"Your bank Lloyds sent the Australian bank $500 AUD, having converted $317.90 GBP at a rate of 1.5728 AUD per GBP which was slightly less than the published rate which normally applies to transfers measured in hundred thousands if not  millions of pounds.  Using the published rate amounts to an unstated fee of 11 AUD which you are not complaining about.  You also paid a fee to Lloyds of 20 GBP which you disclosed after I had posted this answer. The Australian bank refused to accept the payment because the account to which the money had to be deposited was closed.  Perhaps, instead of just sending back $500 AUD, it converted the amount to GBP (less its fee of what I suspect is $60 AUD) and sent it back.  Notice that the bank rate of 1.592 AUD per GBP says that 276.58 GBP is what you get from a tad over  $440 AUD, and so perhaps St George's charged you a $60 AUD fee for the conversion while converting the rest ($440 AUD) to GBP. Or maybe Lloyds  got $500 AUD from St Georges and charged you a $60 AUD fee for converting it to GBP. Regardless of who did the  conversion, it is also possible that the rate you got (not  quite as good as the published rate) corresponds to $450 AUD converting to 276.58 GBP and a $50 AUD fee for the conversion.   You said I was told by Lloyds TSB that St. Georges wouldn't levy any charges, as they would be paid a separate ""agent's fee"". This might have been told to you as ""St. Georges will not be levying any charges if you send $500 AUD for deposit to the account in Australia and your payee will get exactly $500 AUD if you pay us 317.90 GBP plus 20 GBP as our conversion fee today. If you want to send GBP instead, we cannot tell you how much to send  because St. George's will levy a charge for conversion to AUD, and the conversion will be at the rate then prevailing. So your payee may receive more or less than $500 AUD."" Perhaps, wanting to send exactly $500 AUD, you chose to pay Lloyds TSB and send AUD. But, since the account was closed, the money came back, and so you ended up paying yet another conversion fee. The questions are, who charged the second fee? As Muro said in a comment, it should be listed somewhere on the itemized statement. and is it a reasonable charge? I think $50 or $60 AUD is excessive but, then, I am not a bank, and maybe that is what their standard (minimum) charge is. As I said in my comment, the charge is usually a percentage of the amount transferred subject to a minimum levy that the bank sets."


"1. Actually, using the word ""actually"" to begin a sentence just to sound pretentious does NOT get your point across any clearer.  2. I know it would be cheaper and better for the environment. What I'm saying is we already do have enough food an resources to feed the entire world, but we just don't do it."


Imagine a situation where the fire, ambulance, and police resources are compromised because the communication network has gone off line due to a lightning strike. A highly risky situation. Thus it has become very imperative for the wireless industry to consider lightning protection system, assessment, and solutions. Get more information here: https://www.adrive.com/public/6KW2dA/Lightning%20Protection.pdf


It is really hard to tell where you should withdraw money from. So instead, I'll give you some pointers to make it easier for you to make the decision for yourself, while keeping the answer useful to others as well. I have 3 401ks, ... and some has post tax, non Roth money Why keeping 3 401ks? You can roll them over into an IRA or the one 401k which is still active (I assume here you're not currently employed with 3 different employers). This will also help you avoiding fees for too low balances on your IRAs. However, for the 401k with after tax (not Roth) balance - read the next part carefully. Post tax amounts are your basis. Generally, it is not a good idea to keep post-tax amounts in 401k/IRA, you usually do post-tax contributions to convert them to Roth ASAP. Withdrawing from 401k with basis may become a mess since you'll have to account for the basis portion of each withdrawal. Especially if you pool it with IRAs, so that one - don't rollover, keep it separately to make that accounting easier. I also have several smaller IRAs and Roth IRAs, Keep in mind the RMD requirements. Roth IRAs don't have those, and are non-taxable income, so you would probably want to keep them as long as possible. This is relevant for 401k as well. Again, consolidating will help you with the fees. I'm concerned about having easily accessible cash for emergencies. I suggest keeping Roth amounts for this purpose as they're easily accessible and bear no taxable consequence. Other than emergencies don't touch them for as long as you can. I do have some other money in taxable investments For those, consider re-balancing to a more conservative style, but beware of the capital gains taxes if you have a lot of gains accumulated. You may want consider loss-harvesting (selling the positions in the red) to liquidate investments without adverse tax consequences while getting some of your cash back into the checking account. In any case, depending on your tax bracket, capital gains taxes are generally lower (down to 0%) than ordinary income taxes (which is what you pay for IRA/401k withdrawals), so you would probably want to start with these, after careful planning and taking the RMD and the Social Security (if you're getting any) into account.


"you don't really expect an admiral to sit and type emails do you?  it's got to be many times faster and VASTLY better use of his time to have drones do stupid digital ""labor"".  anything that is passed via email in a military command setting is junk mail"


"Yes there is, it is called a One-Cancels-the-Other Order (OCO). Investopedia defines a OCO order as: Definition of 'One-Cancels-the-Other Order - OCO' A pair of orders stipulating that if one order is executed, then the   other order is automatically canceled. A one-cancels-the-other order   (OCO) combines a stop order with a limit order on an automated trading   platform. When either the stop or limit level is reached and the order   executed, the other order will be automatically canceled. Seasoned   traders use OCO orders to mitigate risk. I use CMC Markets in Australia, and they allow free conditional and OCO orders either when initially placing a buy order or after already buying a stock. See the Place New Order box below:  Once you have selected a stock to buy, the number of shares you want to buy and at what price you can place up to 3 conditional orders. The first condition is a ""Place order if..."" conditional order. Here you can place a condition that your buy order will only be placed onto the market if that condition is met first.  Say the stock last traded at $9.80 and you only want to place your order the next day if the stock price moves above the current resistance at $10.00. So you would Place order if Price is at or above $10.00. So if the next day the price moves up to $10 or above your order will be placed onto the market. The next two conditional orders form part of the OCO Orders. The second condition is a ""Stop loss"" conditional order. Here you place the price you want to sell at if the price drops to or past your stop loss price. It will only be placed on to the market if your buy order gets traded. So if you wanted to place your stop loss at $9.00, you would type in 9.00 in the box after ""If at or below ?"" and select if you want a limit or market order. The third condition is a ""Take profit"" conditional order. This allows you to take profits if the stock reaches a certain price. Say you wanted to take profits at 30%, that is if the price reached $13.00. So you would type in 13.00 in the box after ""If at or above ?"" and again select if you want a limit or market order. Once you have bought the stock if the stop order gets triggered then the take profit order gets cancelled automatically. If on the other hand the take profit order gets triggered then the stop loss order gets cancelled automatically. These OCO conditional orders can be placed either at the time you enter your buy order or after you have already bought the stock, and they can be edited or deleted at any time. The broker you use may have a different process for entering conditional and OCO orders such as these."


> Shitty food is priced cheap  Not really --- look at the snack aisle or the canned meat aisle.  These things often exceed the price of USDA premium cuts of meat.  Spam, for example, is about $9.99 lb.  Priced higher than bacon, and ribeye steak.   Brand name snack crackers are as expensive as chicken breasts.


Automated trains are all over the place. CBTC is the standard signalling system for any new installs and most metros are converting to it when their old equipment ages out.  That's the main component required for unattended train operation. Some agencies keep a driver in the train anyway for failures and other problems (most interruptions in North America are customer medical issues) and pausing service on a busy metro line can cost millions per hour.


"Lifecycle funds might be a suitable fit for you. Lifecycle funds (aka ""target date funds"") are a mutual fund that invests your money in other mutual funds based on how much time is left until you need the money-- they follow a ""glide-path"" of reducing stock holdings in favor of bonds over time to reduce volatility of your final return as you near retirement.  The ones I've looked at don't charge a fee of their own for this, but they do direct your portfolio to actively managed funds. That said, the ones I've seen have an ""acquired"" expense ratio of less than what you're proposing you'd pay a professional. FWIW, my current plan is to invest in a binary portfolio of cheap mutual funds that track S&P500 and AGG and rebalance regularly. This is easy enough that I don't see the point of adding in a 1 percent commission."


"Any answer for what to do in a taper will assume ceteris paribus because how markets initially react when they suspect a taper may immediately change depending on what data are released after the taper. For instance, I've seen Soros and a few other hedge fund managers hold shorts when expecting a taper because the theory is that the market may fall.  However, suppose the market falls 5%, but then positive employment numbers are released.  What then?  The same holds true for betting against Emerging Markets (EM), something I've seen Jesse Colombo and others suggest; the claim that Emerging Markets are in a bubble thanks to the U.S. Federal Reserve (the more money they release, the more the money goes overseas ...).  Again, this is possibly true, but if good data are released after the taper for these emerging markets, they could see growth and those with the shorts could get killed. TL;DR - when we ask about what happens after the taper, we have to remember we're assuming some things about everything else.   I do think that the ""safest play"" post taper is what Bill Gross mentioned about bonds (basically a bubble), as we should see interest rates rise and the Chinese seem to be reluctant to buy as much of U.S. bonds as they have in the past (though some, like Mish, assert the U.S. would welcome this).  The other play I like is the VIX (if you think the market will fall) or against (if you think the market will rise).  SVXY has been one of the best plays since 2011 (compare it to the SPY for the same time period)."


Last question first:  The amount borrowed will not transfer to your loved ones upon death.  Even if you were age 50, it is somewhat unlikely you will die in 30 years. First question:  Are you okay with having a student loan that long?  Keep in mind that making payments for that long will hinder your ability to build wealth, buy a home, and have disposable income. Presumably you are used to living like a college student.  If you continue to do so, and maybe take on another job (for the time you used to spend in school), you could be done with this much sooner.  2k/month is doable and retires this in 5 years, but I would shoot for a shorter time frame than that. Hopefully by purposely incurring that much debt you bought yourself a high paying career.


You're doing business in the US and derive income from the US, so I'd say that yes, you should file a non-resident tax return in the US. And in Connecticut, as well, since that's where you're conducting business (via your domestic LLC registered there). Since you paid more than $600 to your contractor, you're probably also supposed to send a 1099 to him on that account on behalf of your LLC (which is you, essentially, if you're the only member).


"For the person being hired this is a tricky situation. Specially with the new laws. There is no real magic number that can be applied as a lot will depend on what benefits you want, and what is actually available. This will really shift the spectrum quite a bit.  Under the affordibal care act, everyone has to have insurance or pay a ?fine? (were really not sure what to call this yet) but there are two provisions that really mess with the numbers you look at as an employee.  First, the cost of heath care has skyrocketed. So the same benefits that you had 5 years ago now cost maybe 10-15 times as much as they used to. This gets swept under the rug a bit because the ""main costs"" of insurance has only increased a tiny amount. What this actually comes down to is does your new ACA approved heath plan cover exactly the benefits you need, or does it cut corners.  Sorry this is complicated, and I don't mean it to come off as a speech against the ACA so I will give an example. My wife has RA, she really has it under control with the help of her RA doctor. This is not something she ever wants to change. Because she has had RA from the age of 15, and because it's degenerative, she doesn't want to spend 5 years working with a new doctor to get to the same place she is with her current doctor.  In addition, the main drugs she takes for RA are not covered under any ACA plan, nor are the ""substitutions"" that her doctor makes (we are trying to have kids so she has to be off the main meds, and a couple of the things this doctor has tried has been meds that reduce inflammation, are pregnancy safe, but are not for the treatment of RA) You now have to take into effect rather the cost of health insurance + the cost of the things now not covered by the heath insurance + the out of pocket expenses is worth the insurance.  Second the ACA has set up provisions to straight up trick those people that have lower income and are not paying close attention. When shopping for insurance, they get quotes like ""$50 a month"" or ""$100 a month"". The truth is that the remainder of the actual cost is deducted from their tax returns. This takes consideration, because if you thing your paying $50 a month for insurance but your really paying $650 then you need to make sure your doing your math right. Finally, you need to understand how messed up things are right now in the US with heath care. Largely this goes unreported. I'm not really sure why. But in order to do this I will have to give examples.  For my wife to see a specialist (her RA doctor) the co-pay is $75. So she goes to the doctor, he charges her $75 and bills the insurance $200. The insurance pays the doctor $50. With out insurance, the visit costs $50.  At first you want to blame the doctor for cheating the system, but the doctor has to pay for hours of labor to get the $50 back from the insurance company. From the doctors perspective it's cheaper to take the $50 then it is to charge the insurance company. And by charging the insurance company he has no control over the cost of the co pay. He essentially has to charge more to make the same money and the patient gets the shaft in the process. Another example, I got strep throat last year. I went to the walk in clinic, paid $75, saw the doctor got my Z-Pack for $15, went home crawled in bed and got better. My wife (who still had separate insurance from before the marriage) got strep throat (imagen that) went to the same clinic, they charged her $200 for the visit ($50 co-pay) and $250 for the z-pack ($3 co-pay). The insurance paid the clinic $90 for the visit and $3 for the drugs. Again the patient is left out in this scenario. In this case it worked better for my wife, unless you account for the fact that to get that coverage she had to pay $650/month.  My point is that when comparing costs of heathcare with insurance, and without out insurance, its often times much cheaper for the practices to have you self pay then it is for them to go through the loops of trying to insurance to make them whole. This creates two rates. Self pay rates and Insured rates. When your trying to figure out the cost of not having insurance then you need to use the self pay rates. These can be vastly different.  So as an employee you need to figure out your cost of heath care with insurance, and your cost of heath care without insurance. Then user those numbers when your trying to negotiate a salary. The problem is that there is no magic number to use for this because the cost will very a lot. For us, it was cheaper to not have insurance. Even with a pre-existing condition that takes constant attention, it's just better if we set aside $500 a month then it is to try to pay $750 a month. That might not hold true for everyone. For some people or conditions it may be better to pay the $750 then to try to handle it themselves.  So for my negotiations I would go with x+$6,000 without insurance or x+$4,500 with insurance.  Now as an employer it's a lot simpler. Usually you have a ""group plan"" that offers you a pretty straight $x per year per person or $y per year per family. So you can offer exactly that. Salary - $x or Salary - $y. AS a starting point. However this is where negotiations start.  If your offering me $50,500 and insurance, I would rather just have $57,000 and no insurance. Of course your real cost is only $55,000 cause you don't care about my heath care costs only about insurance costs. So you try to negotiate down towards $55,000 and no insurance. But that's not good enough for me. So I either go else where and you loose talent, or I accept $50,500 and insurance (or somewhere in between)."


I am American but live in Japan as a network and systems engineer.  I always drink the white one when in the US.  So many of them to pick from when I visit my family.   Not confident enough to invest based on this but for my own non-monetary selfish reasons I hope this suceeds well.


Equity can be diluted by future investors, royalties get paid on each sale, companies can continue selling things even when operating at negative profit, back royalties due can be negotiated and at least partially paid in a bankruptcy.  From the standpoint of the investor: If it doesn't look like the company will likely have commercial success with a second product, it may be wise to simply take a portion of the product that is actually selling rather than risk your capital on the company's future successes (or failures). From the standpoint of the business owner/entreprenuer, if you believe you have a second product close to the end of the development pipeline it would be wise not to give up equity in the entire enterprise simply to gain required financing to ramp up production and marketing on an existing product.  Paying a royalty may be advantageous compared to paying interest on a loan as well (royalty payments are contingent on the occurrence of a sale while interest is due regardless).


The incestuous relationship between America's richest one percent and their political lackeys and lobbyists is sickening American society, and yet the press pretends that everything will be just hunky-dory when housing starts pick up. The politicians manage to conduct political campaigns totally devoid of the real issue—the huge and growing gap between the rich few and the impoverished many. Meanwhile our police, who are supposed to protect us, harass citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to assemble and protest injustice. Wake up, Wall Street: you can't shove this under the rug.


>The Austrians are certainly on some of the shakiest ground in my view. At least Keynes' work was rigorous. So was Marx's for that matter. That stands in stark contrasts to the Austrians and their ilk.  Care to elaborate? (I'm not familiar with the inner workings of Austrian economics nor why it's such a sharp contrast to Keynesian or Friedmanian economics. Other than its worship of the free market and hatred of government, of course.)


One will find that the fixed 30 year mortgage rate is tightly correlated to the 10 year treasury. An adder of 2-2.5% or so, changing slightly with the rest of the economy, as money can get tight or loose independent of the rate itself. In 2011 we are witnessing low rates yet tough loan standards, this is the phenomenon I am referencing.


A futures contract is based upon a particular delivery date.  In the case of a stock index futures contract is a cash settled futures contract based upon the stock index value at a particular point in time (i.e. this is when the final settlement is determined). In your example, the S&P 500 (SPX) is a price return index - that is, it is not affected by dividends and therefore dividends are not incorporated into the index value.  Dividends will affect the price of the constituent stocks (not necessarily by the same amount as the dividend) so they do have influence on the stock index value.  Since the dividends are known ahead of time (or at least can be estimated), this has already been factored into the futures price by the market. In terms of the impact of a dividend by AAPL, AAPL is approximaetely 3.6% of the index.  Apple pays out dividends 4 times a year (currently paying out $0.52 dividends).  Assuming the market is otherwise steady and AAPL drops by $0.52 due to the dividend and Apple is priced at around $105, this would result in a drop in the index of 0.0178% or around 0.35 points. Interesting fact:  There are some futures contracts that are based upon Total Return indexes, such as the German DAX and the above logic would need to be reversed.


Most of the organizations that financial advisors belong to have a function to find their members. The major ones are listed below: Advocis seems to be the largest organization, with CFPs (Certified Financial Planners) and some Insurance designations. The Advocis advisor search feature can be found here.  FPSC is another organization that has a search for CFPs. Many of the same CFPs are in the Advocis database, but some aren't. The FPSC advisor search feature can be found here. IAFP is an organization of Registered Financial Planners (RFP). The database is smaller but the designation comes with prestige and is meant to be a mark of quality. The IAFP advisor search feature can be found here. Finally, there is a site — full disclosure, I am affiliated with it — called wealthprep.ca that has a large listing of advisors in Canada. You can filter by profession, specialties, and compensation type and there are ratings and reviews. Here is the page specifically for Toronto Financial Advisors.


"yeah that makes sense.  I guess the essential problem somehow is that along the line we all bought into the story that profit seeking and ""creating shareholder value"" was the sole duty of a CEO.  It's like we seem to have reduced all of our interactions in life to financial transactions and somehow sucked the humanity out of things."


The key to becoming wealthy as a self-employed person is the drive to be successful. A driven person, who starts their own company (or companies, should they fail), will find success. Assuming that you define success as the accumulation of wealth, then yes, self-employment is correlated with wealth. But as matt mentions in the comments, there is no casual (in the statistical sense) relationship between self-employment and wealth. While I can't say for sure, I would argue that drive is more important that the employment situation.


Don’t go crazy with your salary and try to live similar to your college lifestyle for a while. Max out tax deferred investments and any matching your company offers. Put the rest of your savings in passively managed index funds not a savings account at your bank. Buy furniture over a few months and find deals. Try to keep your total auto expense under 10% of gross monthly income and you’re housing expense under 20% of gross monthly income. After a few months you’ll figure out your other monthly expenses and how much you feel comfortable saving. You can also let your credit card company know you have this income and they may raise your CC limit. A higher limit means your utilization rate will be lower which will help your credit as well.


There are two possible scenarios, relating to slightly different definitions of 'pension'. The most normal definition of 'pension' is that you are paid a defined amount each week or month by some company, or the government. If so, that is not part of the estate. You won't be able to take it as a lump sum (probably). It isn't affected by whatever your husband wrote in his will. If, on the other hand, you and your husband had a big sum of money, which you were drawing on to pay your expenses and still are, then the big sum of money would have been part of the estate. The right person to ask about this is the lawyer who dealt with your husband's will. None of this is any help in deciding what you should do with the pension.


There are a few categories like that (cookies, wine, cheese), but they usually only have 1-2 options when it comes to the basic stuff. They aren't going to have 30 brands of ketchup or an entire aisle of white bread.


"If AIG wasn't bailed out by the US Government, Warren Buffet would be the greatest **RICHES** to **RAGS** story ever.  I can see why he promotes paying more taxes and is so willing to ""betray"" his own ""class"" on behalf of the USGov.  It's because he's in the crony capitalist class post AIG bailout and tax dollars are the only reason he isn't greeting people at WalMart."


So unemployment is dropping in Florida, but you still complain about something in Florida and you know, for sure(!), that the drop in unemployment has nothing to do with Trump.  Go and write your own article about the situation, since you know so much.


"> If you're a few decades older, your generation is mostly to blame for this reversal of fortunes in the US.  Absolutely.  I've personally worked pretty damn hard to do the right thing - I've never owned a car, I recycle, compost, blah blah, but when it comes down to it it was my contemporaries that did us in.  > 1969 was the peak of American culture. > Not since 1969 have more cars been sold in the US   Wait, how is ""selling more cars"" equivalent to the ""peak of culture""?  I fail to agree that American culture reached a peak 40 years ago.  Frankly, I think I'd be pretty bored if I were thrown back to 1969, even though it seemed pretty exciting at the time.  I do think the last ten years of culture have been a bit lame, I've been very surprised that we haven't had an outpouring of intense art and music in response to 9/11 and the impending collapse, I find I keep playing the Clash for want of any contemporary political music that moves me - but there's tons of great things out there.   (EDIT: A great example: I just saw [this movie](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440266/) a few days ago, and it simply blew my mind - it made me rethink choreography, and it also made me happy that Germany, a social Democracy, spends money on amazing things like this.)"


"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-seattle-minimum-wage-20170626-story.html) reduced by 95%. (I'm a bot) ***** > The new study has found that jobs and work hours fell for Seattle&#039;s lowest paid employees after the city raised the minimum wage to $13 last year.  > Some economists see it as a possible sign that $15 minimum wage laws such as those passed in Seattle, New York and several California cities could hurt workers at the lowest end of the wage spectrum.  > In Seattle restaurants the number of jobs and hours worked overall did not change much after the minimum wage rose to $13 an hour, a University of Washington study found.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6jvbvn/minimum_wage_hike_in_seattle_confirming/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~154110 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*: **wage**^#1 **Seattle**^#2 **work**^#3 **job**^#4 **minimum**^#5"


'Seems to me that a private business ought to have the right to do exactly this and more if they wish.  They do not owe anyone a job, nor is the applicant obligated to work there.  If they wish to make religious adherence, color, gender, sexuality, attractiveness, or whatever a condition of employment, they should be free to do so.  HOWEVER, if they do:  a) They should never be eligible for any tax funded business, such as govement contracts.  b) They should not be entitled to special state privileges such as incorporation.  Before any of you RedditLeft halfwits start bloviating about how very intolerant this is, let me point out that we are to be equal before *our goverment* not in our private lives.  No individual's freedoms are more valid or important than another's.  The rights of, say, a woman or person of color or gay person, cannot be more important than the rights of, say, a devoutly religious person that wants - as in this case- to fill their company with like minded people.  The right of association is fundamental in a free society.  Forcing one person to hire someone against their will is flatly immoral.  Let the whiny left begin their foolishness ...


A better boss will make the job less of a steaming pile of shit. Why do you think Americans tend to switch jobs every few years? Pay is nice, but having a job that doesn't make you want to roll over and go back to sleep every goddamned weekday is much, much better.


pay off one of the cards completely. there are several reasons why:


The Canadian government position is that 35 states and nine million American jobs depend on trade with Canada.    Wikipedia's position is that a little over 7 million jobs in the US are dependent on trade with Canada, and that all 50 states have jobs that are dependent on trade with Canada. That's from a 2007 report.


As your is a very specific case, please get an advice of CA. It should not cost you much and make it easier. The sale of agriculture land is taxable in certain conditions and exempt from tax in other cases. Sale of agricultural land is subject to capital gains tax. But there are certain exemptions under Section 54B, subject to conditions, which are as follows:    If deemed taxable, you can avail indexation, ie the price at which you grandfather got [the date when he inherited it as per indexation] and pay 10% on the difference. If the price is not known, you can take the govt prescribed rate.   As there is a large deposit in your fathers account, there can be tax queries and need to be answered. Technically there is no tax liable even if your grandfather gifts the money to your father. More details at http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130401/jsp/business/story_16733007.jsp and http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/publications/4_compute_your_capital_gains/chapter2.asp


Well an empty fridge is a waste of 100% of the cooling.  If you are cooling nothing then all of the energy to cool it is wasted.  Air is not very conductive of Heat.  Its why double paned glass is more effiecent than single pane the air provides an isulation barrier.   So in a fridge you want to quickly bring the temperature of items placed inside down to a storage temperature. (Around 34F 1c)  Having a fridge full of already cold items will allow for a much quicker transfer of heat out of the item placed within.  And since the heat is dispersed out through a larger mass the amount of cooling required will be the same but because the mean temperature change over time is less the fridge will have to work harder for less time if the fridge is full.   But in the end the amount of energy required to cool a full freeser will be higher than an empty one as there is more heat to disapate.  But the cost of keeping it cold is spread out among many items.  So if you only have 1 orange per day in your fridge and it costs you 30 a month to run your fridge then your oranges have an additional 1 cost on them.  But if you use 20 things a day and it costs you 60 a month  it only costs you .1 extra per item.


This should be a comment but could you not get an account with the National Bank of Egypt which has branches in the UK?


I don't get why someone in his situation doesn't just hire a small team of financial planners, ask them to make the majority of their money as safe as possible, and then receive an allowance you can burn worry free every month. The amount of capital he's earned, his money could be working for him to generate all the disposable income one needs. I guess it still comes back to discipline and habits, if the allowance isn't giving him enough to buy a new fancy car every month he'll probably start to dip into his investments.  I think what is really going to kill Mayweather's fortunes, is his gambling habit. He sinks hundreds of thousands of dollars on bets routinely. Eventually that will catch up with him.


The CPA's mention of $2,500 is probably referring to the recently increased de minimis safe harbor under the final tangible property regulations (used to be $500) without an applicable financial statement. The IRS will not challenge your choice of expense or capitalization on amounts on or below $2500 if you elect the de minimis safe harbor election on your return. However, you must follow whatever you're doing for your books. (So if you are capitalizing your laptops for book purposes, you would also need to capitalize for tax purposes). Section 179 allows you to expense property that you would have otherwise have had to capitalize and depreciate. Section 179 can be annoying, especially if your LLC is treated as a passthrough, because there are recapture provisions when you dispose of the asset too early. For the tax return preparer, it makes the return preparation much more simple if there are no fixed assets to account for in the first place, which is quite possible if you are expensive all items/invoices less than $2,500.


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Manage the fuel consumption price: check the pattern of fuel prices if you can for your area.  Some areas have weekly changes which are somewhat predictable and some sites will even predict the minimum price for the  next day.  Some other areas will have a discount fuel day. Switch to diesel: fuel consumption by diesel engines are much better than standard combustion engines.  Downside is not as many refueling stations. Switch to a hybrid: fuel consumption is better than comparable combustion engines alone but the downside is that the technology is new and still maturing.  Check out this site for more information.


If you have a relatively stable income and deductions you can get a fairly good estimate using last year's tax bill. Suppose you paid $12000 of actual taxes last year and you are paid once a month.   If you plan to make a similar amount of money with similar deductions, you need each monthly paycheck to have $1000 of federal income taxes withheld.   I go to a paycheck calculator and find the withholding required to make sure I have that amount withheld every paycheck.


This doesnt happen in Germany, why? Labor gets half the board seats.  When corps cut, everyone gets cuts. Everyone shares the pain. When corps do well, EVERYONE does better. They dont chop up a corp and sell it off for parts. They dont send all the jobs to china.   This is also how you get things like this  [How Germany Builds Twice as Many Cars as the U.S. While Paying Its Workers Twice as Much](http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/)  just remember it is the unions keeping american autoworkers from competeting and yet they get paid less than their german counterparts that live in an economy the fraction of our size.   [If you look at gdp per person, WE are 6th on the planet, and germany 17th](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita)   what does all this mean? Everyone is getting part of the economic growth and the meme that the right go off on that unions are destroying business in the US is BS. WE have a much richer country than germany. WE should be paying our workers even more than them. WE CAN AFFORD TO. They sure as shit can afford to with less money per person to go arround.


No, if you can afford to enforce more rules, you alone pay for that enforcement *only on your own property*. Nobody else pays for your enforcement of rules that only you want enforced.  Customer regulation keeps companies accountable. When you can stop buying from a company who screws over customers, that's accountability. Remember, integrity and honesty is the lifeblood of any company who wants to stay in business for longer than a short period. Those who provide the most value to customers, including the best quality for their money, get the most customers.


Try something like this: http://www.halifax.co.uk/sharedealing/our-accounts/fantasy-trader/ Virtual or fantasy trading is a great way to immerse yourself in that world and not lose your money whilst you make basic mistakes. Once real money is involved, there are some online platforms that are cheaper for lower amount investing than others. This article is a good, recent starting point for you:  http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/diyinvesting/article-1718291/Pick-best-cheapest-investment-Isa-platform.html Best of luck in the investment casino! (And only risk money you can afford to lose - as with any form of investment, gambling, etc)


yeah but that wasn't the implication of your statement. it seemed to imply that being 6 8 makes you a shoo in for the NBA. It absolutely does not. The best percentage chance you have to make the NBA according to height is by being over 7 foot, which gives you a 1 in 6 chance. As you go down in height, the stats become exponentially lower. If your argument is that being taller gives you a better chance of getting into the nba, well, no shit. but your statement seemed to imply that being 6 8 would necessitate your acceptance into the NBA. FYI, 6 7 is average height in the NBA if I remember my statistics correctly.


"Yep. So many of these articles could be changed to:  ""$Company or $Industry That Has Coasted On Shit Product and Shit Service Surprised By Customer Reaction When Something Better Is Available"".   We recently had a contractor offer us a restaurant gift card as a mea culpa for taking longer on a job than originally quoted, which turned out to be for Applebee's.   Just doing takeout was an awful experience: the service was shit, the food was shit, the restaurant and floors were dirty, everyone felt ill after eating poorly cooked sodium muck...   It's hilarious/sad to see these executives flailing around searching for the magic answer as to why their business model is cratering and the best they can come up with is ""damn millennials"". I'm willing to bet, by and large, people don't not eat at these places for some kind of hipster cred, but because they want decent food and decent service for the price. Unfortunately, no one with that viewpoint is being listened to in board meetings it seems."


Why are you saving your emergency fund in a Roth-IRA? That type of fund should be for retirement. I know you can pull out your principal but that would mean in a crisis you will be destroying your retirement fund.  Remember there is an annual limit, it could take years to replenish it if you have to pay for a big repair, or period of unemployment. The emergency fund should be kept in a very safe account. I would just keep in a high yeild account at a Credit Union


The stock market at large has about a 4.5% long-term real-real (inflation-fees-etc-adjusted) rate of return. Yes: even in light of the recent crashes. That means your money invested in stocks doubles every 16 years. So savings when you're 25 and right out of college are worth double what savings are worth when you're 41, and four times what they're worth when you're 57. You're probably going to be making more money when you're 41, but are you really going to be making two times as much? (In real terms?) And at 57, will you be making four times as much? And if you haven't been saving at all in your life, do you think you're going to be able to start, and make the sacrifices in your lifestyle that you may need? And will you save enough in 10 years to live for another 20-30 years after retirement? And what if the economy tanks (again) and your company goes under and you're out of a job when you turn 58? Having tons of money at retirement isn't the only worthy goal you can pursue with your money (ask anyone who saves money to send kids to college), but having some money at retirement is a rather important goal, and you're much more at risk of saving too little than you are of saving too much. In the US, most retirement planners suggest 10-15% as a good savings rate. Coincidentally, the standard US 401(k) plan provides a tax-deferred vehicle for you to put away up to 15% of your income for retirement.  If you can save 15% from the age of 20-something onward, you probably will be at least as well-off when you retire as you are during the rest of your life. That means you can spend the rest on things which are meaningful to you. (Well, you should also keep around some cash in case of emergencies or sudden unemployment, and it's never a good idea to waste money, but your responsibilities to your future have at least been satisfied.) And in the UK you get tax relief on your pension contribution at your income tax rate and most employers will match your contributions.


The primary difference between Japan and most other developed nations is who owns their debt.  Japan's debt is almost entirely internal.  That is it's actually borrowed from within Japan.  It's not owned by China or anyone else.  Additionally, Japan owns a fairly substantial proportion of the USA's debt which provides additional security.  It's a favorite complaint of Romney and his friends that American is borrowing from China to finance public spending.  A lot of people don't realize, that in fact Japan was until very recently, America's biggest source of borrowing.  And is still number 2 by a substantial margin.  Combine this with pretty careful regulation by the Bank of Japan, low bond yields, and a much larger economy, still with a decent manufacturing base, and Japan's situation isn't remotely like Greece despite it appearing worse.  In a nutshell, the Japan is the educated university graduate with a reasonable income, who like many of us who buy a house that costs many multiples of our annual salary, and can afford to service the debt even if it needs to be carefully managed.  Greece is the homeless, one-armed drug addict with no prospects that struggles to find a few bucks to spend a night in a hostel.  The size of the debt is more or less irrelevant.  It's the ability to pay it that really matters.  Of course this doesn't mean that if circumstances change, things couldn't go south badly, but right now Japan isn't in trouble and the 230% vs 130% misrepresents the reality of the situation.


Read any article that's linked to from Facebook or Twitter, that is advertising. I don't know what hole you've crawled out of but digital marketing spending is passing traditional media. More and more companies are using social media marketing and content marketing in their overall plans.   Social Media is not dead, it's just beginning to grow if anything.


blockchain technology does not seem to be the focal point in their startup, which usually should be when there is an ICO. A lot of the things that they say blockchain could enable them to do, could be done with a centralised database. They have a pretty experienced team in real estate though , it looks like they are using the ICO simply as an easy method of raising capital than having an innovative use of the blockchain token


"Yes, the value of a stock is completely, 100% determined by what people are willing to pay for it in conjunction with what people who have it are willing to sell it for. If something really bad happened to a company, like their only factory burned to the ground, and the traders didn't care, then I guess, in that scenario, the value of the stock would not change. But you can spin all sorts of hypotheticals of that sort. If dogs could talk, would German Shepherds speak German? Etc. Any answer is pretty meaningless because the premise is wildly unlikely. As CQM notes, ""traders"" in this context means everyone who buys or sells stock. If you buy stock, that includes you. They're not some mystical cabal somewhere. If you see a stock listed at, whatever, $50, and you are not willing to pay more than $40 for it, then you refuse to buy, and so you tend to force the price down. If you're not a billionaire, then your impact on the market is tiny, but the market is made up of millions of people each with tiny influence. Note that all this is true not just of the stock market, but of every product on the market. A product is worth whatever the owner is willing to sell it for and people are willing to pay. This is what determines the price of everything from houses to toasters. It's a little theory I've invented that I like to call, ""the law of supply and demand"". :-)"


> deregulate a huge number of areas which will effect hundreds of millions  of _poor_ people _who don't matter_  FTFY.  TISA is about using the disposable masses to stick a finger in the eye of Russia and China in international trade.  The still-birth of the labor movement in the developing world is just icing on the cake.


The Japanese stock market offers a wide selection of popular ETFs tracking the various indices and sub-indices of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.  See this page from the Japan Exchange Group site for a detailed listing of the ETFs being offered on the Tokyo exchange. As you have suggested, one would expect that Japanese investors would be reluctant to track the local market indices because of the relatively poor performance of the Japanese markets over the last couple of decades.  However, this does not appear to be the case.  In fact, there seems to be a heavy bias towards Tokyo indices as measured by the NAV/Market Cap of listed ETFs.  The main Tokyo indices - the broad TOPIX and the large cap Nikkei - dominate investor choice. The big five ETFs tracking the Nikkei 225 have a total net asset value of 8.5Trillion Yen (72Billion USD), while the big four ETFs tracking the TOPIX have a total net asset value of 8.0Trillion Yen (68Billion USD).  Compare this to the small net asset values of those Tokyo listed ETFs tracking the S&P500 or the EURO STOXX 50.  For example, the largest S&P500 tracker is the Nikko Asset Management S&P500 ETF with net asset value of just 67Million USD and almost zero liquidity.  If I remember my stereotypes correctly, it is the Japanese housewife that controls the household budget and investment decisions, and the Japanese housewife is famously conservative and patriotic with their investment choices.  Japanese government bonds have yielded next to nothing for as long as I can remember, yet they remain the first choice amongst housewives.  The 1.3% yield on a Nikkei 225 ETF looks positively generous by comparison and so will carry some temptations.


I thought the crux of the argument was that they were supposed to offset the tax cuts with an expansion of the tax base through growth.  If that story were true (and there's a fair bit of evidence that it's not) then why would they need to cut spending?  The reason the CBO shouldn't score the expected growth from a tax cut is because we've seen very little evidence for significant growth from it--and not because we've never seen the long term impacts of a cut, but rather because they didn't result in growth.


Yes, from the point-of-view to the end speculator/investor in stocks, it is ludicrous to take on liabilities when you don't have to.  That's why single-stock options are far more liquid than single-stock futures. However, if you are a farmer with a huge mortgage depending upon the chaos of agricultural markets which are extremely volatile, a different structure might appeal to you.  You could long your inputs while shorting your outputs, locking in a profit.  That profit is probably lower than what one could expect over the long run without hedging, but it will surely be less volatile. Here's where the advantage of futures come in for that kind of structure: the margin on the longs and shorts can offset each other, forcing the farmer to have to put up much less of one's own money to hedge.  With options, this is not the case. Also, the gross margin between the inputs rarely fluctuate to an unmanageable degree, so if your shorts rise faster than your longs, you'll only have to post margin in the amount of the change in the net of the longs and shorts. This is why while options on commodities exist to satisfy speculators, futures are the most liquid.


"The others nailed it, great answers.  I'd add - the two things I'd prioritize ahead of this debt, higher interest debt, obviously. And matched 401(k) deposits. I can't repeat enough - many people are so anti debt, they walk away from guaranteed 100% returns. ""after I pay my mortgage, I'll max out my 401(k) and catch up."" I've read this, and it will never make sense. After that, pay off the 9% rate as soon as you can."


I prefer to use a Foreign Exchange transfer service.  You will get a good exchange rate (better than from Paypal or from your bank) and it is possible to set it up with no transfer fees on both ends.  You can use an ACH transfer from your US bank account to the FX's bank account and then a SEPA transfer in Europe to get the funds into your bank account.  Transfers can also go in the opposite direction (Europe to USA). I've used XE's service (www.xe.com) and US Forex's service (www.usforex.com).  Transferwise (www.transferwise.com) is another popular service. US Forex's service calls you to confirm each transfer.  They also charge a $5 fee on transfers under $1000. XE's service is more convenient: they do not charge fees for small transfers and do not call you to confirm the tramsfer.  However, they will not let you set up a free ACH transfer from US bank accounts if you set up your XE account outside the US. In both cases, the transfer takes a few business days to complete. EDIT: In my recent (Summer 2015) experience, US Forex has offered slightly better rates than XE.  I've also checked out Transferwise, and for transfers from the US it seems to be a bit of a gimmick with a fee added late in the process.  For reference, I just got quotes from the three sites for converting 5000 USD to EUR:


"This turned out be a lot longer than I expected.  So, here's the overview. Despite the presence of asset allocation calculators and what not, this is a subjective matter.  Only you know how much risk you are willing to take.  You seem to be aware of one rule of thumb, namely that with a longer investing horizon you can stand to take on more risk.  However, how much risk you should take is subject to your own risk aversion.  Honestly, the best way to answer your questions is to educate yourself about the individual topics.  There are just too many variables to provide neat, concise answers to such a broad question.  There are no easy ways around this.  You should not blindly rely on the opinions of others, but rather use your own judgment to asses their advice. Some of the links I provide in the main text: S&P 500: Total and Inflation-Adjusted Historical Returns 10-year index fund returns The Motley Fool Risk aversion Disclaimer: These are the opinions of an enthusiastic amateur.  Why should I invest 20% in domestic large cap and 10% in developing markets instead of 10% in domestic large cap and 20% in developing markets? Should I invest in REITs? Why or why not?  Simply put, developing markets are very risky.  Even if you have a long investment horizon, you should pace yourself and not take on too much risk.  How much is ""too much"" is ultimately subjective.  Specific to why 10% in developing vs 20% in large cap, it is probably because 10% seems like a reasonable amount of your total portfolio to gamble.  Another way to look at this is to consider that 10% as gone, because it is invested in very risky markets.  So, if you're willing to take a 20% haircut, then by all means do that.  However, realize that you may be throwing 1/5 of your money out the window. Meanwhile, REITs can be quite risky as investing in the real estate market itself can be quite risky.  One reason is that the assets are very much fixed in place and thus can not be liquidated in the same way as other assets.  Thus, you are subject to the vicissitudes of a relatively small market.  Another issue is the large capital outlays required for most commercial building projects, thus typically requiring quite a bit of credit and risk.  Another way to put it: Donald Trump made his name in real estate, but it was (and still is) a very bumpy ride.  Yet another way to put it: you have to build it before they will come and there is no guarantee that they will like what you built. What mutual funds or index funds should I investigate to implement these strategies?  I would generally avoid actively managed mutual funds, due to the expenses.  They can seriously eat into the returns.  There is a reason that the most mutual funds compare themselves to the Lipper average instead of something like the S&P 500.  All of those costs involved in managing a mutual fund (teams of people and trading costs) tend to weigh down on them quite heavily.  As the Motley Fool expounded on years ago, if you can not do better than the S&P 500, you should save yourself the headaches and simply invest in an S&P 500 index fund. That said, depending on your skill (and luck) picking stocks (or even funds), you may very well have been able to beat the S&P 500 over the past 10 years.  Of course, you may have also done a whole lot worse.  This article discusses the performance of the S&P 500 over the past 60 years.  As you can see, the past 10 years have been a very bumpy ride yielding in a negative return.  Again, keep in mind that you could have done much worse with other investments. That site, Simple Stock Investing may be a good place to start educating yourself.  I am not familiar with the site, so do not take this as an endorsement.  A quick once-over of the material on the site leads me to believe that it may provide a good bit of information in readily digestible forms.  The Motley Fool was a favorite site of mine in the past for the individual investor.  However, they seem to have turned to the dark side, charging for much of their advice.  That said, it may still be a good place to get started.  You may also decide that it is worth paying for their advice. This blog post, though dated, compares some Vanguard index funds and is a light introduction into the contrarian view of investing.  Simply put, this view holds that one should not be a lemming following the crowd, rather one should do the opposite of what everyone else is doing.  One strong argument in favor of this view is the fact that as more people pile onto an investing strategy or into a particular market, the yields thin out and the risk of a correction (i.e. a downturn) increases.   In the worst case, this leads to a bubble, which corrects itself suddenly (or ""pops"" thus the term ""bubble"") leading to quite a bit of pain for the unprepared participants.  An unprepared participant is one who is not hedged properly.  Basically, this means they were not invested in other markets/strategies that would increase in yield as a result of the event that caused the bubble to pop.   Note that the recent housing bubble and resulting credit crunch beat quite heavily on the both the stock and bond markets.  So, the easy hedge for stocks being bonds did not necessarily work out so well.  This makes sense, as the housing bubble burst due to concerns over easy credit. Unfortunately, I don't have any good resources on hand that may provide starting points or discuss the various investing strategies.  I must admit that I am turning my interests back to investing after a hiatus.   As I stated, I used to really like the Motley Fool, but now I am somewhat suspicious of them.  The main reason is the fact that as they were exploring alternatives to advertising driven revenue for their site, they promised to always have free resources available for those unwilling to pay for their advice.  A cursory review of their site does show a decent amount of general investing information, so take these words with a grain of salt.  (Another reason I am suspicious of them is the fact that they ""spammed"" me with lots of enticements to pay for their advice which seemed just like the type of advice they spoke against.) Anyway, time to put the soapbox away.  As I do that though, I should explain the reason for this soapboxing.  Simply put, investing is a risky endeavor, any way you slice it.  You can never eliminate risk, you can only hope to reduce it to an acceptable level.  What is acceptable is subject to your situation and to the magnitude of your risk aversion.  Ultimately, it is rather subjective and you should not blindly follow someone else's opinion (professional or otherwise).  Point being, use your judgment to evaluate anything you read about investing.   If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  If someone purports to have some strategy for guaranteed (steady) returns, be very suspicious of it.  (Read up on the Bernard Madoff scandal.)  If someone is putting on a heavy sales pitch, be weary.  Be especially suspicious of anyone asking you to pay for their advice before giving you any solid understanding of their strategy.  Sure, many people want to get paid for their advice in some way (in fact, I am getting ""paid"" with reputation on this site).  However, if they take the sketchy approach of a slimy salesmen, they are likely making more money from selling their strategy, than they are from the advice itself.  Most likely, if they were getting outsized returns from their strategy they would keep quiet about it and continue using it themselves.  As stated before, the more people pile onto a strategy, the smaller the returns.  The typical model for selling is to make money from the sale.  When the item being sold is an intangible good, your risk as a buyer increases. You may wonder why I have written at length without much discussion of asset allocation.  One reason is that I am still a relative neophyte and have a mostly high level understanding of the various strategies.  While I feel confident enough in my understanding for my own purposes, I do not necessarily feel confident creating an asset allocation strategy for someone else.  The more important reason is that this is a subjective matter with a lot of variables to consider.  If you want a quick and simple answer, I am afraid you will be disappointed.  The best approach is to educate yourself and make these decisions for yourself.  Hence, my attempt to educate you as best as I can at this point in time. Personally, I suggest you do what I did.  Start reading the Wall Street Journal every day. (An acceptable substitute may be the business section of the New York Times.)  At first you will be overwhelmed with information, but in the long run it will pay off.  Another good piece of advice is to be patient and not rush into investing.   If you are in a hurry to determine how you should invest in a 401(k) or other such investment vehicle due to a desire to take advantage of an employer's matching funds, then I would place my money in an S&P 500 index fund.  I would also explore placing some of that money into broad index funds from other regions of the globe.  The reason for broad index funds is to provide some protection from the normal fluctuations and to reduce the risk of a sudden downturn causing you a lot pain while you determine the best approach for yourself.  In this scenario, think more about capital preservation and hedging against inflation then about ""beating"" the market."


This sounds more like a Business Analyst role, but almost impossible to tell with such narrow detail.  My general advice though - don't pick the title based on what the job is today, pick it based on what you can grow it into.


"Updating current reactor tech largely reduces ""radioactive waste?"" Exactly by how much will this reduce radioactive waste? And I hope you can clarify, but when you put ""radioactive waste"" within quotes you could be misinterpreted as downplaying the perilous nature of a deadly substance who's mere milligrams will poison and even kill every orgasm that ingests it -- over the next 250,000 years.  Something /energy ignores and even censors on their subreddit is the question of where will nuclear waste be stored. Our species has had a strong couple thousand years but considering how we collectively mishandle even the simplest of tasks - how arrogant are we to believe we can safeguard the storage of a deadly substance for the next quarter-million years? Windmill 1.0 can just be taken down and even recycled into Windmill 2.0"


What I would prefer is top open a new category charges under dispute and park the amount there. It can be made as an account as well in place of a income or expenses category. This way your account will reconcile and also you will be able to track the disputes.


When evaluating a refinance, it all comes down to the payback. Refinancing costs money in closing costs. There are different reasons for refinancing, and they all have different methods for calculating payback.  One reason to finance is to get a lower interest rate. When determining the payback time, you calculate how long it would take to recover your closing costs with the amount you save in interest. For example, if the closing costs are $2,000, your payback time is 2 years if it takes 2 years to save that amount in interest with the new interest rate vs. the old one. The longer you hold the mortgage after you refinance, the more money you save in interest with the new rate. Generally, it doesn't pay to refinance to a lower rate right before you sell, because you aren't holding the mortgage long enough to see the interest savings. You seem to be 3 years away from selling, so you might be able to see some savings here in the next three years.  A second reason people refinance is to lower their monthly payment if they are having trouble paying it. I see you are considering switching from a 15 year to a 30 year; is one of your goals to reduce your monthly payment? By refinancing to a 30 year, you'll be paying a lot of interest in your first few years of payments, extending the payback time of your lower interest rate.  A third reason people refinance is to pull cash out of their equity. This applies to you as well. Since you are planning on using it to remodel the home you are trying to sell, you have to ask yourself if the renovations you are planning will payoff in the increased sale price of your home. Often, renovations don't increase the value of their home as much as they cost. You do renovations because you will enjoy living in the renovated home, and you get some of your money back when you sell. But sometimes you can increase the value of your home by enough to cover the cost of the renovation. Talk to a real estate agent in your area to get their advice on how much the renovations you are talking about will increase the value of your home.


This article is simply a discussion of the author's own stupidity. In no way does a liquidation preference effect the value of a company. Share class? Yes definitely.  The issue comes from applying the price of a preferred funding round to a fully diluted basis as is often quoted in financial media. Value doesn't always just equal basic p * q


What you put that money into is quite relevant. It depends on how soon you will need some, or all, of that money.  It has been very useful to me to divide my savings into three areas...  1) very short term 'oops' funds. This is for when you forget to put something in your budget or when a monthly bill is very high this month. Put this money into passbook savings.  2) Emergency funds that are needed quite infrequently. Used for such things as when you go to the hospital or an appliance breaks down. Put this money in higher yeald savings, but where it can be accessed.  3) Retirement savings. Put this money into a 401-K. Never draw on it till you retire. Make no loans against it. When you change jobs roll over into a self-directed IRA and invest in an ETF that pays dividends. Reinvest the dividend each month.  So, like I said, where you put that money depends on how soon you will need it.


The dividend is for a quarter of the year, three months. 80 cents is 3.9% of $20.51. Presumably the Div/yield changes as the stock price changes. On Yahoo, they specify that the yield is based on a particular stated date. So it's only the exact number if the stock trades at the price on that date.


I couldn't believe they blew money on a fucking share buy back.  Even the product issues aside, how moronic is that?  Hey guys, we are 3 years behind the competition in technology, our next product is another 2 generations from now, and sales are collapsing around us.  Should we maybe INVEST IN SOME FUCKING R&D!?  Nah, lets hand out the cash to shareholders.  I'm sure they would prefer a 5% share price boost now instead of long term survival of the company.


Can't see why would you need to track the sources of the original funds. Can't think of a reason not to consolidate, if at all it will only make the management of your IRA more convenient, and may be even cheaper (if the fees depend on the account value...).


Russia has structural problems too. The last time they had an election, their president and prime minster of what - 10yrs? - swapped roles.   India has a fully functioning democracy. Yes, there are challenges but dont say that Russia has crossed the chasm.


"Obama is a piece of shit, who is nothing more than a puppet. You will get no arguement from me on that. What piece of shit would you like to see in his place? These horrid anti-competition agreements are not possible without govenment's supporting them. You wonder why governments and corporations are so friendly with one another? Think about it. Who collects the taxes for the government? And do you think the government could get those taxes without those corporations doing the job for them? They would have to come to your house and force it out of your hands face to face. By getting your boss to do it they make him the bad guy who doesn't ""pay"" you what you feel you are worth. You ignore the fact that if he didn't steal from your cheque he would be shut down.  You think the Mafia has a monopoly on extortion?   What part in your own words do I have ""COMPLETELY"" backwards?"


"I'm going to assume that by ""register the house in my name"" you mean that the house is legally yours. In that case there are a number of implications, tax and otherwise. You should also be very clear with your father about what happens when the house is sold. Do you give him back what he paid for it? Does he get all the value? What happens if the value has gone down? Some of this is down to Indian law, which I know nothing about. However all of these are red flags which you should consider before doing this. This is not legal advice in any jurisdiction."


"Simply paying him back the 50K to reduce ""his equity"" back to 30% doesn't necessarily mean that he still doesn't have a higher liq pref upon a liquidation event. You don't need the legal language to know...I deal with term sheets all the time, I don't deal in the legal language, we cut the deal with the term sheet and leave the legal language to the lawyers."


"Do yourself a favor and actually read the article posted; it directly addresses your claim. Here is a lovely excerpt -  ""The claim that climate models are unreliable is the 6th-most popular contrarian myth. The argument is generally based on the claim that climate models didn't predict the slowdown in global surface warming over the past 15 years. That's in large part because during that time, we've predominantly experienced La Niña conditions. Climate modelers couldn't predict that ahead of time, but the models that happened to accurately simulate those conditions also accurately predicted the amount of global surface warming we've experienced."""


Yeah, she is a control freak... she sold the rights of pictures of her to some agency, who licensed them out.... she lost control.   So to this end, I think it's only fitting that we the people of the internet seek justice & irony.... we must go forth and photoshop actual dicks in place of the 7 inch burger.  Go now.... make it happen.


You are thinking about this very well.  With option one, you need to think about the 5 D's in the contract.  What happens when one partner becomes disinterested, divorced (break up), does drugs (something illegal), dies or does not agree with decisions. One complication if you buy jointly, and decide to break up/move, on will the other partner be able to refinance?  If not the leaving person will probably not be able to finance a new home as the banks are rarely willing to assume multiple mortgage risks for one person.  (High income/large down payment not with standing.) I prefer the one person rents option to option one.  The trouble with that is that it sounds like you are in better position to be the owner, and she has a higher emotional need to own.    If she is really interested in building equity I would recommend a 15 year or shorter mortgage.  Building equity in a 30 year is not realistic.


Thanks for the cross-post.  I wrote this in response to a lot of questions on Quora, asking about Segwit and where the market was going. There are a ton of factors that could affect the market, but if I had to bet on the most likely outcome, this would be it.


"The cause of the increase in 2006-2011 was the financial crisis, where, if you recall, the global banking system came close to collapse for reasons that are well documented. Rightly or wrongly, gold is seen as a safe haven asset in times of crisis. The price of gold began to decline in 2011 when the markets decided that the risk of a global banking system collapse had passed without further incident. In the period leading up to 2006, the price of gold was in a flat-to-down trend because there was little net buying interest in gold and large gold sales had been executed by various central banks around the world who felt that gold no longer had a place in central bank reserves.   In modern economies gold is seen as a ""fringe"" asset.  It has no role to play.  The recent financial crisis may have dented that perception, but those dents are now being forgotten and the price of gold is returning to its long-term downward trend.  When the next financial/banking crisis is upon us, the price of gold will again (probably) rally.  The extent of the rally will depend on the extent of the crisis."


Foot Locker is getting squeezed in two directions. They're getting pinched on price by online sales while losing the top end of the athletic market to boutique sporting goods stores. Foot Locker let's you try shoes on, that's the only thing their in store experience ads. There are several specialty stores in my area that have a well trained staff that offer good advice and fitting services that I'm more likely to buy athletic shoes from than Foot Locker.


"Just an add-on that I would argue CDO's were created much earlier, in the late 1960's, by newly created Ginnie Mae and Fannie Mae, and eventually Freddie MAc in some of the original mortgage bundling programs.  There were no private-label MBS's at the time, but the practice had already started well before the 80's.  Not trying to be a dick, but I think it's historically significant.  edit: To maybe double back a bit, I know that they were passing through mortgages, but I'm actually not sure how the securitization actually worked, (if they were technically ""collaterialized."")."


If you've decided to ignore the sound advice re: oil company stocks, and you want something directly linked to the price of oil, do the following: Understand that oil producers would like avoid the risk of a price drop, and oil consumers (refiners, electric utilities, etc.) would like to avoid the risk of a price rise. Understand that you are about to assume their risk.


And then there is the issue of people who actually don't intend to reduce the size of their loan. They only want to pay the interest, so their debt with the bank remains constant. If you are upside down, it means you will not have the financial means to remove the debt. If, for some reason, you are no longer able to pay the bank, you might lose the house. After that you will have no house, but you still have a debt with the bank.


"Can you give me evidence that HFT front running is happening? Better yet, can you tell me how, given current market structure, front running is even possible? Don't just tell me ""order types"" and ""faster"", because that doesn't directly lead to front running. In fact, why don't you start by defining what you think to be front running? I have a feeling that will clear up a lot of your apparent misunderstanding.  In the meantime, you're just regurgitating Flash Boys / CNBC hype.  Also, it's a fallacy to say that people ""believe"" in the mission of IEX simply because there's volume there. Market participants will connect to any liquidity source, based purely on their endless quest for more liquidity...  EDIT: By the way, being faster than someone is *not* front running. It's being faster than them. I want to make sure you understand this distinction before venturing into matters you're obviously *very* unfamiliar with."


being prepared to take advantage of opportunities is also determined by luck. Did you get to choose who your parents were or how they brought you up, eventually defining your personality and therefore propensity to be prepared for opportunities?  No.  Did you get to choose what random events occurred around an opportunity, which modified your ability or propensity to act up on it? No.   The idea of 'success' depends on the idea of free will and the ability to overcome disadvantages, but you don't even need to rule out free will to see that ability itself is determined by luck.   Luck is all.   Read The Sirens of Titan by Vonnegut, it really solidified my thinking in this vein.


Thanks for the huge insight. I am still a student doing an intern and this was given as my first task, more of trying to give the IA another perspective looking at these funds rather than picking. I was not given the investors preference in terms of return and risk tolerances so it was really open-ended.   However, thanks so much for the quick response. At least now I have a better idea of what I am going to deliver or at least try to show to the IA.


"I speak from a position of experience, My BS and MS are both in Comp Sci. I know very little about loans or finances. That is very unfortunate as you are obviously an intelligent human being.  Perhaps this is a good time to pause your formal education and get educated in personal finance.  To me, it is that important. I study computer science, and am thus confident that I will be able to find work after I finish school. This kind of attitude can lead to trouble.  You will likely have a high salary, but that does not always translate into prosperity.  Personal finance is more about behavior then mathematics.  I currently work with people that have high salaries in a low cost of living area.  Some have lost homes due to foreclosure some are very limited in their options because of high student loan balances.  Some are millionaires without hitting the IPO/startup lotto.  The difference is behavior. It's possible that someone in my family will be able to cosign and help me out with this loan. This is indicative of lack of knowledge and poor financial behavior.  This kind of thing can lead to strained relationships to the point where people don't talk to each other.  Never co-sign for anyone, and if you value the relationship with a person never ask them to co-sign. I'll be working as a TA again for a $1000 stipend. Yikes!  Why in the world would you work for 1K when you need 4K?  You should find a way to earn 6K this semester so you can save some and put some toward the loans you already acquired.  Accepting this kind of situation ""raises red flags"" on your attitude towards personal finance.  And yes it is possible, you can earn that waiting tables and if you can find a part time programming gig you can make a lot more then that.  Consider working as a TA and wait tables until you find that first programming gig. I am just about done with my undergraduate degree, and will be starting graduate school at the same university next semester. To me this is a recipe for failure in most cases.  You have expended all your financing options to date and are planning to go backwards even more.  Why not get out of school with your BS, and go to work?  You can save up some of your MS tuition and most companies will provide tuition reimbursement.   Computer Science/Software Engineering can be a fickle market.  Right now things are going crazy and times are really good.  However that was not always the case during my career and unlikely for yours.  For example, Just this year I bypassed my highest rate of pay that occurred in 2003.  I was out of work most of 2004, and for part of 2005 I actually made less then when I was working while in college.  In 2009 my company cut our salaries by 5%, but the net cost to me was more like a 27% cut.  In 2001 I worked as a contractor for a company that had a 10% reduction in full time employees, yet they kept us contractors working.   Recently I talked with a recruiter about a position doing J2EE, which is what I am doing now.  It required a high level security clearance which is not an easy thing to get.  The rub was that it was located in a higher cost of living area and only paid about 70% of what I am making now.  They required more and paid less, but such is the market.  You need to learn about these things! Good luck."


I've been in the workforce for a little over 20 years. This sounds like one of the situations that starts out as a nice little bonus, but ends with me holding the bag and wishing I never would've gotten involved.


"Investors aren't ""job creators"" ... they're job *haters*.  The top folks cannot think past one business quarter, so they hate wages and increasing wages to get their jobs done.  It will only change when someone realizes they are losing the race because they don't want to buy the gear they need.  And they do need it.  Companies don't need better investment advisors or magic business consultants to worship.  They need workers.  Sadly ... they are told by the expensive consultants that paying for the latter is always the problem."


Its more important to me that people who make more than me are villianized than to do some simple math and see that articles decrying executive pay is a red herring designed to pit the rich, middle class, and poor against each other.


"You do not say what country you are in. This is an answer for readers in the UK. Most normal balance transfer deals are only for paying off other credit cards. However there are ""money transfer"" deals that will pay the money direct to your bank account. The deals aren't as good as balance transfer deals but they are often a competitive option compared to other types of borrowing.  Another option depending on how much you need to borrow and your regular spending habits is to get a card with a ""0% for purchases"" deal and use that card for your regular shopping, then put the money you would have spent on your regular shopping towards the car."


True, but I don't think that's our only problem. It's a complicated issue, but we've seen the militarization of police, many people fear the police too much to report serious crimes (which might be reformable, but not if Internal Affairs corruption is anyone's idea of reform). Both of these issues stem from a fundamental lack of respect for the populace at large on the police's behalf, a natural response to seeing society's worst day in and day out.   There's also the benefit of having one more level to escalate your issues up. If the insurance company doesn't issue a fair decision, the courts may, and while a police officer doesn't have a legal duty to protect and serve (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=0), an insurance company has a contract and a service you paid. Also, though I'm not sure how relevant it is in the insurance industry, companies are competing with each other and thus have an incentive to report their competitor's illegal activity, unlike the blue code of silence.   These problems may be fixable, but they certainly are not easily so.


It's not so much about time but about intent.  If your intent is to move there permanently, it would be when you arrive in the state for the purposes of living there (i.e. not from a while before that when you went to check a place out or for an interview).  I believe that most (if not all) states expect you to get a Driver's License from that state within 30-days of moving there. Something like a Driver's License or State ID would be proof of your residency.  These things vary greatly from state to state, so you'd have to research particular states.  Or find someone who's done that already. A bit of searching, specifically for Texas, brought me to this forum thread: If you / he wish to establish residency here -- here being Texas -- get a Texas Driver's License and Voter Registration here. Government issued ID with a Texas address is pretty much bulletproof defense against being found to be a resident of elsewhere. Your battle, if there is one, will not be with Texas, but with your present home of record state and/or local government if there are income taxes associated with having been a resident there during the tax year. Which brings up the other question: You would need to make sure that California does not have some provision that would cause you issues.  (This isn't so much a case of income from a company in the state as it about capital gains, but it is still prudent to check.)


"Do you guys think it's a good idea to put that much down on the car ? In my opinion, it depends on a lot of factors.  If you have nothing to pay, and are not planning to invest in something that cost a lot soon (I.E an house, etc). Then I see no problem in put ""that much down on the car"". Remember that the more you pay at first, the less you will pay interest on. However, if you are planning on buying something big soon, then you might want to pay less and keep moneys for your future investment. I would honestly not finance a car with the garage as I find their interest rate to high. Possibilities depends a lot of your bank accounts, but what I would personally do is pay it cash using my credit margin with the bank which is only 2.8% interest rate. Garage where I live rarely finance under 7% interest rate. You may not have a credit margin, but maybe you could get a loan with the bank instead ? Many bank keep an history of your loan which will get you a better credit name when trying to buy an home later. On the other side, having a good credit name is not really useful in a garage. What interest rate is reasonable based on my credit score? I don't think it is possible to give a real answer to this as it change a lot around the world. However, I would recommend to simply compare with the interest rate asked when being loan by the bank."


One of the most useful ways to depict Open, High, Low, Close, and Volume is with a Candlestick Chart. I like to use the following options from Stockcharts.com: http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=SPY&p=D&yr=0&mn=3&dy=0&id=p57211761385


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"I think Feral Oink said it well here when someone asked if they should negotiate for additional benefits in lieu of a portion of salary. ""You never want to take a lower salary, especially not in exchange for something that is conditional e.g. benefits. Your salary is the only thing that is guaranteed as a condition of employment. Other things can be changed by the employer at a future point in time."" Does it make sense to take a lower salary so I can still contribute to a Roth IRA?"


No but from what I remember, they didn't label this pink slim at all when they sold it.  The example I gave is from a recent one as from what I remember about this, they were tossing meat in a dryer with ammonia to break down scraps to re-purpose later.  They weren't required to label anything they sold as what they did and it was misleading to consumers and many people wouldn't approve of the process they used to obtain the meat.  It's a lot like meat products bought in the US and being labeled as US products but the cattle is killed in the US, shipped to China for processing then back to the US for labeling and resale.


Single payer is simply meaning you pay one outlet for your care.  So I go to ER and have surgery with overnight stay. I would have 10 or so different bills under the current system or with single payer one bill with the details.  With out considering left or right leaning, just seems easier.   What is the negative to that?   I have been involved in the IT side of insurance for a long time and a considerable portion of the expenses are just for all the different parties to track billing.


Quite a bit as in, $100K+? If you're a sole operator, not sure what constitutes a real likelihood that a risk of liability will materialize, and in need of a lot of up front financing, I am genuinely concerned that you're going to a lay a giant egg on this one. What is it your business is going to be doing? I don't really want to give a free consultation, but I'm worried you're either misunderstanding something or about to make a mistake, and I don't want to see that happen.


Wikipedia is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stock_exchanges


Wobbly legs in boxing means he about hit the mat. In MMA, it looks more gruesome because of all the blood, but in boxing, by time someone is to the point McGregor was, he was getting brain damaged.  He 'gassed out' starting at the beginning of round 4. His arms were noodles in round 5.   Unless you wanted McGregor to risk being stupid, punishment needed to stop when it did.


I've had fairly extensive experience using Entropay, with a few hiccups along the way. I suspect your transaction or repeated top-ups has been flagged as 'suspicious' activity. Read: potentially fraudulent or money laundering.  You've also tried to buy expensive electronic goods, a common use of fraud/laundering. Finally, Entropay does NOT provide address validation. Again, with laptops being a common use for fraud, it is more than likely Lenovo attempted to do an address validation on your card details, which failed and may have led to the hold. How to resolve it? You will probably need to provide documentation to Entropay including proof of identity and where you live.


This article uses the kind of evaluation that has screwed up this country's businesses for years.  I don't care about the short term stock gains, we should be looking at long term investing and whether the CEO has the vision to lead the corporation into the future, not whether he decided to shut down a factory because it lead to a one time tax bonanza.


"Companies ""make"" sales. The receivable from those sales are typically and commonly referred to as *""money""*.  In that respect, when a company makes sales, they make money.  Whether or not they are realizing a profit from those sales, is entirely different.  There's a huge distinction between a company that is generating no sales, and a company that is generating no profit."


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what are you talking about, the wealthy are not just tied to money. Alot of it is assets, physical metals, and properties  currency switches happen every 40 years or so btw, which is the case lately in the past couple of centuries.


"Looking at the list of bonds you listed, many of them are long dated. In short, in a rate rising environment (it's not like rates can go much lower in the foreseeable future), these bond prices will drop in general in addition to any company specific events occurred to these names, so be prepared for some paper losses.  Just because a bond is rated highly by credit agencies like S&P or Moody's does not automatically mean their prices do not fluctuate. Yes, there is always a demand for highly rated bonds from pension funds, mutual funds, etc. because of their investment mandates. But I would suggest looking beyond credit ratings and yield, and look further into whether these bonds are secured/unsecured and if secured, by what. Keep in mind in recent financial crisis, prices of those CDOs/CLOs ended up plunging even though they were given AAA ratings by rating agencies because some were backed by housing properties that were over-valued and loans made to borrowers having difficulties to make repayments. Hence, these type of ""bonds"" have greater default risks and traded at huge discounts. Most of them are also callable, so you may not enjoy the seemingly high yield till their maturity date. Like others mentioned, buying bonds outright is usually a big ticket item. I would also suggest reviewing your cash liquidity and opportunity cost as oppose to investing in other asset classes and instruments."


>People with demanding, manual labor jobs (probably the only way to get enough calories for that kind of work -- none of them were fat)   Most men can eat 2300-2500 calories in a day with out much exercise, and a Whopper is a whole 660 calories. Most sandwiches at any chain restaurant are more than that. Not one salad at Applebees is less than 1000 calories. People have no idea what their calorie intake is.


"The way I see it: Survival of the fittest. In the beginning weren't there a LOT of nearly similar sites? There was competition but they died out. Before there was only Google, there was MSN and Yahoo and more BUTT they died out. The only way break this alleged ""monopoly"" is if there will be others who could provide even better services than these giants."


The big difference for me is that my contribution thorough a cafeteria plan also skips Social Security and Medicare taxes. That is a 6.2% (SS) + 1.45% (Medicare) tax on those contributions if done outside a cafeteria plan. Some companies make a contribution to a the HSA. If you handle your contributions outside of their channels they may see you as a non-participant, and not make any matching contributions. You might have to put a minimum amount into the company setup HSA.  The non-company HSA may also charge fees that the company one doesn't. Regarding the taxes: If you contribute $3,000 to the HSA via post tax, your paychecks would have had an extra $229.50 paid into social security/Medicare. There is no mechanism to get this refunded.


Rich tax evaders are entitled leeches who claim extraordinary results enabled by their community/city/state/republic as wholly their own.  They violate the social contract that asks members to pay their share of the cost, as determined by tax code, for public goods they enjoy.  They refuse to contribute toward improvement and maintenance of infrastructure that magnify fruits of labor and investment.  If they find fault with the way the military is run, they should get politically involved.  If they just don't want to pay taxes, they should move elsewhere and renounce their US citizenship.  I don't see what's heroic about tax evaders.


You're asking three different things: What is the fastest way, what is the cheapest way and what is the easiest way.  You will not find one method that is all three at once. The fastest way is a wire transfer.  The cheapest way that I've encountered is a foreign exchange service like XE.  The easiest way is probably Paypal since the money is already in Paypal.


I think it would be good to familiarize yourself with the market in the subject building's area and convey that knowledge. What is a typical cap rate for the area? Comparable sales? Any new employers coming into the area that affect the local economy in a positive way?


"Warren Buffett pointed out that if you set 1 million monkeys to flipping coins, after ten flips, one monkey in about 1,000 (1,024) actually, would have a ""perfect"" track record of 10 heads. If you can double your money every three to five years (basically, the outer limit of what is humanly possible), you can turn $1,000 into $1 million in 30-50 years. But your chances of doing this are maybe those of that one in 1,000 monkeys. There are people that believe that if Warren Buffett were starting out today, ""today's version"" could not beat the historical version. One of the ""believers"" is Warren Buffett himself (if you read between the lines of his writings). What the promoters do is to use the benefit of hindsight to show that if someone had done such-and-such trades on such-and-such days, they would have turned a few thousand into a million in a few short years. That's ""easy"" in hindsight, but then challenge them to do it in real time!"


Aside from what else has been said, the stock market does not equal the real economy, so putting some trendline over the S&P time series tells us nothing when recessions (though ultimately decided upon by NBER's methodology) generally coincide with >= 2 consecutive quarters of GDP contraction.


"On a longer time scale, the plot thickens:  It almost looks random.  A large drop in real rates in the mid-70s, a massive spike in the early 80s, followed by a slow multi-decade decline. The chaos doesn't seem to be due to interest rates.  They steadily climbed and steadily fell:  All that's left is inflation:  First, real rates should be expected to pay a moderate rate, so nominal rates will usually be higher than inflation. However, interest rates are very stable over long time periods while inflation is not.  Economists call this type of phenomenon ""sticky pricing"", where the price, interest rates in this case, do not change much despite the realities surrounding them. But the story is a little more complicated. In the early 1970s, Nixon had an election to win and tried to lessen the impacts of recession by increasing gov't spending, not raising taxes, and financing through the central bank, causing inflation.  The strategy failed, but he was reelected anyways.   This set the precedent for the hyperinflation of the 1970s that ended abruptly by Reagan at the beginning of his first term in the early 1980s.  Again, interest rates remained sticky, so real rates spiked. Now, the world is not growing, almost stagnating.  Demand for equity is somewhat above average, but because corporate income is decelerating, and the developed world's population is aging, demand for investment income is skyrocketing.   As demand rises, so does the price, which for an investor is a form of inverse of the interest rate. Future demand is probably best answered by forecasters, and the monetarist over and undertones still dominating the Federal Reserve show that they have finally learned after 100 years that inflation is best kept ""low and stable"":  But what happens if growth in the US suddenly spikes, inflation rises, and the Federal Reserve must sell all of the long term assets it has bet so heavily on quickly while interest rates rise?  Inflation may not be intended, but it is not impossible."


Imagine a stock where the share price equals the earnings per share.  You pay say $100 for a share. In the next year, the company makes $100 per share. They can pay a $100 dividend, so now you have your money back, and you still own the share. Next year, they make $100 per share, pay a $100 dividend, so now you have your money back, plus $100 in your pocket, plus you own the share. Wow. What an incredible investment.


However, we don’t need to and we haven’t removed power from the government for this solution.  We have removed lobbying rights for certain special interests.  I think that is important to note.    The government isn’t malicious.  It just needs adjusted, realigned, maybe having some fat trimmed off.  In some cases it may require more power.  Every issue should have solutions suggested on a case by case basis.  No need to throw the baby out with the bath water.


Well, there has to be a compromise, that's for sure. But surely you would agree that the people who take the lion's pie of the risk should also take the lion's pie of the profits. Just because one of their companies has turned profitable, it does not follow that somehow other stakeholders should now deserve a bigger piece of the pie. These shareholders probably have stakes in hundreds of other companies that failed, they lost their money, but the employees and executives there got paid, right? Well, you win some, you lose some. But again, when you take most of the risk, you have to take most of of the profits, because from an individual's perspective, you need to have a positive EV from all your investments on average, otherwise you wouldn't invest at all.  Do you think that this would be better for all those workers?