"Its not for US citizens - its for US residents. If the US considers you as a tax resident - you'll be treated the same as a US citizen, regardless of your immigration status. The question is very unclear, since it is not mentioned whether your US sourced income ""from the Internet"" is sales in the US, sales on-line, services you provide, investments, or what else. All these are treated differently. For some kinds of US-sourced income you should have paid taxes in the US already, regardless of where you physically reside. For others - not. In any case, if you become US tax resident, you'll be taxed on your worldwide income, not only the $10K deposited in the US bank account. ALL of your income, everywhere in the world, must be declared to the US government and will be taxed. You should seek professional advice, before you move to the US, in order to understand your responsibilities, liabilities and rights. I suggest looking for a EA/CPA licensed in California and experienced with taxation of foreigners (look for someone in the SF or LA metropolitan areas). Keep in mind that there may be a tax treaty between the US and your home country that may affect your Federal (but not California) taxes."


>where does Keynesian economics say that there is no demand?  Keynesian economists, like Paul Krugman, say so.  If the correct application of Keynesian economics says the US has insufficient demand, while the country's balance of payments has a deficit of several hundred billion dollars a year, then the theory is seriously wrong. OTOH, if there is no lack of demand while unemployment is high then the theory is also wrong.  Where is the right interpretation of Keynesian economics that would account for both a sluggish economy and a big balance of payments deficit?  The only explanation I can imagine is that production costs are too high.


So. You might be looking at the world of investing after tax deductions are gone. Buy index funds, or a few stable stocks of your choice. (Index funds have minimal turnover, so you won't realize as many uncontrollable tax events throughout the year). The top long-term capital gains rate is presently 15% (will it go up to 20% soon? who knows! it might. That's up to Congress and Obama, really.) If you can control when you realize it (say, in a year when you don't have a lot of other income) the tax consequences aren't toooo horrible. (It also helps if you live in a state that doesn't tax the gains themselves, e.g. not California?) Or buy real estate, if you don't own the house where you live already (and your lifestyle permits). You shouldn't expect impressive capital appreciation, but you don't have to pay tax on the imputed rent (the rent money you avoid paying by owning the place yourself).


"The two questions inherent in any decision to purchase an insurance plan is, ""how likely am I to need it?"", and ""what's the worst case scenario if I don't have it?"". The actuary that works for the insurance company is asking these same questions from the other end (with the second question thus being ""what would we be expected to have to pay out for a claim""), using a lot of data about you and people like you to arrive at an answer. It really boils down to little more than a bet between you and the insurance company, and like any casino, the insurer has a house edge. The question is whether you think you'll beat that edge; if you're more likely than the insurer thinks you are to have to file a claim, then additional insurance is a good bet. So, the reasons you might decide against getting umbrella insurance include: Your everyday liability is low - Most people don't live in an environment where the ""normal"" insurance they carry won't pay for their occasional mistakes or acts of God. The scariest one for most is a car accident, but when you think of all the mistakes that have to be made by both sides in order for you to burn through the average policy's liability limits and still be ruined for life, you start feeling better. For instance, in Texas, minimum insurance coverage levels are 50/100/50; assuming neither party is hurt but the car is a total loss, your insurer will pay the fair market value of the car up to $50,000. That's a really nice car, to have a curbside value of 50 grand; remember that most cars take an initial hit of up to 25% of their sticker value and a first year depreciation of up to 50%. That 50 grand would cover an $80k Porsche 911 or top-end Lexus ES, and the owner of that car, in the U.S. at least, cannot sue to recover replacement value; his damages are only the fair market value of the car (plus medical, lost wages, etc, which are covered under your two personal injury liability buckets). If that's a problem, it's the other guy's job to buy his own supplemental insurance, such as gap insurance which covers the remaining payoff balance of a loan or lease above total loss value. Beyond that level, up into the supercars like the Bentleys, Ferraris, A-Ms, Rollses, Bugattis etc, the drivers of these cars know full well that they will never get the blue book value of the car from you or your insurer, and take steps to protect their investment. The guys who sell these cars also know this, and so they don't sell these cars outright; they require buyers to sign ""ownership contracts"", and one of the stipulations of such a contract is that the buyer must maintain a gold-plated insurance policy on the car. That's usually not the only stipulation; The total yearly cost to own a Bugatti Veyron, according to some estimates, is around $300,000, of which insurance is only 10%; the other 90% is obligatory routine maintenance including a $50,000 tire replacement every 10,000 miles, obligatory yearly detailing at $10k, fuel costs (that's a 16.4-liter engine under that hood; the car requires high-octane and only gets 3 mpg city, 8 highway), and secure parking and storage (the moguls in Lower Manhattan who own one of these could expect to pay almost as much just for the parking space as for the car, with a monthly service contract payment to boot). You don't have a lot to lose - You can't get blood from a turnip. Bankruptcy laws typically prevent creditors from taking things you need to live or do your job, including your home, your car, wardrobe, etc. For someone just starting out, that may be all you have. It could still be bad for you, but comparing that to, say, a small business owner with a net worth in the millions who's found liable for a slip and fall in his store, there's a lot more to be lost in the latter case, and in a hurry. For the same reason, litigious people and their legal representation look for deep pockets who can pay big sums quickly instead of $100 a month for the rest of their life, and so very few lawyers will target you as an individual unless you're the only one to blame (rare) or their client insists on making it personal. Most of your liability is already covered, one way or the other - When something happens to someone else in your home, your homeowner's policy includes a personal liability rider. The first two ""buckets"" of state-mandated auto liability insurance are for personal injury liability; the third is for property (car/house/signpost/mailbox). Health insurance covers your own emergency care, no matter who sent you to the ER, and life and AD&D insurance covers your own death or permanent disability no matter who caused it (depending on who's offering it; sometimes the AD&D rider is for your employer's benefit and only applies on the job). 99 times out of 100, people just want to be made whole when it's another Average Joe on the other side who caused them harm, and that's what ""normal"" insurance is designed to cover. It's fashionable to go after big business for big money when they do wrong (and big business knows this and spends a lot of money insuring against it), but when it's another little guy on the short end of the stick, rabidly pursuing them for everything they're worth is frowned on by society, and the lawyer virtually always walks away with the lion's share, so this strategy is self-defeating for those who choose it; no money and no friends. Now, if you are the deep pockets that people look for when they get out of the hospital, then a PLP or other supplemental liability insurance is definitely in order. You now think (as you should) that you're more likely to be sued for more than your normal insurance will cover, and even if the insurance company thinks the same as you and will only offer a rather expensive policy, it becomes a rather easy decision of ""lose a little every month"" or ""lose it all at once""."


"That's definitely a good point; thanks for noting that. Leverage was definitely an issue.  Re: the ratings agencies, I just wanted to clarify that I was talking about something a bit different than the problem of ""ratings shopping"" (I assume this is what you meant what you mentioned the ratings agencies ""capitulating"").   ""Ratings shopping"" is essentially the tendency for a ""race to the bottom"" in ratings when banks pay for ratings. That has always been an issue for the ratings agencies since the 1970s (I think?) when they started having the rated entities pay for their ratings.   What I was talking about is more unique to the structured products industry in the mid-2000s -- i.e. how the ratings agencies gave banks an opportunity for essentially risk-less profit by merely repackaging MBSs into CDOs. So banks would buy up MBSs, repackage them into CDOs, sell shares of the CDOs to investors, and then hedge all of the residual risk away by writing a CDS contract with a monoline insurer like AIG. This has more to do with the relationship *between* ratings for different products, and not the absolute ""level"" of the ratings for any given product.  Sorry if that sounds nit-picky, but I think it's an extremely important detail that is generally lost upon -- as you pointed out -- economists who are pushing the ""ratings shopping"" theory. I would guess this is because moral hazard is a story they are already familiar with."


"> Ok, should I have been more specific in saying monetary assets?   No, the difference isn't really that important.  >Also, why would a 100% marginal tax be required?   Because otherwise you ""demonstration"" numbers will always diverge mathematically.  >taxation on the 1% being one of them  The 1% pays almost half of all income tax. That's more than the bottom 95% combined. What do you want to happen here?"


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-netflix-debt-spending-20170729-story.html) reduced by 95%. (I'm a bot) ***** > For the year, the stock is up nearly 50%. It closed Friday at $184.04, up $1.36 or 0.74%. But some industry experts are warning of a Netflix bubble that may burst if the company fails to produce enough hit series to keep attracting new subscribers.  > Some of the best-known shows on Netflix aren&#039;t made by Netflix.  > While Netflix continues to outspend competitors, industry watchers debate what type of content Netflix should be splurging on - prestige projects or blockbuster movies? Thought-provoking documentaries or more Adam Sandler comedies?   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6r4sym/notflix_is_20_billion_in_debt_guess_maybe_they/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~181342 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*: **Netflix**^#1 **more**^#2 **year**^#3 **company**^#4 **shows**^#5"


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The first thing I would try is to take out a loan from a local credit union. If you don't know of any that you're eligible for, start looking at the National Credit Union Administration's Credit Union Locator. You should be able to get a good rate since your credit is so good. If for whatever reason you can't get the credit union loan, I would open another credit card. Try hard to get the loan though, because using a credit card will most likely be significantly more expensive. If you can't cover your cash-only expenses with cash you already have, make sure that you can get cash from the card. For example, one of my cards regularly sends me checks that I could write to myself to get cash, but be careful with this strategy. Usually the interest is much higher than normal purchases. Either way, until you've paid off this emergency debt and built up an emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses, cut your expenses as much as possible. This Experian article has some good tips:


It's not just salary. I went through university during the dot com bubble and graduated in 2002 into a brutal job market. Programmers took it in the chin during the recession, especially in the areas that now have high demand again, and then suffered through a decade of outsourcing fads where programming and IT were the number one targets. CS enrolment at almost every university plummeted, often by 50% or more. It's only been in the last few years that the job market for programmers has recovered, and only then in very specific regions.  Is it any wonder that people are still gun-shy about going into CS? The current demand for programmers is largely driven by bubble investment in social media startups, which is itself driven by huge amounts of capital looking for high returns in a post-2008 environment of low interest rates. It's not hard to imagine another collapse and a return to the mass firings and outsourcing of the early 2000s. Not to mention that the average career in programming is something like fifteen years...  The athletic analogy isn't a bad one. It's a good paying job right now, but there's an insane amount of risk and stress involved in being a programmer at one of these high-paying companies.


"As others have pointed out, it's all about a fixed, small cost versus the potential of a large cost. If you have insurance, you know you will pay a fixed amount per month. There is a 100% probability that you will have to pay this premium. If you don't have insurance, there is a large chance that you will have no cost in any given month, and a small chance that you will have a large cost. Like my home-owners insurance costs me about $50 per month. If I didn't have insurance and my house burned down, I would be out something like $100,000. What's the chance that my house will burn down this month? Very small. But I'd rather pay $50 and not have to worry about it. On the other hand, I just bought a filing cabinet for $160 and the store offered me an ""extended warranty"" for something like $20 a year. What's the probability that some accident will happen that damages my filing cabinet? Pretty small. Even if it did, I think I could handle shelling out $160. I can imagine my stomach in knots and lying awake at nights worrying about the possibility of losing $100,000 or finding myself homeless. I can't imagine lying awake at nights worrying about losing $160 or being force to stuff my files under the bed. I'll take my chances. When I was young and had even less money than I have now, I bought cars that cost me a thousand dollars or. Even poor as I was, I knew that if the car was totaled I could dig up the cash to buy another. It wasn't worth paying the insurance premium. These days I'm driving a car that cost me $6,000. I have collision and comprehensive insurance, but I think it's debatable. I bought the car with cash to begin with, and if I had to I could scrape up the cash to replace it. Especially considering that my last payment for my daughter's college tuition is due next month and then that expense is gone. :-)"


"ASSUMING a person knows how to use and invest their money wisely, would it still be a bad idea to entirely disregard a 401k plan? Yes. A 401k, like an IRA, is a ""qualified plan"" and as such enjoys certain legal protections.  For a Roth 401k, the taxes are paid now and the interest accumulates tax free, and withdrawals will be tax-free. Doing it on your own means that your own savings will have interest taxed as you earn it.  For a traditional 401k, current savings are deducted from current earnings, and the withdrawals will be taxed. Doing it on your own loses the deferral of tax at this time.   Generally, 401ks and IRAs are highly resistant to judgements in civil lawsuits. If you file for bankruptcy protection at any time in your working career, the assets in these accounts are immune (in most states) from being used to pay off your creditors. If you do it on your own, that savings account will be emptied to pay off creditors in bankruptcy and also will be assets that can be taken from you in civil judgements (for example, you get in a car accident and they sue you). You might never be sued, nor file bankruptcy in your entire life, but you are unnecessarily exposing yourself to risks: anything might happen in the next 50 years. What you will lose in such circumstances far outweighs any perceived benefits you could possibly earn by rolling your own. If you are the sort of person who can max out your 401k and IRA contributions each year, and still have a significant sum to set aside for savings, you should contact an investment advisor and attorney to see about protecting your assets."


Well of course, you can protect accute effects toward the environment, but the nature of private business is that you can't lead on a collective action problem like carbon emissions, you need a political solution. I think people overestimate how much business dominates politics. The politicians still have to answer to constituents who are basically screaming to be the most extreme. If business really dominated as much as everyone likes to say, immigration reform would have been done years ago.


Opening Bank Account in US without physically being present is difficult. I'm having number of clients in USA to pay for my work, but I’m really confused to get money from my clients to my saving bank account. You can get money via PayPal or if they are repeat customers, ask them to send via remittance services like Money2India or Remit2India etc.


You should add it to all the other income and continue paying taxes as you would on your Irish salary. That is true for both the US and the Irish sides of the equation. In case you didn't know - your Irish earnings are taxable in the US, since the US taxes all of your income. Your Amazon.com earnings are taxable in Ireland since that's where you earned it. You can use the FEIE/FTC as appropriate on your US tax return to reduce your tax liability, but all of your income should be reported.


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"In financial markets, the gains you can expect to make (whether in the form of dividends or capital gains) correspond to the risks you are bearing.  There are a variety of REITs but you can expect to make only as much money in them as you bear risk (meaning you can also lose a lot of money in the ones that earn a lot).  In that sense they are just like other financial assets like stocks. If you are generically trying to increase your wealth by bearing risk, you can get a better risk/reward ratio in a fully diversified portfolio including stocks and bonds as well and REITs.  ""Passive income"" means making money by bearing risk.  REITs alone, without diversifying into other financial assets, do a poor job of generating income for the amount of risk you bear. So why are REITs not very comparable to buying a house and renting it out?  Because in the latter case you are being paid not only for bearing the risk of the house depreciating but also you are being compensated for the work you do as a landlord.  Moreover, because the house doesn't trade in a liquid market like REITs do, it is possible to actually get a good deal, as opposed to the fair deal you will get on a REIT. TL;DR: The ""passive income"" generated by REIT investment is more similar to generic equity/bond investment than it is to an investment in a physical home that you rent out.  If what you want is to make money without doing anything besides bear risk, you should invest in a fully diversified portfolio of financial assets (equity and bonds being the primary constituents but REITs potentially being a part as well)."


Be proud of yourself. You are far ahead of your peers when it comes to entrepreneurship. Im not really in the realm of programming, but i do have a book you should highly read to help.  How to win friends and influence others by dale carnegie. One of warren buffets favorite books.


> All of the products that are replacing them by this analysis are more expensive, which indicates they're probably capturing a different sector of the market.  They're probably segmenting the market, not capturing a different market.  When I would have gone to Burger King in the past, I now go to a gourmet burger joint.


"The main villain in Robin Hood is the Sheriff of Nottingham who is referred to as a ""tax collector"".  It was most certainly a government that Robin Hood was stealing from.  Robin Hood never stole money from private citizens.  He didn't steal from rich shop owners, or farmers, etc.  He stole exclusively from the local government, who kept raising taxes."


> earn over 100k a year and they are not even execs  You realize that power transmission and distribution can't be done without electrical engineers right? I don't know about the lunch breaks, but that salary is typical.


If this will be your sole income for the year, going self-employed is the best way to do this: So, here's how to go at it: Total cash in: £2000 Total Tax paid: £0 Admin overhead: approx 3 hours. Legit: 100%   :) Edit:  Can you tell me that in my case what are the required fields on the invoice? If you're non-VAT registered, there are no legal requirements as to what information you need to put on the invoice -it literally can be a couple of numbers on a napkin, and still be legit.  With that said, to make a professional appearance, my invoices are usually structured as follows: Left side: ( Sidenote: why client-specific incremental numbering? Why, so they can't make educated guesses to the number of clients I have at any given time :)  ) Right side: Center table: And so far, none of my clients missed any fields, so this should have everything they need to :) Hope this helps, but keep in mind, all of the above is synthetic sugar on the top -ultimately,  the relationship you share with your Clients is the thing you will (or will not) get paid for! Edit#2: The voices in my head just pointed out, that I've totally omitted National Insurance contributions in the above. However, and I quote HMRC: If your profits are expected to be less than £5,315 you may not have to pay Class 2 National Insurance contributions. Hence, this won't change the numbers above, either -just make sure to point this out during your registration in the office.


Your plan will work to increase your total credit capacity (good for your credit score) and reduce your utilization (also good).  As mentioned, you will need to be careful to use these cards periodically or they will get closed, but it will work. The question is whether this will help you or not.  In addition to credit capacity and utilization, your credit score looks at things like These factors may hurt you as you continue to open accounts.  You can easily get to the stage where your score is not benefitting much from increased capacity and it is getting hurt a lot by pulls and low average age. BTW you are correct that closing accounts generally hurts your score.  It probably reduces average age, may reduce maximum age, reduces your capacity, and increases your utilization.


"The fact that dividends grow in perpetuity does not prevent one from calculating duration.  In fact, many academic papers look at exactly this problem, such as Lewin and Satchell.  This Wilmott thread discusses some of the pros and cons of the concept in some detail. PS: Although I was already broadly familiar with the literature and I use the duration of equities in some of my every-day work as a professional working in finance, I found the links above doing a simple google search for ""equity duration."""


Gentlemen, you're probably wondering why I've called you all together today.   Edit: seriously,  if what you said isn't sufficient (and it sounds like it should be) ask if you're needed for anything else, thank all parties for joining the call, say good day. You can let them know where to reach you if needed. Source: years of professional phone work.


Okay, I think I managed to find the precise answer to this problem! It involves solving a non-linear exponential equation, but I also found a good approximate solution using the truncated Taylor series. See below for a spreadsheet you can use. Let's start by defining the growth factors per period, for money in the bank and money invested:   Now, let S be the amount ready to be invested after n+1 periods; so the first of that money has earned interest for n periods. That is,  The key step to solve the problem was to fix the total number of periods considered. So let's introduce a new variable: t = the total number of time periods elapsed So if money is ready to invest every n+1 periods, there will be t/(n+1) separate investments, and the future value of the investments will be:  This formula is exact in the case of integer t and n, and a good approximation when t and n are not integers. Substituting S, we get the version of the formula which explicitly depends on n:  Fortunately, only a couple of terms in FV depend on n, so we can find the derivative after some effort:  Equating the derivative to zero, we can remove the denominator, and assuming t is greater than zero, we can divide by the constant ( 1-G t ):  To simplify the equation, we can define some extra constants:    Then, we can define a function f(n) and write the equation as:  Note that α, β, γ, G, and R are all constant. From here there are two options: Use Newton's method or another numerical method for finding the positive root of f(n). This can be done in a number of software packages like MATLAB, Octave, etc, or by using a graphics calculator. Solve approximately using a truncated Taylor series polynomial. I will use this method here. The Taylor series of f(n), centred around n=0, is:  Truncating the series to the first three terms, we get a quadratic polynomial (with constant coefficients):  Using R, G, α, β and γ defined above, let c0, c1 and c2 be the coefficients of the truncated Taylor series for f(n):    Then,  n should be rounded to the nearest whole number. To be certain, check the values above and below n using the formula for FV. Using the example from the question: For example, I might put aside $100 every week to invest into a stock   with an expected growth of 9% p.a., but brokerage fees are $10/trade.   For how many weeks should I accumulate the $100 before investing, if I   can put it in my high-interest bank account at 4% p.a. until then? Using Newton's method to find roots of f(n) above, we get n = 14.004. Using the closed-form approximate solution, we get n = 14.082. Checking this against the FV with t = 1680 (evenly divisible by each n + 1 tested): Therefore, you should wait for n = 14 periods, keeping that money in the bank, investing it together with the money in the next period (so you will make an investment every 14 + 1 = 15 weeks.) Here's one way to implement the above solution with a spreadsheet. StackExchange doesn't allow tables in their syntax at this time, so I'll show a screenshot of the formulae and columns you can copy and paste: Formulae:  Copy and paste column A: Copy and paste column B: Results:  Remember, n is the number of periods to accumulate money in the bank. So you will want to invest every n+1 weeks; in this case, every 15 weeks.


"Obviously you have done well financially in order to be able to purchase a condo for cash, presumably, without risk of your other obligations.  To put things in perspective, we are probably talking about less than $5,000 in tax savings.   If she is on the title then she is a co-owner.  Are you okay with that?  You would essentially be giving this child a 50% stake in a property without compensation.  Will your other children be okay with it? As your question stated you would prefer to not have her as an owner.  However, is it better to not have her as an owner, So I would buy the condo without her on the title and just pay the extra $100 per month in property tax.  It is probably ""small potatoes"" in comparison to your net worth. I would also only charge her at most your cost of carrying the property as rent.  While you will create income all of it (and probably more) could be written off as costs.  There should be no income tax burden created from this situation.  Your accountant can help with any paperwork that needs to be filed."


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sell drugs? (joking)  In all seriousness though, your options to legally invest this money are limited, which leaves you to extra-legal options..... which many young people engage, different kind of candy I guess.   Ok so you cannot invest into stocks, to day trade. Because you're not an adult.  You can put the money in a bank, but the interest rate on that amount of money is in the realm of ~0.1%.  You can use the money to seed another legal business venture, say another kind of better candy.    My advice is to get a parental unit to put the cash into a mutual fund, in your name... then hand that over to you when you turn 18.


That's pretty fucking cool. While this plant had DCS (and triconex for the really important shit like Fire & Gas), it didn't order spare parts for them. How cool!   So what you're saying is that those high-paid procurement guys are next on the chopping block, hmm?


In most cases my preference would be to buy. However, if you intend to sell after just one year I would maybe lean towards renting. You haven't included buying and selling cost into your equation nor any property taxes, and as John Bensin suggests, maintenance costs. If you were looking to hold the property for at least 5 years, 10 years or more, then if the numbers stood up, I would defiantly go with the buy option. You can rent it out after you move out and if the rent is higher than your total expenses in holding the property, you could rely on some extra passive income.


The fact that a lawsuit has been filed is not ipso facto evidence of wrongdoing. BoA has a lot of ugliness yet un-accounted-for, but escrowing insurance and taxes is 100% standard practice, to the point where you cannot get a conventional mortgage that *doesn't* escrow that stuff.   **NO** bank will give or carry a conventional home-loan *without* escrowing taxes and insurance. If you have a conventional mortgage, your insurance and tax payments are made by the mortgager whether or not you pay, because the bank doesn't want the house (their collateral) repo'd or destroyed due to lack of a $100 insurance/tax payment.   To the point, no bank in 2011 wants *more* foreclosed homes on their books. Banks *lose* money in foreclosure. The thesis that BoA conspired to get a bigger portfolio of underwater homes defies sanity.   Just because BoA robbed a liquor store doesn't mean that they also molested children and killed JFK. There might be a colossal paperwork snafu here that BoA has to make right, but that can be unwound. But the narrative that BoA was gaming the paperwork to get a higher ratio of foreclosures on their books doesn't make sense.


Ask yourself a better question: Under my current investment criteria would I buy the stock at this price? If the answer to that question is yes you need to work out at what price you would now sell out of the position. Think of these as totally separate decisions from your original decisions to buy and at what price to sell. If you would buy the stock now if you didn't already hold a position then you should keep that position as if you had sold out at the price that you had originally seen as your take profit level and bought a new position at the current price without incurring the costs. If you would not buy now by those criteria then you should sell out as planned. This is essentially netting off two investing decisions. Something to think about is that the world has changed and if you knew what you know now then you would probably have set your price limit higher. To be disciplined as an investor also means reviewing current positions frequently and without any sympathy for past decisions.


A simple example - When looking at oil trading in different locations first I have some back of the envelop adjustments for the grade of oil, then look at storage costs (irrelevant in the case of electricity) and transport costs between two locations to see if physical players are actively arbing the spread.   No strong views on reading material in this specific area - Google, google scholar and amazon all have relevant material.  When it comes to your current problem, here are some questions to think about:  1. Is the power generated from the same commodity at location A and location W?   2. How has the spread changed in the past? Has trading location W actively hedged the worst cases of prices moves in location A?   3. Is it feasible to trade the commodity that location A generates the majority of its power from/how does that compare to electricity trading at location W as a hedge?  4. If hedging is really desirable, are you sure you can't do an illiquid over the counter hedge at location A? Paying a little bit more in the bid/ask for the hedge could be more desirable than trying to jump into a market you yourselves don't quite understand.  5. If your consultants come back with just some hedge ratios without discussing what drives the spreads between the two locations and where the spreads are currently be skeptical.


What benefit vs. what cost? Benefit - none that I can think of. Cost - massive. Every system that handles money would need to re-value overnight, every store would need to re-price. In many ways it would be simpler and maybe even cheaper to introduce a new currency.


The capital gains is counted towards your income. If you cash out 1 Million dollars, you have a 1 Million dollar income for that year, which puts you at the 39.6% tax bracket. However, because that 1 Million dollars is all long term capital gains, you will only have to pay 20% of it in long term capital gains taxes. The best you can do is to cash the 1 Million dollars through several years instead of just all at once. This will put in a lower tax bracket and thus will pay lower capital gains tax.


Upstream is into businesses that supply the original business; downstream is into businesses that make use of the original product.  So in that description, what they are saying is that the original business received products from plantations and sent products to manufacturing. This is also called vertical integration.  Meaning that they are diversifying along their supply chain so that they control more of it.  This is in contrast with horizontal integration, where they move into new products that either compete with the existing products or which are entirely separate.   In general, the upside of vertical integration is that a company is less reliant on suppliers (and intermediate consumers) and has more control over its supply chain.  The downside is that they have less opportunity to partner with other companies in the same supply chain, as they compete with them.  Some companies are better at managing to do both.  For example, Amazon.com has integrated fulfillment and sales.  But partners can still do their own fulfillment and/or sales, choosing how much to send out to Amazon.   If you are investing in individual stocks, integrated companies can be problematic in that they cut across diversification areas.  So they can be harder to balance with other stocks.  You can either buy plantations, transport, and manufacturing together or not buy at all.  If your investment strategy says to increase plantations and reduce manufacturing, this can be difficult to implement with an integrated company.  Of course, everyone else has the same problem, which can lead to integrated companies being undervalued.  So they may be an opportunity as a value stock.


"Your question was about recharacterizing. But then you said ""I contributed a few thousand dollars to my 401(k) as Roth contributions"" which means you never converted from a 401(k) to a Roth 401(k), the deposit was always Roth.  Even if the law changes allowing the recharacterization, it would not apply to your situation."


"From the bank's perspective, they are offering a service and within their rights to charge appropriately for that service. Depending on the size of their operation, they may have considerable overhead costs that they need to recoup one way or another to continue operating (profitably, they hope). Traditionally, banks would encourage you to save with them by offering interest growth on your deposits. Meanwhile they would invest your (and all of their customer's) funds in securities or loans to other patrons that they anticipate will generate income for them at a faster rate than the interest they pay back to you. These days however, this overly simplified model is relatively insignificant in consumer banking. Instead, they've found they can make a lot more profit by simply charging fees for the handling of your funds, and when they want to loan money to consumers they just borrow from a central bank. What this means is that the size of your balance (unless abnormally huge) is of little interest to a branch manager - it doesn't generate revenue for them much faster than a tiny balance with the same number of transactions would. To put it simply, they can live without you, and your threatening to leave, even if you follow through, is barely going to do anything to their bottom line. They will let you. If you DO have an abnormally huge balance, and it's all in a simple checking or savings account, then it might make them pause for thought. But if that's true then frankly you're doing banking wrong and should move those funds somewhere where they can work harder for you in terms of growth. They might even suggest so themselves and direct you to one of their own ""personal wealth managers""."


"I assume you've no debt - if you do then pay that off. I'd be tempted to put the money into property.  If you look at property prices over the past 20 years or so, you can see returns can be very good.  I bought a house in 1998 and sold it in 2003 for about 110% of the purchase price.  Disclaimer, past performance is no guarantee of future returns! It's a fairly low risk option, property prices appear to be rising currently and it's always good to get your foot on the housing ladder as quickly as you can as prices can rise to the stage where even those earning quite a good salary cannot afford to buy. Of course you don't have to live in the house, a rental income can be very handy without tying you down too much. There are plenty of places in the UK where £60k will buy you a reasonable property with a rental income of £400-£500, it doens't have to be near where you live currently. Just to put a few more figures in - if you get a house for £50k and rent it for £400 a month (perfectly feasible where I live) then that's very close to a 10% return year on year.  Plus any gains made by the price of the house. The main downside is you won't have easy access to the money and you will have to look after a tenant if you decide to rent it out.  Also if you do buy a property make sure it is in a good state of repair, you don't want to have to pay for a new roof for example in a couple of years time. Ideally you would then sell the house around the time property prices peak and buy another when they bottom out again.  Not easy to judge though! I'd review the Trust Fund against others if you decide to keep it there as 12% over 6 years isn't great, although the stock market has been depressed so it may compare favouribly. Keep some ""rainy day"" money spare if you can."


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-01/failing-nuclear-power-is-good-for-coal-bad-for-earth) reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Scana Corp. announced Monday it will stop construction on a nuclear power plant in South Carolina-one of two in development in the U.S. Project costs ballooned in recent years, and the decision should eventually save electricity customers $7 billion.  > &quot;Without an aggressive build-out of nuclear power, climate goals are still attainable, but at much greater expense,&quot; according to Jeffrey Sachs, the economist and director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which co-leads the Deep Decarbonization effort.  > A magic wand solving the cost problems would still leave the problem of waste, and give policymakers a choice between nuclear waste-deadly but concentrated poison that lasts thousands of years-and fossil-fuel waste-invisible, diffuse carbon pollution that in sufficient amounts will transform the Earth for thousands of years.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6r4sp7/failing_nuclear_power_is_good_for_coal_bad_for/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~181341 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*: **nuclear**^#1 **cost**^#2 **more**^#3 **year**^#4 **U.S.**^#5"


Most bank bill pay services will work for this purpose. Generally you can pay any person or business that has a valid address. As an added Paypal will no longer take ~3% of the money.


Maybe I can explain a little clearer: Your LLC is not a person, and cannot have taxes withheld on its behalf. Therefore, anyone paying your company should not withhold taxes. If they are paying you directly, and withholding taxes, they are treating you as an employee, and will probably issue a W2 instead of a 1099.  Put it this way: Your LLC is a separate company providing services to that company. They shouldn't withhold taxes any more than they would when paying their ISP, or power company.


There ain't no such thing as a free lunch! It has always been the case that the only way to talk to a human is to pay (because the human needs a salary), but the only difference is that in the past the cost was obscured to you because it was bundled in with the cost of the primary product or service. Now they're unbundling it so you see it as a separate cost. This is actually a good idea in my opinion.


Now if only they would release an operating system that wasn't trash so I can update my win 7 system.   Many of their core businesses are neglected, office and OS, they need to have a few people doing good stuff there.


But you don't know the facts and details. They used to have more than 7,000 employees, right now they're at about 6,500.   Companies lay off thousands of people all the time. It could happen very easily. Or what about bringing in temporary, staffing agency or different classed workers to avoid these liabilties? All of these things are possible!  This whole issue around this guy's memo is WAYYYY oversimplified by his critics, who don't know the details.   >AKA: they still have an incentive to grow, you can still make more money by growing a slight increase in taxes doesn't change that  Because business is GREAT, right? The consumer and retail sectors ARENT suffering in the toilet? The whole economy is flourishing!  Reality check: Luxury items like timeshares are NOT in great demand. I would expect his revenue, profits and growth to be completely flat or negative over the short to medium term.  Companies don't just think about the next 90 days, or 1 year or 3 years, this effects their 5-10 year plans. Considering most wage earners live paycheck to paycheck and have very little in the way of savings it doesn't suprise me they don't appreciate companies who MUST do this to survive or risk running out of capital and going bankrupt.


"Yeah, I'll take the challenge...:) How trustworthy these are and what are their sources of income? These are in fact two separate questions, but the answers are related. How trustworthy? As trustworthy as they're clear about their own sources of income. If you cannot find any clue as to why, what for and how they're paying you - you probably should walk away. What's too good to be true usually is indeed too good to be true. For those of the sites that I know of their sources of income, it is usually advertisements and surveys. To get paid, you have to watch advertisements and/or answer surveys. I know of some sites who are legit, and pay people (not money, but gift cards, airline miles, etc) for participating in surveys. My own HMO (Kaiser in California) in fact pays (small amounts) to members who participate in enough surveys, so its legit. Are these sites worthwhile to consider for extra income? Not something you could live off, but definitely can get you enough gift cards for your weekly trip to Starbucks. What do I need to consider tax wise? Usually the amounts are very low, and are not paid in cash. While it is income, I doubt the IRS will chase you if you don't report the $20 Amazon gift card you got from there. It should, strictly speaking, be reported (probably as hobby income) on your tax return. Most people don't bother dealing with such small amounts though. In some cases (like the HMO I mentioned), its basically a rebate of the money paid (you pay your copays, deductibles etc. Since the surveys are only for members, you basically get your money back, not additional income). This is in fact similar to credit card rebates. Is there a best practice for handling the income? If we're talking about significant amounts (more than $20-30 a year), then you need to keep track of the income and related expenses, and report it as any other business income on your taxes, Schedule C. Is there a good test to determine what is and isn't a scam? As I said - if it looks too good to be true - it most likely is. If you're required to provide your personal/financial information without any explanation as to why, what it will be used for, and why and what for you're going to be paid - I'd walk away. Otherwise, you can also check Internet reviews, BBB ratings, FTC information and the relevant state agencies and consumer watchdogs (for example: http://www.scamadviser.com) whether they've heard of that particular site, and what is the information they have on it. A very good sign for a scam is contact information. Do they have a phone number to call to? Is it in your own country? If its not in your own country - definitely go away (for example the original link that was in the question pointed to a service whose phone number is in the UK, but listed address is in Los Angeles, CA. A clear sign of a scam). If they do have a phone number - try it, talk to them, call several times and see how many different people you're going to talk to. If its always the same person - run and hide. Do they have an address? If not - walk away. If they do - look it up. Is it a PMB/POB? A ""virtual"" office? Or do they have a proper office set up, which you can see on the map and in the listings as their office? And of course your guts. If your guts tell you its a scam - it very likely is."


holy Toledo...I agree  > Stop glamorizing entrepreneurship. Stop thinking that business is all about funding rounds, huge, fancy offices and happy teams, 7-figure sums on the bank accounts, freedom, and fame. Because it is not  too bad you have to read to paragraph 7 to get there / start content


Ad Hominem isn't meant to apply to every comment about the speaker, it's meant to apply to situations where someone argues 'he must be wrong because of who's speaking'.  In this case, crazymunch is just raising the point that we should be aware that bezos has conflicting/contradictory statements, according to who he's talking to.  You can't be both down on patents *and* vigorously defending your own dubious patent.


"You are right in insisting upon a proper B2B contract in any business relationship. You wish to reduce your risk and be compensated fairly. In addition to the cost and complexity of international wire transfers, the US companies may also be considering the fact that as an international contractor in a relatively hard-to-reach jurisdiction, payments to you place the company at higher risk than payments to a domestic contractor. By insisting upon PayPal or similar transmitters, they are reducing their internal complexity and reducing their financial exposure to unfulfilled/disputed contract terms. Therefore, wire payments are ""hard"" in an internal business sense, as well as in a remittance transfer reporting sense. The internal business procedure will likely be the hardest to overcome--changing risk management is harder than filling out forms."


I've sometimes wondered this. It seems like something your agent would deal with and surely be familiar with.  If any of my screenplays get filmed though, I'm going to try and get a cut of the gross if I can. I wonder if some are mad because they didn't fully understand and didn't fight harder for a cut, since .001% of the gross is better than 5% of the net.


The payer system doesn't matter when the health care industry is being massively demand side subsidized year after year primarily by Medicaid and Medicare. It's econ 101 that massively demand side subsidizing an industry drives up prices, but too many pockets are being filled by the subsidization, so this point is not emphasized.


It seems that you are misunderstanding how your taxes are calculated. You seem to be under the impression that once you pass $37,450 annual income, ALL of your income will be taxed at 25%. However, in reality, only the income you earn above that amount will be taxed at 25%. You can use this chart to determine exactly how much federal tax you will pay;  As you can see, if you earned, $37,500 in a year, you would only be charged 25% taxes on $50 (and you will pay 15% on the amount between $9226 and $37450, and 10% on the amount from $0 to $9225, which is $5126.25 when summed together).


"The term you're looking for is yield (though it's defined the other way around from your ""payout efficiency"", as dividend / share price, which makes no substantive difference). You're simply saying that you want to buy high-yield shares, which is a common investment strategy. But you have to consider that often a high-yielding share has a reason for the high yield. You probably don't want to buy shares in a company whose current yield is 10% but will go into liquidation next year."


These are two rather distinct questions; only one of which is relevant to a Money web site. In general, the investment is questionable.  Leaving aside the green feel-good factor, you need to look at a total cost of ownership (TCO) and payback on the asset.  Neither is cheap as such.  There are DIY windmill plans, but you likely still need a commercial battery charger/inverter/controller setup. Government incentives, depending on where you live, may change the story considerably.  Many jurisdictions around the globe have both incentives to install and then power-feed-in tariffs if you sell back excess power. Your latitude also has an impact on your total available solar energy, along with regular weather patterns for both cloud cover and wind. One of the cheapest solar projects can be hot-water.  Particularly if you have a pool, or even for domestic use, if you use a lot. All that said, given the green feel-good factor, if you want a small set of solar panels and have the space/budget, go ahead!  You can add more later. For the second question: it is indeed possible to live off grid.  Some remote houses do just this, and the methods to accomplish it vary.  The number one thing you need to do is work on a power budget; and be both ruthless as well as realistic.  Fridge, freezer, AC, furnace, plasma TV, etc.  Depending on your climate and preferences, these may not all be possible for an off-grid lifestyle.  (Of course, if you get a propane fridge and have a truck come by once a month, does that count as off-grid?)


Does anyone here have a source to find free PDFs of books related to finance, specifically corporate finance? I would like to truly learn about the subject but all the books I've found so far are too expensive for me to rent.   Alternatively, any other quality sources (doesn't have to be books) about corporate finance for a beginner would be fine as well. Thanks in advance.


I do something pretty simple when figuring 1099 income.  I keep track of my income and deductible expenses on a spreadsheet.  Then I do total income - total expenses * .25. I keep that amount in a savings account ready to pay taxes.   Given that your estimates for the quarterly payments are low then expected, that amount should be more then enough to fully fund those payments.   If you are correct, and they are low, then really what does it matter?  You will have the money, in the bank, to pay what you actually owe to the IRS.


The main reason is that you move from the linear payoff structure to a non-linear one. This is called convexity in finance. With options you can design a payoff structure in almost any way to want it to be. For example you can say that you only want the upside but not the downside, so you buy a call option. It is obvious that this comes at a price, the option premium. Or equivalently you buy the underlying and for risk management reasons buy a put option on top of it as an insurance. The price of the put could be seen as the insurance premium. You can of course combine options in more complicated ways so that you e.g. profit as long as the underlying moves strongly enough in either direction. This is called a straddle.


I don't understand what the conclusion you came to is, as well as how that differs from the economy.  Positions on Immigration policy, NHS, Public Service, and etc. are normally derived from an opinion of how those factors effect the economy and the individuals bottom line. Minimum wage, unemployment, health care, infrastructure, and etc., all have fiscal correlation.  On top of that, I don't really see any conclusion and how that correlates to David Cameron. Maybe I'm showing an inability, but I don't feel like I gathered any information from the article.


I think a large portion of the inequality problem stems from too many people. We've devised a society around protecting people and keeping as many as possible healthy and alive, but don't have the resources to meet their desires, now we face the consequences as people try to buy things that aren't there and fill positions that don't exist.


I personally don't agree with a currency union. I'd rather follow Ireland's example when they gained independence and created the Irish Pound and peg it to Sterling, which they did for over 70 years before transitioning to the Euro.   There isn't any debt to reject or default on.The UK treasury has already assured the debt market that it's 100% responsible for it.  Scotland has no responsibility for taking on any debt, but might/will in response to negotiations and in return for something.   Debt markets will be far more receptive of a country which has 0 government debt. We're not talking South Sudan or a tin pot south american country, we're talking about a mature northern european democratic state.   I should also note, that oil is a bonus, but not a required export. With oil, Scotland has higher revenue per person than the entire UK,  but if it disappeared tomorrow, we're only slightly below the UK average.  [Institute for financial studies.](http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6881)


You can setup your Netgear router manually by using the web address www.routerlogin.net. Type the same in the address bar of the browser window and login using the default username and password. You can change the settings of your router from this administration panel like Parental Controls, Guest Network etc.


"The question isn't ""fair"", it's ""how much do you have to give them in order to get them to trust you with the money for a year rather than doing something else with it, and does that exceed what you are willing/able to give them, and how sure are you that you can either do without the money or find it elsewhere?""  This has to be negotiated. There is no standard answer, since there is no standard company or lender. Heck, even a simple bank loan is a negotiation, though that usually takes the form of shopping around for an acceptable rate and their deciding whether they'll accept you rather than going back and forth on what rate would be the best compromise."


"***@AceCP***  *Twitter Profile:*  >***AceCP***  >[*acecp.com*](http://acecp.com 'url unshortened via longurlplease.com, images rehosted by imgur.com') > >User since: *2011/10/04* > >Location: *No location set.* > >*Ace Content Professionals is focused on Enterprise Content Management technologies and services.* > >Friends: **4** Followers: **6** Listed: **0** Tweets: **22**  *Last tweet/conversation (at time of this comment):*  ***AceCP***:  >&#91;2011/12/21&#93;&#91;16:42:38&#93;  >[&#91;Translate&#93;](http://translate.google.com/#auto|auto|Today I am putting our site up on the different %22social bookmarks%22 Like Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, and Delicious.... http://t.co/qlnw2jdR 'google translate this tweet'): Today I am putting our site up on the different ""social bookmarks"" Like Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, and Delicious.... [*facebook.com*](http://www.facebook.com/AceCP/posts/198042330287208 'url unshortened via longurlplease.com, images rehosted by imgur.com')  [&#91;This comment was posted by a bot&#93;&#91;FAQ&#93;](http://www.reddit.com/help/faqs/tweet_poster 'tweet_poster FAQ')[&#91;Did I get it wrong?&#93;](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=tweet_poster&subject=Error%20Report&message=[Oops!](http://reddit.com/r/business/comments/nledw\)%0d%0dPlease leave the subject and this link unaltered, but feel free to add a description here. 'report an error')"


And the weird shit is that it's actually kind of good thing for the banks to do that.  If there is lot's of money around on people, it means they can invest it on something. That investment helps new businesses to emerge and employ more people.  If there would be less money around, the rich dudes would still invest, but there could not be so much competition in investing, so they could ask for higher interests.   This would mean that the system is rewarding someone more, not because he is taking bigger risks or because he is driving the economy into efficient direction, but because there just happens to be shortage of money.  Does more money imply that more people will invest? Yes, because of inflation they have to invest not to **lose money**. Actually that's why governments maintain inflation, so that people are forced to invest.


While there are plenty of arguments for and against subsidizing public broadcasting groups, with varying degrees of credibility, I think the issue is too small to stress about given the state of other elements of the economy and government. That is, the subsidies given to these groups are so small that the debate seems overblown.


If he moves his 401K to a Roth all in one go, all the money will be considered income for the year he moves it, and he will have to pay taxes on that income.  If he keeps it in his 401K or rolls it into a traditional IRA, he will only pay taxes on the money as he withdraws it. Bottom line, converting to Roth is almost certainly a bad idea.


"I find myself being very skeptical about robotics' use in society. I think robotics will splinter off into many different specifically designed forms. the ""irobot"" dream of a humanoid robot doing all the menial tasks that humans don't want to do will never happen. Instead, there will be robots designed for specific tasks, because that specific design will be better for that purpose than any generally designed robot will. Also, AI will solve most of the use cases that i see robotics used for and it will not require the expensive electronics and manufacturing required."


Trump voters aren’t the bottom 60%...he won every single income bracket $50k and up.   If politicians had not been so hard at work importing another uneducated, unintegrated serf class into the country since the early 90s, this bottom 60% scenario might be more solvable. It’s easier to sustain a nation where only 30% of the citizens are peasants compared to 60%. (A dilemma that’s twice the size.)


**Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies**  Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies is a book written by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras. The first edition of the book was published on October 26, 1994 by HarperBusiness.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/business/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.24


No unemployment has been dropping in Florida. Has nothing to do with trump or his cutting of regulations.  Unemployment is dropping everywhere but to make it seem like some bold moves helped people get jobs in bullshit. The narrative of the article is trash. The point of unemployment going down is correct.


"D should get all the money since he supplied the software and the work. To think A or B deserve anything for a simple""referral"" is reprehensible. Honestly if you don't agree, I suggest you remove all references to the word ""friend"" from the post.  Question to OP: Why do you think you deserve anything?"


I used Pidgin instead of AIM on Windows and Linux, so they weren't even showing me ads on the contact window. The last time I really used AIM was my Verizon Motorola e815 flip phone. I was somehow able to send aim messages that did not count as text messages or data. It made no sense. There were also no ads in the app.


I think it would be a wise move on the part of the 3D printing small businesses if contingency plans were put in place: Plan on alternate locations with backup printers, or better yet, print offsite in several undisclosed locations and employ couriers to transport the parts to the final customer. A dispersed mechanism is much harder to squash, and if a business starts by using satellite printers in the first place it's much easier to bring previously unused resources online in the event of a disruption. Better yet, subcontract the printing to individuals around your area that have the capabilities, giving them a steady stream of income in return for a reduced rate. I anticipate demand for this sort of service will pick up as both variety of materials and performance characteristics of output products improves. This will last until 3D printing is so ubiquitous that Epson and HP are selling units as cheaply as you buy Inkjet printers now. By that time, smart printing services will have figured out alternative ways to stay in business instead of fighting to stay on top just like the older business models they usurped.


There is certainly an obligation in some cases of a company to distribute profit, either as dividend or a stock buy back. Activist investors frequently push for one or the other when a company is doing well - sometimes to the detriment of future growth, in some eyes - and can even file shareholder lawsuits (saying the company is not doing its duty to its shareholders by simply holding onto cash).  Apple famously held out from doing either for years under Steve Jobs, and only in the last few years started doing both - a large dividend and a share buy-back which increases the value of remaining shares (as EPS then goes up with fewer shares out there).  Carl Icahn for example is one of those investors in Apple's case [and in many cases!] who put significant pressure, particularly when they were sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars. Ultimately, a (for-profit) corporation's board is tasked with maximizing its shareholder's wealth; as such, it can buy back shares, pay dividends, sell the company, liquidate the company, or expand the company, at its discretion, so long as it can justify to its shareholders that it is still attempting to maximize the value of their holdings.  Companies in their growth phase often don't return any money and simply reinvest - but the long-term hope is to either return money in the form of dividends on profits, or the sale of the company.


Ryanair pays either your next flight or you get a refund of your booked flight. You also have the right to get a compensation depending on your flight distance. The range is from 250€-400€. Extra transfer costs or additional hotel cost should be covered by Ryanair as well. So go and get your money back!


$100B? Really? Sounds like horseshit.   And China not only is still a developing nation but also is far ahead of us in developing sustainable fuels.   And again, we have zero leverage to force them to even restructure trade deals, let alone a climate deal.   Get a grip on reality.


Great effort on the question. All I can advise is: If paypal does not provide the mapping table (Type, Status, Credit/Debit) you will have to build it up yourself as you go along. I would tackle it this way: Your SQL mapping table has Credit/Debit entries for all knows combinations and the Credit/Debit entry would be -1 for all. Then, as you get a list of transactions you will have to display all possible results to the user who will then tick the correct one (comparing it to the balance). You would store the Credit/Debit entry if it is unique. This way you will learn what the possible combinations are over time. Its a to the nth problem, so maybe start with a small number of transactions first. I expect you can build up pretty quickly. It will be an interesting experiment...


As mentioned, the main advantage of a 15-year loan compared to a 30-year loan is that the 15-year loan should come at a discounted rate.  All things equal, the main advantage of the 30-year loan is that the payment is lower. A completely different argument from what you are hearing is that if you can get a low interest rate, you should get the longest loan possible.  It seem unlikely that interest rates are going to get much lower than they are and it's far more likely that they will get higher.  In 15 years, if interest rates are back up around 6% or more (where they were when I bought my first home) and you are 15 years into a 30 year mortgage, you'll being enjoying an interest rate that no one can get. You need to keep in mind that as the loan is paid off, you will earn exactly 0% on the principal you've paid.  If for some reason the value of the home drops, you lose that portion of the principal.  The only way you can get access to that capital is to sell the house.  You (generally) can't sell part of the house to send a kid to college.  You can take out another mortgage but it is going to be at the current going rate which is likely higher than current rates. Another thing to consider that over the course of 30 years, inflation is going to make a fixed payment cheaper over time.  Let's say you make $60K and you have a monthly payment of $1000 or 20% of your annual income.  In 15 years at a 1% annualized wage growth rate, it will be 17% of your income.  If you get a few raises or inflation jumps up, it will be a lot more than that.  For example, at a 2% annualized growth rate, it's only 15% of your income after 15 years. In places where long-term fixed rates are not available, shorter mortgages are common because of the risk of higher rates later.  It's also more common to pay them off early for the same reason.   Taking on a higher payment to pay off the loan early only really only helps you if you can get through the entire payment and 15 years is still a long way off.  Then if you lose your job then, you only have to worry about taxes and upkeep but that means you can still lose the home.  If you instead take the extra money and keep a rainy day fund, you'll have access to that money if you hit a rough patch.  If you put all of your extra cash in the house, you'll be forced to sell if you need that capital and it may not be at the best time.  You might not even be able to pay off the loan at the current market value. My father took out a 30 year loan and followed the advice of an older coworker to 'buy as much house as possible because inflation will pay for it'.  By the end of the loan, he was paying something like $250 a month and the house was worth upwards of $200K.  That is, his mortgage payment was less than the payment on a cheap car.  It was an insignificant cost compared to his income and he had been able to invest enough to retire in comfort.  Of course when he bought it, inflation was above 10% so it's bit different today but the same concepts still apply, just different numbers.  I personally would not take anything less than a 30 year loan at current rates unless I planned to retire in 15 years.


"The Bank of England will simply increase some numbers in a computer.  It will then buy UK Government Bonds (debt) and other financial assets from their favorite banks and investment firms with the newly created money that they just pulled out of thin air.  It's a win-win-lose.  Your government wins by getting more cash to waste, the elite global bankers win by getting more cash to swim around in, and you lose because the money supply inflates, so the small amount of cash you have now has even less buying power.  It's the perfect scheme for the government and banking elites.  They steal your money from you without you even noticing and just pretend it's a normal part of life.  But I expect all the Krugman worshipers to tell me why I'm wrong, throw around some obscure keyensian terms like ""liquidity trap"", and tell you why this is all good for you and to just shut up, accept it and keep quite."


> Their housing market appears to have really hit rock bottom,  Yep.  We didn't have the bubble of the 200Xs, but we crashed with everyone else.  Want to buy a house in Wayne County, MI?  I've got a good deal for you, 40% off what I paid for it in 2002.


(yes, this should probably be a comment, not an answer ... but it's a bit long). I don't know what the laws are specifically about this, but my grandfather used to be on the board of a company that he helped to found ... and back in the 1980s, there was a period when the stock price suddenly quadrupled One of the officers in the company, knowing that the stock was over-valued, sold around a third of his shares ... and he got investigated for insider trading.  I don't recall if he was ever charged with anything, but there were some false rumors spreading about the company at the time (one was that they had something that you could sprinkle on meat to reduce the cholesterol).  I don't know where the rumors came from, but I've always assumed it was some sort of pump-and-dump stock manipulation, as this was decades before they were on the S&P 500 small cap. After that, the company had a policy where officers had to announce they were selling stock, and that it wouldn't execute for some time (1? 2 weeks? something like that).  I don't know if that was the SEC's doing, or something that the company came up with on their own.


"sigh.. michael lewis what have you done.. he's created an army of people spouting non-sense yet have no idea **wtf** they're talking about. HFT is not really ""skimming"" money from you, they're providing liquidity and making markets more efficient. Would you rather pineapples cost 20$, or would you rather they cost 5.50$, and someone is willing to take on 50 cents worth of risk in exchange for a chance at some profit. The description below about ""beating you to the punch"" is just unbelievably wrong as well.   http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2014/03/31/michael-lewis-is-entirely-wrong-about-high-frequency-trading-hitting-the-little-guy/   http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-01/what-michael-lewis-gets-wrong-about-high-frequency-trading   http://www.slate.com/articles/business/books/2014/04/michael_lewis_s_flash_boys_about_high_frequency_trading_reviewed.html"


Agreed; additionally, a good portion of our population knows no history. They are being manipulated with the same rhetoric that's been misleading the masses forever.  American families should all be making significantly more money but those darn minorities and terrorists (insert non-sense here). Socialism is stigmatised and most people don't understand just how much they would benefit from more socialist policy. One of the two major political parties is also ignoring the very liberal direction their base wants to go. They tried to shove an establishment, status-quo politician down our throats and now we have the embodiment of the American disease as our head of state.


True. That, and the fact that median household income hasn't increased in two decades, while housing has now passed its prior (unsustainable) highs and is now more expensive than ever before in US history.   That's a recipe for misery if there ever was one.


"Let me summarize your question for you: ""I do not have the down payment that the lender requires for a mortgage. How can I still acquire the mortgage?"" Short answer: Find another lender or find more cash. Don't overly complicate the scenario. The correct answer is that the lender is free to do what they want. They deem it too risky to lend you $1.1M against this $1.8M property, unless they have $700k up front. You want their money, so you must accept their terms. If other lenders have the same outlook, consider that you cannot afford this house. Find a cheaper house."


When you invest (say $1000) in (say 100 shares) of a mutual fund at $10 per share, and the price of the shares changes,  you do not have a capital gain or loss, and you do not have to declare anything to the IRS or make any entry on any line on Form 1040 or tell anyone else about it either. You can brag about it at parties if the share price has gone up, or weep bitter tears into your cocktail if the price has gone down, but the IRS not only does not care, but it will not let you deduct the paper loss or pay taxes on the paper gain.  What you put down on Form 1040 Schedules B   and D is precisely what the mutual fund will tell you on   Form 1099-DIV (and Form 1099-B), no more, no less. If you did not report any of these amounts on your previous   tax returns, you need to file amended tax returns, both   Federal as well as State, A stock mutual fund invests in stocks and the fund manager may buy and sell some stocks during the course of the year. If he makes a profit, that money will be distributed to the share holders of the mutual fund. That money can be re-invested in more shares of the same mutual fund or taken as cash  (and possibly invested in some other fund). This  capital gain distribution is reported to you on Form 1099-DIV and you have to report sit on your tax return even if you re-invested in more share of the same mutual fund, and the amount of the distribution is taxable income to you. Similarly, if the stocks owned by the mutual fund pay dividends, those will be passed on to you as a dividend distribution and all the above still applies. You can choose to reinvest, etc, the amount will be reported to you on Form 1099-DIV, and you need to report it to the IRS and include it in your taxable income. If the mutual fund manager loses money in the buying and selling he will not tell you that he lost money but it will be visible as a reduction in the price of the shares. The loss will not be reported to you on Form 1099-DIV and you cannot do anything about it.  Especially important, you cannot declare to the IRS that you have a loss and you cannot deduct the loss on your income tax returns that year. When you finally sell your shares in the mutual fund, you will have a gain or loss that you can pay taxes on or deduct. Say the mutual fund paid a dividend of $33 one year and you re-invested the money into the mutual fund, buying 3 shares at the then cost of $11 per share. You declare the $33 on your tax return that year and pay taxes on it. Two years later, you sell all 103 shares that you own for $10.50 per share.  Your total investment was $1000 + $33 = $1033. You get $1081.50 from the fund, and you will owe taxes on $1081.50 - $1033 = $48.50. You have a profit of $50 on the 100 shares originally bought and a loss of $1.50 on the 3 shares bought for $11: the net result is a gain of $48.50. You do not pay taxes on $81.50 as the profit from your original $1000 investment; you pay taxes only on $48.50 (remember that you already paid taxes on the $33). The mutual fund will report on Form 1099-B that you sold 103 shares for $1081.50 and that you bought the 103 shares for  an average price of $1033/103 = $10.029 per share. The difference is taxable income to you. If you sell the 103 shares for $9 per share (say),   then you get $927 out of an investment of $1033 for   a capital loss of $106. This will be reported to you   on Form 1099-B and you will enter the amounts on   Schedule D of Form 1040 as a capital loss. What you actually pay taxes on is the net capital gain, if any, after combining all your capital gains and losses for the year. If the net is a loss, you can deduct up to $3000 in a year, and carry the rest  forward to later years to offset capital gains in later years. But, your unrealized capital gains or losses (those that occur because the mutual fund share price goes up and down like a yoyo while you grin or grit your teeth and hang on to your shares) are not reported or deducted or taxed anywhere. It is more complicated when you don't sell all the shares you own in the mutual fund or if you sell shares within one year of buying them, but let's stick to simple cases.


"HSBC, Hang Seng, and other HK banks had a series of special savings account offers when I lived in HK a few years ago.  Some could be linked to the performance of your favorite stock or country's stock index. Interest rates were higher back then, around 6% one year.  What they were effectively doing is taking the interest you would have earned and used it to place a bet on the stock or index in question.  Technically, one way this can be done, for instance, is with call options and zero coupon bonds or notes.  But there was nothing to strategize with once the account was set up, so the investor did not need to know how it worked behind the scenes... Looking at the deposit plus offering in particular, this one looks a little more dangerous than what I describe.  See, now we are in an economy of low almost zero interest rates.  So to boost the offered rate the bank is offering you an account where you guarantee the AUD/HKD rate for the bank in exchange for some extra interest.  Effectively they sell AUD options (or want to cover their own AUD exposures) and you get some of that as extra interest.  Problem is, if the AUD declines, then you lose money because the savings and interest will be converted to AUD at a contractual rate that you are agreeing to now when you take the deposit plus account.  This risk of loss is also mentioned in the fine print. I wouldn't recommend this especially if the risks are not clear. If you read the fine print, you may determine you are better off with a multicurrency account, where you can change your HK$ into any currency you like and earn interest in that currency. None of these were ""leveraged"" forex accounts where you can bet on tiny fluctuations in currencies.  Tiny being like 1% or 2% moves.  Generally you should beware anything offering 50:1 or more leverage as a way to possibly lose all of your money quickly. Since you mentioned being a US citizen, you should learn about IRS form TD F 90-22.1 (which must be filed yearly if you have over $10,000 in foreign accounts) and google a little about the ""foreign account tax compliance act"", which shows a shift of the government towards more strict oversight of foreign accounts."


The individual drivers are the ones who should be making the decision as to whether Uber's treatment of them is acceptable.  The notion that you, me, London's mayor, or any other third party should make that decision on their behalf is paternalistic and denies them their [agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_%28sociology%29).  Edit: hyperlink formatting.


The economy is getting overly competitive and last one decade has been pretty notable in this direction. While the consumers are definitely at advantage through such competition which throws up price wars and more options of buying in the market.For More Info:- http://www.startupmentor.co.in/


Why are you reading them? Most undergrad books are good enough for a general understanding of a subject. Graduate books, on the other hand, can sometimes get a bit difficult to read and start to throw in measure theory and other abstract concepts, and they're more rigorous with definitions compared to the intuitive explanations of undergrad books (this can be a good or bad thing). I probably wouldn't bother unless you're looking to take graduate level classes in the subjects.  With that said, Hull's book isn't too advanced and you would probably not have too much difficulty with it, so recommended. Not sure if I've read the corp fin book.


The really simple answer is that compound interest is compound not linear.  Money invested for longer earns more interest, and the sooner you start investing, the longer it has to earn interest.  These ideas come out of pension investment where 65 is the usual retirement age and what you invest in the 1st ten years of your pension (or any other compound interest fund) accounts for over 50% of what you will get out. 25 to 65 is forty years and $100 invested at 7% for 40 years is $1400.  $100 invested every year for 40 years the pot would be worth just under $20,000. At 30 years, it would be worth under $10,000, and at 20 years it would be worth only $4099.  If you double your investment amount every 10 years you would have invested $15700, and the pot would be worth $45,457. Do exactly the same but starting at 35 instead of 25 and your pot would only be worth $14,200.


"The hardest part seems to be knowing exactly when to sell the stock.  Well yes, that's the problem with all stock investing. Reports come out all the time, sometimes even from very smart people with no motivation to lie, about expected earnings for this company, or for that industry. Whether those predictions come true is something you will only find out with time. What you are considering is using financial information available to you (and equally available to the public) to make investment choices. This is called 'fundamental analysis'; that is, the analysis of the fundamentals of a business and what it should be worth. It forms the basis of how many investment firms decide where to put their money.  In a perfectly 'efficient' market, all information available to the public is immediately factored into the market price for that company's stock. ie: if a bank report states with absolute certainty (through leaked documents) that Coca-Cola is going to announce 10% revenue growth tomorrow, then everyone will immediately buy Coca-Cola stock today, and then tomorrow there would be no impact. Even if PwC is 100% accurate in its predictions, if the rest of the market agrees with them, then the price at the time of IPO would equal the future value of the cashflows, meaning there would be no gain unless results surpassed expectations. So what you are proposing is to take one sliver of the information available to the public (have you also read all publicly available reports on those businesses and their industries?), and using that to make a high risk investment. Are you going to do better than the investment firms that have teams of researchers and years of experience in the investment world? You can do quite well by picking individual stocks, but you can also lose a lot of money if you do it haphazardly. Be aware that there is risk in doing any type of investing. There is higher than average risk if you invest in equities ('the stock market'). There is higher risk still, if you pick individual stocks. There is yet even higher risk, if you pick small startup companies.  There are some specific interesting side-elements with your proposal to purchase stock about to have an IPO - those are better dealt with in a separate question if you want more information; search this site for 'IPO' and you should find a good starting point. In short, the company about to go public will hire a firm of analysts who will try to calculate the best price the public will accept for an offering of shares. Stock often goes up after IPO, but not always. Sometimes the company doesn't even fill its full IPO order, adding a new type of risk to a potential investor, that the stock will drop on day 1. Consider an analogy outside the investing world:  Let's say Auto Trader magazine prints an article that says ""all 2015 Honda Civics are worth $15,000 if they have less than 50,000 Miles."" Assume you have no particular knowledge about cars. If you read this article, and you see an ad in the paper the next day for a Honda Civic with 40k miles, should you buy it for $14k? The answer is not without more research. And even if you determine enough about cars to find one for $14k that you can reasonably sell for $15k, there's a whole world of mechanics out there who buy and sell cars for a living, and they have an edge both because they can repair the cars themselves to sell for more, and also because they have experience to spot low-offers faster than you. And if you pick a clunker (or a stock that doesn't perform even when everyone expected it would), then you could lose some serious money. As with buying and selling individual stocks, there is money to be made from car trading, but that money gets made by people who really know what they're doing. People who go in without full information are the ones who lose money in the long run."


Have you looked at ThinkorSwim, which is now part of TD Ameritrade? Because of their new owner, you'll certainly be accepted as a US customer and the support will likely be responsive. They are certainly pushing webinars and learning resources around the ThinkorSwim platform. At the least you can start a Live Help session and get your answers. That link will take you to the supported order types list. Another tab there will show you the currency pairs. USD is available with both CAD and JPY. Looks like the minimum balance requirement is $25k across all ThinkorSwim accounts. Barron's likes the platform and their annual review may help you find reasons to like it. Here is more specific news from a press release: OMAHA, Neb., Aug 24, 2010 (BUSINESS   WIRE) -- TD AMERITRADE Holding   Corporation (NASDAQ: AMTD) today   announced that futures and spot forex   (foreign exchange) trading   capabilities are now available via the   firm's thinkorswim from TD AMERITRADE   trading platform, joining the recently   introduced complex options   functionality.


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"Ha, that's cute. Your attitude towards the ""poor problem"" tells me you know nothing about being a worthwhile member of society. But by all means, keep looking down on poor people for their lack of ""trying"" or whatever other stupid BS you think the problem is and grandstanding about how they just need to do better."


">But I think that humans have that potential to bring out something that uniquely is their own in whatever they are making.  Agree, the data scientist in House of Cards summed it up perfectly: ""People didn't know they like Jazz till they heard it."""


You send the proper form to the other person for the amount you gave him, and file it as your business expense on your Schedule C.


Well, there is always TVIX for all your 2x leverage needs. The prospectus even admits that the ETN is going to zero in the long run, because of its construction.  The issue with shorting vola is that it works up until the point where you get caught in a huge and sudden squeeze that wipes out months of gains and possibly more.


As others have said, make sure you can and do file your taxes on a cash basis (not accrual). It sounds like it's very unlikely the company is going to issue you a 1099 for invoices they never paid you. So you just file last year's taxes based on your income, which is the money you actually received. If they do pay you later, in the new year, you'll include that income on next year's tax return, and you would expect a 1099 at that time. Side note: not getting paid is unfortunately common for consultants and contractors. Take the first unpaid invoice and sue them in small claims court. After you win (and collect!), tell them you'll sue them for each unpaid invoice in turn until they pay you in full. (You might need to break up the lawsuits like that to remain under the small claims limit.)


>This whole article sounds like it was paid off by cable and internet providers. Don’t get me wrong these web companies definitely need to be hammered down on specially after what happened this past election.  >However this article is trying to make a point that getting rid of net neutrality is the right thing to do. Net neutrality is the rule that prevents cable/internet companies to charge you more for access to certain websites than others, in a similar way they do with television today. The same cable/internet companies that lobbied and won the right to sell your browsing history the same way these web companies do.  >And if we talk about monopolies we should also be looking at AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and various other companies that have a strong hold on today’s consumers.   To me, the article says nothing that you assert...  >The FCC is right to revisit the illogical “public utility” rules imposed on broadband companies by former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler, who seemed eager to do The Web Trust’s bidding. Unlike search or social media, connectivity is an innovative, fluid market with competing wired and wireless options that have continually improved consumers’ ability to reach anybody or anything, anywhere. We now have not just companies, but whole systems and technologies like cable, fiber, satellite, cellular, DSL and other options that compete for your attention. The FCC is right to reject obsolete Ma Bell era regulation that denies this basic fact.  >But the more pressing question is: **What obligations should be imposed on the Web Trust giants as they embed themselves ever further into our lives?** How do we assure ourselves that the “users” they connect us to are human or that the search results they feed us are based on merit — not pay for play (or worse, algorithmic racism).  >It’s time to consider whether to break up the Google search and advertising functions, or to deny safe harbors that protect the tech platforms if they turn a blind eye to sex trafficking or commercial piracy. **We need a new privacy Bill of Rights to demystify the algorithms that track and tag you and shape your on-line experience.**    >In these partisan times, it speaks to how dangerous The Web Trust has become that both Republicans and Democrats are calling for action and reform. *If Congress and the administration want to preserve a truly open internet, they need to become the trustbusters for a new, digital generation.*  Actually, no where in the article does it express anything about opposition to NN. The article is about breaking a Monopoly, which does not correlate to opposing NN. --See highlighted line.  This article is not anti-NN, this article is anti-monopoly!  You must be with Google.


They are intertwined, that recommendation part is huge for both Google and Amazon when it comes to shopping. I bet Amazon took a lot of money from by having this smart recommendation system, no need to google it. Before you had to search for each company to order their product. Amazon means less search for them. They might be in different business but it doesn't mean one isn't shadowing the other.


"The other answers are good, I would just like to add certain points, taking this question together with the previous ones you have asked here. How can a person measure how much to spend on food, car, bills or rent   from his salary? Is there a formula to keep in check? Basically, it may well be that your best option would be to move to a smaller apartment or worse location to bring down rent, possibly forget about your own study in the worst case, sell the car and use public transportation, eat as many meals as possible at home, bring boxed lunch from home to work, if this applies, etc -- whatever makes a saving and sense to you. Regarding food, this is the point where it is usually possible to save a very significant amount, if you are prepared to make food at home. Unless you are already doing it, look around for articles such as ""living on 20 pounds a week"" or so, maybe they will give you ideas you can use (eg. How to eat on 10 pounds a week: shopping list and recipes) -- where you are shopping is crucial here as similar items can differ in price significantly between different chains. If the electricity bill is significant and you are at home a lot, you could try to bring it down by changing all bulbs in your home to LED ones, unless it has already been done. Yes, they can cost 2-3 more than eg. halogen ones, but they use 5-10x less electricity. Forget credit cards, if possible. Use debit cards so you know the money you spend does not get you into more debt. One question you asked here was about exchange rates -- if you work with different currencies a lot, there are several companies such as Revolut or N26, which offer accounts with debit cards that use near FX rates --- in my experiencee I could save around 10-15% on currency conversion EUR/GBP, using Revolut, compared to my local bank rate, for example. I find myself looking at my account every single day and get tensed   and sad because almost whenever the money (pay) comes in I freak out   that after everything there is nothing for us to enjoy or save. Well, yes. That is nearly the definition of too much debt. The point about going to the extremes of reducing expenses I outlined above, is that the more you can reduce your expenses while struggling with debt, the faster you'll get out of it. It might be hard to adapt, but it will be better, if you can calculate how long it will take to get you back on feet and know that, eg. ""in 6 months I can start to think of savings and carefully upgrading my lifestyle back"".  In turn, the smaller the reduction of expenses, the more prolonged the process -- you might be looking at 2-3 years of insecure/constantly frustrating/risking more debt lifestyle, instead of 6 months of severely reduced one. Alternatively, if things go too bleak, you might consider declaring bankrupcy -- although I am not sure how feasible it is in the UK."


You're missing the point. You can't save any money if you're required to spend all of it. Most costs like housing, transportation, utilities, etc. are highly fixed. Beyond illegally violating fire codes (what the Mexicans generally do) or building codes theres very little you can do. Unless you loosen the laws for flop houses but I'm quite certain many white home owners would be against that.


Well, the simple answer is that I reject the assumptions of demand-side economics. I don't believe that the velocity of money matters, because money isn't real. It's just a proxy for actual value which is derived from the subjective perception of people.  The trouble with looking at data is that it's all observational data, not experimental, so a substantial amount of judgement needs to be employed in interpreting causation, and with economics being a politically charged discipline, there's significant risk of bias in making those judgements, particularly if they are being made in an ideologically homogeneous setting (such as much of present-day academia).  I look at economics from a rationalist epistemological lens, rather than an empiricist one, which is why I don't take studies as seriously as some others do.


Banks also need in-house web developers so if you don't want to switch from doing that then it should be possible. Especially if you are up for working with mobile/ubiquitous computing side of things. That seems to be the next step for retail banking anyway. For investment banking I'm not really sure of the need of web developers. I guess some offer different forms of online platforms (e-trading stuff) but most of what developers do is internal stuff that never see outside customers. Those could be built using similar technologies I guess.


Agreed that luck is important, but in everything I've read about the extremely successful, it seems that careful measured analysis played just as crucial a role in their success. Something that these guys appear to be advising startups to ignore.   But again, maybe pure instinct is the only way to run the fast-paced type of business they're operating. Also that quote I cited may have just been an off-the-cuff remark, not meant to be taken literally.


One reason to prefer a dividend-paying stock is when you don't plan to reinvest the dividends.  For example, if you're retired and living off the income from your investments, a dividend-paying stock can give you a relatively stable income.