"Accounting for this properly is not a trivial matter, and you would be wise to pay a little extra to talk with a lawyer and/or CPA to ensure the precise wording. How best to structure such an arrangement will depend upon your particular jurisdiction, as this is not a federal matter - you need someone licensed to advise in your particular state at least. The law of real estate co-ownership (as defined on a deed) is not sufficient for the task you are asking of it - you need something more sophisticated. Family Partnership (we'll call it FP) is created (LLC, LLP, whatever). We'll say April + A-Husband gets 50%, and Sister gets 50% equity (how you should handle ownership with your husband is outside the scope of this answer, but you should probably talk it over with a lawyer and this will depend on your state!).  A loan is taken out to buy the property, in this case with all partners personally guaranteeing the loan equally, but the loan is really being taken out by FP. The mortgage should probably show 100% ownership by FP, not by any of you individually - you will only be guaranteeing the loan, and your ownership is purely through the partnership. You and your husband put $20,000 into the partnership. The FP now lists a $20,000 liability to you, and a $20,000 asset in cash. FP buys the $320,000 house (increase assets) with a $300,000 mortgage (liability) and $20,000 cash (decrease assets). Equity in the partnership is $0 right now. The ownership at present is clear. You own 50% of $0, and your sister owns 50% of $0. Where'd your money go?! Simple - it's a liability of the partnership, so you and your husband are together owed $20,000 by the partnership before any equity exists. Everything balances nicely at this point. Note that you should account for paying closing costs the same as you considered the down payment - that money should be paid back to you before any is doled out as investment profit! Now, how do you handle mortgage payments? This actually isn't as hard as it sounds, thanks to the nature of a partnership and proper business accounting. With a good foundation the rest of the building proceeds quite cleanly. On month 1 your sister pays $1400 into the partnership, while you pay $645 into the partnership. FP will record an increase in assets (cash) of $1800, an increase in liability to your sister of $1400, and an increase in liability to you of $645. FP will then record a decrease in cash assets of $1800 to pay the mortgage, with a matching increase in cost account for the mortgage. No net change in equity, but your individual contributions are still preserved. Let's say that now after only 1 month you decide to sell the property - someone makes an offer you just can't refuse of $350,000 dollars (we'll pretend all the closing costs disappeared in buying and selling, but it should be clear how to account for those as I mention earlier). Now what happens? FP gets an increase in cash assets of $350,000, decreases the house asset ($320,000 - original purchase price), and pays off the mortgage - for simplicity let's pretend it's still $300,000 somehow. Now there's $50,000 in cash left in the partnership - who's money is it? By accounting for the house this way, the answer is easily determined. First all investments are paid back - so you get back $20,000 for the down payment, $645 for your mortgage payments so far, and your sister gets back $1400 for her mortgage payment. There is now $27,995 left, and by being equal partners you get to split it - 13,977 to you and your husband and the same amount to your sister (I'm keeping the extra dollar for my advice to talk to a lawyer/CPA). What About Getting To Live There? The fact is that your sister is getting a little something extra out of the deal - she get's the live there! How do you account for that? Well, you might just be calling it a gift. The problem is you aren't in any way, shape, or form putting that in writing, assigning it a value, nothing.  Also, what do you do if you want to sell/cash out or at least get rid of the mortgage, as it will be showing up as a debt on your credit report and will effect your ability to secure financing of your own in the future if you decide to buy a house for your husband and yourself?  Now this is the kind of stuff where families get in trouble. You are mixing personal lives and business arrangements, and some things are not written down (like the right to occupy the property) and this can really get messy. Would evicting your sister to sell the house before you all go bankrupt on a bad deal make future family gatherings tense? I'm betting it might. There should be a carefully worded lease probably from the partnership to your sister. That would help protect you from extra court costs in trying to determine who has the rights to occupy the property, especially if it's also written up as part of the partnership agreement...but now you are building the potential for eviction proceedings against your sister right into an investment deal? Ugh, what a potential nightmare! And done right, there should probably be some dollar value assigned to the right to live there and use the property. Unless you just want to really gift that to your sister, but this can be a kind of invisible and poorly quantified gift - and those don't usually work very well psychologically. And it also means she's going to be getting an awfully larger benefit from this ""investment"" than you and your husband - do you think that might cause animosity over dozens and dozens of writing out the check to pay for the property while not realizing any direct benefit while you pay to keep up your own living circumstances too? In short, you need a legal structure that can properly account for the fact that you are starting out in-equal contributors to your scheme, and ongoing contributions will be different over time too. What if she falls on hard times and you make a few of the mortgage payments? What if she wants to redo the bathroom and insists on paying for the whole thing herself or with her own loan, etc? With a properly documented partnership - or equivalent such business entity - these questions are easily resolved. They can be equitably handled by a court in event of family squabble, divorce, death, bankruptcy, emergency liquidation, early sale, refinance - you name it. No percentage of simple co-ownership recorded on a deed can do any of this for you. No math can provide you the proper protection that a properly organized business entity can. I would thus strongly advise you, your husband, and your sister to spend the comparatively tiny amount of extra money to get advice from a real estate/investment lawyer/CPA to get you set up right. Keep all receipts and you can pay a book keeper or the accountant to do end of the year taxes, and answer questions that will come up like how to properly account for things like depreciation on taxes. Your intuition that you should make sure things are formally written up in times when everyone is on good terms is extremely wise, so please follow it up with in-person paid consultation from an expert. And no matter what, this deal as presently structured has a really large built-in potential for heartache as you have three partners AND one of the partners is also renting the property partially from themselves while putting no money down?  This has a great potential to be a train wreck, so please do look into what would happen if these went wrong into some more detail and write up in advance - in a legally binding way - what all parties rights and responsibilities are."


Prior to 1975, commissions for trading stock on the NYSE were fixed at 1% of the amount of the trade.  In 1975, the SEC made fixed commission rates illegal, giving rise to discount brokers offering much reduced commission rates.  Simultaneously, Electronic Communications Networks (ECNs) gained market share as alternative venues for executing trades.  The increased competition led to further declines in commissions.  Finally, as technology was widely adopted on Wall Street and human beings were largely taken out of the order execution process, commissions fell further.  This had the effect of both drawing in new participants and increasing the rate of transactions of the existing participants (see Day Trading, which was largely unheard of prior to the technology revolution of the 1990s).  Most recently, the exchanges themselves have shifted their business model to depend on high frequency traders, and the proportion of trades accounted for by HFT firms ballooned from under 10% in the early 2000s to over 50% today.


You should look into a home equity line of credit: A home equity line of credit (often called HELOC and pronounced HEE-lock) is a loan in which the lender agrees to lend a maximum amount within an agreed period (called a term), where the collateral is the borrower's equity in his/her house. Because a home often is a consumer's most valuable asset, many homeowners use home equity credit lines only for major items, such as education, home improvements, or medical bills, and choose not to use them for day-to-day expenses.


"Here is the ""investing for retirement"" theoretical background you should have. You should base your investment decisions not simply on the historical return of the fund, but on its potential for future returns and its risk. Past performance does not indicate future results: the past performance is frequently at its best the moment before the bubble pops. While no one knows the specifics of future returns, there are a few types of assets that it's (relatively) safe to make blanket statements about: The future returns of your portfolio will primarily be determined by your asset allocation . The general rules look like: There are a variety of guides out there to help decide your asset allocation and tell you specifically what to do. The other thing that you should consider is the cost of your funds. While it's easy to get lucky enough to make a mutual fund outperform the market in the short term, it's very hard to keep that up for decades on end. Moreover, chasing performance is risky, and expensive. So look at your fund information and locate the expense ratio. If the fund's expense ratio is 1%, that's super-expensive (the stock market's annualized real rate of return is about 4%, so that could be a quarter of your returns). All else being equal, choose the cheap index fund (with an expense ratio closer to 0.1%). Many 401(k) providers only have expensive mutual funds. This is because you're trapped and can't switch to a cheaper fund, so they're free to take lots of your money. If this is the case, deal with it in the short term for the tax benefits, then open a specific type of account called a ""rollover IRA"" when you change jobs, and move your assets there. Or, if your savings are small enough, just open an IRA (a ""traditional IRA"" or ""Roth IRA"") and use those instead. (Or, yell at your HR department, in the event that you think that'll actually accomplish anything.)"


He's right and not being a baby. Netflix changed their stance within days and have come out against the FCC's renewed stance against net neutrality. Why call people babies? You wouldn't want to be called a contrarian edgelord would you?


"There are some loan types where your minimum payment may be less than the interest due in the current period; this is not true of credit cards in the US.  Separately, if you have a minimum payment amount due of less than the interest due in the period, the net interest amount would just become principal anyway so differentiating it isn't meaningful. With credit cards in the US, the general minimum calculation is 1% of the principal outstanding plus all interest accrued in the period plus any fees.  Any overpayment is applied to the principal outstanding, because this is a revolving line of credit and unpaid interest or fees appear as a charge just like your coffee and also begin to accrue interest.  The issue arises if you have multiple interest rates.  Maybe you did a balance transfer at a discounted interest rate; does that balance get credited before the balance carried at the standard rate?  You'll have to call your lender.  While there is a regulation in place requiring payment to credit the highest rate balance first the banks still have latitude on how the payment is literally applied; explained below.   When there IS an amortization schedule, the issue is not ""principal or interest"" the issue is principle, or the next payment on the amortization schedule.  If the monthly payment on your car loan is $200, but you send $250, the bank will use the additional $50 to credit the next payment due.  When you get your statement next month (it's usually monthly) it will indicate an amount due of $150.  When you've prepaid more than an entire payment, the next payment is just farther in to the future.  You need to talk to your lender about ""unscheduled"" principal payments because the process will vary by lender and by specific loan. Call your lender.  You are a customer, you have a contract, they will explain this stuff to you.  There is no harm that can possibly come from learning the nuances of your agreement with them. Regarding the nuance to the payment regulation: A federal credit card reform law enacted in May 2009 requires that credit card companies must apply your entire payment, minus the required minimum payment amount, to the highest interest rate balance on your card.  Some credit card issuers are aggressive here and apply the non-interest portion of the minimum payment to the lowest interest rate first.  You'll need to call your bank and ask them."


I explicitly said I'm not calling anyone fake news, I was attacking the credibility of mediabiasfactcheck.com. If you read my first comment I made that abdunantly clear, never once questioned the credibility of NYT or even mentioned them before now.   But yeah, just ignore everything I'm saying and strawman me.


*Paternity* leave. The situation now allows managers to hire a man over a woman because he can't take off when he has a child. Requiring that he be offered the same or similar option reduces or eliminates that incentive for hiring a man instead of a woman.  Another way of looking at it: most people think that the way to promote hiring women is to make them better potential employees, but another way to do it is to make men worse potential employees (by giving them the same time off).


"Perhaps people in student loan debt aren't the source of the assessment. There have been multiple warnings from Nobel economists on the potential for student loans to do what the housing market did in 2008. If we suddenly find out a large fraction of the educations loaned weren't worth enough to pay back, many positives on company balance sheets would suddenly  appear as negatives. When negatives are realized, it triggers what some economists have termed a ""balance-sheet recession"": the great depression and 2008 recession both had this mechanism at their heart. They're a special type of recession that are not temporary and take on the order of a decade to crawl out of."


The mode of payment mentioned by your bank is called the ACH(Automatic Clearing House) which means that anyone(Trusted payment gateway owners like banks themselves) can process payments. There can be a fraud declared against any payment that you have made and you can get every single penny back. This amount can not be withdrawn in cash at all. However for your situation I would suggest that you ask your bank to block any transactions above the amount of a specific sum, this way they will require your authorization to finalize the payment. You should feel safe after this. Also no one can access any other account apart from the one whose details you are giving out so do not worry about this guy(or anyone else for that matter) to be able to access your other accounts.  Hope this helps. (I have experience in payment gateways so I do understand these procedures.) Cheers!!


Specifically I'm trying to understand this pargraph:  >Stripping the German mobile-phone unit of its cash and increasing its net debt before the IPO could help lower the unit’s average cost of capital, said Carlos Winzer, a senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service.  >“Telefonica Deutschland had a very strong cash position and no debt, so this move will allow the German unit to have a more efficient balance sheet structure,” said Winzer, who has covered Telefonica for 20 years  How does moving cash from the German unit to the Spanish Telefonica unit induce a more efficient balance sheet structure for the German unit?  Appreciate any help!


Renting an apartment here in Atlanta (where I live) is just as expensive (if not more) than paying own a home so it seems like a good ideas to just go for owning my own property. And I really want space for my dog. :-)


It sounds to me like you may not be defining fundamental investing very well, which is why it may seem like it doesn't matter.  Fundamental investing means valuing a stock based on your estimate of its future profitability (and thus cash flows and dividends).  One way to do this is to look at the multiples you have described.  But multiples are inherently backward-looking so for firms with good growth prospects, they can be very poor estimates of future profitability. When you see a firm with ratios way out of whack with other firms, you can conclude that the market thinks that firm has a lot of future growth possibilities.  That's all. It could be that the market is overestimating that growth, but you would need more information in order to conclude that.  We call Warren Buffet a fundamental investor because he tends to think the market has made a mistake and overvalued many firms with crazy ratios.  That may be in many cases, but it doesn't necessarily mean those investors are not using fundamental analysis to come up with their valuations. Fundamental investing is still very much relevant and is probably the primary determinant of stock prices.  It's just that fundamental investing encompasses estimating things like future growth and innovation, which is a lot more than just looking at the ratios you have described.


In both theory and practice the tax results in reduced consumption. Check out the stats from when NY did it. Also check out how cigarette tax worked on smoking statistics. I'm on mobile means no source links for now, should be googleable though. Some people will drive out of their way to save a little. Most people won't.   Opinion part:  In a society where health care is indirectly subsidied by everyone (higher hospital bills to cover uninsured), it makes sense to me to insentivise healthier eating habits. I'd prefer they take away the corn subsidies keeping corn sugar prices so low. Seems a bit roundabout to subsidise then tax.


TL,DR; Good point, but there are arguments why you should allow others in.  _____  I think one an idea is steeped in the culture, it unreasinably depletes the commons not to be able to reference it, someone dressing up as mickey mouse at Disney world 100 years later not withstanding.  Trademark law should differentiate the original artist's work from derivatives.  Having said that, addition to the world that substantially and materially add to the cultural impact of the work should be protected for the term of 20 years or so.  You should allow the creator the rights to Harry Potter merchandizing after the movie rather than the books.  But overall the intellectual commons is under protected in law. In fact it's not even recognized, except where someone has owned something and given it to the commons. But in as much as you can't kill all the deer on the common because it depletes the resource, if the space of intellectual commons is reduced so much that there is no way to say something (or no way to write a program to do something), then that should not be legal either.  And at some point in his interaction with our culture, Yoda is the best person to say some things. And to keep him from us depletes the commons.


You can and are supposed to report self-employment income on Schedule C (or C-EZ if eligible, which a programmer likely is) even when the payer isn't required to give you 1099-MISC (or 1099-K for a payment network now). From there, after deducting permitted expenses, it flows to 1040 (for income tax) and Schedule SE (for self-employment tax). See https://www.irs.gov/individuals/self-employed for some basics and lots of useful links. If this income is large enough your tax on it will be more than $1000, you may need to make quarterly estimated payments (OR if you also have a 'day job' have that employer increase your withholding) to avoid an underpayment penalty. But if this is the first year you have significant self-employment income (or other taxable but unwithheld income like realized capital gains) and your economic/tax situation is otherwise unchanged -- i.e. you have the same (or more) payroll income with the same (or more) withholding -- then there is a 'safe harbor': if your withholding plus estimated payments this year is too low to pay this year's tax but it is enough to pay last year's tax you escape the penalty. (You still need to pay the tax due, of course, so keep the funds available for that.) At the end of the first year when you prepare your return you will see how the numbers work out and can more easily do a good estimate for the following year(s). A single-member LLC or 'S' corp is usually disregarded for tax purposes, although you can elect otherwise, while a (traditional) 'C' corp is more complicated and AIUI out-of-scope for this Stack; see https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/business-structures for more.


I don't really think supply will be a problem. Here in NZ the farming community are already looking at this as a windfall.  I'd be interested to know how this will effect Germany, I don't expect a lot, but it will have some impact especially if you are producing a perishable good that you need to find a new market for quickly.


Ah, yes. The report that makes some very strange assumptions, such as the following:  * People drive less than 100 miles per week (5,170 miles per year, or just over 14 miles a day).  * People are moving at all times while driving and at a constant speed. * The factories making the batteries are entirely powered by fossil fuels.  * Your non-electric vehicle had zero emissions during its own production. * You don't have a lead-acid battery in your non-electric vehicle. * Your non-electric vehicle took no emissions to reach the lot where you bought it.  With a narrow-enough constraint, a person can make anything appear true. However, once those constraints are themselves examined, the silliness of it becomes quite clear.


I understand the concepts behind the different weighting methods, but what I’m wondering is why a company CHOOSES a specific weighting method. For example, what exactly was being looked at when the decision was made to make the DJIA price-weighted instead of market cap-weighted? Why does a manager decide to use free-floating methodology over price-weighting? I just don’t understand why there’s no uniformity.  Apologies as I may have not worded my question properly.


"your question is based on a false premise.  there is no ""standard"" for raises.  some jobs in some years see huge raises. other years those same jobs may see average pay rates drop. if you want a benchmark, you would be better off looking at typical pay rates for people in your job, in your city with your experience. sites like glassdoor can provide that type of information. if you are at the low end of that range, you can probably push for a raise. if you are at the high end, you may find it more difficult. typically your employer will pay you just enough to keep you from leaving. so they will offer you as little as they think you will accept.  you can either accept it or find another job that pays more. if you work in software, then you can probably make more by switching jobs. if you work in food service, you might have more trouble finding higher pay elsewhere. if you do find another employer, you might be able to elicit a counter-offer from your current employer. in fact, even suggesting that you will look for another employer may prompt your current employer to be more generous.  that said, if your employer thinks you are on your way out, they might cut your bonus or lay you off."


With a 1/4 million you should  be looking at staying fully invested and doing income draw down you can safely take 3 or 4 %   Basing your retirement income 100% on cash investments is very risky I can remember when inflation hit 15% in the UK and it has been at similar levels in the usa around 14% in 79.


Yup. Same reason why developers go to Mexico and build huge resorts in the poorest places.   Then you get the people who live there to work for you for dirt-cheap because, what else are they going to do? If the per capita income is $10,000, a yearly salary of $20,000 is going to look awesome.


One of the most obvious uses of SMAs is the detection of a trend reversal. A trend reversal happens when a short term SMA crosses over a longer term SMA.  For example, if a 20 day moving average was, previously, above a 200 day moving average, but has crossed over the 200 day and is currently below the 200 day then the security has performed a 'death cross' and the trend is for lower and lower prices.  Stockcharts.com has excellent 'chart school' for the beginning chart user. They also provide excellent charts.  Here is a link: http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school I  like to use a 20 day SMA, a 200 day SMA, and a 21 day EMA.


You need a cosigner. Someone prepared to repay the mortgager if you should fail to. Needless to say this is going to have to be someone who knows you and trusts you very much. One way is to find someone prepared to share a house with you. Buy a bigger house than you would otherwise need. You would own half each, and the sharing agreement would specify that if one of you defaulted on their payments the other would get a larger share according to how much extra they end up paying. The other way is to find a silent partner, who doesn't live there. They put up no money unless you actually default. They would almost certainly have to be part owners, but you can structure the agreement so that you end up with the whole house if you succeed in paying off the mortgage, or miss no payments until you sell. Parents sometimes do this for their kids.


"I assume by that you mean gradually buying the same mix of funds over time.  If that's the case, there is no rational reason to do this.   Dollar-cost averaging is an artifact of the way most people fund their 401(k).  I would not consider it a viable ""strategy"".  (Neither does Wikipedia)  Let's say you have $100,000 that you add $10,000 at a time.  When you add money, one of three things can happen: Since you can't predict the future, there's no mathematical justification for buying in segments.  There's just as much chance that your funds will be worth more or less, so on average it should make little to no difference.   In fact, given the time value of money there is a slight  advantage to investing it all now so you can capture any future returns.  You can always rebalance later to capture gains on some funds and purchase funds that are down to (hopefully) catch them on a rebound."


When debit cards were first made available one of the advertised strengths was that if you never wrote a check,and always used a debit card, you could never be overdrawn. They money would be instantly withdrawn from the account and the balance would always reflect perfectly the amount of money in the account. Of course some saw the loss of float as a weakness, but for others this instantaneous aspect was what they needed.  If only that were true. I have seen debit card transactions take a couple of days to appear. I have seen a $1 hold for gas not be removed and the real amount withdrawn for 2 or 3 days. Horror stories about having a $3 coffee end up costing $30 because of overdraft fees can only occur if the transactions aren't instant.  The contactless feature doesn't make the time delay any shorter. The delay for an individual transaction, assuming there are no unusual network problems, still depend on the vendor policies, the card network policies, and the bank policies. But from the viewpoint of the cashier the transaction has been completes and the customer can leave with their coffee. From the viewpoint of the bank account it may still be waiting,


It would help if we had numbers to walk you through the analysis. Current balance, rate, remaining term, and the new mortgage details.  To echo and elaborate on part of Ben's response, the most important thing is to not confuse cash flow with savings. If you have 15 years to go, and refinance to 30 years, at the rate rate, your payment drops by 1/3. Yet your rate is identical in this example.  The correct method is to take the new rate, plug it into a mortgage calculator or spreadsheet using the remaining months on the current mortgage, and see the change in payment. This savings is what you should divide into closing costs to calculate the breakeven. It's up to you whether to adjust your payments to keep the term the same after you close.  With respect to keshlam, rules of thumb often fail. There are mortgages that build the closing costs into the rate. Not the amount loaned, the rate. This means that as rates dropped, moving from 5.25% to 5% made sense even though with closing costs there were 4.5% mortgages out there. Because rates were still falling, and I finally moved to a 3.5% loan. At the time I was serial refinancing, the bank said I could return to them after a year if rates were still lower. In my opinion, we are at a bottom, and the biggest question you need to answer is whether you'll remain in the house past your own breakeven time. Last - with personal finance focusing on personal, the analysis shouldn't ignore the rest of your balance sheet. Say you are paying $1500/mo with 15 years to go. Your budget is tight enough that you've chosen not to deposit to your 401(k). (assuming you are in the US or country with pretax retirement account options) In this case, holding rates constant, a shift to 30 years frees up about $500/mo. In a matched 401(k), your $6000/yr is doubled to $12K/year.  Of course, if the money would just go in the market unmatched, members here would correctly admonish me for suggesting a dangerous game, in effect borrowing via mortgage to invest in the market. The matched funds, however are tough to argue against.


No two states have the same exact laws regarding community property.  I would recommend asking a competent financial advisor in your area, as they would be more familiar with the local statutes.


The real benefit to the environment will come as the grid is powered by more renwables. Tesla will charge when renwables are generating, store power in its big battery, and feed energy back to the grid during times of high demand or when renewable sources are down


"> They trick people into rigged contracts, which requires paying uber even if you quit. So your time spent making money at another job belongs to uber.  Can you link me to some info on this? This is bizarre.  >What makes it ""sort of"" slavery is the foolishness of entering the contract.  lol"


Another factor is that a natural disaster ends up having a positive effect on GDP (if the country is already wealthy.)  Everything needs to be rebuilt, and this takes money.  It's one of the greatest flaws of GDP calculation, because it doesn't write off the damage as a capital loss.


No...it is...overall there are less insects than the rest of the Midwest from what I have experienced; and the food is shockingly good...they are the only other city that has meat comparable to Chicago.  They have great steak houses and other american food....mexican,  not so much unfortunately.


If your primary goal is no / minimized fees, there are 3 general options, as I see it:  Based on the fact that you want some risk, interest-only investments would not be great. Consider - 2% interest equals only $1,500 annually, and since the trust can only distribute income, that may be limited. Based on the fact that you seem to have some hesitation on risk, and also limited personal time able to govern the trust (which is understandable), I would say keep your investment mix simple. By this I mean, creating a specific portfolio may seem desirable, but could also become a headache and, in my opinion, not desirable for a trust executor.  You didn't get into the personal situation, but I assume you have a family / close connection to a young person, and are executor of a trust set up on someone's death. That not be the case for you, but given that you are asking for advice rather than speaking with those involved, I assume it is similar enough for this to be applicable: you don't want to set yourself up to feel emotionally responsible for taking on too much risk, impacting the trustee(s)'s life negatively. Therefore, investing in a few limited index funds seems to match what you're looking for in terms of risk, reward, and time required. One final consideration - if you want to maximize annual distributions to the trustee(s)'s, consider that you may be best served by seeking high-dividend paying stock (although again, probably don't do this on a stock-by-stock basis unless you can commit the time to fully manage it). Returns in the form of stock increases are good, but they will not immediately provide income that the trust can distribute. If you also wish to grow the corpus of the trust, then stock growth is okay, but if you want to maximize immediate distributions, you need to focus on returns through income (dividends & interest), rather than returns through value increase.


In general stock markets are very similar to that, however, you can also put in limit orders to say that you will only buy or sell at a given price. These sit in the market for a specified length of time and will be executed when an order arrives that matches the price (or better). Traders who set limit orders are called liquidity (or price) makers as they provide liquidity (i.e. volume to be traded) to be filled later. If there is no counterparty (i.e. buyer to your seller) in the market, a market maker; a large bank or brokerage who is licensed and regulated to do so, will fill your order at some price. That price is based on how much volume (i.e. trading) there is in that stock on average. This is called average daily volume (ADV) and is calculated over varying periods of time; we use ADV30 which is the 30 day average. You can always sell stocks for whatever price you like privately but a market order does not allow you to set your price (you are a price taker) therefore that kind of order will always fill at a market price. As mentioned above limit orders will not fill until the price is hit but will stay on book as long as they aren't filled, expired or cancelled.


Because it takes more than a day to establish a cab network...  Also, it looks like Lyft has garnered some market share from this fiasco, but customers clearly have different priorities here. You may be willing to pay much more, but not everyone is willing. Uber still has a larger network and competes on price especially with their pool option. Just like United,  customers are showing with their wallet that it's not really worth that much to make the switch as long as they keep getting promotions and discounts.


so·cial·ism ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/ noun noun: socialism  >a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be ***owned or regulated by the community as a whole.*** ie. government.  Regulations are socialism. You don't even have to augment it with the word crony.


If a business incurs expenses in the process of its trading, generally those expenses are deductible. Disposing of waste is generally held to be a deductible expense.


"Spoken like a true non-business person.  I'm an engineer that now has an MBA. It's not ""fluff"", far from it. In fact, I'm doing more quantitative work now than I did as an engineer. I use MATLAB and Excel more than I ever did before. And I'm in marketing, one of the less quantitative MBA jobs."


I worked at TRU in 1990. Night crew. Hilariously fun.   In 1995, I did a consult for their executive team for some database stuff. I mentioned I was an employee, we got to talking, I saw their processes and mindset...  Things haven't really changed from 1990 to 1995 and from 1995 to now. They have somewhat of an idea of what to do, they just can't seem to get it done.   I shopped there over Xmas. I could tell more stories.   Sad thing is, I told them what they needed to do 16 years ago. I think half the reason they hooked up with amazon.com was because doing it right and starting over from scratch was too much for them. Their entire operation is still connected to bad practices from the past.


"Here is how I would approach that problem: 1) Find the average ratios of the competitors: 2) Find the earnings and book value per share of Hawaiian 3) Multiply the EPB and BVPS by the average ratios. Note that you get two very different numbers.  This illustrates why pricing from ratios is inexact.  How you use those answers to estimate a ""price"" is up to you.  You can take the higher of the two, the average, the P/E result since you have more data points, or whatever other method you feel you can justify.   There is no ""right"" answer since no one can accurately predict the future price of any stock."


This is basically done to reduce costs and overhead, with agreement of the credit card issuers. When the card is physically present and the charge is low, the burden of keeping the signed receipts and of additional delays at the cash register is not worth the potential risk of fraud. Depending on the location and the specific charge-back history of the business, the limit above which signature is required differs. In one supermarket in the area I live they require signatures only on charges above $50. In another, 10 miles away from the first one, they require signatures on charges above $25.


Pm me. As a long time bar and restaurant owner who specializes in audits on projects like this I can tell that there are a number of variables at play in this scenario.   A typical MBA won't see the industry issues you need to address.    I can do a phone convo for 15 min and get you sorted fast. Happy to pro bono it.   Good luck.


Your suggestion seems a bit too extreme. Handing auditing responsibility to a government body/agency would just create its own set of problems and other conflicts of interest (for example, opinions could be subject to politics, increased bureaucracy, laziness due to monopoly) Hell, if the government audited the statements, they would have the power to authorize only accounting policies that maximized a company's tax payout.  The audit only firm proposal by the European Commission seems to be the more reasonable solution to try to avoid conflicts of interest (firms that audit companies are less likely to issue adverse/qualified opinions on them since those companies were simply following the firms' own consulting advice) which seems to be the heart of the problem even though the SOX nearly eliminated that. But if the audit business was effectively separated from accounting firms' other practices and audit only companies sprung up then other problems would arise. Audit only firms would still be unwilling to piss major clients off by issuing qualified opinions (and lose future business). Also, since the audit business is not really the present firms' money maker, costs to audit would only increase to ensure that audit only firms are profitable.


i think 150 hours of practice is enough for level 1, im taking level 1 in december and i have a bba in finance&investments, work on buy side for equity fund. while a lot of the material is conceptual, being in the industry i already knew almost half the stuff pretty well. the way i study is by consistently doing practice questions(this is key for level 1, make sure to get the schweser test bank and do all 4,000+ questions!) after every section going back to the start so i dont forget anything along the way. i avg about 85% score and have studied so far for about 100-120 hours.  hope that helps


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


Underwriting manager here. It's not a big deal. Call your processor or loan officer tomorrow to make sure it's been cleared. My guess is that the underwriter or loan officer noted the discrepancy and corrected it in their systems. You'll have to sign a updated 1003 and 4506T at closing with correct info.  In other words...no biggie, no worries. Not a show stopper at all.


Hello,  I'm very interested in learning money. I used the search function, which led me to Investopedia, and already I'm learning a bunch.  Could you recommend me some introductory reading on finance and economics? I have no education on this subject, and I realise that reading isn't anywhere near having a good formal education, but some knowledge is better than none.  I'm looking to put this knowledge towards understanding what is a an enormous organ of power, and gaining the ability to recognise opportunities and profit.  So yeah, economics and finance, but I will study anything you throw my way, so the more the better. Especially because investments and accounting also seem interesting and useful.  P.S.: I'm European, if this makes a difference in what content will be relevant to me.  Thank you for reading this.


I assume that with both companies you can buy stock mutual funds, bonds mutual funds, ETFs and money market accounts. They should both offer all of these as IRAs, Roth IRAs, and non-retirement accounts.  You  need to make sure they offer the types of investments you want. Most 401K or 403b plans only offer a handful of options, but for non-company sponsored plans you want to have many more choices. To look at the costs see how much they charge you when you buy or sell shares. Also look at the annual expenses for those funds. Each company website should show you all the fees for each fund. Take a few funds that you are likely to invest in, and have a match in the other fund family, and compare. The benefit of the retirement accounts is that if you make a less than perfect choice now, it is easy to move the money within the family of funds or even to another family of funds later. The roll over or transfer doesn't involve taxes.


You're trading a fixed liability for an unknown liability. When I graduated from college, I bought a nice used car. Two days later, a deer came out of nowhere, and I hit it going 70 mph on a highway. The damage? $4,500. If I didn't have comprehensive insurance, that would have been a real hit to me financially. For me, I'd rather just pay the modest cost for the comprehensive.


>If society is evil (as you believe)  I don't believe society is evil. I believe that some people make irrational decisions, some people make evil intentionally discriminatory decisions, that some people are indifferent to the suffering of others, and that all of those things combining are why the libertarian fantasy doesn't work.  >Legislation doesn't help  It absolutely does. When interracial marriage was illegal, society didn't want it to be made legal. It was against society's wishes according to the majority. It was made legal anyway, and (in sane parts of the country) we all moved on.   You can pretend legislation isn't necessary, but it is, and libertarianism is naive at best.


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FedEx pays as little as it can get away with to employees, because it CAN.  We are in an employer, not employee, favoring market.  Of course they pay less.  But the Post Office is antiquated.  If it wants to survive, it needs to adapt to the times.  The reasons it is kept around seem more sentimental than anything else.  I used to work at the Post Office, and I definitely didn’t make $5.00 / hour more than anyone.  Unless they were waiters, who depend on tips.  I still want to see how we know government employees are making $5.00 / hour more than they should.


Not really. The lender is not buying the stock back at a lower price. Remember, he already owns it, so he need not buy it again. The person losing is the one from whom the short seller buys back the stock, provided that person bought the stock at higher price.  So if B borrowed from A(lender) and sold it to C, and later B purchased it back from C at a lower price, then B made profit, C made loss and A made nothing .


Houses depreciate. Period. Things break: the hot water heater explodes, the AC cuts out in August, the roof leaks, the basement floods, toilets back up, raccoons dig up the garden. Each time something breaks, the house loses value. Every year the paint fades a little, the house loses value. Every time GE comes out with a more efficient washing machine, the house loses value. The only reason a house appears to maintain its value over time is because the money you spend repairing and improving it offsets this unavoidable depreciation. Even then, over extended periods of time it will typically just track inflation--so you're treading water. Not that there's anything wrong with that. You need to live somewhere.


Yes but it's more important to look at the longer term trends, which Schiff would actually probably support.   He is not anyone you should take very seriously for intelligent economic debate. His glory comes from calling the real estate bubble, which deserves some credit, but all of his predictions of what would occur during the fall out have been wrong and almost the exact opposite. He doesn't understand modern economics.


"I'm trying to understand how an ETF manager optimized it's own revenue.  Here's an example that I'm trying to figure out.  ETF firm has an agreement with GS for blocks of IBM. They have agreed on daily VWAP + 1% for execution price.  Further, there is a commission schedule for 5 mils with GS. Come month end, ETF firm has to do a monthly rebalance. As such must buy 100,000 shares at IBM which goes for about $100 The commission for the trade is 100,000 * 5 mils = $500 in commission for that trade. I assume all of this is covered in the expense ratio. Such that if VWAP for the day was 100, then each share got executed to the ETF at 101 (VWAP+ %1) + .0005 (5 mils per share) = for a resultant 101.0005 cost basis  The ETF then turns around and takes out (let's say) 1% as the expense ratio ($1.01005 per share)  I think everything so far is pretty straight forward. Let me know if I missed something to this point.  Now, this is what I'm trying to get my head around. ETF firm has a revenue sharing agreement as well as other ""relations"" with GS. One of which is 50% back on commissions as soft dollars. On top of that GS has a program where if you do a set amount of ""VWAP +"" trades you are eligible for their corporate well-being programs and other ""sponsorship"" of ETF's interests including  helping to pay for marketing, rent, computers, etc.  Does that happen? Do these disclosures exist somewhere?"


Lol spoken like a true idiot who can't debate facts. The only demons here are the ones in your head that keep telling you your shit doesn't stink.  Most people who disagree with a portrayal of facts counter with facts of their own. Not you though! You counter with demons and dragons and Satan and any other boogeyman bullshit you were scared of when you were a kid (and still scared of).  Congratulations! You, along with buckshot, juror, are among an elite few that have less substance than the shit I just took.


ESPP is common among US companies, often with a framework similar to your outline.  In the US, some ESPPs allow sales of shares to be considered qualifying (subject to capital gains rather than ordinary income tax) if they are sold at least 2 years after the enrollment date and at least 1 year after the purchase date.  These details can vary from one plan to another and will be stated in the company's ESPP enrollment documents.   Do look at the high and low values of the stock over the last year.  If it swings up and down more than 15% (or whatever the discount is), then that risk should be a factor in your decision.  If the stock is trending upward over the long term and you are confident in the durability of the company, then you might favor holding.


Corporate profits are currently taxed twice. Once at the corporate level, and a second time when the corporation's owners get paid via dividends or capital gains.   The alternative is simply to eliminate the corporate-level taxation and raise the dividend and capital gains taxes back up to normal levels. Instead of (1-35%)*(1-15%) we'd just have (1-45%) or something


Is the study confirming that warning $7.25 an hour sucks, or is confirming that a higher minimum wage (say 10-15 / hour) would magically result in better conditions and no job losses, and no difficulty finding a first job?  Those are very different questions.


"I buy new clothes when the old ones fall apart, literally. When jeans get holes in the knees, they're relegated to gardening or really messy jobs. Shirts go until they're worn so much that I can't reasonably wear them to work any more. Sounds like your ""dress code"" at work is about like mine (also a software engineer). I've found that the Dickies jeans and work pants are sturdy, long lasting, fit in reasonably at the workplace, and are very inexpensive. If you know that you're going to need to replace some pants or shirts, wait for a sale to roll around at a local store, and then stock up. I don't specifically budget for clothes since I spend so little. But I'd be at the bottom of anybody's list in terms of giving fashion advice..."


"When I have a question about my income taxes, the first place I look is generally the Giant Book of Income Tax Information, Publication 17 (officially called ""Your Federal Income Tax""). This looks to be covered in Chapter 26 on ""Car Expenses and Other Employee Business Expenses"". It's possible that there's something in there that applies to you if you need to temporarily commute to a place that isn't your normal workplace for a legitimate business reason or other business-related travel. But for your normal commute from your home to your normal workplace it has this to say:  Commuting expenses.   You cannot deduct the costs of taking a bus, trolley, subway, or taxi, or of driving a car between your home and your main or regular place of work. These costs are personal commuting expenses. You cannot deduct commuting expenses no matter how far your home is from your regular place of work. You cannot deduct commuting expenses even if you work during the commuting trip."


Give Harris Bank a call; they might be able to help you As of August 21, 2015, Harris bank does NOT offer Canadian dollar accounts in the U.S.


Dunno who downvoted you.  Yes, that (as far as I understand your US Glass-Steagall act) is what he's advocating.  In the late 1990s, when you guys were repealing your GS act, we in the UK were doing the same with our version of the same idea, thus permitting lunatic, risk-taking investment bankers to start playing with the deposited money of savings banks.  Yadda, yadda, yadda, time passed, investment bankers took all of our money down the shitter, and then we had to pay them off because they hadn't just lost their own money, they had also lost all of *our* money, too. Hence bank bailouts, which were really the government bailing *us* out, because we had all been *gigantically goddamn fucking moronically stupid* enough to invest our money in investment banks instead of savings banks.  Merv wants to re-separate the investment banks from the savings banks again because this is the *second* time this has happened, and we could do with the peace that will come from putting up walls that it will take another 80 years for the bankers to lobby down again.


"It is difficult to become a millionaire in the short term (a few years) working at a 9-to-5 job, unless you get lucky (win the lottery, inheritance, gambling at a casino, etc). However, if you max out your employer's Retirement Plan (401k, 403b) for the next 30 years, and you average a 5% rate of return on your investment, you will reach millionaire status.  Many people would consider this ""easy"" and ""automatic"". Of course, this assumes you are able to max our your retirement savings at the start of your career, and keep it going.  The idea is that if you get in the habit of saving early in your career and live modestly, it becomes an automatic thing. Unfortunately, the value of $1 million after 30 years of inflation will be eroded somewhat.  (Sorry.) If you don't want to wait 30 years, then you need to look at a different strategy.  Work harder or take risks.  Some options:"


It's an infosec rule at my 200 person software company that really doesn't have much of a security risk (i.e. no one would gain much by getting into our records). If it wasn't a rule at equifax, at least on paper, I'll eat my hat or a dictionary or something.  To be clear, I'm not claiming I know this, I'm just basing it on experience working in smaller tech companies. And let's put it this way... the failings of big companies are very rarely a *lack* of rules and bureaucracy.


Unless other people believe you have a reason for selling at a lower price, your sale probably has no lasting effect at all on the market. Of course, if people see you dump a few million dollars' worth of shares at a discount, they may be inclined to believe you have a reason. But if you just sell a few, they will conclude the reason is just that you needed cash in a hurry.


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I read, however, that if the company's assets are not kept separate from our assets then if we got sued, the corporate veil would be pierced. This whole venture would be to give us additional income so my wife could watch our daughter and have an income.


"If markets are efficient they will be unpredictable.  If all past information is already priced into a stock then movement will only occur when new information is introduced.  Since no one can predict future events stocks will move in an unpredictable way.  If markets are inefficient in the short term, people should be able to figure out the long-term price movements.  This doesn't seem to be the case.  This is why the authoritative book on market efficiency is called ""A **Random** Walk Down Wall Street""."


"I think this is more a symptom of the complexity and difficulty associated with buying a smartphone; unless you're technically inclined, the long lists of specs and features for each model are difficult to compare, turning buying a smartphone into ""I know the iPhone and galaxy s3 are good, so I'll just get one of those rather than doing hours of research on what's really best for me""."


"> Spoken like one who's soul has already been sold.  Soul has been sold? It's comical how exaggeratedly apocalyptic your conspiracy theories are just because I'm willing to admit that not everybody at Fox fits into your conspiracy theory.  I don't even know what you're trying to say here anyways. Who are you implying bought my soul for what and why would my comment demonstrate that?  > Real people know they're being lied to.  Yes, and Fox news viewers include many real people... which is why a portion of both viewers and presenters are indeed intelligent, well-meaning people looking for accurate reporting. There are plenty of intelligent and self-aware conservatives who are aware of media bias. Awareness of media bias is in large part why Fox viewers were so happy to have a conservative alternative. All media has bias and many people are more comfortable in the context of certain biases than others. The fact there are also presenters and viewers that don't fit this high integrity, high intelligence and/or high awareness description doesn't justify simplifying those who do out of the picture just to give your narrative a more pure sense of good and evil. It turns out that the real world is not so conveniently simple. There is bad in good. There is good in bad. You're enemy may do good things or work with good people. Your ally may do bad things or work with bad people. All people, parties, governments and businesses have competing interests some of which likely clash with yours and some of which probably align with yours. The real world is complex.  > Some people don't understand the extent to which they are being manipulated.  This is why MY comment suggest that SOME people are one way and SOME people are another way. There is a big jump between this claim (a ""some"" statement) and your more extreme suggestions (""all of them"" / ""none of them"" statements). By disagreeing with my comment, you were making a jump to the latter which is not supported by a statement like this and requires stereotyping the world into an unrealistic black and white."


They start at six figures with just a bachelor's, and their raises tend to be pretty substantial. Many of them will earn more than $200k before they are age 30. Basically, if they were to live relatively normal lifestyles (many do not), save and invest most of their earnings, then they should be able to become a millionaire at around age 30 while just following their career path, without taking big risks such as starting a business.


"Central Banks are essentially a cartel, designed to let banks in general borrow money from depositors at relatively low interest rates.  They do this in two ways:  By reassuring depositors that momentary cash flow problems at banks will not result in banks failing, they lower the interest rates that depositors demand.  And by imposing strict regulations on banks that are borrowing from depositors at high interest rates.  (People who move money to the banks offering the highest interest rates are especially likely to participate in bank runs.) Borrowing ""too much"" from the Central Bank is considered to be a sign of a bank that is too weak to attract deposits from depositors at ""reasonable"" interest rates. If a bank borrows ""too much"" (as a percentage of the bank's assets) from the Central Bank, the bank regulators will subject the bank to heavy scrutiny.  If the bank fails to find ways to reduce its borrowing from the Central Bank, the bank regulators are likely to steal the bank from its shareholders, and sell the bank to a ""stronger"" bank that pays lower interest rates."


This doesn't seem to explain the odd behavior of the collector, but I wanted to point out that the debt collector might not actually own the debt. If this is the case then your creditor is still the original institution, and the collector may or may not be allowed to actually collect. Contact the original creditor and ask how you can pay off the debt.


NPR has turned into corporate propaganda. Industry has to place these stories before they hire people from overseas who will work for half the wages of Americans. If Trump succeeds with raising blue collar wages substantially the Democrats are done. What can they do if they permanently lose blue collar workers?


It seems to me that your main question here is about why a stock is worth anything at all, why it has any intrinsic value, and that the only way you could imagine a stock having value is if it pays a dividend, as though that's what you're buying in that case.  Others have answered why a company may or may not pay a dividend, but I think glossed over the central question.  A stock has value because it is ownership of a piece of the company. The company itself has value, in the form of: You get the idea. A company's value is based on things it owns or things that can be monetized.  By extension, a share is a piece of all that. Some of these things don't have clear cut values, and this can result in differing opinions on what a company is worth.  Share price also varies for many other reasons that are covered by other answers, but there is (almost) always some intrinsic value to a stock because part of its value represents real assets.


I've had positive experiences and negative ones. One key is to be sure you have followed ALL of the instructions. Once I forgot a small piece of information and lost out on $40. I was not happy. A few weeks ago I got a rebate for $50 from Staples, and it couldn't have been simpler. Stick with big companies and make sure you do everything on time. Companies use rebates because they know some people will forget, mess up, or not use the rebate. They make a ton of money off of unused rebates.


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I've used prosper for a while and have a pretty good return based purely on shotgun approach.  I recently invested a few thousand with their automated tool.  Some people will default, but that's expected and part of their expected return calculation.


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I do understand what a creditor and equity holder is. I'm just saying my teacher NEVER brought up ponzi schemes and tied it to anything related to our accounting. He didn't think it was worth his time to go into details how ponzi schemes break accounting principles.  I also posted the question in finance as my finance courses dealt with financing money... And banks...


"Why not both?  I have been working and studying at the same time since I was 13... for all purposes, when I finished high school, I was working and studying part time... until I got my B.Sc in Computer Science and Masters in Business Administration (MBA)... developed my career and now I am a senior executive making excellent money and supervising many people.  In retrospect, I want to tell you that the degrees did not help me at all in my career in the sense that did not teach me anything of significance for real work and career life, nor did they lend me my first jobs.   However(!!!), without a degree (piece of paper), I could not advance to my current position because ""degree required for this position"".  One more thing, very important: when I studied for my MBA, and worked full(!) time, I had no choice but to take night classes (City University of NY, Baruch College, one of the best business schools in the country). **This was the best experience I had in all the of my college studies!** Why? Because all(!) the professors who teach in the night were working in the morning in their normal jobs - none of them were tenured professors.   They were real business people, grounded, know what they are talking about, and they were teaching because they loved to teach and share the experience and knowledge. **Do you understand what I am saying here?**  So, I did not get the theoretical nonsense from them. They actually taught us what really happens, the real approach to things, and the real issues to address.  P/S: My son is following my way. Since he was 11, he works in the areas he like (Minecraft) and he made money since then, running classes, getting to know people in the field, getting experience, getting work ethics, etc. If he wants to go to Harvard, fine with me, but I think he just need to go to ""reasonable"" low cost college to get those pieces of papers called ""Diplomas""."


You cannot become a CFA charterholder without job experience (I think it is 5 years in a finance-related job). But typically, for students or recent graduates, passing the Level 1 exam has a lot of value as it signals your interest in the field and shows that you have the work ethic to go through the 1000+ pages of material. The incremental value of Level 2 and Level 3 is not as much, but they still add value. I did a career change into finance and I planned to take the Level 1, but I found that I didn't have the time to apply for jobs and study at the same time. I ended up getting a job without taking the exam. I did end up taking the exam last weekend after I started working at my new job.


You are looking for the Internal Rate of Return. If you have a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel you can simply put in a list of the transactions (every time money went in or out) and their dates, and the spreadsheet's XIRR function will calculate a percentage rate of return. Here's a simple example. Investment 1 was 100,000 which is now worth 104,930 so it's made about 5% per year. Investment 2 is much more complicated, money was going in and out, but the internal rate of return was 7% so money in that investment, on average, grew faster than money in the first investment.


> Then I'll pay for those services as I use them. Not before. except for the fact that you need them set up before you use them  >It's not cheaper for me. I don't have kids, no public school. I work from home, no commuting. It's a lose/lose scenario for me.  think about it as an investment in the future for when you do need it, and those kids skills.  >I work for the government. Many of the government services are valuable. It's just seems more logical to pay for them as you use them, like every single other business works.  good luck getting the cashflow with that sorta system to work  >Even more reason to test the experiment. Let's give it a try and see what happens. I'm sure I'll be fine.  the experiment was conducted for hundreds of years it didn't work so we changed it, and then it worked a lot better, if you try that experiment we know it was fail.  >Actually you don't. You just want free shit like everyone else.  honestly I do understand and I also believe in limits to what we expect the Gov to do, but the current rhetoric around it is just stupid, read Bill Clinton's last book it goes into a lot of detail around it.  Now here is something I want you to think about.  A truck causes 50X more damage to the roads than a car does, so according to you a truck should pay 50X the road tax of a car, now after this happens how much more will you be paying for your goods, but thats alright you save a little on your road tax.


"Much of the interest on a loan comes in the first years of a mortgage, so the sooner you can pay that off, the better.  But let's see what the numbers say. If you have a loan at 4%, principal of $100,000, a term of 30 years, then this gives monthly payments of $477.42 (using the Excel PMT function). If you sell the house after precisely 5 years worth of payments, then you have made $28,644.92 in payments, you still owe $90,924.93. Suppose you sell the house for $100,000.  That means you will be in the hole for: $100,000 - $90,924.93 - $28,644.92 = -$19,569.85 Now, suppose you pay an extra $50 per month over the five years.  The same calculation becomes: $100,000 - $87,659.98 - $31,644.92 = -$19,304.90 So in this scenario, which is a little simplistic, you are $264.95 better off. The question you have to ask is whether you could have done better investing the $3,000 in extra payments somewhere else. The CAGR in doing this is 1.7%, so you might be better off putting the money away. Running the same numbers for a 6% mortgage the CAGR you have is about 2.7%. Edit I've added a Google Docs spreadsheet (read-only) that you can download and play with.  Feel free to correct anything you find amiss! Edit 2  OK, so I've had a look at what JoeTaxpayer is saying in the comments below, and now I agree:  The CAGR should be 4%. Where I want wrong was to assume that the $50 per month payments over the five years are worth $50 * 5 * 12 = $3000.   This neglects the ""time value of money"" --- having small amounts of money periodically, rather than all of it in a lump sum. Including this makes the ""effective"" value of the monthly $50 payments $2714.95 written as =PV(0.04/12,60,-50) in Excel or Google Docs. I've added a tab to the original spreadsheet to show the different calculations.  Note that it still doesn't quite come to 4%, but I guess it's a minor error in the sheet. NB: I know, I'm leaving out mortgage interest tax relief, costs for selling etc. etc."


I agree that it sounds like a lot. The last time I read about it someone had been banned for violating the threshold. They were very angry. Their point was that it fails to account for volume of purchases or cost of items returned. They had been buying everything through amazon, so it was particularly harsh to be cut off, but they thought it was unfair since some people are able to exceed the amount of value returned comparatively several times over without violating the magic threshold. (i.e. return 40 $1 items and lose your account, but return 10 $1k items and you're fine).


"The goldbug crowd over on ZeroHedge's comments seem fond of reminding everyone that, while they might have bought and owned some gold in the past, they don't have it any more because they actually lost it all in a lake in ""a tragic boating accident"".  And who's going to prove otherwise? For that group, who are convinced cash (""fiat paper"") will at some point be worthless, the stockmarket will evaporate, the highest grade bonds will default and bank accounts and other personal assets will be subject to confiscation and ""bail in""... general bug-out apocalypse in other words... having a ""secret stash"" of high-value physical assets is obviously quite important and reassuring and presumably totally ""worth it""."


"Most companies are taken over. One can reasonably guess that company X will be taken over for a price P, at some future point in time. Then the company has a value today, that is less than price P, by a large enough margin so that the investor will likely ""make out"" when the company finally is taken over at some unknown point in time. The exception is a company like Microsoft or Apple that basically grow too large to be taken over. But then they eventually start paying dividends when they become ""mature."" Again, the trick, during the non-dividend paying period (e.g. ten or fifteen years ago) is to guess what dividends will be paid in some future time, and price the stock low enough today so that it will be worthwhile for the buyer."


For any corporate or commercial event to be a success, it is necessary that, hosting of the same is done in a proper manner. And, apart from hosting, the event should also be documented too. For doing so, you will need assistance of professional photographers, who are skilled and experts enough, to be able to cover the big event in a systematic way.


"Yup, friends called us ""the web 2.0 power couple."" (That tells you something about when we got married.)  When Thomas met me, he was world-famous and an awesome developer… and part of a 3-person consulting firm which gave him a middle class lifestyle. With my design and biz sense, we've created an empire.   I'll pass on your compliments. He always likes tweets too - @thomasfuchs :)"


Depends on the job.  At my current job, when I leave work for the day, I'm done.  But I have friends who would likely lose their jobs if they weren't available outside of normal hours.  They prefer having a source of income to not having one, even if it means that reddit user ngroot considers them a doormat.


Financial analysis and modeling. What I find intimidating about CFA Level 1 is not the difficulty level, but the size. As I mentioned above, it's most likely that I will be asked questions on the principles of accounting, financial statement analysis. Unfortunately, my knowledge of these is rather limited.  Do you consider CFA level 1 curriculum materials to be a good resource for learning that?


"Any sensible lender will require a lean lien against your formerly-free-and-clear property, and will likely require an appraisal of the property. The lender is free to reject the deal if the house is in any way not fitting their underwriting requirements; examples of such situations would be if the house is in a flood/emergency zone, in a declining area, an unusual property (and therefore hard to compare to other properties), not in salable condition (so even if they foreclose on it they'd have a questionable ability to get their money back), and so forth. Some lenders won't accept mobile homes (manufactured housing) as collateral, for instance, and also if the lender agrees they may also require insurance on the property to be maintained so they can ensure that a terrible fate doesn't befall both properties at one time (as happens occasionally). On the downside, in my experience (in the US) lenders will often require a lower loan percentage than a comparable cash down deal. An example I encountered was that the lender would happily provide 90% loan-to-value if a cash down payment was provided, but would not go above 75% LTV if real estate was provided instead. These sort of deals are especially common in cases of new construction, where people often own the land outright and want to use it as collateral for the building of a home on that same land, but it's not uncommon in any case (just less common than cash down deals). Depending on where you live and where you want to buy vs where the property you already own is located, I'd suggest just directly talking to where you want to first consider getting a quote for financing. This is not an especially exotic transaction, so the loan officer should be able to direct you if they accept such deals and what their conditions are for such arrangements. On the upside, many lenders still treat the LTV% to calculate their rate quote the same no matter where the ""down payment"" is coming from, with the lower the LTV the lower the interest rate they'll be willing to quote. Some lenders might not, and some might require extra closing fees - you may need to shop around. You might also want to get a comparative quote on getting a direct mortgage on the old property and putting the cash as down payment on the new property, thus keeping the two properties legally separate and giving you some ""walk away"" options that aren't possible otherwise.  I'd advise you to talk with your lenders directly and shop around a few places and see how the two alternatives compare. They might be similar, or one might be a hugely better deal! Underwriting requirements can change quickly and can vary even within individual regions, so it's not really possible to say once-and-for-all which is the better way to go."


You think that, but she's pretty much unemployable now.  That's the point of golden parachutes.  23 million is nothing to what she could have made if she was successful.  So she could have either been mega rich if she was successful, or have a decimated reputation if she failed.  It turned out to be the latter.  She's peaked and will never have a chance like that again.


Which is the right move.   Lowes is not in the business of patching windows vulnerabilities and writing inventory management software. They are in the business of selling hammers. IT is a cost center for them, not a profit center. Cost centres that have nothing to do with your core competency are best outsourced, unless there is some mitigating factor. This is business 101.


I've seen this in my town. I don't know if they are charging for Teslas specifically, or things like the Volt (I don't own an electric car so haven't looked into it too much), but there are over a dozen places in my city that have parking spots equipped with charging stations. They are outside various retail locations/malls as well as parking garages at the local university.   Keep in mind, this is not a major city. The total population is about 150,000 and that includes about 50,000 transient students who aren't here during the summer.


Not really practical... The real problem is getting the money into a form where you *can* invest it in something.  It's not like E\*Trade will let you FedEx them a briefcase of sequentially numbered hundreds and just credit your account, no questions asked.  That **is** the hard part.


> You are assuming Romney would actually allow for Free Markets, that's a laugh!   Invoking the Free Market Fairy is about all anyone can do anyway. Magic is as magic does.  > You are also assuming Romney would do absolutely nothing. You see, if Romney won and the House stayed republican, we'd see tons of legislation, crony, corrupted, bullshit, but legislation nonetheless.   Yes, yes we would. At the moment the House of Representatives and White House are at odds with each other. When they're on the same side you'll see lots more legislation to support their cronies such as tax cuts, corporate welfare, regulatory protection of broken business models and so forth. Much, *much* more than you see coming through now.  Like I said, you may not think there's a huge difference with Obama in office, but there is a difference.  > Romney is no bigger of a crony capitalism than Obama, considering Obama has not jailed a single big bank executive for their role in the 2008 meltdown, all this talk about how they differ is bullshit.  Romney is **much** more of a crony capitalist than Obama. He doesn't even *try* to give lip service to anyone who isn't in the 1%. That you don't want to see the difference between them doesn't mean it isn't there.  > That's a laugh.  What? There's not a single soul in the entire nation who fits this description? I find that hard to believe.


"Background: I live and work in a small city (250k) and want to work somewhere much larger (New York, London, Chicago, Sydney). Ideal job is something quantitative and related to programming/analytics in finance, though I have passed the CFA Level III Exam to show my interest in the field and currently work as a systems and database analyst (job title is ""Senior financial analyst"".) I have a Master's in mathematical finance but my work mostly relates to personal side projects.  Questions:  Short of packing up and moving, what is an effective way to network with people from these larger cities?  Is there demand for quants and junior quants, or is there too much supply? Will I need to get a PhD to be relevant? Can I transfer my background or skills into another area of finance first to get the networking contacts?"


"1. (a) ""Malawi: People with albinism 'living in fear'"" by Azad Essa & Sorin Furcoi, published on 7 June 2017: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/malawi-people-albinism-living-fear-170419064018308.html      (b) ""A 'resurgence' in attacks on people with albinism"" by Azad Essa and Sorin Furcoi, published on 12 June 2017: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2017/06/resurgence-attacks-people-albinism-170606110357747.html      (c) ""Scores arrested in Malawi after mobs kill 8 suspected 'vampires'"" by Charlotte Bellis, Al Jazeera, published on 23 October 2017: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/scores-arrested-malawi-mobs-kill-8-suspected-vampires-171023074106197.html      YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ho-xGJsdkA      (d) ""Killed for their bones: On the trail of the trade in human body parts"" by Al Jazeera, published in 2017: https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2017/malawi-killed-for-their-bones/  2. Read      (a) ""Miners' magic: artisanal mining, the albino fetish and murder in Tanzania"" by Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Jesper Bosse Jønsson, and Richard Sherrington, published in 2010: #9 at https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/5bpc5x/an_update_for_my_readers_by_peter_levenda/dbwig0v      (b) ""Save our skins: Structural adjustment, morality and the occult in Tanzania"" by Todd Sanders, published in 2001: #10a at https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/5bpc5x/an_update_for_my_readers_by_peter_levenda/dbwig0v          (c) ""The Economic Aspects of Human and Child Sacrifice"" by Peter Rwagara Atekyereza, Justin Ayebare, and Paul Bukuluki, published in 2014: #2c at https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/5bpc5x/an_update_for_my_readers_by_peter_levenda/dbob0j2      Source for #2a, #2b, #2c: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/5bpc5x/an_update_for_my_readers_by_peter_levenda/d9q9006          Via: https://www.reddit.com/r/Missing411/comments/41oph0/supernatural_abductions_in_japanese_folklore_by/cz3we2z      (d) https://www.reddit.com/r/worldpolitics/comments/7372pp/the_global_traffic_in_human_organs_by_dr_nancy/dno28j5"


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2017/advanced-economicsciences2017.pdf) reduced by 99%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Implications of mental accounting Following Thaler (1985), a large amount of work by Thaler and by others has explored and documented the consequences of mental accounting.  > Real-world examples of commitment devices include the &quot;Christmas Clubs&quot; mentioned by Strotz (1956) and Thaler (1981), where individuals commit to saving for Christmas; the drugs Xenical or Antabuse (that makes you sick if you drink alcohol); and commonly used rules of thumb like &quot;Do not shop when you are hungry&quot; or &quot;Do not keep alcohol at home.&quot; 3.2 The planner-doer model Motivated by the observed deviations from exponential discounting, Thaler and his collaborator Hersh Shefrin proposed the planner-doer model (Thaler and Shefrin 1981, Shefrin and Thaler 1988).  > Together with Kahneman and Knetsch, Thaler also invented novel experiments and uncovered three important manifestations of fairness preferences in interactions between individuals: first, some individuals will behave fairly towards others even in anonymous settings without reputational concerns; second, some individuals are willing to forego resources to punish individuals that behaved unfairly towards them; and third, some individuals are willing to forego resources to punish unfair behavior and norm violations even if the unfair behavior was directed towards someone else.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/75882u/richard_thaler_wins_2017_nobel_prize_advanced/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~224768 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **THALER**^#1 **price**^#2 **individual**^#3 **Economic**^#4 **model**^#5"


All CBD Fruit Strips are an all characteristic, great organic product nibble that you can stick in your pocket, knapsack or lunchbox. All CBD Fruit Strips are yummy organic product snacks that can go with you any place you go. Each Stretch Island All CBD Fruit Strip is equivalent to a large portion of a serving of natural product. It doesn't improve than that, with the exception of perhaps a genuine bit of natural product.


That's actually what I was thinking, too. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of it (I've been into vidya as long as I can remember), but there's got to be something that distinguishes you from any old GameStop, otherwise it may be futile.


I wonder this myself.  If an economic apocalypse actually came to pass, owning a bunch of gold bars - or shares in gold bars held somewhere else - isn't going to help you eat, or keep you from freezing to death.  The most valuable goods will be those with some utility - food, water, clothing, medicine, ammunition.  I think the financiers and their pornographers at WSJ forget that their entire world - and everything of value, power, and consequence within it - will cease to exist if the power goes out.


My wife and I chose to share all bank accounts and credit cards. We did so because we realized that, over the course of a marriage, the pendulum of who is the primary breadwinner may shift repeatedly. Having one account gets us in the habit of thinking about our needs and wants together and eases any transitions that may come as one or the other of us quits a job/returns to school/reduces hours. I should also say that this system would likely not work well if either partner has semi-compulsive spending/consumption habits. I'd recommend separate bank accounts with a joint account for your mortgage in that situation.


I can see three possibilities:  * The money was illegally transferred and used for operating costs when they started having trouble.  * The company was playing Enron-like accounting games, and were reporting imaginary profits and gains.  In that case, the money never really existed.  * The money was outright stolen, and is in somebody's offshore bank accounts.  Or some combination of these.


Now, if I wasn't concerned with the integrity of my already tainted soul I would have given myself the following advice five years ago:


In the UK the free newspapers have a page dedicated to famous people getting drunk. I play a game where I see how long it takes before I find out why the person is famous.   The latest realizations: Pixie Lott isn't Bob Geldorf's daughter.  Duffy isn't Hillary Duff. Kim Kardashian wasn't a porn star - she just had a sex tape... I haven't figured out why she's famous yet.  Also, Lady GaGa has a song called 'born this way.'  Anyway, the kinda point of the game is to figure out why I know which songs are by lady GaGa and which are by Amy winehouse if I hadn't clever knowingly heard there songs. And what does that mean for copyright vs. What must be in the public domain. E.g. if I have a song in my head which has been drilled into me, at what point can we consider it part of the fabric of our society. In otherwords, when does it become public domain as much as the 'performance ' of a car horn or a tree rustling?


Yea I meant 2-2.5 effectively. The high amex is going to be offset by regulated debit to get you a nice sweet spot in the middle :) I'm in NYC so while some places opt out of amex for the most part people are going to take it. Since OptBlue came out it's helped mitigate amex costs too which definitely helped


So, to be clear, you think a two year old, stunningly-beautiful property, is about to go vacant for an extended period?  Because I'll bet Reddit Gold, or anything you like, that it reopens, as a casino, probably before the end of the year, at worst - sometime next year.  Someone always gobbles properties like this up, the questions are who, how long does it take, when does it re-open, and can they avoid the same fate?


"You can do a lot of deduction FINRA keeps a ""REG-SHO"" list created daily that tells what the daily short volume is. March 26th 2014's list: http://regsho.finra.org/FNSQshvol20140326.txt If you are talking about the United States, this answer may be better ;)"


FedEx pays what it pays because unlike the Postal Service, they are a competitive entity that earns peoples business.  > In response, the USPS has increased productivity each year from 2000 to 2007,[58]through increased automation, route re-optimization, and facility consolidation.[57]Despite these efforts, the organization saw an $8.5 billion budget shortfall in 2010,[59] and was losing money at a rate of about $3 billion per quarter in 2011.[60]  They've tried that. They've tried to modernize really, really hard. The fundamental problems remain, they aren't paying a competitive wage rate and they're forced to operate on a socialistic universal price and quality mandate accross the entire geography of the US, offering speedy service to areas where it simply is infeasible to do so without incurring great expense.  I had the source up in an earlier comment, let me see if I can find it.  Edit: [here it is](http://work.chron.com/average-salary-government-employees-7863.html)


"(Insert the usual disclaimer that I'm not any sort of tax professional; I'm just a random guy on the Internet who occasionally looks through IRS instructions for fun. Then again, what you're doing here is asking random people on the Internet for help, so here goes.) The gigantic book of ""How to File Your Income Taxes"" from the IRS is called Publication 17. That's generally where I start to figure out where to report what. The section on Royalties has this to say: Royalties from copyrights, patents, and oil, gas, and mineral properties are taxable as ordinary income. In most cases, you report royalties in Part I of Schedule E (Form 1040). However, if you hold an operating oil, gas, or mineral interest or are in business as a self-employed writer, inventor, artist, etc., report your income and expenses on Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ (Form 1040).  It sounds like you are receiving royalties from a copyright, and not as a self-employed writer. That means that you would report the income on Schedule E, Part I. I've not used Schedule E before, but looking at the instructions for it, you enter this as ""Royalty Property"". For royalty property, enter code “6” on line 1b and leave lines 1a and 2 blank for that property. So, in Line 1b, part A, enter code 6. (It looks like you'll only use section A here as you only have one royalty property.) Then in column A, Line 4, enter the royalties you have received. The instructions confirm that this should be the amount that you received listed on the 1099-MISC. Report on line 4 royalties from oil, gas, or mineral properties (not including operating interests); copyrights; and patents. Use a separate column (A, B, or C) for each royalty property. If you received $10 or more in royalties during 2016, the payer should send you a Form 1099-MISC or similar statement by January 31, 2017, showing the amount you received. Report this amount on line 4.  I don't think that there's any relevant Expenses deductions you could take on the subsequent lines (though like I said, I've not used this form before), but if you had some specific expenses involved in producing this income it might be worth looking into further. On Line 21 you'd subtract the 0 expenses (or subtract any expenses you do manage to list) and put the total. It looks like there are more totals to accumulate on lines 23 and 24, which presumably would be equally easy as you only have the one property. Put the total again on line 26, which says to enter it on the main Form 1040 on line 17 and it thus gets included in your income."


It seems at most a cosmetic difference - nothing keeps you from adding the 9$ cash to the fund the same day the fees are deducted from the shares.


"I think the important thing is if it's made with whole chicken or 100% chicken breast, not just ""100% chicken"". Because it can be 100% chicken skin.  But yeah, the problem is that the ingredient list is often too small and not detailed enough."


Ask the folks administering your plan. They're the ones who define and implement the available choices for that specific plan.


You can evaluate portfolio raw returns or risk adjusted returns. To evaluate raw returns, I would personally compute the total returns over the time period in question for both portfolios.  To compute total returns, split the time into a bunch of subperiods by the dates at which you contributed money.  Compute each subperiod return by dividing the value of the portfolio at the end of the subperiod (but before adding additional cash on that day) by the value at the beginning of the subperiod (after adding cash on that day).  Then multiply all these returns together.  Finally, subtract 1.  That's your total return. For the portfolio where you didn't add any money it's easy: just divide the end value by the beginning and subtract 1. Whichever has a higher return performed better. To compute risk adjusted returns, get the portfolio returns from both portfolios (daily or monthly) and use OLS to regress on a benchmark portfolio return (something like the S&P500).  The intercept of the regression is a measure of the risk-adjusted peformance of your portfolio.  Higher the better.  More sophisticated models will do multiple regression using a few benchmark portfolios at the same time.


For me, ticket prices are horrible.   Expensive, but under $25 for three people, generally.   What kills me is the snacks and whatnot.   For fucks sake movie theaters. A small soda doesn't need to be 64 ounces. A small popcorn doesn't need to be 128 ounces. And neither of them need to cost $10.


Synthetic vacuum pump oil can prove to be highly effective in enhancing the life span and efficiency of the vacuum pumps. It’s a synthetic hydrocarbon fluid that has been doubled distilled for improved properties. Highly recommended to use for detector vacuum pumps, this can turn out to be a greatly reliable solution.


I drive a CNG E-250 van for work. Its sucks. There are 3 stations each about 20 miles apart. I get about 150 miles a tank so I have to fill up twice as much as normal vans and that nullifies any savings per gallon. Going up hills the van has no power. Except for being able to drive in the HOV lane the CNG is horrible.


I'd worry more about falsifying documents of sale.  No good reason at all to do that. Detecting counterfeit bills is easy if they're all new bills.  Hold them up to the light and look for the watermark and the numbered tape in the bill.  Refuse any bad ones.


"You seem to really have your financial act together.  Your combination of assets, and ongoing savings makes you the ideal candidate for paying it off. One way to look at it is that your mortgage offers you a place to 'invest' at a fixed 2-7/8% rate. ""I'd really like to not have a house payment"" is all I need to hear.  The flip side is the lecture that talks about long term market returns, the fact that the combination of your deductible mortgage, but 15% cap gain rate means you need 2.5% return to break even, and odds are pretty high that will occur over the next 15 years. ""pretty high"" does not equal ""guaranteed"". And I won't debate the value of sleeping soundly vs an excess 5-8% return on this money that you'd maybe achieve.  You haven't missed anything. In fact, though I advocate saving first, you are already doing that. This is above and beyond. Good work."


I wish I could remember the name of that book, it was really good, but it mentioned this as well. It said, if you can get them, get what ever ancillary rights you can and they used Star Wars as the prime example why.