export income. With reference to your particular question about local inflation, a rise in exports causes appreciation in the exchange rate i.e. local currency becomes more expensive with respect to (in this case) the Euro. Appreciation in the exchange rate actually puts downward pressure on inflation. However, the absence of our worker from the local economy puts upward pressure on local wages and and hence inflation. Both of these effects are small and other factors will dominate them.


Hello, My names Michael and I'm a 19 year old college student. I have recently decided to begin a music production career from scratch. Music is my favorite and only outlet that lets me unwind and truly feel at peace. I dont do drugs or alcohol and my favorite pass times are listening to music and creating beats on my laptop. I come from a relatively lower middle-class family so my parent's arent financially able to help me acquire some of the tools i need to advance myself musically. The funds that i receive if any will be used towards a mini player and better music production software whatever it may be and also some speakers. I would honestly be forever grateful to anyone that decides to donate and help me out. ANY amount would be deeply appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read my story and i hope you have a blessed day. All Love.


He owns some giants. I'd bet Coca-Cola is his biggest cash cow.   This is a non-story. The revenue naturally follows actual value provided, as opposed to buying and selling shares with the swings of the stock market.   Buffet buys and holds, and builds and collects the revenue from his companies, that's been his core philosophy since the beginning.


"While you’re new or relatively new to this idea then the fitting idea is to perform a little research and primary get conversant in what’s possible with offshore investment opportunities.  I couldn't agree more. A good way to begin this research would be to do an online search for an investment opportunity called ""Royal Siam Trust."""


I inherited nothing and have retired comfortably in my 50s after some hard work, tradeoffs etc., however I am quite certain that there are millions who are more intelligent, harder-working, talented and haven't had my luck.  Good luck can get you there, bad luck will stop you, in either case more completely than inheritance, contacts, diligence or talent.  It's worth remembering that the best luck is good health.


"Isn't calling something unilaterally ""fake news"" basically the opposite side of that same coin?  It's a ""joke"" when you don't want people to take *you* at face value.  It's ""fake news"" when you don't want people to take *information* at face value.  Both are convenient ways to dismiss criticism and responsibility."


"The charts on nasdaq.com are log based, if you look closely you can see that the spacing between evenly incremented prices is tighter at the top of the chart and wider at the bottom.   It's easiest to see on a stock with a wide price range using candlestick where you can clearly see the grid.  I'm also not seeing the ""absurdism"" you indicate when I look at google finance with the settings ticked to use log on the price axis.  I see what I'd expect which is basically a given vertical differential on the price axis representing the same percentage change in price no matter where it is located. For example if I look at GOOG from the earliest date they have (Aug 20 2004) to a nice high point (dec 7 2007) I see a cart where the gap from the the bottom of the chart (seems to be right around 100) to the 200 point, (a 100% increase) is the same as from 200 to 400 (a 100% increase) is the same as 400 to 800 (a 100# increase)   That's exactly what I expect from a 'log' chart on a financial site, each relative move up or down of the same distance, represents the same relative change in value. So I'm having difficulty understanding what your complaint is. (note: I'm using chrome, which is the browser I'd expect to work best with any google website.  results with other browsers could of course vary)  If you want to do some other wacky math with the axis then I humbly suggest that something like Excel is your friend.   Goto the charts at nasdaq.com  get the chart displaying the period you care about, click the chart to display the unlying data, there will be an option to download the data.  cram it into excel and go wild as you want with charting it out.  e.g. note that step 2 links to client side javascript, so you will need javascript enabled, if you are running something like noscript, disable it for this site.  Also since the data opens in a new window, you may also need to enabled 'popups' for the site. (and yes, I sometimes get an annoying news alert advert popup  and have to close it when the chart first appears.. oh well it pays the rent and nasdaq is not charging you so for access so such is the price for a free site. )"


Mathwise, I absolutely agree with the other answers.  No contest, you should keep getting the match.  But, just for completeness, I'll give a contrarian opinion that is generally not very popular, but does have some merit.   If you can focus on just one main financial goal at a time, and throw every extra dollar you have at that one focus (i.e., getting out of debt, in your case), you will make better progress than if you're trying to do too many things at once.  Also, there something incredibly freeing about being out of debt that has other beneficial impacts on your life. So, if you can bring a lot of focus to the credit card debt and get it paid off quickly, it may be worth deferring the 401(k) investing long enough to do that, even though it doesn't make as much mathematical sense.  (This is essentially what Dave Ramsey teaches, BTW.)


Hurricanes are not good for the economy. They might be good for GDP, but GDP is not a good measure of the economy in cases of natural disasters.   [The increase in GDP is due to rebuilding and replacing things that existing prior to the disaster](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-hurricanes-are-not-good-for-the-economy-2017-08-28). There is no increase in the size of the economy or improvements in living standards. Also see: [the parable of the broken window](http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/broken-window-fallacy.asp) for why disasters are not good for the economy.


The presence of the 401K option means that your ability to contribute to an IRA will be limited, it doesn't matter if you contribute to the 401K or not. Unless your company allows you to roll over 401K money into an IRA while you are still an employee, your money in the 401K will remain there. Many 401K programs offer not just stock mutual funds, but bond mutual funds, and international funds. Many also have target date funds. You will have to look at the paperwork for the funds to determine if any of them meet your definition of low expense. Because any money you have in those 401K funds is going to remain in the 401K, you still need to look at your options and make the best choice. Very few companies allow employees to invest in individual stocks, but some do. You can ask your employer to research other options for the 401K. The are contracting with a investment company to make the plan. They may be able to switch to a different package from the same company or may need to switch companies. How much it will cost them is unknown. You will have to understand when their current contract is up for renewal.  If you feel their current plan is poor, it may be making hiring new employees difficult, or ti may lead to some employees to leave in search of better options. It may also be a factor in the number of employees contributing and how much they contribute.


"1) Don't buy a house as an investment. Buy a house because you've reached the point in your life where you don't expect to move in the next five years and you'd prefer to own a house (with its advantages/disadvantages) than to rent (with its advantages/disadvantages). Thinking of houses primarily as investments is what caused the housing bubble, crash, and Great Recession. 2) Before buying a house for cash, look at the available mortgage interest rates versus market rate of return. Owning the house outright is slightly lower stress, but using the house as the basis for a ""leveraged investment"" may be financially wiser. (I compromised; I paid 50% down and took a mortgage for the other 50%.) 3) 1 year is short-term. Your money doesn't belong in the market if you're going to need it in the short term. If you really intend to pull it back out that soon, I'd stick with CD/money-market kinds of instruments. 4) Remember that while a house is illiquid, it is possible to take out home equity loans... so money you put into a house isn't completely inaccessible. You just can't move elsewhere as easily."


"What do you mean by 'make'?  I am in the US, but I'm sure it's typical that any business has a ""bottom line"", the profit after all costs including paper losses for things like depreciation. This is then taxed, either at the business level or to the individual. The individual's person expenses don't come into play, unless those expenses are tied to the business, e.g. Some kind of function at their house which includes clients/customers."


On NYSE it isn't the equity which is listed but is an ADR(American Depositary Receipt). Source A negotiable certificate issued by a U.S. bank representing a specified number of shares (or one share) in a foreign stock that is traded on a U.S. exchange. ADRs are denominated in U.S. dollars, with the underlying security held by a U.S. financial institution overseas. ADRs help to reduce administration and duty costs that would otherwise be levied on each transaction. Else people would make a killing on the arbitrage opportunity. Frankly speaking arbitrage opportunities are more or less non existent. They occur for maybe seconds or milliseconds and the HFT firms and banks trade on it to remove the arbitrage.


"This is not an end-all answer but it'll get you started I have been through accounting courses in college as well as worked as a contractor (files as sole proprietor) for a few years but IANAA (I am not an accountant). Following @MasonWheeler's answer, if you're making that much money you should hire a bean counter to at least overlook your bookkeeping. What type of business? First, if you're the sole owner of the business you will most likely file as a sole proprietorship. If you don't have an official business entity, you should get it registered officially asap, and file under that name. The problem with sole proprietorships is liability. If you get sued, not only are your business' assets vulnerable but they can go after your personal assets too (including house/cars/etc). Legally, you and your business are considered one and the same. To avoid liability issues, you could setup a S corporation. Basically, the business is considered it's own entity and legal matters can only take as much as the business owns. You gain more protection but if you don't explicitly keep your business finances separate from your personal finances, you can get into a lot of trouble. Also, corporations generally pay out more in taxes. Technically, since the business is it's own entity you'll need to pay yourself a 'reasonable salary'. If you skip the salary and pay yourself the profits directly (ie evade being taxed on income/salary) the IRS will shut you down (that's one of the leading causes of corporations being shut down). You can also pay distribute bonuses on top of that but it would be wise to burn the words 'within reason' into your memory first. The tax man gets mad if you short him on payroll taxes.  S corporations are complicated, if you go that route definitely seek help from an accountant. Bookkeeping If you're not willing to pay a full time accountant you'll need to do a lot of studying about how this works. Generally, even if you have a sole proprietorship it's best to have a separate bank account for all of your business transactions. Every source/drain of money will fall into one of 3 categories... Assets - What your business owns: Assets can be categorized by liquidity. Meaning how fast you can transform them directly into cash. Just because a company is worth a lot doesn't necessarily mean it has a lot of cash. Some assets depreciate (lose value over time) whereas some are very hard to transform back into cash based on the value and/or market fluctuations (like property). Liabilities - What you owe others and what others owe you: Everything you owe and everything that is owed to you gets tracked. Just like credit cards, it's completely possible to owe more than you own as long as you can pay the interest to maintain the loans. Equity - the net worth of the company: The approach they commonly teach in schools is called double-entry bookkeeping where they use the equation: In practice I prefer the following because it makes more sense: Basically, if you account for everything correctly both sides of the equation should match up. If you choose to go the sole proprietorship route, it's smart to track everything I've mentioned above but you can choose to keep things simple by just looking at your Equity. Equity, the heart of your business... Basically, every transaction you make having to do with your business can be simplified down to debits (money/value) increasing and credits (money/value) decreasing. For a very simple company you can assess this by looking at net profits. Which can be calculated with: Revenues, are made up of money earned by services performed and goods sold. Expenses are made up of operating costs, materials, payroll, consumables, interest on liabilities, etc. Basically, if you brought in 250K but it cost you 100K to make that happen, you've made 150K for the year in profit. So, for your taxes you can count up all the money you've made (Revenues), subtract all of the money you've paid out (Expenses) and you'll know how much profit you've made. The profit is what you pay taxes on. The kicker is, there are gray areas when it comes to deducting expenses. For instance, you can deduct the expense of using your car for business but you need to keep a log and can only expense the miles you traveled explicitly for business. Same goes for deducting dedicated workspaces in your house. Basically, do the research if you're not 100% sure about a deduction. If you don't keep detailed books and try to expense stuff without proof, you can get in trouble if the IRS comes knocking. There are always mythical stories about 'that one guy' who wrote off his boat on his taxes but in reality, you can go to jail for tax fraud if you do that. It comes down to this. At the end of the year, if your business took in a ton of money you'll owe a lot in taxes. The better you can justify your expenses, the more you can reduce that debt. One last thing. You'll also have to pay your personal federal/state taxes (including self-employment tax). That means medicare/social security, etc. If this is your first foray into self-employment you're probably not familiar with the fact that 1099 employers pick up 1/2 of the 15% medicare/social security bill. Typically, if you have an idea of what you make annually, you should be paying this out throughout the year. My pay as a contractor was always erratic so I usually paid it out once/twice a year. It's better to pay too much than too little because the gov't will give you back the money you overpaid. At the end of the day, paying taxed sucks more if you're self-employed but it balances out because you can make a lot more money. If as you said, you've broken six figures, hire a damn accountant/adviser to help you out and start reading. When people say, ""a business degree will help you advance in any field,"" it's subjects like accounting are core requirements to become a business undergrad. If you don't have time for more school and don't want to pay somebody else to take care of it, there's plenty of written material to learn it on your own. It's not rocket surgery, just basic arithmetic and a lot of business jargon (ie almost as much as technology)."


I don't think either of these answers are accurate. A beta of 0 means that your stock/portfolio does not change accordingly or with the market, rather it acts independent. A beta above 0 means the stock follows what the market does. Which means if the market goes up the stock goes up, if the market goes down, the stock goes down. If the stock's beta is more than 1 the stock will go up more if the market goes up, or go down more if the market goes down. Inversely if the stock is less than 0 the stock will follow the market inversely. So if the market goes up, the stock goes down. If the market goes down, the stock goes up. Again a greater negative beta, the more this relationship will be exaggerated.


Assuming no debt, as you've specified in the comments to your question, the assets should generally be distributed proportional to ownership share.  BUT, without any sort of agreement, there might be contention on what each investor's share is and that might get fought out in court.  With a corporation issuing shares, the corporate charter probably defines the relationship between different classes of shares (or specifies only one class).  For a partnership though, you could conceivable have people making claims of ownership stake based on labor in addition to any cash that they put up.  Messy if there's no up-front agreement.


New estimates are that over 3.5 million phony accounts were created by Wells Fargo workers under extreme and intimidating performance pressure to sign up new accounts.   People need to go to jail for this. It's not only criminal it is eroding public confidence in our institutions. Or maybe that's the intention.


Automated Clearing House transactions are used in the US for direct deposit of pay checks and direct debit of many payments for accounts such as mortgages, credit cards, car loans, insurance premiums, etc. The reason they take one or more business days to clear is that the transactions are accumulated by each processor in the network during the day and processed as a batch at the end of each business day.  The ACH network processes 20+ billion transactions per year worth $40 trillion, (estimates based on 2012 figures).


It is an undeniable fact that 95% of all retail forex traders lose money. In order to break free from this crowd of losing traders we must first understand the forex trading strategies they use. Only then can we learn how to trade forex profitably.


"Pyramid Schemes are illegal. This is not a pyramid scheme but I wouldn't dive into it unless you either had some killer marketing skills OR you are an extremely social and likable person; like high-school popularity contest winner level, but older.   The affiliate earning system is way more complicated than what you mentioned (in a good way) because there are many ways to earn, but the biggest way to earn requires someone who ""knows how to throw a party"" or someone who absolutely loves people. (I don't).   I personally am documenting my experience with PMB CBD oil and am posting my no B.S. review about everything from the product to the affiliate system on my personal FB. I'm not a people-person so i don't see me standing on a podium with a little mic around my cheek, but oddly my candid (and often funny) reviews inspired many of my Facebook friends to buy CBD. I get $30 for every bottle i sell through my affiliate page; this is a better way for me to earn than standing up in front of people like Martha Stewart.   It helps if you actually like and use the product because that way you don't feel pressured to sell. I'm experimenting with CBD because I simply can't relax and suffer from some major anxiety and stress attacks.   Results? Well it's 6am and i'm writing to you not freaking out about work tomorrow and browsing for Rick and Morty memes. I like it so far but we'll see."


Yeah, Microsoft's performance review system has had some... criticism in the past. You do get bonuses for excellent work, but in general it's a much more structured system. It's a tradeoff, though - on one hand engineers at Microsoft have a high guaranteed base pay. On the other hand, it's a very inflexible system and it doesn't reward merit as strongly as it could.


I can say for certain that everyone in my group of friends had to wait a long time to buy homes, some including me still rent, due to the impossibility of saving for a downpayment with sky high rent and $1000+ dollar a month student loan payments. It basically took until they paid the loans off after 10 years or got management level positions at excellent salaries before they could start saving for a down payment.  Probably hundreds of thousands of people have this same experience.


"It's not precisely meant for that.  You could do it and get a business loan, though.  But it's not set up to take into account after-production shares, royalties.  It's just a simple ""I want 25,000 to develop film"" and then a bunch of people give you money and you pay interest."


"I'm not sure that malice or 'bad people' is the true problem. Surely it will exist in small samples, but that will be the exception. I think the problem norm is boring, routine work.   I'll explain: Given mundane tasks, people unconsciously start to shortcut. They begin taking normal things for granted and they lose the care they originally put into the work. When these employees first started this job, it's likely they were very ""kind"" to the turkeys and put extra care into the details of their job. They were probably also very slow and compared to seasoned employees, their throughput was low.  Over time, they begin to shortcut. Their throughput increases and they start to match seasoned employees. But they've lost the detail.  They get a little sloppy, they treat the turkeys a little rougher. The minute detail continues to erode with enough repetition that you wind up with employees doing tremendously cruel things to the animals, simply because they are so overexposed and desensitized to the work. The turkey is no longer an animal, it's now become a widget. A widget to move, process, and package.  I won't get into solutions because there's a great number of them that'll work, but I'm not convinced that terrible turkey tyrants are running farms. The type and layout of work has evolved normal employees into this."


Not perhaps practically useful, but I found it conceptually useful to learn the basics of mathematical finance, a way of describing financial markets via probability theory and stochastic processes. It's a little like trying to understand horse racing by studying spherical horses rolling without friction in a vacuum, but it does give you some ways of thinking that may be more appealing to someone with a math background. For instance, there's the idea that shorting a stock is effectively owning negative shares. Option pricing is a common motivation. There's a brief introduction, at the advanced undergraduate level, in Durrett's Essentials of Stochastic Processes. At the graduate level, I liked Ruth Williams' Introduction to the Mathematics of Finance.


YORKA İNŞAAT olarak bu güne kadar birçok projede (Mesken, Konut, Villa, Residence, Depo, Fabrika, Sanayi, Şahıs ve Site Yönetimleri, Resmi Kurumlar, Belediyeler, Özel Kuruluşlar, Toplu Konutlar, İnşaat Firmaları Alt Yüklenici Hizmetleri) ana ve alt yüklenici olarak görev aldık. Tecrübeli ekibimiz ve iş kalitemizle her bir projeyi alnımızın akıyla ve sıfır problemle tamamladık.


Here are two different sources, one from an actual credit reporting agency, Experian. http://www.experian.com/assistance/sample-credit-report.html http://www.aie.org/manage-your-money/understand-credit/your-interactive-guide-to-credit-reports.cfm If what you want to see an actual real credit report, no one in their right mind is going to show you unless they are a close friend or relative.


I was able to find several references that claim that the Indo-US treaty provision is limited to five years: Here it says this (on page 20): Generally the treaty exemption for students is limited to the first   five calendar years that the international student is in the U.S.   However there is no set time limit for students from Belgium,   Bulgaria, China, The Netherlands, and Pakistan. However, I couldn't find any specific time limit neither in the treaty nor in the technical explanation. The explanation says: Thus, for example, an Indian resident who visits the United States as   a student and becomes a U.S. resident according to the Code, other   than by virtue of acquiring a green card, would continue to be exempt   from U.S. tax in accordance with this Article so long as he is not a   U.S. citizen and does not acquire immigrant status in the United   States. The saving clause does apply to U.S. citizens and immigrants. However, the treaty explicitly says this: The benefits of this Article shall extend only for such period of time   as may be reasonable or customarily required to complete the education   or training undertaken. The reason for this last paragraph is to ensure that you don't artificially prolong your student status, and the 5 year limit may come out of the interpretation of this specific paragraph. Similar paragraph exists in the US-China treaty, and the explanation for that treaty says this: These exemptions may be claimed only for the period reasonably   necessary to complete the education or training. In some cases, the   course of study or training may last less than year. For most   undergraduate college or university degrees the appropriate period   will be four years. For some advanced degrees, such as in medicine,   the required period may be longer, e.g., seven years. Based on this, it is my personal impression that if you're an undergraduate student and studying the same degree (and not, for example, finished your BA, and started your MS) - you are no longer eligible for the treaty benefit. But I suggest you ask a professional (EA/CPA licensed in your State) for a more reliable tax advice on the matter. I'm not a tax professional and this is not a tax advice.


I read Q#4 as  Will $250 in one account earn more interest than $250 in five accounts? in which case Excel says no, assuming a constant interest rate for all accounts. I dunno if the same holds true for banks.


There's nothing illegal in hiring your friends to manage your property or provide you services, and it is definitely deductible. There's nothing specific to reference here, this is a standard deduction for a landlord just as any. I mentioned 1099 in the comments - if the total is over $600 and your friend is not a corporation, then you should issue 1099. That would provide you the necessary substantiation of the deduction (of course you need to keep some documentation that shows the relation between the money paid and the services provided, like a contract, or invoice or receipt). You can (but don't have to) issue 1099 for lower amounts as well. If you don't - you'll need to keep more documents as substantiation - cached checks, documents about the agreement and the amounts, etc. In addition, your deduction may be disallowed if your friend doesn't declare this as taxable income (issuing 1099 helps here since your friend will be forced to declare it, otherwise it will be recorded as a mismatch by the IRS and trigger an audit). As to reimbursements - that would go into the same bucket. They'll have to deduct their expenses from that income on their own taxes. So if you give them $300 for the work, $300 for the miles, and $300 for the materials they bought - you issue the 1099 for $900, and let them deduct the $600 on their own Schedule C.


For the 1st part of your question. Yes the other taxes still apply. You are only deferring your income tax, not the other taxes. Read the 3rd paragraph: http://www.irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/Plan-Sponsor/401(k)-Resource-Guide-Plan-Sponsors-401(k)-Plan-Overview


Credits are expensive, so it's a great advantage to pay in cash. Obviously, it's even more an advantage to pay in cash for a house or a car, of course if you can afford it. But, as annoying as it could be, there are some services, where you're out of option to pay in cash, or even to pay by bank transfer. One of the most prominent examples, Google Play (OK, as I've learned, there are prepaid cards. But Groundspeak, for example, has none.). With the further expansion of Internet and E-Economy there will be more cases like that, where paying in cash is no more an option. Booking of hotels or hostels is already mentioned. There are some that provide no other booking option that giving your credit card number. However, even if the do, for example bank transfer of, say, 20% as reservation fee, please note that international money transfer can be very expensive, and credit card is usually given only for security in case you don't come, and if you do come and pay in cash, no money is taken = no expensive fee for international money transfer and/or disadvantaging currency exchange rate.


No chance.. cars are much easier to repossess and the cost of doing so is less. People aren't quite as leveraged on autos as they were on homes. Even with a worst case scenario 7 year loan people are usually in par within 3-4 years, in that timeframe on a 30 year mortgage you've barely started paying the interest down. Even at the height of the housing crisis auto loan losses were manageable.. when people were losing their homes at a record pace you'd think they would skip the car payments to make the mortgage. That wasn't the case, people generally kept paying their car notes even when the house was going away. Losing your car is actually much more troublesome to most people.. they will make that payment over all others.


"A day or so later I get an email from the mattress company where the rep informs me that they will need to issue me a paper check for the full amount and that I would have to contact Affirm to stop charging me. To which I rapidly answered ""Please confirm that with Affirm prior to mailing anything out. On my end the loan was cancelled."" To which the rep replied ""confirmed. It has been cancelled."" I think your communication could have been more explicit mentioning that not only was the loan cancelled, you got your initial payments. You have not paid for the mattress. The refund if any should go to Affirm. The Rep has only confirmed that loan has been cancelled. at what point, if any, am i free to use this money? I was planning to just let it sit there until the shoe drops and just returning. But for how long is too long? Sooner or later the error would get realized and you would have to pay this back."


> This again avoids the point, which is that military functions are being outsourced - I assume you really agree, and that to the extent there's a debate, it's only about the extent.  Of course I agree. I was a contractor to both the Department of Defense and the Department of State. I just disagree with the notion that there is any significance to the thought that contractors outnumbered troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. It is an absolutely meaningless statement as there is so much more going on there than would be understood by someone who hadn't seen it in person or worked on the contracts themselves.  At no point during the occupation, prior to the drawdown, did DoD contractors of any nationality outnumber troops. After the drawdown started they did, of course, because that is how the withdrawal was formulated. Contractors outnumber troops in Iraq several hundred to one now.


"First off, I would label this as speculation, not investing.  There are many variables that you don't seem to be considering, and putting down such a small amount opens you to a wide variety of risks.  Not having an ""emergency fund"" for the rental increases that risk greatly.  (I assume that you would not have an emergency fund based upon ""The basic idea is to save up a 20% down payment on a property and take out a mortgage"".) This type of speculation lent a hand in the housing bubble. Is your home paid off?  If not you can reduce your personal risk (by owning your home), and have a pretty safe investment in real estate.  Mission accomplished. My hope for you would be that you are also putting money in the market.  Historically it has performed quite well while always having its share of ""chicken littles""."


"If they allowed people to skip reporting the funds ""even though I might not intend to use this money to help my kids through college"", then children of a Billionaire would be eligible for financial aid.   In addition you might have reported all your income to the IRS, but the rest of the government isn't able to see that information."


Yikes:  >Ten years after PetroChina peaked on its first day of trading in Shanghai, the state-owned energy producer has lost about $800 billion of market value --**a sum large enough to buy every listed company in Italy**, or circle the Earth 31 times with $100 bills., or circle the Earth 31 times with $100 bills.


Institute of Supply Management, specifically their Report on Business. Good forward looking indicator.   As far as the weekly report, I'd probably read it, maybe even contribute, but I more of a lurker on this sub. I saw your question and have had some similar experiences so I thought I could help you out.