Fundamentally these are my opinions I am expressing. Even though I try to remain as factual as possible, and have significantly modified my opinion over the years as a result of apparently factual information, it's still technically just opinion.  > My view is not so much that labour and finance capital returns need to be balanced (although that is probably a great thing to aim for), but that creation of wealth/capital needs to be intrinsically linked with the creation of real value.  By the way, when I say capital it's not generally just finance capital, but all operational capital goods. Which includes factories and all means of production. A certain amount of financing is needed to keep it operational, and more is needed to increase the means of production to grow overall wealth.  Have you ever heard of the [Bowley's law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowley%27s_law)? Basically you can't really push this ratio very far. If consumer demand dries up then production will get cut back to meat demand. Overproduction of stuff they can't sell is not what they are in business for. Likewise, is demand exceeds the capacity of production to keep up it pushes inflation, which drives up cost to reduce demand. So this ratio remains very nearly a constant. Even though this ratio was at historic highs in the 1970s, and historic lows today.  What happens when you artificially dry up labor returns, through excessive supply side policies, is that demand for production falls. Hence production is cut back to meet that demand. This of course reduces employment and increases job competition, which puts more downward on wages exacerbating the situation. Only once labor cost fall low enough it effectively subsidizes inefficient production methods which limits the falling wages at a reduced overall productivity. Note that this is under present circumstances, not those of the 1970s. This adaptive matching between production and demand insures that the Bowley ratio is never too far off of its historical averages, even if productivity is driven well below its potential.  More or less the same effect occurs for the opposite reason if capital return ratios are too low. Though with opposite effects on the inflation rate and such. When consumer demand is high enough capital will pay whatever labor cost is required to meet that demand, so long as it remains profitable enough, i.e., they get a reasonable ratio of the market return. Consumer demand with sufficient capital profit margins is what drives full employment, not the sheer volume of capital returns as present policies essentially assume. Yet you can't have a broad based consumer demand, to drive employment, without sufficient labor returns, as those labor returns is what finances that demand needed to drive employment.  So not only does labour and capital returns need to be balanced. Economics does NOT allow it to be unbalanced, at least for long. Even if balancing requires the economy to shrink, productivity to fall, etc., that is exactly what it will do to remain balanced. No choice given, no matter how draconian the regulations to force it. This is true under purely agrarian economies of the past, pure communism, and even ecology. This is why I am a capitalist, because nature gives me no choice. But acceptance of that fact does not require me to have an ounce of tolerance for cronyism.  The only thing we can do is not push this balance in either direction to destructive levels. Because destruction is what will happen for the balance to remain. Because so much of our productive capacity has been in productivity gains since the 1990s, and wages and demand have as yet not matched these productivity gains, we have a huge latent wealth capacity that continues to grow as we fail to take advantage of it. So far our supply side policies haven't so much destroyed wealth and productivity. Rather it has prevented us from seeing the potential gains from the latent productivity growth from technologies over the few decades.  ---  The last part you mention about wealth/capital needing to be intrinsically linked with the creation of real value. You are absolute 100% entirely correct. Perhaps even more than you know. Ever heard of planned obsolescence, or [The Light Bulb Conspiracy](http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb-conspiracy/)? That link is a documentary on the issue that will make you mad. We could almost certainly pay a flat 90% tax rate on everything and still not come close to what this issue cost us. That's not the only means this issue imposes cost, but it is extreme.   Of course just because an appliance still works doesn't mean people will not replace it with newer better models. But the trash pile insures there is a much more limited secondary market for poorer people. Consumption debt cost is also a far bigger issue than people recognize. Debt to finance capital goods for production is fine, as this feeds productivity and wealth in a manner that sustains itself even as the debt is paid. Consumption debt is an entirely different beast. Creating a significant section of the population that feeds on peoples income without producing a thing. Only to let allow people to consume income they haven't earned yet.  This generally falls under the category of rent seeking behavior. Yeah, the lack real value creation turns my stomach. That people will knowingly spend money on temporary non-essential novelties and such is all fine and dandy, but underhandedly renting our base appliances for a certain number of uses is outrageous in my book.


Stores have been using fake markups for centuries--this is nothing new. It isn't anymore deceptive than any other business practice that has been around forever. I know a story in the UES of Manhattan that has had a going out of business sale since at least 2010.  This is no PSA; it's an attempt at some viral marketing from yet another online clothes retailer. Yawn.


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://timharford.com/2017/08/what-we-get-wrong-about-technology/) reduced by 97%. (I'm a bot) ***** > So sophisticated is Rachael that she is impossible to distinguish from a human without specialised equipment; she even believes herself to be human.  > &quot;If 11th-century Europe had little use for paper,&quot; writes Mark Kurlansky in his book Paper, &quot;13th-century Europe was hungry for it.&quot; When paper was embraced in Europe, it became arguably the continent&#039;s earliest heavy industry.  > If human skills are now so valuable, that low-end growth seems like a puzzle - but the truth is that many distinctively human skills are not at the high end.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6wyvcy/what_we_get_wrong_about_technology/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~201126 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **human**^#1 **paper**^#2 **technology**^#3 **invention**^#4 **more**^#5"


The best advice I can give to anyone who doesn't know a subject is to just start reading. At first you won't understand fuckall, but after a few months things will start to snap together in your head. I know it's hard considering most of us have this idea that to learn a subject we need to start at some sort of beginning but in reality there's no beginning or end of any subject. So just dive in and keep reading until it makes sense.


> *I fail to see how moderate inflation is a bad thing*  The purchasing power of the currency slowly erodes, which means people's savings melt away.  So people are forced to invest into something they don't really understand and something that is completely rigged, instead of just having their savings in a currency.  [USD purchasing power](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mAg6FMpNGpM/Ta9ICcEMonI/AAAAAAAABBM/UoQG8vxtBX0/s1600/U.S.%2BDollar%2BPurchasing%2BPower.jpg).


This article talks about State controlled banking, before 1913 - the power of printing money and all that was under control of the State (Congress). If they shut down the Federal Reserve, they would then be able to eliminate the fractional reserve banking method and government wouldn't have to pay intertest to borrow in their own currency.


>I haven't been in /politics since the election where anyone that didn't support Hillary was either downvoted into oblivion or banned.   Okay, but that doesnt mean it hasnt happened.   >Once CTR took over /politics, any posts supporting Bernie or criticizing Hillary's past were trashed.  These are all just cognitive bias. While they do support and tend to be this way it is not as extreme as you are making it out to be. Maybe if I have time I'll link 10-15 comments that illustrates why there are many exceptions to what youre saying.  There are no exception on for the r/T_Ds -- it is 100% tow the line or silence/ban.   >Maybe it's changed since then now that the election money has dried up and CTR doesn't have the funds to pay shills to full-time manage /politics.   This is just speculation. We can say definitively however that r/T_Ds havent changes.


My suggestion would be to ask the planner as an initial question as there could be a couple possible explanations for a free meeting: Initial consultation - Within some industries there will be that first meeting which is free to see how well do two people work together.  In Canada there are some lawyers that will give a half-hour of their time and I'd imagine some financial planners may have a similar practice.  This would be where that first meeting is a half-hour or hour to see what is your situation and what expertise do you want that the planner would have. Straight commission - There is also the possibility that the planner is compensated by the products you purchase through him.  In this case, the mutual fund companies, insurance companies and other institutions that he recommends will be handling his compensation.  While this does present a conflict of interest, you have to decide whether you want a fee-only planner which wouldn't have this issue though you'd have to pay out of pocket. Something to consider is what are you bringing to this meeting and how long is it intended to be.  If you are bringing a lot of paperwork then it is definitely worth asking upfront while if it is an informal chat for a half hour then things may be different.


No, it is the same as it has always been. The market gives a valuation of a company based off its expected discounted cash flow.   Only problem we see is that many growth companies ($TSLA!!!) are being given the benefit of the doubt in regards to their expected growth and future profitability. **IF** Tesla does grow as many expect, then current share prices are definitely justifiable. But since when do we price things based on their ideal scenario? This market has lost its grip on risk-reward and risk tolerance. Does even a Tesla bull think that the company even has a >10% chance at ever exceeding expectations in regards to near-future growth or profitability? And even those who are invested in the company admit there is a serious chance that Tesla fails to reach expectations for growth/margins.  Either way the market will cool soon. And negative cash flow companies with ultra-aggressive growth targets will be punished.  ---  If I wasn't poor/saving up to buy a house. I'd love to purchase 100 [January 2019 $50 Put Leaps at a cost of $0.55 each](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/tsla/option-chain/190118P00050000-tsla-put) (total cost $5,500).  A Tesla BK before January 18th 2019 would mean $50x100x100 - $5,500 = **$494,500** net profit WOW.  A reduction in market cap to $5 Billion and increase in outstanding shares to 200 million (currently at 167M) results in a net profit of **$244,500**  A reduction in market cap to $10 Billion with the same share dilution results in share price of $50 and thus a full loss of my $5,500. :(


Let's stop right there. Are you implying that the Ukrainian military shot down MH17 and made it look as if Russia was involved, as well as enlisting the U.S. intelligence community in their coverup of murdering of a couple hundred citizens of an allied nation and member of NATO?


No clue, why you are getting downvoted. Most people need to understand that entry level positions garner entry level pay, and it's only after being loyal to a company that you get paid much more. However, if work sucks, they ought to do the best to find another one.


"I read up on it and saw that the IRS can ""charge"" the loan provider on   interest even if the loan provider doesn't charge interest, but this   is normally mitigated by the 0% interest being considered a gift and   as long as it's below X amount your fine. Yes, this sums it up. X is the amount of the gift exemption, the $14K. However, you must differ between loan with no interest and loan with no paying back. With loan with no interest you're still giving a statutory gift of the IRS mandated minimum interest. However, the principal is expected to be repaid to you and you must show that this expectation is reasonably fulfilled. If you cannot (i.e.: you gave a ""loan"" with no intention of it being paid back), then the IRS will recharacterize the whole amount as the gift, and you'll be on the hook for gift tax for the amounts above the exemption. What defines a loan vs a gift in terms of the IRS, is it simply that   the loan will be paid back, or is it only considered a loan if a   promisary note is made? As I said - you must be able to show that the loan is indeed a loan, even if it is with no interest. I.e.: it is being repaid, it is treated as a loan by all parties, and is not an attempt to evade gift tax. Promissory note is not a must, but will definitely be helpful in showing that. But without the de-facto repayment of the loan, it will be hard to argue that it is not a gift, even if you have a promissory note. That means, you should make a loan in such a way that the borrower will (begin) repaying it reasonably soon, so that you can show payment schedule being followed and money moving back to you. Reasonably soon is not of course defined in a statute, so do consult with a EA/CPA licensed in your state on how to structure the loan so that it will not appear as an attempt to evade the gift tax. Are there any limits on how big a loan can be? No, but keep in mind that even with statutory interest charges (published by the IRS monthly, see the link), with large enough loan you can exceed the gift tax exemption. Also, keep in mind that interest is taxable income to you. Even if you gift it back (i.e.: the statutory interest)."


OMG, I'm sorry about where you live. I could name 6 local burger joints off the top of my head within 15 miles of me that have better burgers for cheaper than McD's premium products. I'm sure there are many more if I researched it. I think McD is relatively expensive.


Volume @ 0 doesn't mean that there are no buyers and sellers, it just means that there hasn't been any trades done yet. What you need to look for are the bids and offers (for selling and buying, respectively). For further expiration and NTM or IT options there will almost always be a bid and an offer (but it may be very wide). Now, in case where there is 0 bid (no one is willing to buy), you may still have a chance if the option has some value in it. For that - you need your broker to try to shop it to market making firms. Now, depending on who your broker is, this may or may not be possible. Alternatively, if you have DMA (direct market access) to the options exchanges, you can try to put in an offer of your own and wait for someone to execute against you, however do not expect to be traded with unless your price is out of line with the cost. However, in wide markets, you can try Lampost options (they may give you price improvement) or try to offer very close to the bid. You may save yourself a penny or two and perhaps get a rebate if you are using BATSO or NASDAQO markets (if you have DMA and pass-through exchange fees).


"My company makes books.  It is a start-up going through hard times right now.  It is too soon to say if we are ultimately going to be successful, so we might not be the best example of triumph following adversity.  We certainly can fulfill the ""hard times"" part, though.  Let me know if I can be of any help."


Drain City Toronto plumbers use high pressure water jetting technology, for effectively removing sediment, grease, and waste, to thoroughly clean the inside of your drains and sewer pipes in the ground. Our plumbers use only the best equipment available, and you’ll receive quality jetting services done by our knowledgeable and experienced plumbers. Learn more details visit here: http://www.draincity.com/high-pressure-water-jetting-services/


If you're relatively certain that you're going to meet the requirements, it sounds like a good move for you. The #1 priority with emergency funds should be easy access to the money when you need it.  Before the current economic situation, money market funds were great for this since they preserved the value of the dollars you put in.  Now the rates on money market accounts are barely better than the 0.2% you're currently getting.


Credited to your account means amount has been deposited to your account(this will be your income). Debited from your account means withdrawn from your account(This will be your expense). Hope this clarifies your question. Regards Jayanthi


I'd worry about being robbed or losing the money en-route. Is it likely? Probably not. But wow, I wouldn't want to lose serious money in one shot. I have fond memories of the time I was serving as treasurer for a non-profit organization and I was taking $30,000 in contributions to the bank. As I walked across the parking lot with all that money in my brief case, I thought, I would really hate to be robbed right now. When I've moved long distances in the past, I've simply written myself a check from my old account and then deposited that amount to my new account. These days I presume I'd do an electronic transfer. I live in the US so I don't know what the conventions are in Europe, but around here, 5% would be an outrageous fee. I once paid $20 for an electronic transfer of around $3,000, and I considered that an excessive fee. I can understand the bank charging a few bucks, but. I'd check around if there are not other banks with more reasonable fees.


You were an unsecured creditor. If Refco had a corporate credit card Visa would be in the exact same position you were. Nothing to do with being the little guy per se, just that UCC Article 9/the Bankruptcy Code has a massive preference for secured creditors over unsecureds. (Which I think is not the best idea, but for other reasons.)  Just took my Secured Credit final a few days ago.


You don't even know why licenses you need? And you're asking Reddit? You will be doing a disservice to any client who has the misfortune of having you as an investment advisor. Go work for an established shop for a bit and learn the ropes. How could you dream of asking someone to trust you with their money when you know as little as you do?


In regards to the legal recourse, no there is none.  Also, despite your frustrations with Citi, it may not be their fault.  Mortgage companies are now forced to select appraisers (essentially at random) through 3rd party Appraisal Resource Companies (ARCs).  This randomization mandate from the government was issued in order to combat fraud, but it is really causing more trouble for homeowners because it took away appraiser accountability.  Basically, there's nothing we can do to fire an appraiser anymore.  I've had appraiser do terrible jobs, just blatantly wrong, and have gone the distance with the dispute process only to find they won't change the value.  My favorite real-life example came from an appraiser who got the bedroom count wrong (4 instead of 5); yet he took pictures of 5 bedrooms.  The one he excluded he stated it shouldn't count because it didn't have a closet.  Problem is, it DID have a closet.  I had the homeowner take pictures of all of the closets in his house, and send them in.  He still refused to change the count.  After close to 2 months of the dispute process, the ARC came in and changed the count, but did not chagne the value, stating that the room count didn't increase the sqft, and there would be no adjustment in value.  I was floored.  The only solution we had was to wait for the appraisal to expire, then order it again; which we did.  The new appraiser got the count right, and surprisingly (not really), it came in at the right value... In regards to the value necessary to avoid MI, they are likely using 80%, but it's not based on your current balance vs the value, it's based on the new loan amount (which will include costs, prepaids, skipped mortgage payments, etc) vs the value. Here are your options: Get a new appraisal.  If you are confident the value is wrong, go somewhere else and get a new appraisal. Restructure the loan.  Any competent Loan Officer would have noticed that you are very close to 80%, and should have offer you the option of splitting the mortgage into a 1st and 2nd loan.  Keeping the first loan at 80%, and taking out a 2nd for the difference would avoid MI. Best Regards, Jared Newton


First: the question is irrelevant for purchases on exchange, mostly. Majority of sales on stock exchanges is between shareholders. If however you buy directly from the company (in a IPO, or direct share purchase program of some kind, like ESPP), then it does end up showing in the company account ledgers one way or another. It then become part of company's total assets, and the newly sold shares add to the equity.


Scrip dividends are similar to stock splits. With a stock split, 100 shares can turn into 200 shares; with scrip dividends they might turn into 105 shares.


A mortgage will show as a lien on your property. Say your home is worth 400,000 (money units) but you only owe 200,000. A lender may be willing to be second in line, lending you another 100,000.


Ons bedrijf heeft u een goede keuze van infraroodcabines en keukenwinkels. Van klein tot groot en maatwerk is mogelijk. U kunt verwachten kwaliteit en duurzaamheid bij een stand te kopen. U kunt er zeker van zijn dat u kunt gaan genieten van uw aankoop zeer lange tijd.


"It depends on the rules in the specific places you stay.  Specific places being countries or states.   Some states may consider pension payments to be taxable income, others may not.  Some may consider presence for X days to constitute residency, X days may be 60 days in a calendar year whether or not those days are continuous.   It doesn't matter so much where your mailbox or mail handling service is located, it matters: You may owe taxes in more than one place.  Some states will allow you to offset other states' taxes against theirs.  Some states in the US are really harsh on income taxes.  It's my understanding that if you own real estate in New York, all of your income, no matter the source, is taxable income in New York whether or not you were ever in the state that year. Ultimately, you can't just put up your hand and say, ""that's my tax domicile so I'm exempt from all your taxes.""  There is no umbrella US regulation on this topic, the states determine who they consider to be residents and how those residents are to be taxed. While it's possible you may be considered a resident of multiple states and owe income taxes in multiple states, it's equally possible that you won't meet the residency criteria for any state regardless of whether or not that state has an income tax.  The issue you face, as addressed in @Jay's answer, Oklahoma will consider you a resident of OK until you have established residency somewhere else."


"P/E alone would not work very well. See for example http://www.hussmanfunds.com/html/peak2pk.htm and http://www.hussmanfunds.com/rsi/profitmargins.htm (in short, P/E is affected too much by cyclical changes in profit margins, or you might say: booms inflate the E beyond sustainable levels, thus making the P/E look more favorable than it is). Here's a random blog post that points to Schiller's normalized earnings measure: http://seekingalpha.com/article/247257-s-p-500-is-expensive-using-normalized-earnings I think even Price to Sales is supposed to work better than P/E for predicting 10-year returns on a broad index, because it effectively normalizes the margins. (Normalized valuation explains the variance in 10-year returns better than the variance in 1-year returns, I think I've read; you can't rely on things ""reverting to mean"" in only 1 year.) Another issue with P/E is that E is more subject to weird accounting effects than for example revenues. For example whether stock compensation is expensed or one-time write-offs are included or whatever can mean you end up with an economically strange earnings number. btw, a simple way to do what you describe here would be to put a chunk of money into funds that vary equity exposure. For example John Hussman's fund has an elaborate model that he uses to decide when to hedge. Say you invest 40% bonds, 40% stocks, and 20% in Hussman Strategic Growth. When Hussman fully hedges his fund, you would effectively have 40% in stocks; and when he fully unhedges it, you would have 60% in stocks. This isn't quite the whole story; he also tries to pick up some gains through stock picking, so when fully hedged the fund isn't quite equivalent to cash, more like a market-neutral fund. (For Hussman Funds in particular, he's considered stocks to be overvalued for most of the last 15 years, and the fund is almost always fully hedged, so you'd want to be comfortable with that.) There are other funds out there doing similar stuff. There are certainly funds that vary equity exposure though most not as dramatically as the Hussman fund. Some possibilities might be PIMCO All-Asset All-Authority, PIMCO Multi-Asset, perhaps. Or just some value-oriented funds with willingness to deviate from benchmarks. Definitely read the prospectus on all these and research other options, I just thought it would be helpful to mention a couple of specific examples. If you wanted to stick to managing ETFs yourself, Morningstar's premium service has an interesting feature where they take the by-hand bottom-up analysis of all the stocks in an ETF, and use that to calculate an over- or under-valuation ratio for the ETF. I don't know if the Morningstar bottom-up stuff necessarily works; I'm sure they make the ""pro"" case on their site. On the ""con"" side, in the financial crisis bubble bursting, they cut their valuation on many companies and they had a high valuation on a lot of the financials that blew up. While I haven't run any stats and don't have the data, in several specific cases it looked like their bottom-up analysis ended up assuming too-high profit margins would continue. Broad-brush normalized valuation measures avoided that mistake by ignoring the details of all the individual companies and assuming the whole index had to revert to mean. If you're rich, I think you can hire GMO to do a varied-equity-exposure strategy for you (http://www.gmo.com/America/).  You could also look at the ""fundamental indexing"" ETFs that weight by dividends or P/E or other measures of value, rather than by market cap. The bottom line is, there are lots of ways to do tactical asset allocation. It seems complex enough that I'm not sure it's something you'd want to manage yourself. There are also a lot of managers doing this that I personally am not comfortable with because they don't seem to have a discipline or method that they explain well enough, or they don't seem to do enough backtesting and math, or they rely on macroeconomic forecasts that probably aren't reliable, or whatever. All of these tactical allocation strategies are flavors of active management. I'm most comfortable with active management when it has a fairly objective, testable, and logical discipline to it, such as Graham&Buffett style value investing, Hussman's statistical methods, or whatever it is.  Many people will argue that all active management is bad and there's no way to distinguish among any of it. I am not in that camp, but I do think a lot of active managers are bad, and that it's pretty hard to distinguish among them, and I think active management is more likely to help with risk control than it is to help with beating the market. Still you should know (and probably already do know, but I'll note for other readers) that there's a strong argument smart people make that you're best off avoiding this whole line of tactical-allocation thinking and just sticking to the pure cap-based index funds."


If one suffers from an injury due to car accident in Boca Raton there are experts who can immediately diagnose the patient and take prompt action to help him. In an accident, the neck and other areas of the musculo skeletal system get damaged, they get you rid of all problems. @ https://1800draccident.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/contact-at-a-leading-medical-practice-for-car-accident-boca-raton-injury-treatment/


[Image](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png)  [Mobile](https://m.xkcd.com/435/)  **Title:** Purity  **Title-text:** On the other hand, physicists like to say physics is to math as sex is to masturbation\.  [Comic Explanation](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/435#Explanation)  **Stats:** This comic has been referenced 1413 times, representing 0.8601% of referenced xkcds.  --- ^[xkcd.com](https://www.xkcd.com) ^| ^[xkcd sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/) ^| ^[Problems/Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd_transcriber/) ^| ^[Statistics](http://xkcdref.info/statistics/) ^| ^[Stop Replying](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=xkcd_transcriber&subject=ignore%20me&message=ignore%20me) ^| ^[Delete](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=xkcd_transcriber&subject=delete&message=delete%20t1_dksp032)


"The receiving Roth IRA custodian will almost certainly not charge you anything; they are eager to get their hands on the money. In fact, the easiest and most efficient way is to fill out the forms for opening a Roth IRA account with the new custodian (most of this can be done online, but it might be necessary to print out a paper form, sign it and send/fax it to the company), tell them that the Roth IRA will be funded by a trustee-to-trustee transfer from the current custodian, and tell them to go get the money from the online bank who is the current custodian of your Roth IRA account. Don't approach your online bank and tell them to send the money to your new Roth IRA custodian; it will cost money and take more time and the likelihood of a screw-up is way too high. The current custodian might charge you a fee for closing the account, or for ""breaking a CD"" if that savings account is a CD and you are withdrawing the money before the maturity date of the CD. This will be spelled out in the Roth IRA custodial agreement that you accepted when you opened the account (but most likely did not read in full when you received it, and might even have discarded). One final note: with just $11K, please do not open a brokerage account for your Roth IRA and invest in stocks, bonds etc.  For now, invest all your Roth IRA in a single low-cost mutual fund (preferably an index fund such as the Vanguard S&P 500 Index fund or Fidelity Spartan 500 fund); you can branch out into more funds when you have more money in your Roth IRA. Investing in these funds does not need you to have a brokerage account; you can do it directly on the fund's website. Avoid (for now) the siren song of Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) because you need to have a brokerage account to buy and sell them.  When you have more money in your Roth IRA account, say in ten years' time, you can start investing in individual stocks, ETFs and the like through a brokerage account, but don't do it now."


Well this was an interesting read, but sadly no one has given me anything I asked for. I'm not complaining, as I didn't expect a complete stranger to actually tell me how much they make, but I figured it'd be worth a try. Anyway, I'm gonna assume that you work in NY? If so, what were your starting hours like (approx) and also, do you work as a quant, cause it seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that you're describing an I-Banking job. Also, if you feel comfortable, a starting salary would be helpful as well. I'm trying to get real figures here cause everyone that I ask tells me something different.  Finally, I haven't completely taken NY off the table as an option, I would just prefer Toronto if it's possible.


Ive been that guy a few times.  was this close to launching their computer across the room.  they said vehicle B was equivalent to vehicle A and yet they also said that vehicle C which was made by the same company as B was somehow also equivalent as if Toyota or whoever made more than one vehicle in a given class.  Equivalent my ass!    I went on another trip with a large group of friends and they all took the rental place in the airport.  The wife and I took the shuttle to one off campus because I was thinking about buying a mustang and they had them so I wanted to drive it around for the week to see how I fit.  Thats the only reason I went to that place.  I motherfucked the hell out of that asshole and the other cunt and still got nowhere.  Hopefully those motherfuckers crashed their cars into a goddamn bridge on the way home.  I hate the fucking lying.


I know you're making a joke, but I really think Tesla could kill off train transportation entirely. If you can get in a car anywhere in the country and travel anywhere else in the country, more or less in a straight line instead of following the few rail routes available, then it just comes down to price. If they're able to make long distance travel affordable with cheap, renewable electricity charging up the cars, then Amtrak will be history.


It's fake. It's not a leak.  > According to **this rendered image,** Apple may be releasing a new line of Macbook Air computers in the color “Space Gray” at their next conference.  And according to my anus, Apple may be releasing a new line of Macbook Air computers that can be inserted rectally.


"Most likely because they don't know what they're talking about. They all have a belief without evidence that information set X is internalised into the price but information set Y is not. If there is some stock characteristic, call it y, that belongs to set Y, then that moves the gauge towards a ""buy"" recommendation. However, the issue is that no evidence has been used to determine the constituents of X and Y, or even whether Y exists in any non-trivial sense."


"I'd be curious how many of those people own cell phones, flat screen TV's, the latest DVD's, $100 shoes etc.   I know there are poor people who spend their money wisely and still barely make it, but I'm related to ""poor"" people who are always dressed better than I am and still barrow money from grandma every month."


You are not missing something basic.  Putting money in the bank will cost you in terms of purchasing power.  The same thing has been true in the US and other places for a long time now.  The real interest rate is negative--there is too much aggregate wealth being saved compared to the number of profitable lending opportunities.  That means any truly risk-free investment will not make as much money as you will lose to inflation.   If the real interest rate appears to be positive in your home country it means one of the following is happening: Capital controls or other barriers are preventing foreigners from investing in your home country, keeping the interest rate there artificially high Expected inflation is not being measured very accurately in your home country Inflation is variable and unpredictable in your home country, so investors are demanding high interest rates to compensate for inflation risk.  In other words, bank accounts are not risk-free in your home country. If you find any securities that are beating inflation, you can bet they are taking on risk.  Investing in risky securities is fine, but just understand that it's not a substitute for a risk-free bank account.  Part of every interest rate is compensation for the time-value-of-money and the rest is compensation for risk.  At present, the global time-value-of-money is negative.


Well keep in mind until the 2007ish housing crash Fannie and Freddie MADE money, they received no help from the federal gov't. The whole idea of the secondary mortgage market was to keep money flowing to home buyers and everyone who bought a home benefited (via rates a few points lower than if banks had to keep all the capital on hand to back all the loans)  Both these institutions worked well for about 40 years, the criminality here was that ratings agency rated these bonds as AAA, when in fact they were junk, that's who failed in their due diligence and really should be held accountable. (as if they were rated junk, the banks would have no one to buy them except at junk bond interest rates, meaning they wouldn't have made these loans to people who couldn't really afford houses.) The rating agencies were *supposed* to be neutral evaluators of the debt, and instead they essentially took what amounts to bribes from the banks to rate them highly.


$100K of mortgage debt at 4%, 30 years will result in a $477/mo mortgage. It would take about $23K in income to have 25% of the monthly income cover the mortgage.  This means, that with no other large debts, a bank will lend you about 4X your income.  If, instead of 25%, we decided that having 20% of income go to the mortgage, the ratio drops to just over 3X.  In the end, it comes down to keshlam's advice regarding a budget. I think the question can't be answered as asked, given the fact that you offer no numbers. For the average person, credit card debt, student loans, and cars payments add up to enough to chip away at the amount the bank will lend you. Since (per one of the linked questions) the maximum debt service should be 36%, you start with that and subtract all current payments.  If this doesn't suffice, let us know what, exactly you're looking for .


As pointe out by @quid, inflation figures are almost always quoted as a comparison of prices last month, and prices a year ago last month.  So 10% inflation in August means that things cost 10% more than they did in August a year ago.  This can lead to some perverse conclusions. Consider an imaginary economy where prices stay constant over years.  Annualized inflation is zero. Then something happens on January 2nd, 2018.  Some crop fails, a foreign cheap source of something becomes unavailable, whatever.  Prices rise, permanently, as more expensive sources are used. This is the only disruption to prices. Nothing else goes wrong. So, in February, 2018, the authorities find that prices in January, 2018 rose by 1% over January 2017. Inflation! Politicians pontificate, economists wring their hands, etc. In March, again, prices for February, 2018 are found to be 1% higher than for February, 2017.  More wailing... This goes on for months.  Every month, inflation (year over year) is unchanged at 1%.  Everyone has a theory as to how to stop it... Finally, in February, 2019, there's a change!  Prices in January, 2019, were the same as in January 2018.  Zero inflation!  Everyone takes credit for bringing down inflation...


MB's math is right, but I can describe it in a short sentence. All Traditional accounts are combined, 401(k) rollover is no different from other IRA money. You should have been tracking your non-deducted money via form 8606 so you know this figure. The non-deducted money as a percent of your total balance is the percent of conversion that's not taxed.  (To be clear, deducted contributions and growth are not tracked separately, one only tracks the non-deducted deposits.)


From personal experience: Loan Impact It does impact your ability to take out other loans (to an extent) Your first investment property is going to go against your debt to income levels, so if you take out a loan, you've essentially decreased the amount you can borrow before you hit a lender's debt to income ceiling.   Two things about that: 1) I'm assuming you have a primary mortgage - if that's the case they will factor what you are already paying for your primary house + any car loans + any student loans, etc.  Once you've successfully taken out a mortgage for your investment property, you're probably close to your debt to income ceiling for any other loans.  2) There is usually a 2 year time period where this will matter the most.  Once you've rented out this property for 2 years, most financial institutions will consider a percentage of the rent as income.  At this point you can then take on more debt if you choose. Other (Possibly Negative) Impacts and Considerations Maintenance Costs Renovations Turnovers Taxes and Insurance Downpayments and interest Income tax Advertising costs Property Management costs Closing costs and Legal fees Vacancies HOA fees Other (Possibly Positive) Impacts and Considerations Passive Income as long as the numbers are right and you have a good property manager Tax deductions (And depreciation) Rent has low correlation to the market Other investment alternatives: Stocks Reits (not directly comparable to investment properties) Long story short- can be a hassle but if the numbers are right, it can be a good investment. There's a series of articles further explaining these above listed components in detail.


"No. A deposit to an IRA must be in cash. A conversion from traditional IRA to Roth can be ""in kind"" i.e. As a stock transfer. Last, any withdrawals can also be in stock or funds.  IRS Publication 590, so important, it's now in 2 sections Part A and Part B, addresses IRA issues such as this as well as most others.  By the way - now on page 7 - ""Contributions, except for rollover contributions, must be in cash."""


In addition to the issues discussed in BrenBarn's answer, I think you need to consider your medium term saving needs and existing savings. In particular, do you have a sufficient rainy day fund, a fund you will spend if things go wrong? For example, if you are dependent on a vehicle that is not covered by a guarantee or service plan, you should have enough money saved for a couple of major repairs. Depending on how secure your job is, whether it carries sick leave and long term disability, and how easy or difficult it would be to find another job in the event e.g. of your employer going bankrupt due to a downturn in your industry, you should have months to years of minimal living expenses in your rainy day fund. If you don't have those things covered, you should urgently save as much as you can until they are covered. If you do, then the next savings priority is to put money by for retirement. Of course, if all goes well the rainy day fund will ultimately get folded into retirement, but it needs to exist now, in a form you can access quickly.


Here is the raw truth that you are missing.  The people displaced by Amazon eliminating these lower end jobs will not be able to find work. EVER!!!!  They are now structurally unemployed.  The are not able to learn the skills necessary to find work because they lack the initiative and/or intelligence.  Remember that the average I.Q. is 100 meaning that around half of the workforce is below 100.  If we eliminate all jobs these folks can perform what are they going to do?  Idle hands etc.


That's what most athletes should do, but they don't. They end up getting an uncle or cousin to invest for them and they end up stealing it or losing it on terrible investments. It's really sad. And all the major sports put these guys through learning seminars when they are rookies, but they just don't listen.


I would like JD to soar I got in little while ago. I have heard a lot of news lately about Unicom in the last month or so but this is the first time JD has been involved. Also until you shared this article I always read Unicom as Unicorn haha.


It's also the fact that there's a difference between ability and qualification.  I, for example, am capable, though not qualified in the eyes of many companies.  I've talked to a couple of them before where they don't seem to care much about an electrical engineering degree, but would love me if I had a toilet paper MIS degree or similar.


CDs or money market funds. Zero-risk for the CD and ultra-low risk for the money market account; better return than most savings accounts.


What on earth are they going to deliver for $100 in 2017...? People might as well go back to developing gamecube games. If you want cheaper games that are more fun than just sheer graphics, the nintendo virtual console has you covered, only the price of the actual console is high--if it's too high, then you have plenty decent indie options through Steam.


This works even better when you have a good credit score when you want to arbitrarily inflate it for bragging rights or lowest interest rates, I'm only pointing this out because it has nothing to do with your current score and CK's recommendation. The presence of an installment loans is 10% of your credit score, according to some credit scoring models. So theoretically someone with a solid 720 score could gain 72 points, while someone with a 480 score would only gain 48 points. But the scores are weighted so you wouldn't get that kind out outcome regardless, it will have less of an impact. You can do this, amongst other things, but if that installment loan alters your utilization of credit it will more greatly lower your score, and the hard inquiry to apply for the loan will also temporarily hurt your score and you also might not be approved. These are the things to consider (but fortunately utilization has no history). Yes you can pay the loan off with a monthly payment. The loan's interest will cost slightly more than the monthly payments, by the end of the loan term. I've done this with a 5 year $500 installment loan at a credit union. As others pointed out, you don't have to spend money to raise your credit score (unnecessary interest, in this case), but you certainly can!


Since this is the reasoning: I don't want to bother with micropayments, and harassing her for   monthly payments. You must do one the following: Provide the money to your mom as a loan (i.e.: with a note and interest) payable when the full repayment of the loan to the bank is done (i.e.: balloon note). The terms of the note should be that the money to be used as collateral for the secured loan from the bank. Provide the money to your mom directly. In this case you have to pay gift tax on $7K (above the 13K exemption limit). Since you want the money back - you'll probably want the option #1. Your interest rate should be above a certain level to avoid reclassifying it as a gift by the IRS (your tax adviser can help you with that). Your mom will pay interest to the bank on the secured loan, and to you on the collateral (unless you wave it, subject to gift tax, again - talk to the tax adviser). You will only need to harass your mom about the balloon payment in the end. This is not a tax or legal advice. Talk to your tax adviser and a legal counsel about the details and additional options.


It's still a car with the carbon footprint of a car, except it uses electricity, which still is generated by fossil fuels for the most part   If it's a step in the right direction  And people are only buying it to be cool elitist hippies, deep down  I'd still like to buy one


You always see articles of how financially distressed people are, but then other articles on how home prices are rising and people don't want to sell their homes for less (to meet the pent-up demand for starter homes).  A nice, long, prolonged drop in real estate prices would solve so much. With the decline in retail I hope it comes.


"To short:  Of course, you may always buy some index correlated ETF that eliminates the above. They use stock futures on the index, and you simply buy the ""shorting ETF"" in your non-margin account. However, they are surprisingly high cost, and despite the intended correlation, have significant drag. It's a much safer way to short the market (you have great choice in which market ETF) and eliminates the single stock risk."


I believe that! Their system is meant to cause defaults. They are so disorganized and unhelpful. On three separate files for the same client, I dealt with lost documents and forced start over on the processes of approvals because they said documents weren't received in time, even though we had confirmations. I think if Congress could sit through a customer service call or process for some person trying to do a loan modification or get short sale approval, they would instantly call a senate investigation into their practices. I don't know how they can not be aware of the outright fuckery that goes on with their company.


The percentage fee often depends on the type of card. Amex and rewards cards like aeroplan cards often charge 2.5-4% whereas cashback cards will charge less. That's why most places (specifically in Canada which is where I'm from) don't take Amex because they charge way too much.


The value of Coins & Currency is more of Demand Vs Supply Situation. The value of Coins is not just due to it being old, but also   For example the 1876 US Nickel around 300,000 were minted. The 1916 US Nickel around 400,000 were minted.  However the 1916 Nickel is at more premium than the 1876. This is because there are many collectors who want to complete the collection post 1900. They can never complete the 1800 to 1900 collection as other year coins are not available.   It is hard to tell which currency will catch craze amongst collectors. That's what will drive the prize. For example if 50 years from now, Zimbabwe becomes a leading developed country, there will be craze / nostalgia to collect things of past.   Certain coins like the American Double Eagle are a craze because the design is very good, its made of Gold, has history to it. It's sold for USD 7-8 Million, Or the USD 1 Dollar uncut sheets [16 notes in a sheet], the sheet goes for around 1-2 Million USD As an individual if you have some coins / currencies keep them more as a hobby than as something that would return value.   Investments in Collectibles and Art is an emerging form of investment and needs to be looked at separately and shouldn't be mixed with a simple hobby.


Interesting point. I hadn't considered the general market so much as the large retail locations like malls.   I'm very interested in the effect of reduced foot traffic as major anchor tenants leave malls.   Most food court restaurants / chain retail like footlocker etc operate on slim margins except at holidays / high spending periods.


"No they aren't, they either can't afford fast food burgers anymore or they are willing to pay a little extra because they are ashamed of eating at Mcdonald's.  All fast food is roughly equivalent, the differences are just perception and marketing.  We probably all share the same concept of what Taco Bell and Chipotle represent: Taco Bell's are dirty and filled with stoners while Chipotle's are for younger hipper people who enjoy ""fresh"" food that won't make you shit yourself.  They both sell fake Mexican food with ingredients that come from god knows where and are hastily assembled by surly teenagers.  Is one better than the other?  That's entirely subjective.  Is one more likely to make your sick?  Probably not, both companies probably have roughly equivalent quality control procedures.  Does one have a better atmosphere?  Personally, I think that can be chalked up to confirmation bias.  You see Taco Bell's at gas stations and highway rest stops, in poorer neighborhoods, and Taco Bell has also been around for almost 40 years longer than Chipotle so of course some of the stores are a bit more run down.  Americans aren't over fast food at all there is just more competition and the competition has great marketing."


This can make a difference of a few points. When your balance is reported on a monthly basis to the bureaus that current balance is used to determine your utilization. Keeping it paid down will  help in this case. If you are monitoring your credit regularly, you can see what time of the month your balance is reported and pay before then (just make sure you include enough padding to be sure your payment clears before the reporting date--normally only a business day or so, but weekends can throw it all off).


$900 seems like a fair cost of minor repair. As a landlord, I repaint and repatch the walls if there are any holes. Labor is also expensive now a days (especially here in the West Coast).   HOWEVER, this is why there is a security deposit. To make sure things like this is covered after move out. NOW, you could ask the landlord for an itemized invoice of the cost of repairs. Which then you could rationalize the costs of repairs. I usually take the security deposit, then deduct any costs that were need during repair. And give the remaining difference back to the tenant.


Think carefully about the added expenses.  It may still make sense, but it probably won't be as cheap as you are thinking.  In addition to the mortgage and property taxes, there is also insurance and building maintenance and repairs. Appliances, carpets, and roofs need to be replaced periodically.  Depending on the area of the country there is lawn maintenance and now removal. You need to make sure you can cover the expenses if you are without a tenant for 6 months or longer.  When tenants change, there is usually some cleaning and painting that needs to be done. You can deduct the mortgage interest and property taxes on your part of the building.  You need to claim any rent as income, but can deduct the other part of the mortgage interest and taxes as an expense.  You can also deduct building maintenance and repairs on the rental portion of the building.  Some improvements need to be depreciated over time (5-27 years).  You also need to depreciate the cost of the rental portion of the building.  This basically means that you get a deduction each year, but lower the cost basis of the building so you owe more capital gains taxes when you sell. If you do this, I would get a professional to do your taxes at least the first year.  Its not hard once you see it done, but there are a lot of details and complications that you want to get right.


Ok, cool, feel free to browse this post and all responses. By all means I realize jobs are your paying customers, but my thought is if the site were trafficked enough by job seekers, like indeed is, you can dominate and set the tone to better aide job seekers and boost the economy with job placement.   I think the job posters are abusing their paid privileges and bs'ing too much waste their time and job seekers time. I think a form field with more questions and restrictions in the template will do a lot of good. Imagine a 40 hr week sifting through job sites currently. It's hell.   https://www.reddit.com/r/jobs/comments/6thr7k/if_you_could_change_the_navigationcategorization/?st=J6LFPY6J&amp;sh=4ca9e3fa  I also posted in user interface design and will get that link for you to gain that feedback as well.


"Responsibly produced food is more expensive because it costs more to produce food responsibly. Hard to imagine there won't be some supply constraints associated with these price cuts. ""Organic free range beef only $5/lb when available( only available at 3:42PM every third Tuesday of months that start with the letter 'J'"""


This is all too typical of immature people. Any opinions not in alignment with their own are classified as 'stupid.' It takes time and experience to realize that other people usually have good reasons to think as they do, even when you just cannot fucking understand why.


Buying and selling cars a lot is something that makes money if you are a dealer but usually doesn't if you are not.  The question to ask yourself is why you want to sell it.   If it is because you are feeling poor and need money, it might make sense to sell it, particularly if you don't need it.  But $12k or whatever is not a ton of money.  If you do need a car and will have to replace it if you sell it then selling it is likely not a good idea. If it is because you want a nicer car and can afford to upgrade, then selling it is likely a good idea.  The fact that you have had it for years and not paid off the loan tells me this situation is unlikely. You should think of the value of your car to you (and the potential cost of replacing it) and the amount of money you owe on it as two different things.  The debt you have is a debt that you will need to pay no matter what you do with the car or how its value changes.  The value of the car to you is pretty much a separate issue from how much you have outstanding in debt.   If you want to sell the car to pay off the debt that is fine if you don't need the car or if you can get a suitable replacement car for MUCH less (which I find unlikely).


David Brooks is a well known hack-fraud pundit over at the NYT. He thinks he is much smarter and more articulate than he actually is. His corner is kind of a right-leaning fiscal-conservative sometimes used as a counter-balance to give the appearance of neutrality on issues, despite the fact that he's not an expert or an economist. Generally you should avoid his work.   I can almost guarantee that he didn't take an 'uneducated lady friend' to a sandwich shop for lunch. And even if in a fictional universe he took her to a dumpy corner italian deli that served sandwiches, they would have the same names and dishes. And even if he did take her to a boujie boutique sandwich shop, you're probably right she probably popped her eyes seeing $12.50 for a sandwich and not weak in the knees from seeing so many vowels.


All stocks are held in the expectation that they will eventually return money to whoever is holding the shares at the time, by one or more of the following mechanisms: Just because they aren't paying anything out now, doesn't mean they won't in the future, and even if the current shareholder sells before receiving anything, the next shareholder or the one after that (etc) will get the money. The hope of those future payouts is what ultimately makes people willing to pay for them - the current market value fluctuates at least in part based on the expectations of the people buying and selling of what those payouts will be.


If this was a public corporation (stock) and the investment was made in a non-registered account, then you can claim a capital loss.  Capital losses are claimed against capital gains (not income), and can be carried back 3 years or carried forward indefinitely.   Here's an article I've written on how to claim capital losses that may help.


I just wrote an article about this and how Im playing it (ALOT of long dated OotM (out of the money) PUT options).  Especially with the Fed forcing rate hikes (as if they think we dont understand theyre hiking only to cut rates in a few months when a recession shows) and the economys growth weakening.  I don't see a single catalyst for resuming the boom in auto sectors.  (my article) https://lonewolf.liberty.me/car-mageddon-is-upon-us-and-how-to-play-it/


"> This is probably the single most clueless statement I've read about business, ever... actually made me laugh.   Because you are clueless? Do you know how many ads I see on the internet every day? Zero. I see Zero ads. And every person I talk to sees Zero ads, because I tell them about ad blockers. And they tell their friends, and so on and so on.  I advertise on reddit, and I pay for ""impressions"". So every 1k impressions I pay a certain amount. But they have no way of knowing if those impressions are actually seen or not, they can use sophisticated scripts to determine if the ads are blocked but there are sophisticated ad blockers designed to block just those kinds of things. This is a war, and in the end ad blockers are going to win this war. So why would anyone pay for advertising?  Advertising is dead. It's dying. And if marketers can't find a new way to make money they will die with it."


If you have such a long term investment goal there really is no reason to try time the markets, 1990s market high was nothing compared to 1999s market high which was nothing to 2006  etc and so on(years quoted as example).  Also consider cost of opportunity missed by holding back investing your immediately available investment capital and have it sit in a bank account for 18-24months, collecting meager returns instead of a 5-10% potential return for example(which isnt a strech by any means). Now if you re really hell-bent on timing the market, since you re in the UK, if you really want to attempt it, I would pay close attention to Brexit news and talks that are scheduled for 2018 onwards. Any delays on that deal and/or potential bad development may lead to speculation and temporary lows for you to buy in. If thats worth the effort and cost of opportunity mentioned before is up to you.


"I am a tax lawyer and ALL the RESPONSES ABOVE are 1/2 Correct but also 1/2 Wrong and in tax law this means 100% WRONG (BECAUSE ANY PART INCORRECT UNDER TAX LAW will get YOU A HUGE PENALY and/or PRISON TIME by way of the IRS!  So in ESSENCE ALL the above answers are WRONG! Let me enlighten you to the correct answer in 5 parts, as people that do not practice tax law may understand (but you still probably will not understand, if you are NOT a Lawyer). 1) All public companies are corporations (shown by Ltd.), 2) only Shareholders of Public companies (ie, traded on the NYSE stock market) are never liable for debts of a bankrupt company, due to the concept of limited liability. 2) now Banks may ask a sole proprietorship (who wants to incorp. for example) to give collateral, such as owners stocks/bonds or his/her house, but then of course the loanee can tell the Bank No Thanks and find a lender that may charge higher interest rates but lend money to his company with little to NO collateral. 3) Of course not all companies are publicly traded and these are called private companies. 4)""limited liability"" has nothing to do directly with subsequent shareholders (the above answer is inaccurate!), it RELATES rather to INITIAL OWNERS INVESTMENT in their company, limiting the amount of owner loss if the company goes bankrupt. 5) Share Face-value is usually never related to this as shares are sold at market value in real life instances (above or below face-value), or the most money Investments Banks or owners can fetch for the shares they sell (not what the stock's face-value is set at upon issuance). Never forget, stocks are sold in our Capitalistic System to whomever pays the most, as it is that Buyer who gets to purchase the stock!"


From Wikipedia: If a company with limited liability is sued, then the claimants are   suing the company, not its owners or investors. A shareholder in a   limited company is not personally liable for any of the debts of the   company, other than for the value of their investment in that company. Summarized, no, if you buy stock from the regular stock market like NYSE, you're not personally liable for any debt or fraud that happens.


The price of the loan may be justified if you're considered a high-risk applicant for some reason (e.g. you're putting very little money in initial payment), and if it includes all the associated expenses. What is more relevant to your situation is that you're probably better off renting. Think about it: your $300'000 house will require some repairs in those 30 years (let's estimate those at $100'000). That means in 30 years you'll build $200'000 of equity spending $720'000 on it. Of course this assumes that the value of the house will remain constant. You're effectively be throwing away $520'000, or more than $1'400 a month. If you can rent a place for $1'400 a month or less, you'll build more equity by renting that place for 30 years and saving the excess money in a bank account. If you consider the interest that money in your bank account will earn you (e.g. 3% annually), you'll build more than $200'000 equity in 30 years even if you spend as much as $1'650 on your rent and save only $350 a month.


The dividend goes into the IRA (either reinvested automatically or remains as cash until you invest it, per your choice). You're not taxed on this dividend (IRA is a taxed-deferred account - you're taxed on the distributions, but not on the capital gains within the account).


Not surprising, the whole culture has shifted since  everyone was either let go, had a work buddy (or several) let go, or were sitting on the edge of their seats for 18 months waiting to be let go back in the collapse.


As Victor says, you pay tax on net profit. If this is a significant source of income for you, you should file quarterly estimated tax payments or you're going to get hit with a penalty at the end of the year.


Have a read of this PF&M article, which @Blackjack has an excellent answer that speaks around risk. Answers which suggest that the return is proportional to the amount invested is a very simplistic argument. It is far more complex than that. I would content that your initial question Does investing more money into stocks increase chances of profit? is not the best question. The answer is it depends upon your investment methodology. The following will increase your chance of overall profit in the stock market


I use a spreadsheet for that.   I provide house value, land value, closing/fix-up costs, mortgage rate and years, tax bracket, city tax rate, insurance cost, and rental income.  Sections of the spreadsheet compute (in obvious ways) the values used for the following tables:  First I look at monthly cash flow (earnings/costs) and here are the columns:   Next section looks at changes in taxable reported income caused by the house,  And this too is monthly, even though it'll be x12 when you write your 1040.   The third table is shows the monthly cash flow, forgetting about maintenance and assuming you adjust your quarterlies or paycheck exemptions to come out even: Maintenance is so much of a wildcard that I don't attempt to include it.  My last table looks at paper (non-cash) equity gains:  I was asked how I compute some of those intermediate values.  My user inputs (adjusted for each property) are:  My intermediate values are:


"Yes, the world was very poor, things were supposed to change and people could live better lives, but now people live at home until 28 just to try and have a home of their own. And we argue that this is preferable, for some stupid reason.  If you stopped sitting on your ass and actually learn a skill, you can move out earlier than this.  I moved out at 23 and have had no problems finding jobs, even with a terrible economy.  Nobody is going to hand you a good job.  You have to earn it.  ""You did make a sound financial decision, in a warped, lopsided society that lets rich people get away with murder. Romney pays 14% of his income to taxes? pfft, this IS class warfare, and the lower and middle classes are losing.""  How many jobs did Romney create?  All of those jobs = tax dollars going into our economy.    The rich pay more than anyone else and you still complain!!  50% of the US population don't even pay federal income taxes.  It's class warfare because you have this fucked-up mentality that the rich are somehow doing something wrong for earning more than everyone else."


"It's like people think the definition of fascism is ""a thing I don't like"". Let say, as Robert Paxton did, that fascism is ""a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."" What does that have to do with minimum wage or a livable wage? I'm not saying you can't push for some lassiez faire paradise but everyone who disagrees with you isn't a fascist."


By paying the $11,000 into the 2.54% loan you will save $23.30 in interest every month. By paying the $11,000 into the 3.625% loan you will save $33.20 in interest every month. If your objective is to get rid of one loan quicker so repayments can go to the other loan to pay off sooner, I would put the $11,000 into the 2.54% loan and pay that off as quick as possible, then put any extra payments into the mortgage at 3.625%. Pay only the minimum amounts into the 0% car loan as this is not costing you anything.


This can arise with very thinly traded stocks for large blocks of shares. If the market only has a few thousand dollars available at between 8.37 and 12.5 the price is largely meaningless for people who want to invest in hundreds of thousands/millions of dollars worth, as the quoted price can't get them anywhere near the number of shares they want. How liquid is the stock in question?


I recommend talking to your parents.  You may be able to convert the account to a joint account that is shared with them, and then they would be able to withdraw the money for you.


Not sure of your locality. In the USA, there are many options. There are many corporate bonds that pay interest monthly. You can invest in a handful of bonds, chosen so at least one of them pays interest each month. (Minimum investment requirements make this an expensive option)  Unit Trusts made of bonds (a handful of bonds wrapped into a single fixed investment) usually pay monthly interest. As the bonds begin to mature, the interest payments shrink (but you begin to get principal payments which can be reinvested). Bond mutual funds and ETFs usually provide monthly dividends (that come from the interest and capital gains of the bonds held by the fund). Dividends are usually consistent, but not necessarily fixed.  You can produce a monthly income from stocks in the same way as the above mentioned bond methods. Income can be consistent, but not fixed.


07-08 isn't our only reference point. It is the most extreme financial event in decades. But, there could easily be enough froth to spark another downturn (10 years since 2008 it wouldn't be too soon for that either) like market crashes in 1989 or 2001.   It's not all doom and gloom but you have to be realistic. There is an economic cycle and it has been around 10 years since the last recession. Asset prices are high and not matched by real world performance. It would just take a medium sized shock to trigger a mini crash. Some kind of high street bankruptcy or accounting scandal could have quite major repercussions.


If you're talking about ADBE options, that is an American style option, which can be exercised at any time before expiration. You can exercise your options by calling your broker and instructing them to exercise. Your broker will charge you a nominal fee to do so. As an aside, you probably don't want to exercise the option right now. It still has a lot of time value left, which you'll lose if you exercise. Just sell the option if you don't think ADBE will keep going up.


I think that MFin is best suited for more technical roles in banks (I assume when you say IB you mean sell/buy side M&A), HF, AM, and PM roles. I don't view PE, CF, or IB as technically challenging as most of the analysis is done on the areas outside of finance.


This is not just a Santander issue - 95% of ATMs globally run on XP (secondary source: http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/20/5326772/windows-xp-powers-95-percent-of-atms-worldwide). This is because of what has already been mentioned - the benefit does not outweigh the cost/inconvenience.  However, in the wake of the recent WannaCry ransomware attack, there are well-founded security concerns with relying on an unsupported operating system in such a widespread manner.


Hi guys, could I get advice on possibly entering finance myself? I have a BSE in computer engineering, and a Ph.D. in nanoscience and microsystems, and I do computational aeroscience and biology now. Needless to say, I'm an applied physics and computer nerd. I love currency and commodities trading and instruments, though, I'm totally fascinated by it and I'm a *mean* coder and scientist. Can I get into finance?


Floyd Mayweather isn't wealthy???? Wtf are you talking about? Forbes puts his net worth somewhere near 400M. That's not all in liquid assets he can just hand to the IRS (which would be stupid if they were liquid). The guy has houses, cars, jets, boats, planes, businesses. Wtf? The guy has made himself into one of the best boxers and promoters on the planet, he'll be rich off of boxing forever.  He has tax liability, i'm not sure why but it's not crippling for a guy who in a month will make literally 10x his liability in one day. If $500M isn't wealthy... no stop, it's insanely wealthy. Y'all are just bonkers.


I've seen my score dip a little bit after every hard pull.  (Admittedly, a fako score.)  You apply for credit or for a credit increase and your score is going to dip. Any check that is not intended to grant credit (either an existing creditor rechecking, or when you check your own credit) has no effect on your score.  Likewise, a check done to screen for a solicitation have no effect as you are not trying to borrow.  (Taking them up on the offer will normally cause a hit, though.)


Sigh. You're obviously going to believe what you want to believe.  I meant General Mills. Congratulations. You've made an entirely irrelevant point that adds nothing whatsoever to the conversation.  >Bullshit. they will do whatever they can do that they think will increase the bottom line.  Indeed they will, and deception, or even appearance of deception, hurts their bottom line. I thought I made that clear. It's generally bad for business to piss off your customers.


Judging by the fact that 6% of the companies in the U.S earn roughly 50% of the profits, the Dow Jones is most certainty not useless. The 6% of companies that earn all the profit are the biggest movers of the market, thus they give a basic glimpse of how the economy is faring.


"Rather than reading news stories, why not go straight to the HMRC source? https://www.gov.uk/tax-on-your-private-pension/lifetime-allowance Seems your lifetime allowance measurement differs based on whether your pension is defined contribution or defined benefit.  The latter seems fairly simple at 20 times first year payout, though the HMRC usage of the word ""usually"" is disconcerting.    The language for defined contribution implies they check multiple times for violation of the LFA, just like you've pointed out.  Of note, they specifically list: Note that you can also file to ""protect"" a larger LFA that you might have previously had.  This generally means not contributing any longer to your pension though.  There is info on the page linked above."


Forget income tax, they need to raise the tax on capital gains and other investment income, that's where most of the wealth is. For example a CEO would get like 200k in income every year, but would get hundreds of millions in stock options. A higher income tax means nothing for this CEO, and for the country for that matter.


Yeah, we must be in completely different social circles. My friends all rave about the latest brunch spot with $15 all-you-can-drink mimosas or the Michelin star restaurant that you have to reserve months in advance (but they know that you can wait stand-by for three hours to get a table). The cheapest meals for me are $25 for lunch, not including alcohol. Dinners are easily $50+. That whole avocado toast article? Describes my friends to a T.   Needless to say, none of us would be caught dead in an Applebee's. Even our burritos cost $8 (but hey, it won the 538 National Burrito Contest)


Insider trading is when you buy or sell an investment based on material, non-public information that gives you an unfair advantage over the rest of traders in that market.  Working for a company is one way that you might have such information, but whether it is insider trading is not contingent on you working there. You could use that information a long time after leaving the company. You don't even need to have worked there. If a friend/relative gave you non-public information because THEY work there, it is still insider trading.


>[**Халява в интернете!!! Правда!? Как заработать в интернете без вложений или на приглашениях! [3:40]**](http://youtu.be/3J8EUjG3pJ0)  >>Друзья, в этом видео, будет информация о заработке без вложений!  > [*^Финансовый ^Вектор*](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAOABF2yT1SjVqI7RK9aIUg) ^in ^People ^& ^Blogs  >*^10 ^views ^since ^Oct ^2017*  [^bot ^info](/r/youtubefactsbot/wiki/index)


"I think your theory breaks down. If everybody started raising chickens, would your ""a chicken is worth a pair of shoes"" still hold? You have capacity to make some number of pairs of shoes in a day, do you allocate each to a chicken or do you say ""hmmm... there's more demand than I can supply, so I'm going to raise my price from one chicken to a 10 piece bucket!"""


As an individual, I am not aware of any insurance you can buy that will cover legal costs for any event that may occur (whether criminal or civil)... I imagine this is because the risk is too difficult to measure and the moral hazard too great. I do notice you mention rental property/small business needs.  If your concern is truly for costs relating to some legal issue that arises out of your professional operations, then  Professional liability insurance may be what you are looking for (oftentimes referred to as errors and omissions, or E&O for short).  This insurance is specific to whatever business you engage in, however will typically protect you against legal claims (including defense costs) as a result of your business operations.  Note however that what is actually covered will be specific to your policy. As duffbeer703 mentioned, the purpose of insurance is for covering specific losses, i.e., protecting you from legal claims that may arise during the course of business.  If you are looking for a solution that will, e.g., provide you a standard set of legal documents (maybe a lease agreement) then you are not in fact looking for insurance, but instead legal services at a fixed rate. Why would an insurance company pay for services both you and it already know you need?


I wouldn't recommend leveraged dividend fishing. Dividend stocks with such high dividends are highly volatile, you will run out of collateral to cover your trades very quickly


Uber is not awesome - Uber is a dangerous company bent on obtaining a complete monopoly over the urban transportation market, eviscerating all competitors (including public transit) by massively subsidizing their fares using venture capital as a means of grabbing market share. Uber's model does not scale and they bleed money. The only way they will ever turn a profit is by establishing a total monopoly and extracting rent. Their corporate culture is atrocious, they  ignore regulations designed to protect consumers, and they've positioned themselves as a moralistic crusader fighting the big bad taxi cartel... which doesn't exist.


The world of social media can be quite treacherous for businesses. For the most part, your prospective customers won’t always welcome your page with open arms, especially if you do nothing but post about your business all day, sparing nary a thought to what they actually want to hear or read about. Below are some basic tips for beginners to social media marketing.


This course was written by active owners, operators and investors in Group Homes, Halfway Homes, ICF/MR Homes, Disability Homes and other special needs assisted living and care homes in order to personally teach you the strategies and steps to help you start your first Group Home.


"http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc503.html says you can deduct ""Any prior year's state or local income tax you paid during the year."" So I would say as long as you have good records, you can deduct the excess refund you had to pay back in the year in which you paid it. Whether or not your return was amended shouldn't affect whether or not it is deductible."


As near as I can tell that is their business model. I mean the [seriously argued to a judge that they weren't liable for a drivers actions while he was waiting for dispatch using their app](http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Family-of-SF-girl-killed-by-Uber-driver-backs-5579980.php) which is as blatant an attempt to get out of any liability as I've ever seen.


Yes peeper  Now, you think the mental state of the baboon in the Whitehouse is not related to the economy . .I do  You think the pointless wars that American is involved in is Off Topic . . I think they are a core fundamental of the economy  You have spent 9 years of your life with an attention span of roughly 15 secs and have given people the power to tell you what to say and what not to in a social experiment called reddit, you conform to being a lemming.   I am sorry I cannot relate to you and your habit of peeping


"For MCD, the 47¢ is a regular dividend on preferred stock (see SEC filing here). Common stock holders are not eligible for this amount, so you need to exclude this amount. For KMB, there was a spin-off of Halyard Health. From their IR page on the spin-off: Kimberly-Clark will distribute one share of Halyard common stock for   every eight shares of Kimberly-Clark common stock you own as of the   close of business on the record date. The deal closed on 2014-11-03. At the time HYH was worth $37.97 per share, so with a 1:8 ratio this is worth about $4.75. Assuming you were able to sell your HYH shares at this price, the ""dividend"" in the data is something you want to keep. With all the different types of corporate actions, this data is extremely hard to keep clean. It looks like the Quandl source is lacking here, so you may need to consider looking at other vendors."


Can confirm. I lived in Arkansas for most of my life so far and recently moved to Orlando. The market and income difference in Orlando are insane. I am lucky to find an apartment that doesn’t cost as much as two houses in Arkansas. If I wanted a $250k house in Arkansas, I could probably get a 4 acres and a 4 bedroom here I’m lucky to get a 1 bedroom townhome, and that’s still driving an hour to work! It’s ridiculous.


"One of the things that you have to be aware of is a little gotcha in the credit utilization rate. They, or at least the credit company I worked for, used the ""high balance"" in figuring the credit utilization, not the ending balance. For example, say you had a single card with a $2000 credit limit and used it to charge everything during the month. Say that the high balance was $1900 and you paid it down to zero at the end of the month. The company would calculate your credit utilization at 95%. This is not good and not really fair, but that was the way it was done. Increasing the credit limit helps, but you can also usually make interim payments, say as a paycheck comes in, during the month, if you have an online account."


I have and will.  It's just more bloat justifying it's self.  It's the marketing team taking credit for what the product team achieved.  They didn't have the right product, they made a better feeling soap and this is what the marketeers faffed around with in the mean time.


"We just got a chick-fil-a competitor called [PDQ](http://www.eatpdq.com/index.php?id=2). The fast-food-ish restaurant  doesn't have a freezer or a microwave, they bread their own chicken, and cut their own fries. I know this because the entire kitchen is completely open. The only thing I'm not certain about is the caloric / nutrient info for their menu. I've looked and haven't been able to find anything on it anywhere.   McDonalds/Wendys/Burger King better wake up and smell the pseudo-bacon cooking too. Chains like in-n-out, five guys, and smash burger are dominating the mid-tier of burgers while cook-out is emerging as a serious threat to the lower tier. Cookout is exploding in the South East because their food is absolutely delicious and you can get a ""cookout tray"" with a burger, two sides, and a drink for about $5.50.   The old giants of fast-food are in trouble and it's about damned time."


The perilously dumb are the ones who can't admit that we live in a certified state-corporate oligarchy. A capitalist experiment gone wrong. That the financialization of our economy since the 1980's has reduced the world economy to financial machinations on fancy spreadsheets. The world is living through the end-results of all of this misguided short-termist bullshit, so I invite you to look all around you in order to understand things as they are (versus fluff economic theories and edicts that get continually debunked).


Putting money into a Roth IRA or 401(k) will save you money if your taxes this year will be lower than your taxes in retirement. See also the Wikipedia retirement-savings matrix.


He gets upset if I insist on bringing an extra person to help him out but then he complains about his work load and how he's running the company alone. Why complain if I offered him an assistant?  I wish my boss would've offered me an assistant when I worked at companies. He refuses to take paid vacations. If he does take a vacation he'll tell me 2 to 3 weeks in advance. My red flag is he never ever takes a paid vacation. If he does take a paid vacation he plans it out a few weeks in advance. This is the perfect way to cover up anything.


">A lot of the greatest innovators in America started out with little or no capital. Thomas Edison once sold newspapers and fruit on a train. Jack Welch was the son of a train conductor who worked his way up the ranks of GE. Steve Jobs was put up for adoption as an infant and was at one point homeless.   Those are all *true* but *trivial* and *irrelevant* points.  Steve Jobs did not start and grow Apple computer without capital -- it was just *other people's capital* (a series of partners and investors).  Jack Welch may have ""worked his way up"" in GE, but he did not found the damned thing -- he merely ran it -- GE was not created or grown without capital.  And likewise with Thomas Edison -- yeah he ""once sold newspapers and fruit on a train"" (which is about as relevant to anything as that he once took a crap on a train as well); but he didn't save his money from those sales and use it as capital to found his lab -- he also had ""investors"".  >The idea that the 1% create all of the growth in the economy is a lie.  Yes, it *is* a lie.  But that does not make the opposite true (that somehow innovation can occur *without* capital investment).  >Do we, the citizens of the richest nation in the world, want to watch our fellow countrymen go hungry, homeless or die because they don't have living salaries or access to proper healthcare?  Ah, the ""emotional appeal"" -- spoken like a true ignoramus, socialist, or politician (but really those are all pretty much the same thing, so I am being redundant)."


As someone with 6 kids, I just found out that I lost $5,400,000 by doing so.  I'm pissed. Where's my millions?  Assuming you have all the kids in a row, Duggar-style, that's 28 years. Basically, it's $200k/yr with that scenario.


"There is *some* merit to it, in that [federal gross receipts are largely uncorrelated with tax rates](https://i0.wp.com/wichitaliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/top-federal-personal-income-tax-rates-tax-receipts-2014-02.png).   There are two somewhat perverse consequences of that fact - First, raising taxes **doesn't** raise revenues, meaning we can't actually pay for ""moar free stuff from Uncle Sam!"" merely by adding an offsetting tax increase.  And second, raising taxes on group-X (ie, the rich) to make them pay their ""fair"" share flat-out *doesn't work*, it's effectively just kicking them in the balls because we grudge them for having more money than we do.  Now, as to whether or not lowering taxes really encourages companies to hire more and pay better - That's an entirely separate issue from whether or not it's revenue neutral from the perspective of the federal government.  Fortunately, we have a recent historical example - Reagan did exactly that, which ushered in a period of corporate greed and erosion of workers' rights not seen since the end of the days of the Robber Barons.  So on the front-end, Trump's not wrong; on the back end, he's trying to sell us unicorn farts."


>“That is the weather,” he said of changes in the markets. “It goes up and down, this and that, and that’s 80% of what you guys focus on.”  >Dimon said financial journalists would be better off concentrating on the “bad policies” that are hurting average Americans.  He's right, it is embarassing, however he's mistaken about what would be best for financial journalists. They aren't really interested in what's best for America. Their jobs demand that they publish content, and they believe that the easiest and best way to publish lots of content in a consistent manner is to focus on short sighted topics.   Anywhere you see people trying to feed the 24 hour media cycle you see this problem emerge. It's difficult to blame them, they gotta feed their families afterall.  We don't need this 24/7 flood of news. If every media outlet published on a weekly basis or less, they could focus on more important stories and they could take more time to investigate them. Their audience could focus on their own lives and bettering themselves. It would be a win:win. But that's not what we have.  Because Americans are fools?  Does anyone remember what sort of role JP Morgan had during the housing collapse however? Was this guy their CEO back then? I'm not forgiving any of them for that faux pas, and neither should anyone else. It's difficult to take seriously criticism coming from the most crooked industry in the world. At the end of the day money doesn't really matter. What matters is that people's needs are met, both needs for survival and recreation. In their greedy thirst for the second, the employees at all the major banks destroyed the lives of many people who were simply struggling to meet the first. Not cool.


>  Not everyone has the ability to eat the refund losses that Amazon does.  Why is this Amazon's problem? Those sellers are free to take their business to Ebay or anywhere else they can sell things. Amazon is trying to set a standard for their own marketplace, which seems perfectly reasonable (assuming they are not identified as a monopoly across the marketplace).  Personally, I've avoided those sellers on Amazon because I know I don't get the same level of service I expect from Amazon (fantastic), so now they'll see more business from me.


">[...] but after actually typing my name ""Amy Hoy"" you still refer to me as a ""he""? Amy is a girl's name and my picture is obviously of a woman.   I dropped an ""s"", yo.  Chill the fuck out.    You'll notice throughout I pretty consistently referred to you as ""she"" or by name if you really put any attention into what I wrote.    Remember my comment about melodrama?  This is a great example.  You assumed I'm an idiot, rather than that ""he"" once or twice is a typo when there's a helluva lot more ""she""s in there.    Also, why are you rebutting someone who's agreeing with you?  It feels pretty douche-y, and looks like you didn't bother to read what they wrote.    >The culture I'm complaining about is everywhere, not just in b-school.  It's pretty clear in my post that I was bringing a personal example, not making a normative statement.    It's also pretty clear that I in no way buy into Startup Culture, and was criticizing a larger cultural problem than just what I experienced in my schooling.  I did you the courtesy of reading what you wrote before critiquing it, please do me the same."


I agree with your title, but am confused with your comment.  I am bullish on Gold in the long run.  I believe that current market fundamentals are poitning towards a longterm bullish trend on Gold.  These fundamentals are:  1. a weak USD.   Although the USD has appreciated as of late, I believe this will be short lived and reversed as soon as the situation in Europe relieves itself.  Once this happens, i forsee net outflows in the USD causing it to revert back to its long term deprciated trend, evidented by its performance (in real terms) over the past decade.  2.QE3 Similar to the above post, once the printing presses are turned back on, we will see all risk assets take off, a depreciation in the USD and of course a rise in the price of bullion  3.negative real rates As long as rates stay low (which they will for a while) Gold will have a cushion and will only push higher, given its historical negative correlation with this economic indicator.  4.Central Bank Buying If central banks are buying...I want in!


"Talk about some serious hardcore overreaction. I merely made a comment on how Uganda should want to be more like Spain, not less. You argued with me. Then I cited development status. That was obviously what I meant.  You're spewing nonsense.  >coming in here to discuss how a third world country is generally less well off than a member of the EU and a first world country and you're going to quote the HDI. In other news the sky is blue, water is wet, the snosberries taste like snosberries and you're wasting my time and yours.  Wait, I didn't want to ""discuss"" it. I made a comment with an obvious meaning, **you challenged it**, so I had to bring in facts.  Now you're going completely mental on me and deleting all your comments. Not sure what kind of strategy that is, but have fun.  PS: I have no idea what ""flame baiting"" is supposed to be, but that is not the first bizarre accusation you're making here, so I'll ignore it."


TL;DR: Income is how much you make, net worth is the value of all your assets: cash, real estate, stocks, etc.  With the case of Buffett: Berkshire Hathaway's - Buffett's company - market capitalisation is ~$460 Billion. Buffett controls 18% of shares. $460B x 18%: ~$80 Billion.  So we can estimate that a large part of his net worth is tied up in BH stock (obviously this isn't perfect either as there are other factors at play here).  BUT this is only on paper. Ie yes he's worth that, but he doesn't really have $80 Billion somewhere in a bank. He gets the money to live from other personal investments and business means.


"He is actually arguing for higher taxes.  When he talks about ""competitive"" taxes, he means that US taxes are too low, which is why we can't fix our infrastructure, and why we are failing to make other investments that corporations depend on for growth (like research and standards development).  http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/20/investing/jamie-dimon-higher-taxes-meet-the-press/index.html"


There isn't any place you can put $300 and turn it into significant passive income. What you need to do instead is manage the active (work) income that you have so that your money goes farther, freeing income up for reducing debt and investing.  Investing $300 one time won't add up to much, but investing $100 a month will turn into wealth over time. Making a monthly budget is the key to managing your income.  In the process, you'll find out where your income is going, and you can be intentional about how much you want to spend on different things in your life.  You can allocate some of your income to paying down debt and investing, which is what you need to do to get ahead. For some general guidelines on what to do with your money first, read this question: Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing.  For more specifics on creating a budget, eliminating debt, and building wealth, I recommend the book The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.


As you suspected, there is more than just car replacement taken care of by insurance (some of them are pointed out in Chad's story:


Started as pt at a grocery store. Will never get used to throwing all that good meat out. Still has 2 days but there's fresher stock in back. It seems having bold and full shelves is the reason. They throw out food to have that clean magazine photo look of a store.


I can't help but appreciate the supreme irony in this particular line  >Following a populist wave in countries around the world, investors are now betting the banks are poised to benefit from less stringent regulations and, in the U.S., an improved economic environment.  Because if there's one thing we know for sure, it's that the people voting for populist demagogues are super in favor of deregulating (((wall street)))


"Assuming I don't need any other new lines of credit, can I get pre-qualified repeatedly (and with different banks) with impunity? Yes, but only for a limited period. FICO says: Hard inquiries are inquiries where a potential lender is reviewing your credit because you've applied for credit with them. These include credit checks when you've applied for an auto loan, mortgage or credit card. Each of these types of credit checks count as a single inquiry. One exception occurs when you are ""rate shopping"". That's a smart thing to do, and your FICO score considers all inquiries within a 45 period for a mortgage, an auto loan or a student loan as a single inquiry. However for your situation, since you won't be getting a loan for several months, getting inquiries more than 45 days apart will each count as a separate inquiry."


"I don't know that this can actually be answered objectively.  Maybe it can with some serious research.  (Read: data on what the issuers have been doing since the law went into affect.) Personally, I think the weak economy and general problems with easy credit are a bigger issue than the new rules.  Supposedly, there is evidence that card issuers are trying to make up for the lost income due to the new regulations with higher fees.  I believe that your credit rating and history with the issuer is a larger factor now.  In other words, they may be less likely to lower your rate just to keep you as a customer or to attract new customers. According to The Motley Fool, issuers dropped their riskiest customers as a result of the new regulations. Some say that new laws simply motivated the issuers to find new ways to ""gouge"" their customers. Here are two NYTimes blog posts about the act: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/what-the-credit-card-act-means-for-you/ http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/the-effects-of-the-credit-card-act/ As JohnFx states, it does not hurt to ask."


I like this idea. The limiting factor of renewables and EV's is mainly in storage capabilities. It's easy to make a Tesla go 400 miles on a single charge but the weight requirement isn't. We need smaller size, longer life, and greater storage. And today's environment provides a profit incentive to pursue these goals.