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560340 | It depends where you are going to live and how you are going to pay for your new accommodation. If you are moving within the UK and intend to buy another house you run into the problem that you will find it hard to get a second mortgage. If you rent out the house in Kent you will probably have to change the mortgage basis on it to a mortgage that allows for letting - normal residential mortgages exclude that entirely - which would allow you to take out a residential mortgage. It depends how much equity you have in the house. If most of the value of the house is mortgaged then you'll (1) find it hard to re mortgage on a commercial mortgage (2) may find it hard to cover the costs by letting and (3) are very sensitive to house prices falling. Also bear in mind that for the past three months in a row, house prices in the UK have mostly either stagnated or fallen... so you cannot guarantee any increase in value of the house in Kent. What I'm saying is ... there is no crystal ball that will tell you what's financially the best thing to do. Talk to estate agents, find out how much the house would sell for / how much it would rent for. Talk to your mortgage lender and find out if they will let you rent it out. Talk to other mortgage lenders and find out how much a commercial mortgage would cost. Do the sums, find out if renting the house would cover the costs, in which case you can gamble on the housing market continuing to rise. Don't rely on house prices continuing to rise as they have done before. Certainly where I live due to the number of new houses being built and other economic issues house prices have fallen appreciably over the past few months and may well continue to fall as more and more new houses come on the market. |
560380 | It is generally best to avoid such situations. Any credits to your accounts need to be explained to tax authorities whenever they enquire. This cannot be treated as income as you did not work in exchange for the amount. It can be treated by tax authorities as GIFT. Gift upto certain amount is tax free. Beyond the amount its taxable. Gifts from close relatives has not amount limit and is tax free. Whenever the scrutiny happens, if you can convince the tax authorities that the action was more for convenience, it maybe fine. |
560776 | "Earned income is what your software is doing, so it is taxable. So you can't really make it tax exempt. You can form a business and claim the revenues from that business as income and deduct expenses it costs you to earn that revenue. If you buy a server to run your software, then that is an acceptable expense to deduct from your revenues. Others can be more questionable and the best thing to do is to consult a CPA. If you are still in the testing stage and the revenues will be small then it should not matter. Worry about the important things, not if you paid the IRS a few hundred to much. Are you in a state/country that allows online gambling? In most states here in the US you are operating on shaky legal ground. Before ""Black Friday"" I used to earn a nice part-time income playing online poker." |
561056 | you should always invest if your investment rate of return is higher than your interest rate Your next line, about standard deviation is dead on. There are too many variables to give an exact answer here, in my opinion. The main reason is that one variable isn't easy to quantify - One's risk tolerance. Clearly, there's one extreme, the 18% credit card. Unless you are funding loanshark type rates of 2%/week, it's safe to say that 18% debt should take priority over any investments, except for the matched 401(k) deposits. What I think you're talking about is something we've addressed here in multiple threads. Do I prepay my sub 4% mortgage or invest? In this case, (and to Noah's comment) the question is whether you can expect a post-tax return of over 3% during your time horizon. I look at the return for 15 years from 1998-2013 and see a 6% CAGR for the S&P. I chose 15 years, as the choice is often one of paying a 30 year mortgage faster, as fast as 15. The last 15 years offer a pretty bad scenario, 2 crashes and a mortgage crisis. 6% after long term gains would get you 5.1% net. You can pull the data back to 1871 and run CAGR numbers for the timeframe of your choosing. I haven't done it yet, but I imagine there's no 15 year span that lags the 3% target I cite. What makes it more complex is that the investment isn't lump sum. It may not be obvious, but CAGR is a dollar invested at T=0, and returns calculated to T=final year. It would take a bit of spreadsheeting to invest the extra funds every month/year over your period of analysis. In the end, there are still those who will choose to pay off their 4% mortgage regardless of what the numbers show. Even if the 15 year result showed worst case 3.5% (almost no profit) and an average 10%, the feeling of risk is more than many will want. |
561123 | "While you would probably not use your ATM card to buy a $1M worth mansion, I've heard urban legends about people who bought a house on a credit card. While can't say its reliable, I wouldn't be surprised that some have actual factual basis. I myself had put a car down-payment on my credit card, and had I paid the sticker price, the dealer would definitely have no problem with putting the whole car on the credit card (and my limits would allow it, even for a luxury brand). The instruments are the same. There's nothing special you need to have to pay a million dollars. You just write a lot of zeroes on your check, but you don't need a special check for that. Large amounts of money are transferred electronically (wire-transfers), which is also something that ""regular"" people do once or twice in their lives. What might be different is the way these purchases are financed. Rich people are not necessarily rich with cash. Most likely, they're rich with equity: own something that's worth a lot. In this case, instead of a mortgage secured by the house, they can take a loan secured by the stocks they own. This way, they don't actually cash out of the investment, yet get cash from its value. It is similarly to what we, regular mortals, do with our equity in primary residence and HELOCs. So it is not at all uncommon that a billionaire will in fact have tons of money owed in loans. Why? Because the billions owned are owned through stock valuation, and the cash used is basically a loan secured by these stocks. It might happen that the stocks securing the loans become worthless, and that will definitely be a problem both to the (now ex-)billionaire and the bank. But until then, they can get cash from their investment without cashing out and without paying taxes. And if they're lucky enough to die before they need to repay the loans - they saved tons on money on taxes." |
561377 | I don't understand the logic in the other answer, and I think it doesn't make sense, so here is my take: You pay taxes on income, not on sales price. So if you put X $ of your own money in the account and it becomes X + Y $ in the future, at the moment of liquidation, you will own taxes on the Y $. Never on the X $, as it was your own (already taxed) money to begin with. The difference between long-term and short-term gains just influences the tax rate on Y. If you donate the gain alone (the Y $) to charity, you can deduct Y from your tax base. So adding Y to your tax base and then deducting Y again obviously leaves your tax base at the old value, so you pay no extra taxes. Which seems logical, as you didn't make any money in the process. Aside from extreme cases where the deductible gain is too large a percentage from your income or negative, I don't see why this would ever be different. So you can take your original 100 $ back out and donate all gains, and be fine. Note that potential losses are seen different, as the IRA regulations are not symmetric. |
561764 | Publication 17 Your Income Tax top of page 14 If the direct deposit cannot be done, the IRS will send a check instead. When your girlfriend gets the check, she can endorse it over to you for deposit into your account. |
561832 | Young folks and students are more likely to be overdrawn on accounts, which is ridiculously expensive. Use a program like GNUcash to anticipate all your expenses. You can enter future dated transactions, and it will show you future minimum balances. Negative future minimum balances are of course, the thing you need to worry about. This is especially important as you'll have a mix of large upfront costs (tuition, books), large upfront receivables (student loans, grants), recurring expenses (food, rent, beer), and perhaps recurring income from a part time job. Software helps you record all the nuances to this system so that you can see how much the typical 'friday night fun' will bankrupt you. |
561884 | Successful covered calls are short term capital gains. The amount of time you have owned the underlying security is irrelevant. The gain occurred in the option period which will be an amount of days less than needed for a long term capital gain classification. Failed Covered calls can be either as the date you acquired the stock you are forced to sell determines their classification. |
561999 | "You cannot get ""your investment"" out and ""leave only the capital gains"" until they become taxable at the long-term rate. When you sell some shares after holding them for less than a year, you have capital gains on which you will have to pay taxes at the short-term capital gains rate (that is, at the same rate as ordinary income). As an example, if you bought 100 shares at $70 for a net investment of $7000, and sell 70 of them at $100 after five months to get your ""initial investment back"", you will have short-term capital gains of $30 per share on the 70 shares that you sold and so you have to pay tax on that $30x70=$2100. The other $4900 = $7000-$2100 is ""tax-free"" since it is just your purchase price of the 70 shares being returned to you. So after paying the tax on your short-term capital gains, you really don't have your ""initial investment back""; you have something less. The capital gains on the 30 shares that you continue to hold will become (long-term capital gains) income to you only when you sell the shares after having held them for a full year or more: the gains on the shares sold after five months are taxable income in the year of sale." |
562110 | It's a race to the bottom. Use raising debt ceiling will mean moe helicopter money. Euro is also buying bonds. Uk is idiots having no clue what they're doing so it's also going down. You just have to spread risk to fight inflation and avoid a crash if it happens |
562137 | Sensationalist much? The economy has picked back up, people are optimistic about the future, more secure with their jobs, and thus debts of all sorts should be increasing. The question is how much can be handled before collapse? Well, from this article's own admission default rates and delinquencies are at historic lows. The 1t in debt means nothing without the context. |
562220 | A value of zero or a negative value makes the percent change meaningless. Saying 100% when going from 0 to some other value is simply wrong. I have seen a similar situation several times when looking at a public company with a loss last quarter. On Google Finance or some other service, the PE ratio will be blank, N/A, or something like that. If the company does not currently have earnings, then the PE ratio is meaningless. Likewise, if the company previously did not have earnings, then the percent change of the earnings is meaningless. Also consider the example where the previous value was negative. If the previous value was negative 1 and the current value is positive 99, then this happens: A negative change? But the value went up! Obviously that value does not make sense and should not be shown. |
562305 | "The goal of the single-fund with a retirement date is that they do the rebalancing for you. They have some set of magic ratios (specific to each fund) that go something like this: Note: I completely made up those numbers and asset mix. When you invest in the ""Mutual-Fund Super Account 2025 fund"" you get the benefit that in 2015 (10 years until retirement) they automatically change your asset mix and when you hit 2025, they do it again. You can replace the functionality by being on top of your rebalancing. That being said, I don't think you need to exactly match the fund choices they provide, just research asset allocation strategies and remember to adjust them as you get closer to retirement." |
562412 | According to Money Girl, home insurance premiums are higher if you have a poor credit score. You might self-insure though if you are wealthy. |
562481 | No, the reinvestment is done as a courtesy. Consider, one can have, say, 100 shares of a $50 stock. A 2% dividend is $100/yr or $25/quarter. It would be a pretty bad deal if brokers charged you even $5 for that trade. When cap gains and dividends are grouped as you suggest, it refers to Mutual Funds. My funds will have a year end dividend and cap gain distribution. In a non-retirement account, one has to pay the tax due, and be sure to add this to your cost basis, as it's money you are effectively adding to your account. It does not mean cap gain the same as when you sell your shares of Apple for a huge gain. Those check boxes seem to offer you a chance to put all your holding on the same reinvestment plan for div/cap gain. You should also be able to choose one by one what you'd like to do. |
562489 | "Your decision about which of these investments to make is going to depend on how long you expect to leave the money in the account. For example, based on the figures you give us, if you think you are going to want to withdraw the money in three months or less then you should chose the savings account. For ten months or more you should choose the Fixed Deposit. (As Michael Kjorling says, ""flexible to withdraw at any time"" does not mean you won't pay penalties for withdrawing early that's why you shouldn't choose the longer term deposits if you want to withdraw earlier). That's the simplest approach. The trouble of course is that you don't necessarily know how long you are going to leave the money in. If you are saving for a house, and you know you won't want to buy in the next year, the 12 month deposit looks good. But what if your car suddenly needs repairs? You would have to withdraw that money early and pay the penalties, and it turns out you would have been better of putting it in the savings account. A good approach is:" |
562584 | I feel the change should not be to remove the stigma from personal default. It should be to add it, in very large amounts, to corporate default. Every member of a defaulting corporation should be ashamed to be seen in public. The have let their culture down and should be mortified. So if you defaulted on your mortgage, yeah, that's not great. If you're Donald Trump, that filed 11 a couple times, he can go fuck himself. |
562896 | You must understand that not everyone has or can get credit cards. Consider that those who are in the the lowest 20-30% of income tend to have fewer credit cards (or none), and lower credit debt, although some have quite high credit card debt relative to their income. So you really aren't comparing the same demographics (the population of all income earners, used to calculate average income, and the population of all credit card debt holders, are not the same groups of people). Once you remove those folks from consideration, then credit card usage may still average higher, but accept that it is unusual for people making less than $20K-30K/year to have much credit card debt. You must understand that wealth and income are two very different (although related) concepts. One must note that there are millions of people in the U.S. who have wealth; they have net assets of over $1M (excluding their homes). Many of those folks have assets greatly exceeding $1M. And although it might seem foolish to carry a large balance on their credit cards, they may have quite low interest rates, and simply find it simpler and more convenient to use credit cards in lieu of personal loans. Suppose you have $2M in net assets, and want to buy a classic car or a diamond necklace. Charging $30K and carrying the balance until a dividend check arrives may make sense. Understand also that not everyone makes the same choices, or good choices. Carrying a credit card balance may appear like a poor choice, especially when you are not wealthy, or have lower income. But suppose you have a high credit limit across several cards, and you need to handle a short-term financial challenge (car repair, layoff, medical bills, etc). You might use the credit card to pay for that purchase, essentially financing an extraordinary event over a longer period of time. And although having a balance of more than 5-10% of your monthly income may seem foolish to some, it may make sense to others. And some people choose to carry balances of 50% to 100% of their credit limit. Others realize that keeping their credit utilization below 30%, 20%, or 10% of the credit limit is a better plan (both interest rate and risk wise). |
562934 | Congratulations on saving up $75,000. That requires discipline and tenacity. There are a lot of factors that would go into making your decision. First and foremost is the security of the income stream you have now. Being leveraged during times of hardship is not a pleasant experience. Unexpected job losses can and do happen. Only you can determine how secure your and your spouse's situation is. Second, I would consider the job market in the location that you live. If you live in a small town it will be hard to find income levels like you have now. Rental properties are additional ties to an area. Are you happy in the area in which you live? If you were laid off are there opportunities in the same area. Being a long distance landlord is again not a pleasant experience. I can throw being forced to sell to relocate at a reduced price into this same bucket. Third, you need to have 3 to 6 months of expenses saved for emergencies. This is in addition to having no consumer debt (credit cards, car loans, student loans). $75,000 feels like a lot. Life can throw you curve balls. You need to be prepared for them because of the fundamental nature of Murphy's Law. If you were to be a landlord you should err closer to the six month end of the scale. I own two rentals and can speak to people being late a given month, heating and air problems, plumbing issues, washers and dryers breaking, weather related issues, and even a tenant leaving behind for truckloads of trash. Over 20 years I guess I have seen it all. A rental agency will only act as a minor buffer. Fourth, your family situation is important. I personally save 10% of my income for my child's education. If you haven't started doing so or have different feelings on what you might contribute think about it before any financial move. Fifth, any mortgage payment you are making should be 25% or less than your take home pay for a 15 year fixed rate mortgage. Anything less than 20% down and you start burning up money on PMI insurance. 'House Poor' is a term for people that make high incomes but have too much being spent for housing. It is the cause of a lot of financial stress. Sixth, you need to save for retirement. The absolute minimum I recommend is 15% of your income. Even if the match is 6% you should invest the full 15% making it 21%. Social Security is a scary thing and depending on it is not wise. I think your income still qualifies you for contributions to a Roth IRA. If you aren't personally contributing 15% do so before making a move. There is an old joke that homeless people who have a 0 net worth often are richer than people driving fancy cars and living in fancy houses. Ultimately no one can tell you the right answer. Every situation is unique. You have a complex tapestry to your financial life that no else one knows. |
562957 | If you qualify for the safe harbor, you are not required to pay additional quarterly taxes. Of course, you're still welcome to do so if you're sure you'll owe them; however, you will not be penalized. If your income is over $150k (joint) or $75k (single), your safe harbor is: Estimated tax safe harbor for higher income taxpayers. If your 2014 adjusted gross income was more than $150,000 ($75,000 if you are married filing a separate return), you must pay the smaller of 90% of your expected tax for 2015 or 110% of the tax shown on your 2014 return to avoid an estimated tax penalty. Generally, if you're under that level, the following reasons suggest you will not owe the tax (from the IRS publication 505): The total of your withholding and timely estimated tax payments was at least as much as your 2013 tax. (See Special rules for certain individuals for higher income taxpayers and farmers and fishermen.) The tax balance due on your 2014 return is no more than 10% of your total 2014 tax, and you paid all required estimated tax payments on time. Your total tax for 2014 (defined later) minus your withholding is less than $1,000. You did not have a tax liability for 2013. You did not have any withholding taxes and your current year tax (less any household employment taxes) is less than $1,000. If you paid one-fourth of your last year's taxes (or of 110% of your last-year's taxes) in estimated taxes for each quarter prior to this one, you should be fine as far as penalties go, and can simply add the excess you know you will owe to the next check. |
563025 | In view of business, we have to book the entries. Business view, owner and business are different. When capital is invested in business by owner, in future business has to repay it. That's why, capital always credit. When we come about bank (business prospective) - cash, bank, fd are like assets which can help in the business. Bank is current asset (Real account) - Debit (what comes into the business) Credit (what goes out of the business) Hence credit and debit differs from what type of account is it.... credit - when business liables debit - what business has and receivables |
563446 | Diversification and convenience: Is .15-0.35% fee worth it? It depends on your net worth, amount you invest and value of your time (if you have high net worth and low cost of your time the fee is highier then in case when you have low net worth but high cost of time - so Betterment seems to be a better option to young professional just after college then to someone already retired), your interest in finance, your willpower etc. Is Betterment allocation better then pure SPY? From what I understand about finance theory - yes. EDIT (as requested) I don't have any affiliation with any financial institution as far as I know. I opened it to get used to just investing as oppose to saving and ups and downs of market (and read up on the portfolio management, especially index funds) and I guess it worked well for me. I plan to move out entirely out of it once the cost of the account would be more then paying for a few coffees and move the account to Vanguard, Schwab or something similar. In other accounts (HSA/...) I use simpler portfolio then the Betterment one (US Total, Small Value, Developed, Emerging and Bonds) but there are people who use simpler (search for 3 fund portfolio). |
563627 | This sounds like it makes no difference if you behave in the same manner (i.e. take the same vacation time). For example, say you work 1 hour and take 1 hour of vacation and the current hourly rate is $1/hour. You would make $2. Using your formula, new rate = 1* (1+1)/1 = 1*2 = $2. So they would pay you $2 for the hour you worked and then you would take the 1 hour of vacation with no pay. If you plan on taking LESS vacation than used in the formula, you make more money. If you plan on taking MORE vacation, you make less money. |
564037 | *Volatility and the VIX can be very tricky to trade. In particular, going out longer than a month can result in highly surprising outcomes because the VIX is basically always a one month snapshot, even when the month is out in the future. |
564271 | gnasher729, was able to see my problem here. It was a silly oversight. It's not 50p a share, its 0.5p a share. @Bezzzo: The dividend is not 50p per share, it is 0.50p per share - half a penny per share. Thanks! |
564408 | "Assuming the numbers in your comments are accurate, you have $2400/month ""extra"" after paying your expenses. I assume this includes loan payments. You said you have $3k in savings and a $2900 ""monthly nut"", so only one month of living expenses in savings. In my opinion, your first goal should be to put 100% of your extra money towards savings each month, until you have six months of living expenses saved. That's $2,900 * 6 or $17,400. Since you have $3K already that means you need $14,400 more, which is exactly six months @ $2,400/month. Next I would pay off your $4K for the bedroom furniture. I don't know the terms you got, but usually if you are not completely paid off when it comes time to pay interest, the rate is very high and you have to pay interest not just going forward, but from the inception of the loan (YMMV--check your loan terms). You may want to look into consolidating your high interest loans into a single loan at a lower rate. Barring that, I would put 100% of my extra monthly income toward your 10% loan until its paid off, and then your 9.25% loan until that's paid off. I would not consider investing in any non-tax-advantaged vehicle until those two loans (at minimum) were paid off. 9.25% is a very good guaranteed return on your money. After that I would continue the strategy of aggressively paying the maximum per month toward your highest interest loans until they are all paid off (with the possible exception of the very low rate Sallie Mae loans). However, I'm probably more conservative than your average investor, and I have a major aversion to paying interest. :)" |
564554 | I think a greater problem would be the protection of your property right. China hasn't shown much respect for the property rights of its own citizens - moving people off subsistence farms in order to build high-rise apartments - so I'm not certain that a foreigner could expect much protection. A first consideration in any asset purchase should always be consideration of the strength of local property law. By all accounts, China fails. |
564759 | "You cannot dump $450K of cash into any type of retirement account. Retirement accounts have maximum annual contribution limits and earned income requirements. If the $450K is already in a retirement account you may be able to ""rollover"" these funds into a different type of account. I personally invest in dividend paying stocks and recommend the strategy for just about everyone. $450K earning 4% in dividends would generate ~$18K in annual dividends the first year and, compounded, would generate ~$220K in dividends over a 10-year period. All this being said, I am not a registered professional of any kind and you should consult a professional before making any decisions. And yes, I know this question is from 2012 :)" |
564787 | "I have been considering a similar situation for a while now, and the advice i have been given is to use a concept called ""dollar cost averaging"", which basically amounts to investing say 10% a month over 10 months, resulting in your investment getting the average price over that period. So basically, option 3." |
564983 | "Several people here have highlighted the incentive/agency problems that tend to naturally arise when securitizing mortgages. However, the market for mortgage-backed securities has existed for decades, and during most of that time these agency problems were held in check. Moreover, academics knew about this problem even before the credit crisis and actually *recommended* the use of trenching in order to avoid the moral hazard problems associated with securitization (see DeMarzo 2005). So, to give a compelling historical explanation for why the crisis happened *when* it did, you need to explain what changed in the mortgage securitization market to enable these previously unproblematic agency relationships to breakdown. So what changed? In short, the growth of the market for CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) composed of mortgage-backed securities), and not the MBS market itself. This market grew so rapidly in the mid-2000s because the ratings agencies created an opportunity for banks to take low-rated MBS debt and give it a higher rating by merely repackaging it into a CDO. It was ratings arbitrage, through and through. Explanations that place the brunt of the blame on the GSAs (i.e. Fannie and Freddie) cannot adequately explain why the majority of mortgage-related losses during the credit crisis were concentrated in CDOs of MBSs, and not in the vanilla MBS market. Here's what happened. Back in the day -- say, pre-early 2000s -- the agency/incentive problems that naturally arise in mortgage securitization were held in check by careful institutional investors who would rigorously assess the default risk of the higher-risk MBS tranches. They had a deep knowledge of the mortgage business. Sometimes they would even go so far as manually examining the loan documentation, the profile of the borrowers, the quality of the collateral, and so on. There were a lot of indiscriminating buyers who were happy to purchase the AAA and AA tranches, but they could afford to be indiscriminating because the banks who were securitizing MBSs knew that without selling to the discriminating buyers of higher-risk debt, they wouldn't be able to break even. It worked a bit like a market for fine wines. I don't know much about wine, but when I walk into a shop that sells fine wines, I can be reasonably certain that there will be a reasonably strong relationship between price and the quality of the wine. Basically, I get to free-ride off the superior discrimination of the wine connoisseurs who regularly visit the shop. Once the ratings agencies created the now infamous ""ratings arbitrage"" between the MBS and CDO markets, the market for CDOs on MBSs expanded. As this market grew, these ""discriminating"" buyers became a proportionally smaller part of the MBS market. The folks building CDOs of MBSs didn't know very much about the mortgage business itself; instead, they tended to rely on statistical default models provided by the ratings agencies that predicted the probability of mortgage default based on quantitative variables such as borrowers' credit scores, loan-to-value ratios, etc. The problem is that these models used historical data that was collected back when the ""discriminating"" institutional investors kept the agency problems in the MBS market in check. The growth of the CDO market spurred even more mortgage securitization, which led lending standards to deteriorate because firms like Countrywide knew that the CDO buyers only cared about credit scores, LTV ratios, etc. However, undiscriminating buyers of MBS were unable to detect these changes in default risk because the models they were using to ""see"" those changes were becoming invalidated by the growth of the CDO market itself If you want to read more about this, I'd highly recommend MacKenzie's 2011 paper in the American Journal of Sociology [see here]( http://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/36082/CrisisRevised.pdf). It's a detailed historical account of the changes in valuation practices/models used within the MBS and CDO markets, and how these practices became invalidated as the CDO market grew in size. **TL;DR: the credit ratings created a ""ratings arbitrage"" that the banks took advantage of. They are as much, if not more, at fault as the GSAs.** For more info on the deterioration in mortgage quality in the mid-2000s, check out: Keys, Benjamin, Tanmoy Mukherjee, Amit Seru, and Vikrant Vig. 2008. Did Securitization Lead to Lax Screening? Evidence from Subprime Loans. Rajan, Uday, Amit Seru, and Vikrant Vig. 2008. “The Failure of Models That Predict Failure: Distance, Incentives and Defaults.” SSRN eLibrary (December). http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1296982. Also, the citation I mentioned above: DeMarzo, P. (2005) ""The pooling and tranching of securities: a model of informed intermediation"" Review of Economic Studies, 18(1):1-35, 2005" |
565007 | "In this scenario the date of income is the date on which the contract has been signed, even if you received the actual money (settlement) later. Regardless of the NY special law for residency termination - that is the standard rule for recognition of income during a cash (not installments) sale. The fact that you got the actual money later doesn't matter, which is similar to selling stocks on a public exchange. When you sell stocks through your broker on a public exchange - you still recognize the income on the day of the sale, not on the day of the settlement. This is called ""the Constructive Receipt doctrine"". The IRS publication 538 has this to say about the constructive receipt: Constructive receipt. Income is constructively received when an amount is credited to your account or made available to you without restriction. You need not have possession of it. If you authorize someone to be your agent and receive income for you, you are considered to have received it when your agent receives it. Income is not constructively received if your control of its receipt is subject to substantial restrictions or limitations. Once you signed the contract, the money has essentially been credited to your account with the counter-party, and unless they're bankrupt or otherwise insolvent - you have no restrictions over it. And also (more specifically for your case): You cannot hold checks or postpone taking possession of similar property from one tax year to another to postpone paying tax on the income. You must report the income in the year the property is received or made available to you without restriction. Timing wire transfer is akin to holding and not depositing a check, from this perspective. So unless there was a restriction that was lifted after you moved out of New York, I doubt you can claim that you couldn't have received it before moving out, i.e.: you have, in fact, constructively received it." |
565010 | Are there any known laws explicitly allowing or preventing this behavior? It's not the laws, it's what's in the note - the mortgage contract. I read my mortgage contracts very carefully to ensure that there's no prepayment penalty and that extra funds are applied to the principal. However, it doesn't have to be like that, and in older mortgages - many times it's not like that. Banks don't have to allow things that are not explicitly agreed upon in the contract. To the best of my knowledge there's no law requiring banks to allow what your friend wants. |
565046 | I agree. I have physical cash hidden in my house, a trick I learned from an elderly neighbor whose husband demanded they do it and it paid off for them twice. I have that and then will rely on credit if needed. My only question is if the statistic they mention is ALL savings or just what is in liquid assets. |
565133 | In the united states, they may request a check written by the bank to the other party. I have had to make large payments for home settlements, or buying a car. If the transaction was over a specified limit, they wanted a cashiers check. They wanted to make sure it wouldn't bounce. I have had companies rebate me money, and say the maximum value of the check was some small value. I guess that was to prevent people from altering the check. One thing that has happened to me is that a large check I wanted to deposit was held for a few extra days to make sure it cleared. I wouldn't have access to the funds until the deadline passed. |
565150 | Matthew - what was the stock price and strike price of the option when you did this? I've never seen an at-the-money strike with only a month to run have a price 25% of the underlying stock. Jaydles covers the variables really well in his answer. |
565226 | It depends. Very generally when yields go up stocks go down and when yields go down stocks go up (as has been happening lately). If we look at the yield of the 10 year bond it reflects future expectations for interest rates. If the rate today is very low but expectations are that the short term rates will go up that would be reflected in a higher yield simply because no one would buy the longer term bond if they could simply wait out and get a better return on shoter term investments. If expectations are that the rate is going down you get what's called an inverted yield curve. The inverted yield curve is usually a sign of economic trouble ahead. Yields are also influenced by inflation expectations as @rhaskett is alluding in his answer. So. If the stock market crashes because the economy is doing poorly and if interest rates are relatively high then people would expect the rates to go down and therefore bonds will go up! However, if there's rampant inflation and the rates are going up we can expect stocks and bonds to move in opposite directions. Another interpretation of that is that one would expect stock prices to track inflation pretty well because company revenue is going to go up with inflation. If we're just talking about a bump in the road correction in a healthy economy I wouldn't expect that to have much of an immediate effect though bonds might go down a little bit in the short term but possibly even more in the long term as interest rates eventually head higher. Another scenario is a very low interest rate environment (as today) with a stock market crash and not a lot of room for yields to go further down. Both stocks and bonds are influenced by current interest rates, interest rate expectations, current inflation, inflation expectations and stock price expectation. Add noise and stir. |
565356 | The debt is absolutely real. China loans money to US via buying the US treasury bonds. The bond is essentially a promise to pay back the money with interest, just like a loan. As you point out, the US can print money. If this were to happen, then the USD that the owner of a treasury bond receives when the bond matures are worth less that than the USD used to purchase the bonds. There are lots of reasons why the US doesn't want to print lots of money, so the purchaser of the bond is probably confident it won't happen. If for some reason they think it is possible, then they will want to cover that risk by only purchasing bonds that have a higher interest rate. The higher interest offsets the risk of the USD being worth less. Of course, there are lots more details, e.g., the bonds themselves are bought and sold before maturity, but this is the basic idea. |
565691 | The assumption that house value appreciates 5% per year is unrealistic. Over the very long term, real house prices has stayed approximately constant. A house that is 10 years old today is 11 years old a year after, so this phenomenon of real house prices staying constant applies only to the market as a whole and not to an individual house, unless the individual house is maintained well. One house is an extremely poorly diversified investment. What if the house you buy turns out to have a mold problem? You can lose your investment almost overnight. In contrast to this, it is extremely unlikely that the same could happen on a well-diversified stock portfolio (although it can happen on an individual stock). Thus, if non-leveraged stock portfolio has a nominal return of 8% over the long term, I would demand higher return, say 10%, from a non-leveraged investment to an individual house because of the greater risks. If you have the ability to diversify your real estate investments, a portfolio of diversified real estate investments is safer than a diversified stock portfolio, so I would demand a nominal return of 6% over the long term from such a diversified portfolio. To decide if it's better to buy a house or to live in rental property, you need to gather all of the costs of both options (including the opportunity cost of the capital which you could otherwise invest elsewhere). The real return of buying a house instead of renting it comes from the fact that you do not need to pay rent, not from the fact that house prices tend to appreciate (which they won't do more than inflation over a very long term). For my case, I live in Finland in a special case of near-rental property where you pay 15% of the building cost when moving in (and get the 15% payment back when moving out) and then pay a monthly rent that is lower than the market rent. The property is subsidized by government-provided loans. I have calculated that for my case, living in this property makes more sense than purchasing a market-priced house, but your situation may be different. |
565738 | "If I were in your shoes I'd probably take the Vanguard Total Market fund with Admiral shares, then worry about further diversification when there is more in the account. Many times when you ""diversify"" in to multiple funds you end up with a lot of specific security overlap. A lot of the big S&P 500 constituents will be in all of them, etc. So while the 10 or so basis points difference in expense ratio doesn't seem like enough of a reason NOT to spread in to multiple funds, once you split up the money between Large, Mid, Small cap funds and Growth, Value, Dividend funds you'll probably have a collection of holdings that looks substantially similar to a total market fund anyway. Unless you're looking for international or some specific industry segment exposure and all of the money is going to equities anyway, an inexpensive total market fund makes a lot of sense." |
565765 | I think you are mixing up forward looking statements with the actual results. The funds objective The fund invests primarily in stocks that tend to offer current dividends. It focuses on high-quality companies that have prospects for long-term total returns as a result of their ability to grow earnings and their willingness to increase dividends over time Obviously in 1993 quite a few companies paid the dividends and hence VDIGX was able to give dividends. Over the period of years in some years its given more and in some years less. For example the Year 2000 it gave $ 1.26, 1999 it gave $ 1.71 and in 1998 it gave $ 1.87 The current economic conditions are such that companies are not making huge profts and the one's that are making prefer not to distribute dividends and hold on to cash as it would help survive the current economic conditions. So just to clarify this particular funds objective is to invest in companies that would give dividends which is then passed on to fund holders. This fund does not sell appreciated stocks to convert it into dividends. |
566069 | The simplest way is to invest in a few ETFs, depending on your tolerance for risk; assuming you're very short-term risk tolerant you can invest almost all in a stock ETF like VOO or VTI. Stock market ETFs return close to 10% (unadjusted) over long periods of time, which will out-earn almost any other option and are very easy for a non-finance person to invest in (You don't trade actively - you leave the money there for years). If you want to hedge some of your risk, you can also invest in Bond funds, which tend to move up in stock market downturns - but if you're looking for the long term, you don't need to put much there. Otherwise, try to make sure you take advantage of tax breaks when you can - IRAs, 401Ks, etc.; most of those will have ETFs (whether Vanguard or similar) available to invest in. Look for funds that have low expense ratios and are fairly diversified (ie, don't just invest in one small sector of the economy); as long as the economy continues to grow, the ETFs will grow. |
566184 | "Basically, you have purchased 25% of the condo for $40,000, and your parents bought 75% of the condo for another $115,000. We imagine for a moment that it wasn't you who lived in the condo, but some unrelated person paying rent. You are paying $7,500 a year for tax and fees, plus $6,000 a year, so there is $13,500 leaving your wallet. If $15,500 a year was a reasonable rent, then the tax and fee would be paid out of that, there would be $8,000 left, of which you would get 25% = $2,000. If you were officially ""renting"" it, you would pay $15,500 a year, and get $2,000 back, again $13,500 leaving your wallet. So you are in exact the same situation financially as you would be if you paid $15,500 rent. Question: Is $15,500 a year or $1,290 a month an appropriate rent for your condo? If a neighbour is renting his condo, is he or she paying $1,290 or more or less? Could you rent the same place for the same money? If $1,290 is the correct rent then you are fine. If the rent should be lower, then you are overpaying. If the rent should be higher, then you are making money. Keep in mind that you will also be winning if rents go up in the future." |
566190 | Unless you are a member of the federal reserve. Guaranteed 7% baby. Stocks and real estate during inflation, then liquidate and still get solid returns while everyone is grasping at 4%. Come back next cycle and do it again. |
566215 | You overgeneralize too much. Investors have their place and use. Picking a few examples and make broad statements about a whole industry is just tiresome. Of course they have something to gain, they are putting their money on the line. This is capitalism, not altruism. |
566573 | The issue is the time frame. With a one year investment horizon the only way for a fund manager to be confident that they are not going to lose their shirt is to invest your money in ultra conservative low volatility investments. Otherwise a year like 2008 in the US stock market would break them. Note if you are willing to expand your payback time period to multiple years then you are essentially looking at an annuity and it's market loss rider. Of course those contacts are always structured such that the insurance company is extremely confident that they will be able to make more in the market than they are promising to pay back (multiple decade time horizons). |
566591 | Simple Schwaab does not have actually your securities they have leased them out and have to borrow them back. all assets are linked with derivatives now. They show on the balance sheet but have to be untangled. Thats why the market drops disproportionally fast to the actual number of shares sold. |
566745 | "I invested a small amount of money with Prosper, and later with Lending Club. I don't know why there is such a discrepancy, but over half of my Prosper loans defaulted, while only 1 of my Lending Club loans has defaulted so far. I think that P2P lending is for ""early adopters"" right now. There are regulation issues, transparency issues, legal issues, etc. Once all of those issues get worked out, I think that P2P lending will eventually overtake conventional lending, and it will be more profitable for both the lender and the borrower. The Internet is simply eroding the value that banks are adding to the process (primarily aggregation of funds), and the system has to change." |
567090 | "First, stock prices forecasts are usually pretty subjective so in the following resources you will find differing opinions. The important thing is to read both positive and negative views and do some of your additional research and form your own opinion. To answer your question, some analysts don't provide price targets, some just say ""Buy"", ""Sell"", ""Hold"", and others actually give you a price target. Yahoo provides a good resource for collecting reports and giving you a price target. http://screener.finance.yahoo.com/reports.html" |
567165 | I answered the first one, there is no time to train Americans in useful job skills because they are too busy with government schooling instead. As to the second question, I was being hyperbolic when I said 5-18 (school age). I do think teenagers could start to be trained in useful job skills, not prepubescent children though. |
567201 | "A bona-fide company never needs your credit card details, certainly not your 3-digit-on-back-of-card #, to issue a refund. On an older charge, they might have to work with their merchant provider. But they should be able to do it within the credit card handling system, and in fact are required to. Asking for details via email doesn't pass the ""sniff test"" either. To get a credit card merchant account, a company needs to go through a security assessment process called PCI-DSS. Security gets drummed into you pretty good. Of course they could be using one of the dumbed-down services like Square, but those services make refunds ridiculously easy. How did you come to be corresponding on this email address? Did they initially contact you? Did you find it on a third party website? Some of those are fraudulent and many others, like Yelp, it's very easy to insert false contact information for a business. Consumer forums, even moreso. You might take another swing at finding a proper contact for the company. Stop asking for a cheque. That also circumvents the credit card system. And obviously a scammer won't send a check... at least not one you'd want! If all else fails: call your bank and tell them you want to do a chargeback on that transaction. This is where the bank intervenes to reverse the charge. It's rather straightforward (especially if the merchant has agreed in principle to a refund) but requires some paperwork or e-paperwork. Don't chargeback lightly. Don't use it casually or out of laziness or unwillingness to speak with the merchant, e.g. to cancel an order. The bank charges the merchant a $20 or larger investigation fee, separate from the refund. Each chargeback is also a ""strike""; too many ""strikes"" and the merchant is barred from taking credit cards. It's serious business. As a merchant, I would never send a cheque to an angry customer. Because if I did, they'd cash the cheque and still do a chargeback, so then I'd be out the money twice, plus the investigation fee to boot." |
567244 | When the deal closes, will it be as if I sold all of my ESPP shares with regards to taxes? Probably. If the deal is for cash and not stock exchange, then once the deal is approved and closed all the existing shareholders will sell their shares to the buyer for cash. Is there any way to mitigate this? Unlikely. You need to understand that ESPP is just a specific way to purchase shares, it doesn't give you any special rights or protections that other shareholders don't have. |
567749 | The US Treasury is not directly/transactionally involved, but can affect the junk bond market by issuing new bonds when rates rise. Since US bonds are considered completely safe, changes in yield will affect low quality debt. For example, if rates rose to levels like 1980, a 12% treasury bond would drive the prices of junk bonds issued today dramatically lower. Another price factor is likelihood of default. Companies with junk credit ratings have lousy balance sheets, so negative economic conditions or tight short term debt markets can result in default for many of these companies. Whether bonds in a fund are new issues or purchased on the secondary market isn't something that is very relevant to the individual investor. The current interest rate environment is factored into the market already via prices of bonds. |
567842 | Stop accepting new investments and wait to show a profit on your K-1. |
568130 | I would start by talking to a Fee-Only Financial Planner to make sure the portfolio fits with your goals. You can find a list here: http://www.napfa.org/ |
568165 | "I'm mostly guessing based on existing documentation, and have no direct experience, so take this with a pinch of salt. My best understanding is that you need to file Form 843. The instructions for the form say that it can be used to request: A refund or abatement of a penalty or addition to tax due to reasonable cause or other reason (other than erroneous written advice provided by the IRS) allowed under the law. The ""reasonable cause"" here is a good-faith confusion about what Line 79 of the form was referring to. In Form 843, the IRC Section Code you should enter is 6654 (estimated tax). For more, see the IRC Section 6654 (note, however, that if you already received a CP14 notice from the IRS, you should cross-check that this section code is listed on the notice under the part that covers the estimated tax penalty). If your request is accepted, the IRS should issue you Notice 746, item 17 Penalty Removed: You can get more general information about the tax collection process, and how to challenge it, from the pages linked from Understanding your CP14 Notice" |
568255 | Welcome to the working world. I will answer these a bit out of order. C) Your withholding has almost zero chance of being correct. Just about everyone has to pay or gets a refund. I typically shoot for +- of $1000, and that is tough. A) Your W-2 is where you adjust the amount of tax that is withheld. You should fill out a new one as soon as possible. You can use a paycheck calculator to figure out the proper tax that should be withheld. B) No. D) Yes you will owe Utah state tax. See this site. The rub of this all is that you may have to pay Idaho tax prior to being refunded your Federal. If you want to avoid this file your federal return as soon as possible (Goal: File by 7 Feb). You should have the return in 3 weeks or less (presuming you are owed one). That will give you plenty of time to file and pay any Idaho tax owed. I say all of this because you may be tempted to go to a tax preparation shop and take an advance on your income tax return. Those loans are for people that hate money and are designed to tempt the foolish. They are only slightly better than payday loans. |
568324 | Because the question puts moral obligations aside, I'll answer from the practical point of view. There are two reasons for declaring side income, even cash income. If you buy a house in a year or two, the additional income will help qualify you for a mortgage. The IRS has ways to discover that you earned the money. a. A client might be audited. If the client deducts the cost of your services from their income, they could be asked for proof that they paid you. Suppose they saved ATM receipts that show the withdrawals of cash used to pay you, and kept records that document the dates they paid you. The IRS might want to ask you if you were paid by the client on those dates, and how much. The asking might be in the form of an audit, and you'd have to lie to the IRS to avoid penalty. b. A client might develop a grudge against you and report you to the IRS. Someone could do this even if they don't know for sure that you don't declare the income. If you were interviewed or audited, you'd have to lie to the IRS to avoid penalty. c. You could fall prey to an algorithm. There might be one that compares deductions and income. If you run a crazy-high ratio year after year, you could be flagged for audit. Once again, you'd have to lie to avoid penalty. |
568518 | "Another important commodity necessary to life is money, which is why when vast sums of it go missing or get locked into long-term investments into which one was grossly misled, it's very upsetting. One such long-term investment is Zurich Vista, which the OP is intimately familiar with. Another type of fund into which money can strangely disappear, is the now ubiquitous ""off-shore fund"". One should also be very wary of land-banking schemes that boast of high rates of return (15%-20%) and short maturation dates (4-5 years)." |
568771 | Not as you suggest. Since you are sole prop, you are taxed on a cash basis. Within reason, you can prepay vendors - so temp to hire through an agency might appear more attractive than direct hire. But there needs to be a justification other than avoidance of taxes. So pre-paying 100k on 12/25 would look fishy as fuck. Plus your quality of candidate will suffer if you need anything other than low skill labor. Look at your other fully deductible expenses - anything you can prepay-prepay. For example, I set my liability insurance renewal January 15 to provide optionality. But it just shifts one year into another .. Means fuckall if you are in the same marginal bracket next year. The IRS has also relaxed depreciation on office technology. Computers are now fully deductible rather than being capitalized. @ 500k revenue you should have a CPA and legal counsel. Simply incorporating isn't tax magic. The purpose is to limit yourersonal liability, not a tax shelter - but shitty things happen once you have employees, don't create the potential for a disgruntled employee lawsuit put your shelter at risk of court judgment. That said, assuming you aren't dumping a hypothetical on the Internet, congrats - for all the headaches, having employees is the ultimate leverage .. it's like a xerox machine for your labor (including loss of fidelity with each copy) .. |
568784 | "Can is fine, and other answered that. I'd suggest that you consider the ""should."" Does your employer offer a matched retirement account, typically a 401(k)? Are you depositing up to the match? Do you have any higher interest short term debt, credit cards, car loan, student loan, etc? Do you have 6 months worth of living expenses in liquid funds? One point I like to beat a dead horse over is this - for most normal mortgages, the extra you pay goes to principal, but regardless of how much extra you pay, the next payment is still due next month. So it's possible that you are feeling pretty good that for 5 years you pay so much that you have just 10 left on the 30 year loan, but if you lose your job, you still risk losing the house to foreclosure. It's not like you can ask the bank for that money back. If you are as disciplined as you sound, put the extra money aside, and only when you have well over the recommended 6 months, then make those prepayments if you choose. To pull my comment to @MikeKale into my answer - I avoided this aspect of the discussion. But here I'll suggest that a 4% mortgage costs 3% after tax (in 25% bracket), and I'd bet cap gain rates will stay 15% for non-1%ers. So, with the break-even return of 3.5% (to return 3 after tax) and DVY yielding 3.33%, the questions becomes - do you think the DVY top yielders will be flat over the next 15 years? Any return over .17%/yr is profit. That said, the truly risk averse should heed the advise in original answer, then pre-pay. Update - when asked,in April 2012, the DVY I suggested as an example of an investment that beats the mortgage cost, traded at $56. It's now $83 and still yields 3.84%. To put numbers to this, a lump sum $100K would be worth $148K (this doesn't include dividends), and giving off $5700/yr in dividends for an after-tax $4800/yr. We happened to have a good 4 years, overall. The time horizon (15 years) makes the strategy low risk if one sticks to it." |
569056 | I feel like this has nothing to do with income, and as such RMDs will not really help or harm you. After a person passes, credit card companies are unlikely to collect any outstanding balance. Debts cannot be inherited, however, assets can be made to stand for debts. Many assets pass to heirs without the probate process and in some cases all of them pass this way. This leaves creditors with nothing and having to write off the balance. Even if assets do pass through probate heirs may dispute the creditors. In that case credit card balances may not be high enough justify hiring a lawyer to fight for payment; or, if they do the judge may be unsympathetic and offer nothing or pennies on the dollar. The bottom line is that they probably see you, or your demographic, as a poor credit risk and reduced their exposure by lowering your limit. While that is not what they told you, they probably have to carefully structure what they say to avoid any discrimination claims. |
569157 | The regulatory environment here is the main driver. In Australia, where I spent 10 years developing software for lenders/banks you can operate the same way as described in the original question (overnight transfer to anyone) and cheques are not only never used, if you try, people will laugh at you. In Australia 4 banks control > 90% of the market, they realize that overnight transfers that involve them 0% is more efficient (read: costs less) for all of them. This will change in the next 1 - 2 years in the US I believe however, as pressures from technologies like bitcoin and technology providers like dwolla and venmo start to get a foothold and broader visibility. |
569179 | It is pretty simple to avoid risk in home ownership: Do those things and your risk of home ownership is about nil. |
569206 | "I would let them get their hands dirty, learn by practicing. Below you can find a simple program to generate your own efficient frontier, just 29 lines' python. Depending on the age, adult could help in the activity but I would not make it too lecturing. With child-parent relationship, I would make it a challenge, no easy money anymore -- let-your-money work-for-you -attitude, create the efficient portfolio! If there are many children, I would do a competition over years' time-span or make many small competitions. Winner is the one whose portfolio is closest to some efficient portfolio such as lowest-variance-portfolio, I have the code to calculate things like that but it is trivial so build on the code below. Because the efficient frontier is a good way to let participants to investigate different returns and risk between assets classes like stocks, bonds and money, I would make the thing more serious. The winner could get his/her designed portfolio (to keep it fair in your budget, you could limit choices to index funds starting with 1EUR investment or to ask bottle-price-participation-fee, bring me a bottle and you are in. No money issue.). Since they probably don't have much money, I would choose free software. Have fun! Step-by-step instructions for your own Efficient Frontier Copy and run the Python script with $ python simple.py > .datSimple Plot the data with $ gnuplot -e ""set ylabel 'Return'; set xlabel 'Risk'; set terminal png; set output 'yourEffFrontier.png'; plot '.datSimple'"" or any spreadsheet program. Your first ""assets"" could well be low-risk candies and some easy-to-stale products like bananas -- but beware, notice the PS. Simple Efficient-frontier generator P.s. do not stagnate with collectibles, such as candies and toys, and retailer products, such as mangos, because they are not really good ""investments"" per se, a bit more like speculation. The retailer gets a huge percentage, for further information consult Bogleheads.org like here about collectible items." |
569283 | Information is useless in this case. IR is useful when you are trying to replicate the risk exposures of an index and beat it. I.E.If I am a tech fund, I would compare myself to the tech S&P. IR is useless in this case as it is just the ratio of excess returns over the benchmark to vol. From a trading sense he needs a rate of wins to losses, so a sharpe like construct of R/SemiDeviation. Essentially his avg return divided by negative volatility. Going further on that is omega which introduces a threshold as in trading you care more about the equity curve so MAXDD is probably more relevant. |
569421 | When I have had background/credit checks, I have had to fill out a form first. You may be able to attach your proof that the debts are paid to your form. I had a friend that bombed his background check because his birth certificate and passport didn't have matching names (two variations on the same name, but it spooked the securitiy company). He had a chance to contest the finding and was still hired. |
569528 | Savings accounts with 8% APY? Unheard of these days. You're lucky if you find one at 1%. You should use checking and savings accounts only to hold an emergency fund (6 to 12 months of living expenses), or money that you will need in 2 years or so. The rest, invest in stocks and bonds. |
569539 | Yes your basic math is correct. If your tax bracket never changes, then either type of retirement account will end up in the same place. Assuming that there are no income restrictions that will limit your ability to contribute to the type of account you want. Now your job is to guess what your tax bracket will be each and every year for the next 3 or 4 decades. Events that will influence your bracket: getting married; having children; buying a house; selling a house; paying for college; the cost of medical care; moving to a state with a different state tax structure. Of course that assumes that you don't get a big bonus one year or that congress changes the tax brackets. That is why many people have both types of retirement accounts: Roth and non-Roth. |
569565 | "I thought the other answers had some good aspect but also some things that might not be completely correct, so I'll take a shot. As noted by others, there are three different types of entities in your question: The ETF SPY, the index SPX, and options contracts. First, let's deal with the options contracts. You can buy options on the ETF SPY or marked to the index SPX. Either way, options are about the price of the ETF / index at some future date, so the local min and max of the ""underlying"" symbol generally will not coincide with the min and max of the options. Of course, the closer the expiration date on the option, the more closely the option price tracks its underlying directly. Beyond the difference in how they are priced, the options market has different liquidity, and so it may not be able to track quick moves in the underlying. (Although there's a reasonably robust market for option on SPY and SPX specifically.) Second, let's ask what forces really make SPY and SPX move together as much as they do. It's one thing to say ""SPY is tied to SPX,"" but how? There are several answers to this, but I'll argue that the most important factor is that there's a notion of ""authorized participants"" who are players in the market who can ""create"" shares of SPY at will. They do this by accumulating stock in the constituent companies and turning them into the market maker. There's also the corresponding notion of ""redemption"" by which an authorized participant will turn in a share of SPY to get stock in the constituent companies. (See http://www.spdrsmobile.com/content/how-etfs-are-created-and-redeemed and http://www.etf.com/etf-education-center/7540-what-is-the-etf-creationredemption-mechanism.html) Meanwhile, SPX is just computed from the prices of the constituent companies, so it's got no market forces directly on it. It just reflects what the prices of the companies in the index are doing. (Of course those companies are subject to market forces.) Key point: Creation / redemption is the real driver for keeping the price aligned. If it gets too far out of line, then it creates an arbitrage opportunity for an authorized participant. If the price of SPY gets ""too high"" compared to SPX (and therefore the constituent stocks), an authorized participant can simultaneously sell short SPY shares and buy the constituent companies' stocks. They can then use the redemption process to close their position at no risk. And vice versa if SPY gets ""too low."" Now that we understand why they move together, why don't they move together perfectly. To some extent information about fees, slight differences in composition between SPY and SPX over time, etc. do play. The bigger reasons are probably that (a) there are not a lot of authorized participants, (b) there are a relatively large number of companies represented in SPY, so there's some actual cost and risk involved in trying to quickly buy/sell the full set to capture the theoretical arbitrage that I described, and (c) redemption / creation units only come in pretty big blocks, which complicates the issues under point b. You asked about dividends, so let me comment briefly on that too. The dividend on SPY is (more or less) passing on the dividends from the constituent companies. (I think - not completely sure - that the market maker deducts its fees from this cash, so it's not a direct pass through.) But each company pays on its own schedule and SPY does not make a payment every time, so it's holding a corresponding amount of cash between its dividend payments. This is factored into the price through the creation / redemption process. I don't know how big of a factor it is though." |
569691 | "Interest rates are at a record low and the government is printing money. You can get a fixed rate loan at a rate equal to inflation in a healthy economy. Unless you know that you are moving in < 5 years, why would you expose yourself to interest rate risk when rates are about as close to zero as they can be? If your thought with respect to mitigating interest rate risk is: ""What's the big deal, I'll just refinance!"", think again, because in a market where rates are climbing, you may not be able to affordably refinance at the LTV that you'll have in 5-7 years. From 1974-1991, 30 year mortgages never fell below 9%, and were over 12% from 1979 to 1985. Think about what those kinds of rates -- which reduce a new homeowner's buying power by over 40%, would do to your homes value." |
569953 | According to Publication 590, broker's commissions for stock transactions within an IRA cannot be paid in addition to the IRA contribution(s), but they are deductible as part of the contribution, or add to the basis if you are making a nondeductible contribution to a Traditional IRA. (Top of Page 10, and Page 12, column 1, in the 2012 edition of Pub 590). On the other hand, trustees' administrative fees can be paid from outside the IRA if they are billed separately, and are even deductible as a Miscellaneous Deduction on Schedule A of your income tax return (subject to the 2% of AGI threshold). A long time ago, when my IRA account balances were much smaller, I used to get a bill from my IRA custodian for a $20 annual administrative fee which I paid separately (but never got to deduct due to the 2% threshold). My custodian also allowed the option of doing nothing in which case the $20 would be collected from (and thus reduce) the amount of money in my IRA. Note that this does not apply to the expenses charged by the mutual funds that you might have in your IRA; these expenses are treated the same as brokerage commissions and must be paid from within the IRA. |
570046 | An option gives you the legal right to buy stock. However, you cannot exercise a stock option unless you have the ability to buy the stock. In the United States, securities not fully registered with the SEC for public sale cannot be purchased except by qualified investors. |
570112 | "I've bought ISO stock over they years -- in NYSE traded companies. Every time I've done so, they've done what's called ""sell-to-cover"". And the gubmint treats the difference between FMV and purchase price as if it's part of your salary. And for me, they've sold some stock extra to pay estimated taxes. So, if I got this right... 20,000 shares at $3 costs you 60,000 to buy them. In my sell-to-cover at 5 scenario: did I get that right? Keeping only 4,000 shares out of 20,000 doesn't feel right. Maybe because I've always sold at a much ratio between strike price and FMV. Note I made some assumptions: first is that the company will sell some of the stock to pay the taxes for you. Second is your marginal tax rate. Before you do anything check these. Is there some reason to exercise immediately? I'd wait, personally." |
570178 | At the most basic level of financing a business -- you are trying to acquire capital as cheaply as you can to invest in your projects. The measure for how expensive your capital is to acquire is Weighted Average Cost of Capital. The formula for WACC: Equity Ratio * Cost of Equity + Debt Ratio * Cost of Debt * (1 - Tax Rate) This is also your discount rate when you're making a DCF model. Debt tends to be cheaper than equity when you don't already have any, and is also advantaged by tax rates since you don't pay taxes on interest. In the real world, banks and lenders will ratchet up rates the more debt you acquire, or shut you out once you've taken on too much and your debt service coverage is too low for them. In a classroom though, most teachers are too lazy to make a curvilinear formula for borrowing and will just state a rate for borrowing so you can load up on debt so long as you don't fall below being able to service your debt (cash flow to make your debt payments). This will ultimately juice the returns on equity. Realistically, you would find lenders would let you have ~20% equity in the business and ~80% debt without raising your teacher's eyebrow. If you haven't taken accounting yet; be careful about the difference between cash and revenue in your analyses. Revenue is recognition for work done; not cash in hand. You can have all the revenue in the world but if no one's paid you for it yet, you can't pay anyone. |
570226 | "I figured that there must be some people in a corporate office somewhere who sign $100M loans for lunch. :) The banks have that experience (but I'm not interested in asking them for a sample), and our consultants definitely have that experience, but I'm looking to evaluate the consultants with this exercise. If they provide the sample, then deliver to that sample, I'm still blind as to whether that sample is ""good"" as compared to something that the corporate world would use on the daily. I'd take your advice for the $1M loan, but I can't help but think as the factors of 10 increase, the data required to properly negotiate also increases. I don't want to go in blind, and provide a proposal that looks like a high school project." |
570247 | Barclays offers an iPath ETN (not quite an ETF), DJP, which tracks the total return of the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index. |
570292 | One thing to keep in mind is that with Roth accounts, there are different withdrawal considerations based on your contributions. For example, you can withdraw Roth IRA contributions whenever you want in the future. However this really has nothing to do with your cost basis and purely to do with the contribution amount vs balance. |
570453 | Making or losing income (via selling shares) is the taxable event, not moving the income you made to and from an account. The only exception would be a special account such as an IRA, and then there would be rules specific to that account structure about when you can withdraw money and what the tax consequences are. |
570466 | "When ""people say"", each person is referring to whatever he/she is looking at. Interest rates tend to move roughly the same, but often there is a bias regarding long vs. short term. In the US right now, short term interest rates are very low but there is a lot of chatter saying they will rise in the future. The differential between long term rates and short term rates is high compared to historical norms, suggesting that the market believes this chatter. You can also look at the differences in rates between different quality levels. If the economy is improving, the difference in rate for lower rated debt vs. higher rated debt decreases as people think the chance of businesses failing is decreasing. Right now, any interest rate you look at is well below long term historical averages, so asserting that interest rates are low is quite safe." |
570680 | I would suggest to buy your own printer, and calculate the cost for a page including the wear to the printer. Then either deduce these printing expenses, or ask the charity to reimburse you. This is not much different than when you would go to a copyshop, those easily charge 10-30c per page, with your own printer you can probably get it around 5-10c per page, including paper, toner, drum, and amortization. The advantage is that when you do use the printer for other purposes, you wont get into any problems with who owns the printer or deductions. |
571015 | The quote price is simply the last price at which a trade completed. |
571062 | If this is a business expense - then this is what is called reimbursement. Reimbursement is usually not considered as income since it is money paid back to you for an expense you covered for your employer with your after-tax money. However, for reimbursement to be considered properly executed, from income tax stand point, there are some requirements. I'm not familiar with the UK income tax law specifics, but I reason the requirements would not differ much from places I'm familiar with: before an expense is reimbursed to you, you should usually do this: Show that the expense is a valid business expense for the employer benefit and by the employer's request. Submit the receipt for reimbursement and follow the employer's procedure on its approval. When income tax agent looks at your data, he actually will ask about the £1500 tab. You and you'll employer will have to do some explaining about the business activity that caused it. If the revenue agent is not satisfied, the £750 that is paid to you will be declared as your income. If the required procedures for proper reimbursement were not followed - the £750 may be declared as your income regardless of the business need. Have your employer verify it with his tax accountant. |
571124 | "According to Wikipedia this is still a wash sale: In the USA wash sale rules are codified in ""26 USC § 1091 - Loss from wash sales of stock or securities."" Under Section 1091, a wash sale occurs when a taxpayer sells or trades stock or securities at a loss, and within 30 days before or after the sale:" |
571218 | Congratulations! You're making enough money to invest. There are two easy places to start: I recommend against savings accounts because they will quite safely lose your money: the inflation rate is usually higher than the interest rate on a savings account. You may have twice as much money after 50 years, but if everything costs four times as much, then you've lost buying power. If, in the course of learning about investing, you'd like to try buying individual stocks, do it only with money you wouldn't mind losing. Index funds will go down slightly if one of the companies in that index fails entirely, but the stock of a failed company is worthless. |
571246 | To confirm: you say you have credit card debt of $18,000 with min. repayment of $466.06, plus on top of this you are also paying off a car loan and another personal loan. From my calculations if your monthly interest on your credit card is $237, the interest on your credit card should be about 15.8% p.a. Is this correct? Balance Transfer If you did a balance transfer of your $18,000 to a new credit card with 0% for 14 months and keep your repayments the same ($466) you would have saved yourself a bit over $3020 in interest over those 14 months. Your credit card balance after 14 months would be about $11,471 (instead of $14,476 with your current situation). If your interest after the 14 months went back to 15.8% you would be able to pay the remaining $11,471 in 2.5 more years (keeping repayments at $466), saving 10 months off your repayments and a total of $4,781 in interest over 3 years and 8 months. The main emphasis here is that you are able to keep your repayments at least the same so you are able to pay off the debt quicker, and that your interest rate on the new credit card after the 14 months interest free is not more than your current interest rate of 15.8%. Things you should be careful about if you take this path: Debt Consolidation In regards to a Debt Consolidation for your personal loan and credit card (and possibly your car loan) into a single lower interest rate loan can be a good idea, but there are some pitfalls you should consider. Manly, if you are taking out a loan with a lower interest rate but a longer term to pay it off, you may end up paying less in monthly repayments but will end up paying more interest in the long run. If you do take this course of action try to keep your term to no longer than your current debt's terms, and try to keep your repayments as high as possible to pay the debt off as soon as possible and reduce any interest you have to pay. As you already have you credit card and personal loan with CBA talk to them to see what kind of deal they can give you. Again be wary of the fine print and read the PDS of any products you are thinking of getting. Refer to ASIC - Money Smart website for more valuable information you should consider before taking out any debt consolidation. Other Action You Can Take If you are finding that the repayments are really getting out of hand and no one will help you with any debt consolidation or reducing your interest rates on your debts, as a last resort you can apply for a Part 9 debt agreement. But be very careful as this is an alternative to bankruptcy, and like bankruptcy a debt agreement will appear on your credit file for seven years and your name will be listed on the National Personal Insolvency Index forever. Further Assistance and Help If you have trouble reading any PDS, or want further information or help regarding any issues I have raised or any other part of your financial situation you can contact Centrelink's Financial Information Service. They provide a free and confidential service that provides education and information on financial and lifestyle issues to all Australians. |
571412 | Get a checking account with Ally Bank. They refund all ATM fees from within the US, so effectively, every ATM transaction will have no surcharge. |
571430 | It also depends on where you work. If you move your home and your job then the date you establish residency in the new state is the key date. All income before that date is considered income for state 1, and all income on or after that date is income for state 2. If there is a big difference in income you will want to clearly establish residency because it impacts your wallet. If they had the same rates moving wouldn't impact your wallet, but it would impact each state. So make sure when going from high tax state to low tax state that you register your vehicles, register to vote, get a new drivers license... It becomes more complex if you move your home but not your job. In that case where you work might be the deciding factor. Same states have agreed that where you live is the deciding factor; in other cases it is not. For Virginia, Maryland, and DC you pay based on where you live if the two states involved are DC, MD, VA. But if you Live in Delaware and work in Virginia Virginia wants a cut of your income tax. So before you move you need to research reciprocity for the two states. From Massachusetts information for Nonresident and Part-Year Resident Income, Exemptions, Deductions and Credits Massachusetts gross income includes items of income derived from sources within Massachusetts. This includes income: a few questions later: Massachusetts residents and part-year residents are allowed a credit for taxes due to any other jurisdiction. The credit is available only on income reported and taxed on a Massachusetts return. Nonresidents may not claim the taxes paid to other jurisdiction credit on their Massachusetts Form 1-NR/PY. The credit is allowed for income taxes paid to: The credit is not allowed for: taxes paid to the U.S. government or a foreign country other than Canada; city or local tax; and interest and penalty paid to another jurisdiction. The computation is based on comparing the Massachusetts income tax on income reported to the other jurisdiction to the actual tax paid to the other jurisdiction; the credit is limited to the smaller of these two numbers. The other jurisdiction credit is a line item on the tax form but you must calculate it on the worksheet in the instruction booklet and also enter the credit information on the Schedule OJC. So if you move your house to New Hampshire, but continue to work in Massachusetts you will owe income tax to Massachusetts for that income even after you move and establish residency in New Hampshire. |
571711 | I'm not an expert, but here's my $0.02. Deductions for business expenses are subject to the 2% rule. In other words, you can only deduct that which exceeds 2% of your AGI (Adjusted Gross Income). For example, say you have an AGI of $50,000, and you buy a laptop that costs $800. You won't get a write-off from that, because 2% of $50,000 is $1,000, and you can only deduct business-related expenses in excess of that $1,000. If you have an AGI of $50,000 and buy a $2,000 laptop, you can deduct a maximum of $1,000 ($2,000 minus 2% of $50,000 is $2,000 - $1,000 = $1,000). Additionally, you can write off the laptop only to the extent that you use it for business. So in other words, if you have an AGI of $50,000 and buy that $2,000 laptop, but only use it 50% for business, you can only write off $500. Theoretically, they can ask for verification of the business use of your laptop. A log or a diary would be what I would provide, but I'm not an IRS agent. |
572097 | Never loan money to family or friends with the intention of getting it back. If you take him/her to court, and the claim is valid, sure you get your money back, you lose a friend/family member. |
572451 | |
572563 | There are two fundamental flaws to your plan: Supposing that you can get a loan with an interest rate that is less than the profit you are likely to get from an investment. Historically, the U.S. stock market goes up by 6 to 7% per year. I just did a quick check and found rates for unsecured loans of 10 to 15%. Of course interest rates vary depending on your credit rating and all sorts of other factors, but that's probably a reasonable ball park. Borrowing money at 15% so you can invest it at 6% is not a good plan. Of course you could invest in things that promise higher returns, but such investments have higher risks. If there was a super safe investment that was virtually guaranteed to give 20% profit, the bank wouldn't loan you money at 10 or 15%: they'd put their money in this 20% investment. I don't know what your income is, but unless it's substantial, no one is going to give you an unsecured loan for $250,000. In your question you say you'll use $2,000 of your profits to make payments on the loan. That's less than 0.8% of the loan amount. If you really know a bank that will loan money at 0.8%, I'm sure we'd all like to hear about it. That would be an awesome rate for a fully secured loan, never mind for a signature loan. $250,000 for 10 years at 10% would mean payments of $3,300 per MONTH, and that's about the most optimistic terms I can imagine for a signature loan. You say you plan to lie to the bank. What are you going to tell them? A person doesn't get to be a bank loan officer with authority to make $250,000 loans if he's a complete idiot. They're going to want to know what you intend to do with the money and how you plan to pay it back. If you're making a million dollars a year, sure, they'll probably loan you that kind of money. But if you were making a million dollars a year I doubt you'd be considering this scheme. As TripeHound said in the comments, if it was really possible to get bigger returns on an investment than you would have to pay in interest on an unsecured loan, then everybody would be doing it all the time. Sorry, if you want to be rich, the realistic choices are, (a) arrange to be born to rich parents; (b) win the lottery; (c) get a good job and work hard. |
572822 | If they short the contract, that means, in 5 months, they will owe if the price goes up (receive if the price goes down) the difference between the price they sold the future at, and the 3-month Eurodollar interbank rate, times the value of the contract, times 5. If they're long, they receive if the price goes up (owe if the price goes down), but otherwise unchanged. Cash settlement means they don't actually need to make/receive a three month loan to settle the future, if they held it to expiration - they just pay or receive the difference. This way, there's no credit risk beyond the clearinghouse. The final settlement price of an expiring three-month Eurodollar futures (GE) contract is equal to 100 minus the three-month Eurodollar interbank time deposit rate. |
573143 | "This is fraud, the related legal code is ""11 USC 548 - Fraudulent transfers and obligations""; also see the wiki page for Fraudulent Conveyance in the United States. Highly suggest cutting off contact with this person, and speaking with a lawyer as soon as possible to make sure you have not already broken the law." |
573158 | The limits for 2011 and 2012 are $5000 or $6000 if you are 50 or older. The 2011 income limit is $169K, but that's MAGI, not gross. With a $180K income, your MAGI is likely below $169, but you can only tell by looking at your return. If you are this close, you might have to convert to a non-deducted IRA, or withdraw the money. Else, you can fund the 2011 IRA when you file the return in 2012 to be sure. |
573239 | The SEC 30-Day Yield you're seeing is a standardized yield calculation set out by the Securities & Exchange Commission. It can be useful for comparing bond funds, but it doesn't guarantee what you'll actually earn from a fund. IMPORTANT: The SEC 30-day yield represents a bond fund's returns from the previous 30 days expressed as an annual percentage of the current fund price — yes, an annual percentage. In other words, don't expect 1.81% return on your money every 30 days! Such a return is too-good-to-be-true return in today's low rate environment. 1.81% per year? More reasonable. Even then, the 1.81% you see is merely an estimate, one based on assumptions, of what you might expect to earn if you keep your money in place for the next year. The estimate is based on the assumptions that: These aren't reliable assumptions. BIV's price does fluctuate. You are not promised to get your principal back with a bond fund. Only an individual bond promises your principal back, and only at maturity. So, earning $181 on $10,000 invested for a full year while taking on interest-rate and other risks might not be worth the trouble of putting your money in a brokerage account. You'll need to transfer the money in and out, and there are potential trading fees to take into account. (How much to buy/sell units?) An FDIC-insured high interest savings account makes more sense. |
573290 | Once again. You're taking your finance experience and cross applying it. Very technical degrees like CS often require less gen Ed classes. UIC only allows for 50 gen Ed in their CS program compared to 60 in finance. Stop thinking the degree requirements and paths are the same. They're not. |
573600 | The first moment of trading usually occurs even later than that. It may take a few hours to balance the current buy/sell orders and open the stock. Watch CNBC when a hot IPO is about to open and you'll see the process in real time. If you miss it, look at a one day Yahoo chart to see when the open occurred. |
573713 | If you ever need the money in three years, imagine that today is 2006 and you need the money in 2009. Keep it in savings accounts, money-markets, or CDs maturing at the right time. |
573935 | There is nothing wrong with self directed IRA's the problem is that most of the assets they specialize in are better done in other ways. Real estate is already extremely tax advantaged in the US. Buying inside a Traditional IRA would turn longterm capital gains (currently 15%) into ordinary income taxed at your tax rate when you withdraw this may be a plus or minus, but it is more likely than not that your ordinary income tax rate is higher. You also can't do the live in each house for 2 years before selling plan to eliminate capital gains taxes (250k individual 500k married couple). The final problem is that you are going to have problems getting a mortgage (it won't be a conforming loan) and will likely have to pay cash for any real estate purchased inside your IRA. Foreign real estate is similar to above except you have additional tax complexities. The key to the ownership in a business is that there are limits on who can control the business (you and maybe your family can't control the business). If you are experienced doing angel investing this might be a viable option (assuming you have a really big IRA you want to gamble with). If you want to speculate on precious metals you will probably be better offer using ETF's in a more traditional brokerage account (lower transactions costs more liquidity). |