"My guess would be that they sell your debt to a collection agency and don't really bother with pressing charges for 500 dollars.  A collection agency can do multiple things to hold you accountable for your debt. I hate to bring it to you but it only makes sense that you should try to resolve this debt given that ""not being careful enough"" is not facebook's responsibility. I also assume they won't let you run any further ads on the same credit card. Edit: What you could possibly do is call facebook and be honest with them, tell them it was an accident and that you can't pay the current amount. Maybe they'll waive the debt or give you a settlement offer."


"Seriously. What does this mean? My understanding of how they calculated unemployment figures was by the number of new and ongoing unemployment claims being filed. ""Dropped out""?? Does that mean they died, or exhausted their benefits? People don't just STOP looking for work, and ANNOUNCE it, do they?"


Hmm didn't expect downvotes for stating that QNX is technically one of the best.   It is used in Nuclear power stations, the shuttle robot arm , in Ciscos top of the line carrier grade router (CRS1 using IOS XR),  amongst many other applications especially within infotainment in the automotive sector.   http://www.qnx.com/  It's a great asset that they bought at a good price. I have worked in embedded computing for 20 years in the corporate world, I have specified and used pretty much any OS you care to name, this is a great one with its transparent IPC, high availability manager, user mode drivers,  etc.  Please don't connect QNX with what you see on the blackberry phones because it's not the same OS.


"First a quick terminology correction: I believe you're proposing selling 10,000 shares of the stock of a company, not ""10,000 stocks"". When you sell, you need to decide whether you're selling for a specific minimum price or just selling for whatever price you can get. If you set a specific lower limit on asking price, then if people aren't interested at that price it doesn't sell. Which may mean you sell only a few shares, or none if your asking price isn't considered reasonable. If you want to sell independent of price, then as you begin to flood the market with your shares, the price you get per additional share may decline until it finds a buyer. What that lower limit is will depend on what people think the stock is currently worth. This is one of the many complications I don't want to deal with, which is why I stick with index funds."


"Rather than trying to indirectly game your credit score, I would instead shop around and see if there are other lenders that will pre-qualify you with your credit the way it is today.  BofA and other large banks can be very formulaic in how they qualify loans; a local bank or credit union may be more willing to bend the traditional ""rules"" and pre-qualify you.   I'm thinking about using FHA. If you can put 20% down then a conventional mortgage will likely be cheaper than an FHA loan since FHA loans have mortgage insurance built-in while conventional mortgages typically don't require it if you borrow less than 80% of the house's value.  I would shop around before jumping to an FHA loan."


"The best thing to do is to completely pay off one credit card, then apply the left over to the highest interest card. After that, ALL of your expenses that can be put on a credit card, should be put on the one that you just paid off. At the end of the month, pay off a different credit card and the highest interest, and move all your purchasing to that card. Keep going around the circle until you are able to pay them all off. Doing this will be good for your credit score as the debt on the cards will now be ""new"".  If you're really desperate to increase your credit score (e.g. refinancing a house) you can use balance transfers to temporarily make it appear that you have zero debt but it will cost you some money, typically balance transfers cost something like $35 + 2%."


1.) The majority of credit and loans do not go to publicly traded companies.   2.) Companies can and do trade commodities with paper.   3.) Can't keep up with all the crazy you are spouting.   Smart people lose their shirt in commodities all the time, it's not a fun place to play. If you really believe the majority of publicly traded companies are going to lose their value, then invest in them when they do. Money always has to go somewhere. Insurance, pensions, governments, businesses, don't like to just have cash sit there because nothing happens (you can point to Apple, etc but they're making acquisitions) anyways, they need to buy and sell and will always have to do it.   My last piece of advice, look up the Hunt brothers.


"Most of this is already regulated. ""Food"" specifically is exempt from taxes if it's done on premise and for the ""convenience of the employer"", whatever that means. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/119 Other benefits, such as commuter aid (public transport, parking) are tax free up to a certain limit (I think $255 for 2017) and any excess it taxable income. You can study the whole gory details at https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15b.pdf"


Others have suggested paying off the student loan, mostly for the satisfaction of one less payment, but I suggest you do the math on how much interest you would save by paying early on each of the loans: When you do the calculations I think you'll see why paying toward the debt with the highest interest rate is almost always the best advice. Whether you can refinance the mortgage to a lower rate is a separate question, but the above calculation would still apply, just with different amortization schedules.


"In addition to telling the story, make sure it ends with a conclusion that answers the question ""so what?""  You want to have an impact from each of your stories.  **Story makeup**  Situation + Task = 20%  Action + Result = 80%"


My suggestions would only save the country money and prevent at least 84,500 people - almost certainly much more from dying unnecessarily each year  (due to mortality amenable to health care) if the US had healthcare that was available to everybody and affordable *like almost all other developed countries do.*  They all literally think we are barbarians you know, largely because of people with opinions like your own.


Of course the first reply would be an attempt to poison the well. Of course I'm not gonna engage.   Me, I'm still waiting for that concrete proof that's been promised for a almost one year already. Please, do remember to send it my way once it surfaces!   EDIT: I've received accusations and insults so far.   I'm still waiting for the incriminating paper, tape, video, log, whatever it is that is ACTUAL, concrete proof of interference to be sent my way.   I'm not talking about proof that Trump is a liar, that is known, or that Trump kept in touch with Russia, that is known.  I'm waiting for the concrete proof that Russia interfered in the election.   I'm not claiming there was none, i'm just waiting for the proof. Please times a million, someone share it with me.


"The mods have been alerted and are on watch.  PLEASE report the links yourselves for them.  I've also notified them that the ""breaks subreddit's rules"" option is broken -- not allowing you to pick the rule.  So feel free to use the spam option.  Either way it alerts them...and they've already taken action on the ones I just manually reported!  Thanks Mods!"


"> I really dont understand your argument man. Most people ""escape"" in alot of ways alcohol being the most popular why dont you find issue with this ?  I have an issue with people using any drug everyday. But most people don't drink and get drunk daily.   > Im assuming u live in the la area as do i almost 60% of this state voted for legalization and 60% of our nation approves of legalzation according to polls  Yes, doesn't mean they are smart or right. Most Americans are retards. Honestly, I've seen and been around people from all countries and for as educated as Americans are, they are some of the dumbest and the easiest to manipulate and brainwash.  You have liberals living at home and can't move out that are ready to give almost their whole paycheck in taxes to a government that wastes tons of money and is plagued with corruption. Yet they think its okay to give them more and more when its not necessary and it doesn't benefit us very often.  > There is absoulety no compelling evidence that suggests that mj is more dangerous than legal substances like tobacco and alcohol in fact quite the opposite. So i honestly have to say your stance is quite baffling i tend believe people like just dont personally enjoy mj.  Well if you open your eyes and see what is going on, this country has gone downhill over the past 20+ years. We are slowly heading in the direction of a 3rd world country. It won't be for a long time, but the people are getting poorer and poorer, everything is becoming more un-affordable, and people are being slaves to debt. In 3rd world countries they want you to be high all the time so you can't think, can't fight back, and keep quiet. I see that happening here and many people agree.  But to reply to what you said, things like alcohol have rules. You can't drink everywhere, you can't drink and drive, etc... There needs to be some rules for MJ.  I'm completely okay with medicinal use, but most people don't use it in that way."


"The company itself doesn't benefit. In most cases, it's an expense as the match that many offer is going to cost the company some percent of salary.  As Mike said, it's part of the benefit package. Vacation, medical, dental, cafeteria plans (i.e. both flexible spending and dependent care accounts, not food), stock options, employee stock purchase plans, defined contribution or defined benefit pension, and the 401(k) or 403(b) for teachers. Each and all of these are what one should look at when looking at ""total compensation"". You allude to the lack of choices in the 401(k) compared to other accounts. Noted. And that lack of choice should be part of your decision process as to how you choose to invest for retirement. If the fess/selection is bad enough, you need to be vocal about it and request a change. Bad choices + no match, and maybe the account should be avoided, else just deposit to the match.  Note - Keith thanks for catching and fixing one typo, I just caught another."


"add the interest for the next 5 payments and divide that by how much you paid on the principal during that time Let's see - on a $200K 6% loan, the first 5 months is $4869. Principal reduction is $1127. I get 4.32 or 432%. But this is nonsense, you divide the interest over the mortgage balance, and get 6%. You only get those crazy numbers by dividing meaningless ratios.  The fact that early on in a mortgage most of the payment goes to interest is a simple fact of the the 30 year nature of amortizing. You are in control, just add extra principal to the payment, if you wish.  This idea sounds like the Money Merge Account peddled by UFirst. It's a scam if ever there was one. I wrote about it extensively on my site and have links to others as well. Once you get to this page, the first link is for a free spreadsheet to download, it beats MMA every time and shows how prepaying works, no smoke, no mirrors. The second link is a 65 page PDF that compiles nearly all my writing on this topic as I was one of the finance bloggers doing what I could to expose this scam. I admit it became a crusade, I went as far as buying key word ads on google to attract the search for ""money merge account"" only to help those looking to buy it find the truth. In the end, I spent a few hundred dollars but saved every visitor the $3500 loss of this program.  No agent who dialoged with me in public could answer my questions in full, as they fell back on ""you need to believe in it."" I have no issue with faith-based religion, it actually stands to reason, but mortgages are numbers and there's order to them. If you want my $3500, you should know how your system works. Not one does, or they would know it was a scam.  Nassim Taleb, author of ""The Black Swan"" offered up a wonderful quote, ""if you see fraud, and do not say 'fraud,' you are a fraud.""  The site you link to isn't selling a product, but a fraudulent idea. What's most disturbing to me is that the math to disprove his assertion is not complex, not beyond grade school arithmetic.  Update 2015 - The linked ""rule of thumb"" is still there. Still wrong of course. Another scam selling software to do this is now promoted by a spin off of UFirst, called Worth Unlimited. Same scam, new name."


Those are not formal positions.  Those are phony bullshit lines to motivate a rightwing base.   The guy was a globalist that didn't give a shit about those issues for 60 years.   You have been had. Like so many other people over the decades.


"There will not be enough money to fill the holes that are caused by banks' easy money policies combined with the trillions in derivative ""hedges"" that the banks have off-balance sheet.   The idea is that the chain reaction collapse of the European banking system can be avoided by plugging the holes in the dam in Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Ireland. But it is a crazy idea. Next comes France, and then what? At some point there is not enough money to plug the holes and the entire facade collapses anyways.  Adults would dismantle the Eurozone now and let each country see to itself. Let the banks collapse. Capital (in the form of dollars, gold, etc) will reappear and means will evolve rapidly to connect capital with people who need loans for business.   Consumer loans are going the way of the dodo bird."


"No, his theory didn't get ""dinged""; a single professor, Richard Sutch of the University of California-Riverside, thinks that one of the paper's data comparison techniques is questionable but given the paucity of good data from earlier periods in history a method had to be chosen and was."


Sell a product of $4 w/ COGS of $10, corner the market by driving out competition for a majority in market share, raise the price or squeeze supplier's margins by either lowering BOM or delaying terms from 30 to 360, then voila, big sustainable business.     You must be delusional if you think Amazon did otherwise. They used the above strategy for both their retail and their AWS. Their Lab126 did the exact same thing.  You clearly showed you don't understand either growth equity or competition.


Right. One thing I’ve learned is that there is no such thing as a mild recession until long after it’s over. The downturn in 2001-02 was the worst one since the Great Depression at the time, according to many reports. The same thing was said about the one in the early 90s. People who were around for the recessions in the early 80s and before that can probably say the same thing.   There will be another recession, probably soon, and it will probably be worse than people expect. Until another economic cycle comes and goes, then it won’t be so bad anymore. I do think 2008 will persist for awhile as this cataclysmic event, much like 1929 did several generations ago.


Dean's list every semester, graduated summa cum laude and was a Hamilton Scholar. He actually completed two undergrad majors in 4 1/2 yrs which incl. a semester studying abroad. He just graduated and entered the job market at the wrong time (just as the world economy crashed and no-one was hiring). He was Dean's list and graduated with honours for the MBA from a highly regarded Canadian University. Within 6 months he had an interview, followed by gov't tests and then his job offer. Didn't hurt that the Dean was one of his references.


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"This is a poor argument. If I could make $500 an hour but could only work 1 hour per week, I'd be broke and still ""more successful"" given your example. Salary divided by hours worked (or even effort for that matter) ignores economies of scale. Just because you're efficient on a per unit basis doesn't mean you have the same potential as someone else that can ""sell"" more units than you."


The only card I've seen offer this on credit card purchases is Discover.  I think they have a special deal with the stores so that the cash-over amount is not included in the percentage-fee the merchant pays.  (The cash part shows up broken-out from the purchase amount on the statement--if this was purely something the store did on its own without some collaboration with Discover that would not happen). The first few times I've seen the offer, I assumed it would be treated like a cash-advance (high APR, immediate interest with no grace period, etc.), but it is not.  It is treated like a purchase. You have no interest charge if you pay in full during the grace period, and no transaction fee.  Now I very rarely go to the ATM. What is in it for Discover?  They have a higher balance to charge you interest on if you ever fail to pay in full before the grace period.  And Discover doesn't have any debit/pin option that I know of, so no concern of cannibalizing their other business.  And happier customers. What is in it for the grocer?  Happier customers, and they need to have the armored car come around less often and spend less time counting drawers internally.


Duration is the weighted average time until all the cash flows of a fixed income security are received. There are a few different measures of duration but generally, duration measures the sensitivity of the price of a fixed income asset to a change in the yield of that asset. If you're familiar with calculus, duration is the first derivative of price with respect to yield.  Convexity is the sensitivity of the duration of bond with respect to changes in yield, or the second derivative.   The first chart [here](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/convexity.asp#axzz1x4F075zM) will help. Convexity measures the curvature of the blue or pink line, the steeper the curve the higher the convexity.   The more cash flows there are in a bond (higher or more frequent coupon) the lower the duration, because you are receiving more of your investment earlier as opposed to later (think time value of money). If a bond has one cash flow, meaning you get paid back only at maturity (zero coupon) then any changes in interest rates will have a greater impact on the price of the bond since you are discounting only one cash flow in the future. Think of buying a bond with no coupons and a 5% yield that matures in 5 years, or a bond with similar yield and maturity buy pays a coupon. If interest rates rise, the zero coupon bond's price will fall more than the bond with coupons. Why? Because if you own the zero coupon bond you have to wait 5 years to get your money back and reinvest it at the higher rate, while if you have the bond that pays coupons you can reinvest those incremental cash flows at the higher rate, even though at purchase they had the same yield and maturity.  These are both tough concepts that took me a fair amount of time to really understand. If you're investing in bonds or any fixed income asset, these topics are crucial to understanding interest rate risk.


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Do what's outlined here. The capital asset pricing model will reveal how an asset (a stock in this instance) performed relative to the market performance for that time period. This by itself will answer your assignment's question but allowing you to traverse much deeper in the intricate details of the field. You'll learn a few interesting things on the way! Good luck :)


Employees were already cashing out their RSUs and selling stock on private markets.    >Even if Facebook could resist, an eager army of Facebook employees is pushing hard for an I.P.O., according to Eric Eldon of TechCrunch. In 2008, Facebook adopted a new restricted stock program that prevented employees from selling their shares until an I.P.O. or a sale, or if Facebook permitted it.  They still could have stayed private if they really wanted to.  They were compensating employees in stock, and those employees wanted to cash out.  The underwriters wanted to cash out before the financials became open to public scrutiny.


It may depend on the rental agreement you signed, some agreements may include clauses that allow for early termination so check your agreement carefully. Where there is an early termination clause included it will usually have some sort of notice period or financial penalty associated with it.  For example you may have to give a couple of months notice and pay rent up to the end of that period or be able to pay some sort of one-off penalty. As a more practical example I broke a US rental agreement early last Autumn and had two early termination options in my rental agreement: In my case we chose the second option since we were actually moving out of the country and it was easier to have our US finances completely settled. I'm now planning on breaking another agreement because I'm in the process of purchasing a property and the purchase will likely go through before the lease expires.  In this case the early termination clause requires 2 months notice i.e. we will have to give 2 months notice and pay rent for those two months (unless we are less than 2 months from the end of the lease). As @BrenBarn points out you should also check the laws for the jurisdiction your rental agreement is in to understand what your rights and options are if your agreement does not have an early termination clause


The Telegraph had an interesting article recently going back 30 years for Mutual's in the UK that had beaten the market and trackers for both IT and UT  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/11489789/The-funds-that-have-returned-more-than-12pc-per-year-for-THIRTY-years.html


>Rather than follow its old model of providing parts subcontractors with detailed blueprints created at home, Boeing gave suppliers less detailed specifications and required them to create their own blueprints.  That sounds absolutely retarded, if not criminal from an engineering perspective.


This is going to seem pretty far off the beaten path, but I hope when you finish reading it you'll see the point... Suppose someone offered you a part time job: Walk their dog once per day for at least 20 minutes, and once per week pick up the dog poo from their lawn. Your compensation is $300/month. Now suppose instead you are given two choices for a job: Your preference probably has more to do with your personality and interests than the finances involved.


"Platinum use is pretty heavily overweight in industrial areas; according to the linked Wikipedia article, 239 tonnes of platinum was sold in 2006, of which 130 tonnes went to vehicles emissions control devices and another 13.3 tonnes to electronics. Gold sees substantial use as an investment as well as to hedge against economical decline and inflation, with comparatively little industrial (""real world"", as some put it) use. That is their principal difference from an investment point of view. According to Wikipedia's article on platinum, ... during periods of economic uncertainty, the price of platinum tends to decrease due to reduced industrial demand, falling below the price of gold. Gold prices are more stable in slow economic times, as gold is considered a safe haven and gold demand is not driven by industrial uses. If your investment scenario is a tanking world economy, for reason of its large industrial usage, I for one would not count on platinum to not fall in price. Of course gold may fall in price as well, but since it is not primarily an industrial use commodity, I would personally expect gold to do better in such a scenario."


Long ago when I was applying for my first mortgage I had to list all my income and assets. At the time I had some US Savings Bonds from payroll deduction. I asked about them. The loan officer told me that unless I was willing/planning on selling them to make the down payment, they were immaterial to the loan application. So unless you have a habit of turning RSUs into cash, or are willing to do so for the down payment, it is no different from having money in a 401K or IRA: the restrictions on selling them make them illiquid.


well, you know the problem lies with bonds maturing. The issue is not the function COMP but the security itself. You have to use existing total return indices that reflect a constant 10yr maturity position.      >perpetually rolled the principal once the bond matured until the present?      That would mean your 10y becomes 7y, 5y, 3y, 1y, matured then you reinvest. Not the same.      Use SECF to find something like MLT1US10 Index or go to the IND page to see Merrill Lynch's bond indices. They're some of the best.


> Don't challenge me  Oh please. I challenge everything you've stated here including which if us has more knowledge and experience. Your reading comprehension is still awful; you continue to attribute opinions to me that I haven't expressed, and twisting opinions I have expressed to insinuate that I'm disagreeing with you on the few points we do agree on.


This sounds like my dad in so many ways.    Rather than ask questions and listen to vagueness (or lies) from your dad, I suggest you ask to see financial, tax, and legal documentation.  Maybe speak to the accountant, lawyer, bank official - whomever - to see where checks were written, transfers, etc.  I'm really sorry you are in this situation, but there needs to be a major family meeting immediately.  Good Luck.


You mean regarding Universal Basic Income.  Bus/taxi/autobody workers/factory workers/programmers/farmworkers...the list goes on. Automation/AI is deflationary, and a country with10-15% unemployment, and an opiod epidemic, a heroin epidemic (hello, Afghanistan) certainly should start addressing these issues.  Universal Basic Income is part of the solution to the problems caused by automation/AI.


In general that's illegal. If you're a W2 employee, you don't miraculously become a 1099 contractor just because they pay you more. If your job doesn't change - then your status doesn't change just because they give you a raise. They can be sued (by you, and by the IRS) for that. Other issues have already been raised by other respondents, just wanted to point out this legal perspective.


Yes, Lending Club is the biggest of the bunch, which to date have helped originate $1B of loans. LC just raised more money (bringing total to $100M) and Mary Meeker joined the board. There's a novelty aspect to it b/c it's new but it's just the beginning of parts of the banking industry/process/institutions being disintermediated.   Low vol is an easy sell, actually. If investors aren't being paid for risk, why assume it?


As far as trading is concerned, these forward curves are the price at which you can speculate on the future value of the commodity.  Basically, if you want to speculate on gold, you can either buy the physical and store it somewhere (which may have significant costs) or you can buy futures (ETFs typically hold futures or hold physical and store it for you).  If you buy futures, you will have to roll your position every month, meaning you sell the current month's futures and buy the next month's.  However, these may not be trading at the same price, so each time you roll your position, you face a risk.  If you know you want to hold gold for exactly 1 year, then you can buy a 1-year future, which in this case according to your graph will cost you about $10 more than buying the front month.  The forward curve (or sometimes called the futures term structure) represents the prices at which gold can be bought or sold at various points in the future.


That may be true but on the flip side any monkey can increase security simply by preventing people from doing things. The people who are worth paying for are the ones that enable people who actually contribute to the core business to work as efficiently as possible without setting up roadblocks that provide incentive for bypass.


Do an semi-online transfer. I had a similar situation where i had to transfer 5K USD to a commercial entity. You can request the publisher to give you their bank account details. You will need the SWIFT code of the bank( SWIFT code is a international code that each bank gets to transfer money) You will need bank account number, account name, bank address, address of the publisher. Then just walk into your bank with the above details. Note that you will have to visit a branch in your city that allows forex transfers. They will give you a set of forms to fill up. The above details will be needed to fill up these forms In addition to the above, you will be asked to fill up a purpose code maintained by RBI.  This code is used by RBI to understand the reason why you are transferring the money. The bank will provide you with a sheet which will have these codes and explanation of these codes. Read through the codes and in case of any questions ask the bank officials to help Tip: If you have accounts with any private sector banks, please approach them. Public sector banks will give you tough time  Hope this helps! Regards, Ravi


I don't buy new cars anymore, but I've helped family members negotiate prices on new cars recently. There are various online services to see the average price paid, as well as the low outliers. I've looked at truecar.com for instance to see what others have paid within 50 miles of my zip-code. I think the only way for you to know you're being offered a good deal is to see if any of the other dealers that have not responded are willing to talk when you offer them $22,300 which the dealer above suggested was break-even point. If none of them respond, then you know you're really at the bottom of the negotiating window. If one of them does respond, then you can go back to that internet sales manager and ask why another dealership (do not disclose which one) is willing to sell it to you for less than $22,400 (do not disclose how much lower they offered to sell it for).  In my experience, most dealers will sell at or just below the break-even price at the end of the quarter so that they can beat other dealerships out for the quota. That gives you a week and a half to find the bottom price before going in on New Years Eve to seal the deal.


There is nothing right or wrong about this. On such a short goals, you are essentially saying you need $2700 in next 4 months to buy 3 items. Essentially you can have sub-goals to save $675 each month. As you already have some funds; you can go by priority buy the bed and then once you have more saved, buy the laptop and then buy the bed. If you buy the bed now, it means that you will have to wait more for the laptop. If the goals are further apart; say something in few months and something in few years, you would have to create to separate buckets to save and contribute proportionately to both the buckets.


alabama vacation rentals  ---iTrip.net is a company that has revolutionized the way people book vacations, making the process easy and stress free. Due to our forward thinking and advanced online booking engine, we're able to provide quality vacations rentals and a lower price.


Interactive Brokers advertises the percent of profitable forex accounts for its own customers and for competitors. They say they have 46.9% profitable accounts which is higher than the other brokers listed. It's hard to say exactly how this data was compiled- but I think the main takeaway is that if a broker actually advertises that most accounts lose money, it is probably difficult to make money. It may be better for other securities because forex is considered a very tough market for retail traders to compete in.  https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/?f=%2Fen%2Ftrading%2Fpdfhighlights%2FPDF-Forex.php


actually he can sue for that as well.. it is just harder to prove. But if someone tries to do an end run around discrimination laws, and still hire  certain minorities but then treats them and only them like total crap until they quit. You could still sue, it is just a much harder case.


This depends on if you're talking Secured credit card, or prepaid debit card. There is no separate category for secured credit cards in the IIN list; however, it is possible some of them are classified as debit cards (despite not being debit cards).  You may want to check with the issuer to verify this (and you can check the IIN, or the first 6 digits of the card number, in the list I link to above to verify).  However, prepaid debit cards are debit cards, and are less likely to be accepted for travel, rental car, hotel, etc. types of charges (where a hold, similar to a deposit, is charged to the account). This is one of the major differences between a prepaid card, such as the kind you top up at the grocer, and a secured credit card, where you deposit some money but separately pay back the amount you charge on the card (as a regular card). Secured cards are classified as credit cards, while prepaid cards are debit cards. As mhoran notes, it's possible your credit limit could be too low to allow a hotel, airline, or rental agency to allow a transaction, but otherwise it should be fine.


Same here. I work with realtors on a weekly basis and they all have given me this advice: if you have parents/grandparents/rich uncle, etc., that might be leaving you money when they pass, swallow your pride and kindly ask for it now. Get into the market as soon as possible because this catch 22 is not going to change anytime soon.


You're wise to consider mitigating risks considering your age and portfolio size, but 'in' and 'out' are so reductive and binary. Why not be both? Leave some in and let it ride, providing growth but taking risk. Put some in bonds, where it'll earn more than cash and maybe zig when stocks zag. I applaud you for calling the last two crashes, but remember: a lot of people called them. Jeremy Bentham called the dot com bubble *years* in advance - of course, he got out too early, and the investors in his funds suffered for it. Timing means getting the sell and the buy right, which very few can do. Hence my advice to hold a balanced portfolio or *if you really do have the golden touch* make use of that ability and get rich - no need to work a 9 to 5 if you can call market crashes accurately.


Big problem in general, employers don't give a shit about you. It's almost like they're pissed at you they have to pay you what they do. Then when you've worked really hard and hoped you proved yourself you get a 15 cent raise. Gee, this whole new 5-10 extra dollars a check? Whatever will I do with that. If you have a problem with the job or the pay there's the door. Hardworking people get cut out because in a free market it's all who you know. You could work a job a year and be up for a promotion, but the boss has this buddy who's looking for a job. Less qualified than you but he takes your promotion and starts the job making more than you all because of who he knows. So basically stop working hard and just try and make friends. It's more worth your effort. Which is why Millenials nowadays are so entitled. They're looking for the first connection to give them a handout so they can be on top. Because they all think it's just a matter of who you know. So maybe stop being that asshole who makes hiring discussions based purely on friendship. It technically has no place in business.


Thank you for sharing. I had a feeling it be a legal but soulless job. Unfortunately I have mouths to feed so I'll do what it takes. I just don't want to be fucked over from a startup company since I never worked for one.


"Of course, which is why you need to have a scoring function / utility function for the ""filters"", i.e. Are you going to value it by rate of accuracy hor by a metric where wins = +2, losses = -1, such that it uses a criteria like that to decide whether or not a filter adds value, (some even use a compound effect i.e. wins = 2+e^(1+w) where w is the consecutive wins).  A metric like the above would capture the trade off between predictive power and profit. Also some traders watch their Max DD very carefully so they may be very risk averse."


"at $8.50:  total profit = $120.00 *basis of stock, not paid in cash, so not included in ""total paid"" at $8.50: total profit = $75.00"


"I've come to accept the fact that all these people that hark on and on about ""moving up the ladder"" topped out in pay years ago and have no real understanding that the world is shaped more like a pyramid.   You're not standing on a ladder with 3 people above you waiting to get on the roof and 3 under you waiting for the same. You're standing at the bottom of a pyramid with 3 people and only one of you makes that next step at which point two others are now standing waiting for the next step up and so on. Some move up quickly, others never do. And the situations are all different."


"I am not a lawyer nor a tax accountant, so if such chimes in here I'll gladly defer. But my understanding is:  If you're romantically involved and living together you're considered a ""household"" and thus your finances are deemed shared for tax purposes. Any money your partner gives you toward paying the bills is not considered ""rent"" but ""her contribution to household expenses"". (I don't know the genders but I'll call your partner ""her"" for convenience.) This is not income and is not taxed. On the off chance that the IRS actually investigated your arrangement, don't call any money she gives you ""rent"": call it ""her contribution to living expenses"". If you were two (or more) random people sharing a condo purely for economic reasons, i.e. you are not a family in any sense but each of you would have trouble affording a place on your own, it's common for all the room mates to share the rent or mortgage, utilities, etc, but for one person to collect all the money and write one check to the landlord, etc. Tax law does not see this as the person who writes the check collecting rent from the others, it's just a book-keeping convenience, and so there is no taxable transaction. (Of course the landlord owes taxes on the rental income, but that's not your problem.) In that case it likely would be different if one person outright owned the place and really was charging the others rent. But then he could claim deductions for all the expenses of maintaining it, including depreciation, so if it really was a case of room mates sharing expenses, the taxable income would likely be just about zero anyway. So short answer: If you really are a ""couple"", there are no taxable transactions here. If the IRS should actually question it, don't refer to it as ""collecting rent"" or any other words that imply this is a business arrangement. Describe it as a couple sharing expenses. (People sometimes have created tax problems for themselves by their choice of words in an audit.) But the chance that you would ever be audited over something like this is probably remote. I suppose that if at some point you break up, but you continue to live together for financial reasons (or whatever reasons), that could transform this into a business relationship and that would change my answer."


WTF? Americans aren't saving enough for retirement as it is, SS is not going to be a viable way to fund retirement, and now they want to make it *harder* to put money away for retirement? We're getting pushed into a world where no one can retire but the job market is shrinking due to automation.  Want the American Revolution 2.0 with pitchforks and torches? Because this is how you get the American Revolution 2.0 with pitchforks and torches.


No. There's no inherent reason to link the place that you bank with any other financial service. There may occasionally be benefits; for instance you can sometime get lower rates on mortgages or loans by having a a checking account with an institution. Or perhaps it'll be easier for you to make a same-day payment on a credit account. There could be some negatives as well. If you fall behind on a loan account, the bank may take money from your savings/checking account to satisfy your debt. Choose a bank or CU that's convenient to you. Choose a credit card from whatever bank or CU provides you with the best benefits. If that credit card is coming from a CU that requires a savings account for membership, open a minimum balance savings account and apply for the product you're interested in. If your credit is as good as you claim, they'll be happy to offer you the credit card regardless of whether you do your day-to-day banking with them.


"If it's as simple as constituent banks holding 3% of their stock at the FedResInk, why doesn't the FedResInk just publish an annual report of these banks and how much their paid for placing their 3% at the FedResInk?  Answer?  Because it's not that simple.  This is very much a ""pay no attention to the man behind the curtain""."


Here is a list of threads in other subreddits about the same content:   * [U.S. Homeland Security found SEC had 'critical' cyber weaknesses in January](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/71k03n/us_homeland_security_found_sec_had_critical_cyber/) on /r/politics with 65 karma (created at 2017-09-21 19:46:08 by /u/pipsdontsqueak)  * [U.S. Homeland Security found SEC had 'critical' cyber weaknesses in January](https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/71k06c/us_homeland_security_found_sec_had_critical_cyber/) on /r/Economics with 8 karma (created at 2017-09-21 19:46:25 by /u/pipsdontsqueak)  * [U.S. Homeland Security found SEC had 'critical' cyber weaknesses in January](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/71k01m/us_homeland_security_found_sec_had_critical_cyber/) on /r/news with 11 karma (created at 2017-09-21 19:45:53 by /u/pipsdontsqueak)  * [U.S. Homeland Security found SEC had 'critical' cyber weaknesses in January](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/71jzz1/us_homeland_security_found_sec_had_critical_cyber/) on /r/technology with 1 karma (created at 2017-09-21 19:45:39 by /u/pipsdontsqueak)  ----   ^^I ^^am ^^a ^^bot  ^^[FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/wiki/index)-[Code](https://github.com/PokestarFan/DuplicateBot)-[Bugs](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/comments/6ypgmx/bugs_and_problems/)-[Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/comments/6ypg85/suggestion_for_duplicatesbot/)-[Block](https://www.reddit.com/r/DuplicatesBot/wiki/index#wiki_block_bot_from_tagging_on_your_posts)  ^^Now ^^you ^^can ^^remove ^^the ^^comment ^^by ^^replying ^^delete!


This was actually (sort of) possible a few years ago. The US Mint, trying to encourage use of dollar coins, would sell the coins to customers for face value and no shipping. Many people did exactly what you are proposing: bought hundreds/thousands of dollars worth of coins with credit cards, reaped the rewards, deposited the coins in the bank, and paid off the credit cards. See here, for example. Yeah, they don't have that program any more.  Of course, this sort of behavior was completely predictable and painfully obvious to the credit card companies, who, as far as I know, never let users net rewards on cash advances. They're trying to make money after all, unlike the Mint, which, uh, well...


"There are a LOT of reasons why institutional investors would own a company's stock (especially a lot of it). Some can be: The company is in one of the indices, especially big ones. Many asset management companies have funds that are either passive (track index) or more-or-less closely adhere to a benchmark, with the benchmark frequently being (based on/exactly) an index. As such, a stock that's part of an index would be heavily owned by institutional investors. Conclusion: Nothing definitive. Being included in an equity index is usually dependent on the market cap; NOT on intrinsic quality of the company, its fundamentals or stock returns.  The company is considered a good prospect (growth or value), in a sector that is popular with institutional investors. There's a certain amount of groupthink in investing. To completely butcher a known IT saying, you don't get fired for investing in AAPL :)  While truly outstanding and successful investors seek NON-popular assets (which would be undervalued), the bulk is likely to go with ""best practices""... and the general rules for valuation and analysis everyone uses are reasonably similar. As such, if one company invests in a stock, it's likely a competitor will follow similar reasoning to invest in it.  Conclusion: Nothing definitive. You don't know if the price at which those institutional companies bought the stock is way lower than now. You don't know if the stock is held for its returns potential, or as part of an index, or some fancy strategy you as individual investor can't follow. The company's technicals lead the algorithms to prefer it. And they feed off of each other. Somewhat similar in spirit to #2, except this time, it's algorithmic trading making decisions based on technicals instead of portfolio managers based on funamentals.  Obviously, same conclusion applies, even more so. The company sold a large part of the stock directly to institutional investor as part of an offering. Sometimes, as part of IPO (ala PNC and BLK), sometimes additional capital raising (ala Buffett and BAC) Conclusion: Nothing definitive. That investor holds on to the investment, sometimes for reason not only directly related to stock performance (e.g. control of the company, or synergies). Also, does the fact that Inst. Own % is high mean that the company is a good investment and/or less risky? Not necessarily. In 2008, Bear Stearns Inst Own. % was 77%"


"I love the idea of #1, keep that going. I don't think #2 is very realistic.  Given the short time frame putting money at risk for a higher yield may not work in your favor.  If it was me, I'd stick to a ""high interest"" savings account (around 1%). I don't mind #3 either, however, I'd be socking whatever you could to mortgage principle so you can get out of PMI sooner rather than later.  That would be my top priority.  Given the status of interest rates, you may end up saving money in the long run.  I doubt it, but you may. If you choose to go with #3, don't settle for a house that you really don't like.  Get something that you want.  Who knows it may take you a year or so to find something!"


From the letter you link: Our performance, relatively, is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market so that   deductions made from the above results should be tempered by the fact that it was the type of year when we   should have done relatively well. In a year when the general market had a substantial advance I would be well   satisfied to match the advance of the Averages. Putting those two sentences together, the word relatively means that his funds perform better than the market in bear markets and perform about the same as the overall market in bull markets. It does not mean that absolute performance is better in bear markets than bull markets. Later on he states  This policy should lead to superior results in bear markets and average performance in bull markets.


The 10yr bond pays coupons semi annually.  The yield % is what you would get annually if you hold the bond to full term.  The coupon payment won't be exactly 1.65%/2 because of how bond pricing and yields work.  The yield commonly quoted does not tell you how much each interest payment is.  You have to look at the price and coupon of a specific individual bond.  The rate you see is the market equilibrium yield at the present.      Example, I offer two different people two different bonds.  Joe buys a 10yr bond paying 5% coupons semi annually at a par value of $1000.  I charge him $1000.  Bob wants to buy a 10yr bond paying 10% coupons semi annually at a par value of $1000.  I charge him $1500 for this.   The yield is similar between the two (not equal due to math details but lets assume).  So at the end of 10 yrs, the two have roughly the same total amount of $.  Bob's paid more each year but he paid more up front.    This is why the federal govt can issue bonds with diff coupons and the market prices them so the yield rises/falls to the market clearing yield.


"To calculate the balance (not just principal) remaining, type into your favorite spreadsheet program: It is important that the periods for ""Periods"" and ""Rate"" match up.  If you use your annual rate with quarterly periods, you will get a horribly wrong answer. So, if you invest $1000 today, expect 6% interest per year (0.5% interest per month), withdraw $10 at the end of each month, and want to know what your investment balance will be 2 years (24 months) from now, you would type: And you would get a result of $872.84. Or, to compute it manually, use the formula found here by poster uart:   This is often taught in high-school here as a application of geomentric series. The derivation goes like this.  Using the notation :  r = 1 + interest_rate_per_term_as_decimal p = present value a = payment per term eot1 denotes the FV at end of term 1 etc.  eot1: rp + a   eot2: r(rp + a) + a = r^2p + ra + a   eot3: r(r^2p + ra + a) + a = r^3p + r^2a + ra + a ...   eotn: r^np + (r^(n-1) + r^(n-2) + ... 1)a = p r^n + a (r^n - 1)/(r-1)  That is, FV = p r^n + a (r^n - 1)/(r-1).   This is precisely what exel [sic] computes for the case of payments made at the end of each term (payment type = 0). It's easy enough to repeat the calculations as above for the case of payments made at the beginning of each term. This won't work for changing interest rates or changing withdrawal amounts.  For something like that, it would be better for you (if you don't want online calculators) to set up a table in a spreadsheet so you can adjust different periods manually."


Now I remember why I don't read zero hedge.  Allow me to summarize:  1) lots of people who write articles said so   2) Brazil concluded a currency deal with the Chinese government.  Until China is willing to allow relatively free capital flows they just won't be able make it a major reserve currency.  If political risk in all major reserve currencies is a problem, gold provides a better option than a country with an even more interventionist streak than the countries you're worried about.  The final chart is just absurd.  I'll leave it as an exercise to the readeea .


Ugh, that makes me sick.  If he's teaching his students the same way he's teaching the reporter, then that just makes me ill.  He's just taught the reporter how to cheat the system by figuring out the right answer without ever doing the requested task or understanding the problem.  Instead of solving that simple algebra equation for one of the unknowns, he's taught the reporter to plug in some semi-random numbers (that happen to work out correctly in the original equation) and the check to see which of the offered answers works out when those same numbers are used.  You can see for the first attempt that the reporter chose v=1 and w=2.  That's why there's a check next to both (a) and (c) -- they both work with that pair.  Then the reporter was told to choose another point, and he chose the second most obvious --- v=4 and w=5.  That isolated solution (a).  The test is supposed to test an understanding of algebra, not an understanding of  basic math.  So when he says the system can be gamed, I guess he means he's helping students to game it.  Here's a news flash for you, Mr. Reporter: you're still bad at math, and that one-on-one session just made you worse.


Your actual question has nothing to do with the technical issue of linking a PayPal account to a bank account. It is all about the accounting of the money. That is, what you claim as income and what you can prove to the taxman. Yes, you will need to separate the money. Linking to a business account is probably the way to go. From there, it is about how you keep track of the money and account for it.  How you do the accounting is a different question. So: No, it does not automatically become business income just because it goes into a business bank account. You still have to keep track of said income and claim it somewhere on some tax form(s). The point of the separate business account is to avoid the commingling of the the money which may lead to you losing the liability protection of an incorporation. The bank doesn't file your taxes for you.


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Sorry for your loss. Like others have said Debts cannot be inherited period (in the US). However, assets sometimes can be made to stand for debts. In most cases, credit card debt has no collateral and thus the credit card companies will often either sell the debt to a debt collector or collections agency, sue you for it, or write it off. Collecting often takes a lot of time and money, thus usually the credit card companies just sell the debt, to a debt collector who tries to get you to pay up before the statute of limitations runs out. That said, some credit card companies will sue the debtor to obtain a judgement, but many don't. In your case, I wouldn't tell them of your loss, let em do their homework, and waste time. Don't give them any info,and consult with a lawyer regarding your father's estate and whether his credit card will even matter. Often, unscrupulous debt collectors will say illegal things (per the FDCPA) to pressure anyone related to the debtor to pay. Don't cave in. Make sure you know your rights, and record all interactions/calls you have with them. You can sue them back for any FDCPA infractions, some attorneys might even take up such a case on contingency, i.e they get a portion of the FDCPA damages you collect. Don't pay even a penny. This often will extend or reset the statute of limitations time for the debt to be collectable. i.e Ex: If in your state, the statute of limitations for credit card debt is 3 years, and you pay them $0.01 on year 2, you just bought them 3 more years to be able to collect. TL;DR: IANAL, most credit card debt has no collateral so don't pay or give any info to the debt collectors. Anytime you pay it extends the statute of limitations. Consult an attorney for the estate matters, and if the debt collectors get too aggressive, and record their calls, and sue them back!


Hopefully some Economist will answer this question I have about ZeroHedge.   I see all these terrible news about the economy going to hell and the world economy is going to go into another great depression or some kind of disaster.   **How reputable is this source and should I take all the negative things so seriously? Are there any information that they are skewing?**


[My locator] told me that she was sorry but that she must have misunderstood and there was nothing she could do. Your locator owes you $300.


Unemployment rate for the United States is at 4.4%. This is the lowest it has been since the year 2000 when it was 3.8%. This is at the same point as it was at the height of the housing boom.   So you are wrong, we do not need another housing boom to get our unemployment level back to that level, since we are there already.    As a nation, we are at full employment.


Getting the correct remedy for your eyeglasses or contact lenses is a vital piece of good eye care. However, seeing obviously is only one a player in your general eye health. It's critical to have customary eye exams with an Optometrist in Barrington IL regardless of whether you wear eyeglasses or contacts, and regardless of the possibility that your vision is sharp. Settling on a choice about your eyewear goes past great vision and creates an impression about your identity. Your choice influences how you see and furthermore how you need to be seen by others.


So I don't have any problems with your analysis or the comments associated with it. I just wanted to mention that no one is talking about taxes. Your answer....Figure out new portfolio breakdown and sell to 1.) Get money I need and 2.) re-balance the portfolio to my new target allocations is completely correct.  (Unimpeachable in my opinion.) However, when you calculate what you need to sell to meet your current cash needs make sure to include in that analysis money to pay taxes on anything you sell for a gain, or keep some invested to account for the tax money you would save by selling things for a loss.  The actual mechanics of calculating what these amounts are are fairly involved but not difficult to understand. (IE every situation is different.) Best of luck to you, and I hope your cashflow gets back up to its previous level soon.


"I feel like any ""mental health"" issue that can be solved in two days isn't the kind of thing that warrants missing work.  And if a person is just stressed the fuck out and needs to unwind a little, *just say that -* Tumblr already exists; we don't need more people self diagnosing their idiotic and pretend disorders.  On top of that, since everybody knows this isn't ""real"" in the way that alcoholism or depression is real (though I don't doubt something's bothering her) all this is is a big ""dear everybody, I can't really handle my job.  Remember me next time there's a layoff!""  This has given everyone too much information, it's too much detail for her boss, and it's too fucking ""omg gimme hugs"" garbage for her CEO."


Basically, all the same reasons you might not want to keep piles of your own country's cash, plus or minus the exchange rate question. Banks exist for good reasons. You probably want to use them unless you are explicitly playing the exchange rate game -- And if that's what you want, there are probably better ways to do it. If you need help not touching the money, CDs or other term accounts might give you enough disincentive. Or might not.


"Oh I know, just answering the guy's question. Hospitals in Quebec are run as an integral part of the Health Ministry; they are neither for-profit or non-profit, they outright belong to the government (though many have foundations that help them raise private funding as well). Not saying it's necessarily a better system, but I can understand the initial surprise at the concept of ""hospital companies""."


"> Hahaha... there is a housing project directly across the street from me as I write this.  So you have a front row seat at the zoo.  That is not the same thing as living *among* the poor.  Petting your beloved downtrodden now and then to try to gin up some sense of personal nobility simply isn't the same thing as actually having been there and done that.  > drug war, which disproportionately targets minorities  Yes, in the same way that speeding laws target people that drive too fast.   While I oppose the drug laws, the idea that they target the underclass is idiotic.  They target people that distribute drugs.  And isn't it fascinating that these poor, poor people, who have so little, for whom we  are to have such veerrrrrrry deep compassion, always manage to have money for cigarettes, beer, and dope.  > but the Libertarian ideology only allows for one.  No. Libertarian ideology does not speak to the underlying reasons.  It merely refuses to allow the ends to justify the means.  > Does society have any responsibility to help people who are trapped in a cycle of poverty and bad choices  No.  We as individuals do, but ""society"" does not.  ""Society"" is just another code word used by the self anointed Saviors Of Mankind (tm) as an excuse to pillage personal liberties in your neverending quest to seize power and and appear far more important and noble than you actually are.  > The rich are rich for many reason  No, the rich are only that way for one of three reasons:  Theft, inheritance, achievement.  I've already stipulated that the first is always wrong whether by the rich or people like you than want to use a third party in government to execute the act.  The other two are none of your business.  >There just as many reasons the poor are poor.   And just like the rich, this is also none of your business so long as you insist and trying to make me pay for your utopian wetdreams.  If you feel so very badly about this, pick up the tab yourself.  > And nobody would be rich if we didn't have a functioning society,  That's true, and that's why EVERYONE, not just your hated rich, should be paying taxes and picking up a portion of the tab for running an orderly society.   The truth in all of this is that you and people like you do not trust your fellow citizens.  You believe yourselve to be morally superior to the rest of us and thus entitled to force us all to do what you want.  You don't trust the poor to be able to work their way up and you don't trust the integrity of the rich to do the right things with their money.   Buy, you noble few, *you're* the ones that know the perfect calculus of how to plan a society.  And so it has ever been:  Communist would work if they'd just put ME in charge.  Nothing made me despise your crowd more than having been poor.  You are condescending, smarmy, dishonest, willing to resort to virtually unlimited application of force, and generally clueless.  The most drug adled loser in the ghetto isn't remotely the threat to society that you are."


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There's nothing really there to comprehend.  Cost and demand are inversely proportional.  Boosting demand has the same effect as reducing costs.    Actually, there is something to comprehend.  People will use the appeal of central economic planning to funnel money to their pet projects.  Regardless of what that project is, the allocation of resources to it by artificial means throws off equilibrium in the entire economy.


The way I would use it is, every trade done by a broker has a client side and a street side.  The client side is for their brokerage account, and the street side is whoever they traded with Say, John Doe calls me at Charles Schwab and wants to buy 100 IBM.  I look at the market and decide that the best execution is on Arca.  I trade on Arca for the client.  Then, I book a client side trade into his account, and a street side trade against Arca.  If I myself was a dealer in IBM and executed against my inventory, the street side would basically be internal, booking a trade against my account.


I work for a Nissan dealership,  the lot is full of customer's Versas. Apparently they ran a risk of the passenger airbag randomly deploying. We are giving them all brand new loaners because the airbag won't be available until next year sometime. Crazy stuff...  Looks like subaru won't have nearly as many cars recalled.


Withdrawing from your 401(k) may include a 10% withdrawal penalty. There are ways to avoid the withdrawal penalty for early disbursements. The idea is to reduce your interest expense by leveraging free loans (0% APR purchases). This will help you pay down your debt more.  If you have 0% APR on purchases, you can make purchases on things you already buy. Then use that money towards other debt, while making monthly payments on the 0% APR card. This way, you pay off the credit card before the 0% APR changes. You can then rinse and repeat on another 0% APR card offer. If your credit score is 800, you can do this multiple times. Citi Simplicity gives you 18 months 0% APR. Chase Slate and Chase Freedom gives you 15 months 0% APR. Others typically give you 12 months or less.


Wanna know why? Like a year or two ago, corporate made all of the stores buy these stupid wood-smoked gas grills for like $15k each.  Many franchisees sued.  This is probably the fallout.  We still have the grills, we just don't put the wood in


I've kind of been there myself.  I stretched my finances for the deposit on a house, and lived off my credit card for a few months to build up what I was short on the deposit.  Add some unexpected car repairs, and I ended up with £10k on the card.  The problem I had then was that interest on the card ran at around 20%, and although I could meet the interest payments I couldn't clear the £10k. I simply went and talked to my bank.  In the UK there are some clear rules about banks giving customers a chance to restructure their debts.  That's the BANK doing it, not some shady loan-shark.  We went through my finances and established that in principle it was repayable.  So I got a 2-year unsecured loan at around 5%, cleared the card, and spent the next 2 years paying off a loan that I could afford.  My credit score is still aces. Forget the loan-sharks.  Talk to your bank.  If they're crap, talk to another bank.  If no bank is going to help you, consider bankrupcy as per advice above.  Debt restructuring companies are ALWAYS a con, no exceptions.


> Can you learn how to evaluate operations efficiency without working at McKinsey?  Of course, but what /u/aphorist212 isn't pointing out is the connections and influence that McKinsey alums in PE shops have. You hire someone from McKinsey not because they're smart, but because they know the right people.  Why is this important in a PE shop? Well connected people can find ways to position a failing business for potential deals that will make it more successful.  One other point: you don't need to turn that failing cafe into Starbucks. You just need to turn it into a cafe.


This depends on what your definition of the word is is. Strictly speaking, you are only investing in a company when you buy stock from them somehow.  This is usually done during an IPO or a secondary offering.  Or, if you are someone like Warren Buffet or an institutional investor, you strike a deal with the company to buy shares directly from them.  Otherwise, your money goes to someone else. Merriam-Webster defines speculate as 1b: to review something idly or casually and often inconclusively However, it also defines it as: 2: to assume a business risk in hope of gain; especially : to buy or sell in expectation of profiting from market fluctuations  The typical use of the term stock speculation vs stock investing involves definition 1b.  This alludes to the idea that little to no research was done about the stock.  This may be due to a lack of time, interest, knowledge, etc., or it may be due to a lack of information.  The former usually has a negative connotation.  The latter may have a negative connotation, though usually the connotation is one of greater risk. Strictly speaking, definition 2 includes investing as you define it along with investing in securities/commodities.


Stock Keeping Unit. An inventory item. In this case, an item on the menu. The commentor is saying that they have too many different dishes available. No one can be great at all things. When you have a lot of different dishes, one of two things have to happen: either you have a larger kitchen staff to handle the greater variety or the quality of your overall food declines. Applebees has chosen the second option.


There's so much wrong in such a small space here...  Why do you think this is a component of working in government? Is it a component of working in the private sector? Non-profits? Military (Which is still government)?  If someone specializes in shale gas extraction commercial rate setting for the purposes of royalty calculation, why do they need to remember what it's like to be Joe Sixpack?  Why do NSA administrators who monitor foreign intelligence channels need to remember what it's like to bargain shop?  The argument is nonsense from the ground up.  At the same time, how is flying coach teaching them this *valuable* lesson? And why do you think they can't remember it without flying coach?  Plus, I'm not sure you understand what forms a bubble. I fly coach. I don't interact with anyone around me. And the government officials we're talking about are not so well compensated they don't have ordinary lives.  Instead, the concern you're really alluding to is that homogenous groups of professionals tend to develop institutional blind spots.  Flying coach won't solve that.


I am also confused by what he says. The DJIA has not been at 900 for decades. However a $36 dividend is 4% per unit if you get $9 per unit per quarter. 2/3 of 4% is 6%,so that is inside his 7.5% to 5.5%. How much you have in dividend paying stocks vs. Bonds most often is a function of your age. For example, I have heard the advice of subtracting your age in years from 110 and that would be the percent you hold in dividend paying stocks. At age 30 you would have 80% in stocks. At age 60 you would be 50% in stocks. There are retirement funds that do this for you.  But the 'bottom line' all depends on your risk tolerance. I have a large tolerance for risk. So even though I am currently retired I only have 10% of my money in a 'safe' investment (ticker=PGF). It pays 5.5% per year.  The rest is in a leveraged junk bond fund (PHK) that pays 15.5% per year.


Take some time and check out various audit destinations. Right now is an ideal opportunity to go out and really investigate these sewing machine accessories. Get on the telephone to your neighborhood sewing focuses and texture shops and locate the ones that may have the sewing machine you are searching for.


nj used car dealers  --1800 Auto Land located on Rt. 22 in New Jersey, is one of NJ's premier Toyota car dealerships. You'll discover plenty of vehicles to choose from, so no matter the type of vehicle you're looking for we have something to fit your needs.


Congratulations on getting started in life! John Malloy's (American) research suggests that you should take some time to get used to living on your own, make some friends, and settle into your community.  During this time, you can build up an emergency fund.  If/when the stock markets do not seem to be in a bear market, you can follow user3771352's advice to buy stock ETFs. Do you hope to get married and have children in the next few years?  If so, you should budget time and money for activities where you make new friends (both men and women).  Malloy points out that many Americans meet their spouses through women's networks of friends.


If you do not need it for a day or a week or something like that, an easy thing to do to get the beta of a security is to use wolframalpha.  Here is a sample query: BETA for AAPL Calculating beta is an important metric, but it is not a be all end all, as there are ways to hedge the beta of your portfolio. So relying on beta is only useful if it is done in conjunction with something else. A high beta security just means that overall the security acts as the market does with some multiplier effect. For a secure portfolio you want beta as close to zero as possible for capital preservation while trying to find ways to exploit alpha.


"Whether you do decide to go with a tax advisor or not, be sure to do some research on your own. When we moved to the US about 5 years ago, I did find the taxes here pretty complicated and confusing.  I went ahead and read up all different tax documents and did some calculations of my own before hiring a CPA (at that point, I just wanted a second opinion to make sure I got the calculations right). However, when the office of the CPA was finished with my taxes, I found they had made a mistake! When I went back to their office to point it out, the lady just shrugged, corrected her numbers on the form and said ""You seem to know a lot about this stuff already. Why are you here?"" I swore to never use them again - not this particular CPA at least. Now, I am not saying all CPAs are the same - some of them are pretty darn good at their job and know what they are doing. All I am saying is it helps to be prepared and know some basic stuff. Just don't go in all blind.  After all, they are also humans prone to mistakes and your taxes are your liability in the end.  My suggestion is to start with a good tool that supports tax filing for non-residents. Most of them provide a step-by-step QA based tool. As you go through the steps, Google each question you don't understand. It may take more time than hiring a tax advisor directly but in the end it will all be worth it."


"I think you're asking yourself the wrong question. The real question you should be asking yourself is this:  ""Do I want to a) give my parents a $45,000 gift, b) make them $45,000   loan, or c) neither?"" The way you are talking in your question is as if you have the responsibility and authority to manage their lives. Whether they choose bankruptcy, and the associated stigma and/or negative self-image of financial or moral failure, or choose to muddle through and delay retirement to pay off their debt, is their question and their decision.   Look, you said that loaning it to them was out, because you'd rather see them retire than continue to work. But what if they want to continue to work? For all the stress they're dealing with now, entrepreneurial people like that are not happy  You're mucking about in their lives like you can run it. Stop it. You don't have the right; they're adults. There may come a time when they are too senile to be responsible for themselves, and then you can, and should, step up and take responsibility for them in their old age, just as they did for you when you were a child. But that time is not now. And by the way, from the information you've given, the answer should be C) neither. If giving or loaning them this kind of money taps you out, then you can't afford it."


No, at least not noticeably so. The majority of what HFT does is to take advantage of the fact that there is a spread between buy and sell orders on the exchange, and to instantly fill both orders, gaining relatively risk-free profit from some inherent inefficiencies in how the market prices stocks. The end result is that intraday trading of the non-HFT nature, as well as speculative short-term trading will be less profitable, since HFT will cause the buy/sell spread to be closer than it would otherwise be. Buying and holding will be (largely) unaffected since the spread that HFT takes advantage of is miniscule compared to the gains a stock will experience over time.  For example, when you go to buy shares intending to hold them for a long time, the HFT might cost you say, 1 to 2 cents per share. When you go to sell the share, HFT might cost you the same again. But, if you held it for a long time, the share might have doubled or tripled in value over the time you held it, so the overall effect of that 2-4 cents per share lost from HFT is negligible. However, since the HFT is doing this millions of times per day, that 1 cent (or more commonly a fraction of a cent) adds up to HFTs making millions. Individually it doesn't affect anyone that much, but collectively it represents a huge loss of value, and whether this is acceptable or not is still a subject of much debate!


Generally speaking, granting rights to one bank account (e.g. making a joint account) does not extend rights to other accounts or otherwise let one joint owner create new obligations on the other owner (e.g. opening a line of credit that the other owner must pay for), except to the extent of the joint account.  I assume there are no UK rules that would change this feature. The other party can of course withdraw all the money without need for your approval.  This also means that the joint account could be exposed to all the creditors of either party.  If your account joint tenant has huge debts, the creditors could theoretically look to the joint account for satisfaction.  At least, that would be an issue under US law. Frankly, it may be simpler to get a separate account for the other person (if possible) and make transfers with online banking.  It could also make sense to get a rechargeable banking card, if those are in the UK, which works like a debit card and can be reloaded through various means (sometimes a call, sometimes online deposits, sometimes in physical stores).  There may be fees to getting such a card or a second account, of course.  The benefit is that the cardholder has no access to your account and you control recharging.  Such cards are widely available in the US to people who otherwise would not qualify for traditional bank accounts. Note also the FATCA complication with adding a US person to your account.  My understanding is that a number of non-US banks will simply close the accounts of Americans, rather than deal with FFI hassles under FATCA.


Which will make previously unviable things viable, which will in turn drive up the price of oil. Not to deny your point but it does omit some key facts.  edit: And comparing home prices isn't really fair, I can't split your home up into barrels and ship it anywhere in any meaningful way though your price comparison is reasonable the rest of it is 'meh' at best.


Well, to be fair they are saying that because many of the most effective antibiotics are not effective any more. It is a big deal in the hospitals, and very much on the radar as a serious health concern.    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21757-dont-let-up-in-war-against-antibiotic-resistance.html


you will start to see this from every country, as things get more global, countries are going to want to make sure people arent hiding taxes from the government while enjoying all the protections a state has to offer. Like military, intelligence, protection from unfair trade practices,.. heck look at the us gov going up to bat for exxon against chavez and exxon avoids paying taxes in the US on their profits, like most multi national corps.   states that see outlays straining against lack of revenues, and the distaste that comes from raising taxes, will go after those they think are avoiding them. No one really cares when you go after people hiding money.


"There is nothing in the prop 65 warning that says ""this product will give you cancer"". This is the text:  >WARNING: This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.  When was the last time someone claimed a parking garage gave them cancer?"


So would Uber change the algorithm so surges don't happen as easily, or leave things as they are an collect a cut of every increased fare?  Another option would be to try and encourage drivers not to game the system, either giving them incentives to stay logged in or penalize them for logging out and back in.  Then with any penalty or nerf to the algorithm would piss off drivers, and likely cause a real loss of drivers, making it easier to create surges anyways.


I think he means you aren't legally obligated to show the receipt.  However, I'm not sure that store workers know the exact laws, and I don't know what your luck would be refusing to show them.  My guess is refusing would get you in an awkward argument and managers would be called and it wouldn't be worth the hassle compared to just showing the receipt in the first place.


If you have enough money to buy a car in full, that probably means you have good credit. If you have good credit, car dealerships will often offer 0% loans for either a small period of time, like 12 months, or the entire loan. Taking a 0% loan is obviously more optimal than paying the entire lump sum up front. You can take the money and invest in other things that earn you more than 0%. However, most dealerships offer a rebate OR a 0% loan. Some commenters below claim that the rebate is usually larger than the saved interest, so definitely do the math if you have that option.


Microsoft, one of the leading technology giants, released the much awaited .net core last year. ASP.NET has a notable position as robust and scalable development platform. ASP.NET developers around the world want to have a to more powerful and fresh ASP.NET framework to get their hands on.


A moving average will act as support or resistance to a stock only when the stock is trending. The way it acts as support for instance is similar to a trend-line. Take the daily chart of CBA over the last 6 months: The first chart shows CBA with an uptrend support line.  The second chart shows CBA during the same period with 50 day EMA as a support.  Both can be used as support for the uptrend. Generally you can used these types of support (or resistance in a downtrend) to determine when to buy a stock and when to sell a stock. If I was looking to buy CBA whilst it was uptrending, one strategy I could use was to wait until it hit or got very close to the support trend-line and then buy as it re-bounces back up. If I already held the stock I could use a break down below the uptrend support line as a stop to exit out of the stock.


Hahaha wake the fuck up kid.   I'm going to hit you with some deep shit here, I started off as an Technical Analyst at one of the largest banks in the world and quit after a couple of years because the work was boring, I then went on to work as Mobile/Web Developer again for a large enterprise however I did some startup work and freelancing in between, and if there is one thing I learned then it is that you gotta put in the hours to be successful and that it doesn't matter what your job is. If you want to make it you can't be one of the 9 to 5 wankers you need to do more, if you're good you'll do it in the regular time but if you're working in a decent firm chances are that your competition is tough and the extra time is a must to have a lead and maintain it.


"That's because college graduates are a dime a dozen and don't know shit, and insist on white collar jobs in which they do not labor.  An average highschool graduate will take a blue collar job and get paid handsomely for working up a sweat.  A clever one will learn a trade and get paid north of 40K/yr with less than two years experience.  Give the kid an associate's degree or an apprenticeship program and you can tack half again on top of that inside five years.  Getting degrees is a loosing proposition, and getting worse as everyone goes back to get a Master's degree because their Bachelor's is useless.  Learning a skill is a winning proposition.  If you want to stay out of debt, do not, *do not,* DO NOT ""go to college.""  Get an associate's degree and get a job.  Many companies are so starved for skilled help they will guarantee employment to anyone who graduates with a related degree.  Work the job and take night classes to finish your bachelor's, preferably in a major related to your field of work.  Gain experience and demand higher pay.  Then get higher pay.   Laugh at the law school students with +100K in debt who will never earn enough to repay their loans."


>mostly due to negligible labor costs  That can be true for clothing and shoes, but why cannot the US make cheap electronic equipment, where the labor cost is negligible?  I know the answer to that. There was a time, in the 1970s, when assembling electronic equipment involved a lot of hand work. Chips were packaged into assemblies like the [JEDEC TO-5 package](http://electriciantraining.tpub.com/14186/css/14186_34.htm) where there was a lot of very small wires that had to be soldered by hand using a microscope. (I am an electronics engineer, graduated in 1979, that's why I know this)  Today electronic circuits are totally [made by robots](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Juki_KE-2080L_by_Megger.jpg). The factories that went out of the US in the 1980s because of the labor costs have now been robotized. They are in countries where labor cost is not so significantly smaller by now than in the USA, like Taiwan, South Korea, or Singapore.  The US lost its competitive edge in electronics thirty years ago, and will not get it back without significant investment. Investment that will not be made, unless corporations get tax cuts in capital gains and depreciation.


I think you're misunderstanding how tax brackets work. If you make $1 more and that bumps you into a higher bracket, only THAT particular dollar will be taxed at the higher tax bracket rate... Not your entire income.  Short term capital gains are treated as income.  Long term capital gains have a special tax rate currently.


You have a small emergency fund.  Good! Be open about your finances with each other.  No secrets, except around gift-giving holidays. Pay off the debts ASAP.  Don't accumulate more consumer debt after it's paid off. I wouldn't contribute anything more to the 401k beyond what gives you a maximum match.  Free money is free money, but there are lots of strings attached to tax-advantaged accounts. Be sure you understand what you're investing in.  If your only option is an annuity for the 401k, learn what that is. Retire into something.  Don't just retire from something.  (Put another way: Don't retire.)  Don't wait until you're old to figure out what you want to retire into. Save like crazy before you have kids.  It's much harder afterwards.


"is there anything I can do now to protect this currency advantage from future volatility? Generally not much. There are Fx hedges available, however these are for specialist like FI's and Large Corporates, traders. I've considered simply moving my funds to an Australian bank to ""lock-in"" the current rate, but I worry that this will put me at risk of a substantial loss (due to exchange rates, transfer fees, etc) when I move my funds back into the US in 6 months. If you know for sure you are going to spend 6 months in Australia. It would be wise to money certain amount of money that you need. So this way, there is no need to move back funds from Australia to US. Again whether this will be beneficial or not is speculative and to an extent can't be predicted."


> One night I was invited to a dinner  Who invited him? Isn't that important? What were the circumstances that led to him a) being invited and b) being the kind of person that would make the wife beg for her husband to hire him?  If you choose to hang out with people that run in those kinds of circles, you're more than likely going to end up talking to some big wig. How is that luck?


"It is your choice to have ""insignificant income"", and that has consequences.  One is that you cannot borrow money to purchase a home independent of your credit score.  In order to purchase a home you must also have the ability to repay in addition to a good history. IMHO your question suggest that you have a unrealistic outlook on life.  If you cannot come up with 10K, how can you afford a home?  What happens when the HVAC system goes out?  While I certainly hope you meet and exceed your goals, you can change your whole world by simply getting a job at a fast food restaurant.  When you are not working you can then do the entrepreneurship thing. Life is often a choice of priorities.  If you choose to ""back-burner"" the entrepreneur dream, for a time, and choose to focus on earning the best possible wage. Then perhaps you could afford to purchase a place of your own."


Do you have a regular job, where you work for somebody else and they pay you a salary? If so, they should be deducting estimated taxes from your paychecks and sending them in to the government. How much they deduct depends on your salary and what you put down on your W-4. Assuming you filled that out accurately, they will withhold an amount that should closely match the taxes you would owe if you took the standard deduction, have no income besides this job, and no unusual deductions. If that's the case, come next April 15 you will probably get a small refund. If you own a small business or are an independent contractor, then you have to estimate the taxes you will owe and make quarterly payments. If you're worried that the amount they're withholding doesn't sound right, then as GradeEhBacon says, get a copy of last year's tax forms (or this year's if they're out by now) -- paper or electronic -- fill them out by estimating what your total income will be for the year, etc, and see what the tax comes out to be.


Equifax and their problems aside:   Why do people generally get so mad about high executive pay yet celebrate (or at least not care about) very large professional athletes contracts for their services and endorsement deals? Isn’t it basically the same thing? High performers get the big bucks, most people are average and get the average bucks.


"Depends on what you call a ""middle-class"" income.  My mom makes enough money so that my dad can stay home and they raised three kids on it.  We're not rich by any stretch of the imagination.  But I do believe it's over $100k."


This is the section that I was referring to:  >We are unable to build bridges, we're unable to build airports, our inner city school kids are not graduating.  >I was just in France, I was recently in Argentina, I was in Israel, I was in Ireland. We met with the prime minister of India and China. It's amazing to me that every single one of those countries understands that practical policies to promote business and growth is good for the average citizens of those countries, for jobs and wages, and that somehow this great American free enterprise system, we no longer get it.  >Corporate taxation is critical to that, by the way. We've been driving capital earnings overseas, which is why there's $2 trillion overseas benefiting all these other countries and stuff like that. So if we don't get our act together — we can still grow.


College professor here. I often think about the fact that all the information I teach is available online. Students are paying a premium for my course- what of value do I bring?  **Filter** There is a lot of good information online, but there is also a lot of inaccurate information. I filter out inaccurate information.   **Structure** I organize material in a way that makes it easier to digest  **Elaboration** I provide context and examples. I'm able to explain complex topics in several different ways in case students don't get it the first time.   **Motivation** I explain *why* students need to learn something; I hold them accountable for deadlines.   **Social interaction** I get students to talk with one another and see material from multiple view points.   **Feedback** This is, in my opinion, the most valuable thing I provide to students, and I invest *a lot* of time in it. What are students doing well? What are they not doing well? How can they improve?  This doesn't mean intelligent, motivated individuals can't learn from online materials as well as in a classroom- I believe they can. But the classroom environment does provide some advantages over teaching yourself material online.


"Auto loans are secured agains the car.  ""Signature"" loans, from a bank that knows and trusts you, are typically unsecured. Unsecured loans other than informal ones or these are fairly rare. Most lenders don't want to take the additional risk, or balance that risk with a high enough interest rate to make the unsecured loan unattractive."


"Unless you can make an agreement with your landlord, your credit is on the bubble in this situation and it may be difficult to get the landlord to void the terms of the original agreement in lieu of a new one. I was burned by a similar situation when I was in college. I rented an apartment with my then ""best friend"". I sent my half of the rent in on time and he consistently skipped out on his. My credit took a blow to the tune of the shared liability just the same. Seriously seek to work something out with the landlord because it sounds like if things continue as they are, whether you move out or not, your credit will take a hit."


Right. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the tax code is thousands of pages long and so complex that even most tax attorneys probably don't understand it in its entirety, let alone the average tax payer. There couldn't be *any* flaw in the system *except* that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett don't just fund the government all by themselves.


"Taking ""literature"" in a slightly more literal sense, if you like fiction and have a lot of time, Neal Stephenson's trilogy *The Baroque Cycle*, set around 1700, has as one of its main storylines the development of a modern currency and economical system in Europe. In particular, in the second book, *The Confusion*, one of the main characters does a role-playing exercise in finance (page 357) that covers similar ground to otherwiseyep's posts."


They will not open an account if you come in wanting to open an account for a third party. Your sister will have to do it herself. Assuming she has a SSN and credit history to verify her identity, she'll easily be able to do it online, and use whatever address she wants to send mail to (she can have separate mailing and residence addresses). There are also Israeli institutions who provide investment accounts to Israelis with ability to trade in the US. That might be easier for her than having an account in the US and filing tax returns in Israel every year. Unless she evades taxes in Israel, that is...


This was the day traders dilemma. You can, on paper, make money doing such trades. But because you do not hold the security for at least a year, the earnings are subject to short term capital gains tax unless these trades are done inside a sheltered account like a traditional IRA.  There are other considerations as well: wash sale rules and number of days to settle.  In short, the glory days of rags to riches by day trading are long gone, if they were ever here in the first place.  Edit: the site will not allow me to add a comment, so I am putting my response here: Possibly, yes. One big 'gotcha' is that your broker reports the proceeds from your sales, but does not report your outflows from your buys. Then there is the risk you take by the broker refusing to sell the security until the transaction settles. Not to mention wash sale rules. You are trying to win at the 'buy low, sell high' game. But you have a 25% chance, at best, of winning at that game. Can you pick the low? Maybe, but you have a 50% chance of being right. Then you have to pick the high. And again you have a 50% chance of doing that. 50% times 50% is 25%. Warren Buffet did not get rich that way. Buffet buys and holds. Don't be a speculator, be a 'buy and hold' investor. Buy securities, inside a sheltered account like a traditional IRA, that pay dividends then reinvest those dividends into the security you bought. Scottrade has a Flexible Reinvestment Program that lets you do this with no commission fees.


I am very familiar with the Bloomberg terminal service and agree that their info on securities & markets, especially fixed income, is unparalleled.  However, their news and editorial departments espouse the viewpoints of Michael Bloomberg such as being permabullish in the face of data, pro gun control, pro immigration (legal+illegal), pro Israel, and pro Sunni monarchies (Saudi et al).


"Sounds like my internship! I'm at a major bank and doing some back office stuff as well. I'm at work as I type this. No one really has anything for me to do, so I sit in my cubicle and read e-books and make DCF models for fun until I get a rare ""project"". I might as well learn something while I'm not doing anything, right?   Don't quit though. Maybe ask for more responsiblity. Or do what I do and use it to learn. Either way, you can make your internship sound good on a resume, especially if your employer has a good name."


Or, are there specific types of investments we can make that won't count against college financial aid? Yes - Start saving for college.  You seem to be very willing to save for your own retirement and other investments but are willing to let your kids suffer through college loans and subsidies for college.   Invest in your children's education.


This is where an insurance agent is very useful. They will help you choose appropriate coverage, based on local rebuilding costs, the build quality of your house (higher quality or historic/semi-historic construction requires a different type of coverage), etc. They can also help advise you on things like the need for flood insurance, etc. Local rules can vary, and the local agent will know about them. For example, we found out that my home was in a semi-historic district, which requires using higher-cost materials for reconstruction. Also, our city separately licenses tradespeople, who tend to be unionized and thus more expensive. Had I just picked default coverages, I would have been in a pickle in the event of a loss.


"Income tax wasn't a thing in the states until 1913 and that was by design. Just because a few guys in a room wrote it on a piece of paper doesn't mean it's justifiable and/or moral, in fact it makes it immoral because now millions of people who had no say in the matter are now subject to the consequences of not following the rules these few men wrote. Just as a mental exercise go to Google and type ""define taxes"" and read that definition I'm willing to bet there's 1 word in that definition that will stick out to you."