"#####&#009;  ######&#009;  ####&#009; Section 35. [**European tax avoidance**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbucks#European_tax_avoidance) of article  [**Starbucks**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbucks): [](#sfw)   ---  >In October 2012, Starbucks faced criticism after a [Reuters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters) investigation found that the company reportedly paid only £8.6 million in [corporation tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_tax) in the UK over 14 years, despite generating over £3 billion in sales—this included no tax payments on £1.3 billion of sales in the three years prior to 2012.   It is alleged that Starbucks was able to do this by charging high licencing fees to the UK branch of the business, allowing them to declare a £33 million loss in 2011.  The UK subsidiary pays [patent fees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_fee) to the USA subsidiary, purchases coffee beans from the Netherlands subsidiary (where corporation tax is lower than in the UK), and uses the Swiss subsidiary for other ""miscellaneous services"".  A [YouGov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov) survey suggested that Starbucks' brand image was substantially weakened by the controversy surrounding how much tax it pays in the UK several weeks after the allegations surfaced.   >  ---  ^Interesting: [^Michael ^Majalahti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Majalahti) ^| [^Hear ^Music](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear_Music) ^| [^Kara ^Thrace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara_Thrace)   ^Parent ^commenter ^can [^toggle ^NSFW](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot NSFW toggle&message=%2Btoggle-nsfw+ck06iea) ^or[](#or) [^delete](http://www.np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=autowikibot&subject=AutoWikibot Deletion&message=%2Bdelete+ck06iea)^. ^Will ^also ^delete ^on ^comment ^score ^of ^-1 ^or ^less. ^| [^(FAQs)](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/wiki/index) ^| [^Mods](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/comments/1x013o/for_moderators_switches_commands_and_css/) ^| [^Magic ^Words](http://www.np.reddit.com/r/autowikibot/comments/1ux484/ask_wikibot/)"


Secular means a long term.  A secular basis is something done on a long term basis while a secular trend is a long term trend. http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Secular


Common investment advice recommends paying off all debt before you invest.  This is certainly not debated when the debt is credit card debt or other high interest debt.  Some would argue this doesn't necessarily apply to school debt or mortgage debt, however its not clear what to suggest.  Since any investment you make is unknown whether you will win or lose money, and every debt you have is guaranteed to be a loss via interest, its almost always a good idea to pay off all of your debt first.


Ugh. Really? I thought this subreddit was smarter than this.   1) You pay taxes on net income, not sales. Expenses are tax deductible.   2) This took place in the UK, which operates on a different set of tax rules than many of us are familiar with.  3) The company still pays other taxes even if they don't pay income tax. In the US, examples would be payroll taxes including the employer portion of things like SS and Medicare, but I'm sure the UK has similar programs funded in a similar manner. To the extent that they own their buildings, they also pay property taxes. They globally source their supplies, which means they also pay import taxes. There are a ton of other taxes that a company pays.  4) Tax laws are complex because business is complex.   Inflammatory headlines like this serve no purpose whatsoever.


"The bank ""credit's"" your account for money coming into it. In double entry accounting, you always have a debit and a credit to balance the accounts. As an Example: for $500 that the bank credited to your checking account, you would post a debit to Cash and a Credit to Income Earned. The accounting equation is: Assets = Liabilities + Owner's Equity                             $500   =                    $500 Cash is the ""Asset"" side of the equation, Income is part of Owner's Equity, and so is the Credit side... to make the equation balanced."


> You fully support the free market.  Yep  >What the fuck is the point of having a job(s!) which don't support you?  Good question. I wouldn't work one and neither should anybody else. Thats how the market knows to raise wages or automate these jobs  >I support ending corporate welfare.   Hey, we agree on something!  >I think this country has the means to support anyone willing to work as hard as her to make sure she and her kids have the very basics.  Yet you failed to address my point. Ill make it easy for you. Do you think random worker should get more money because they have a kid? What about 2? 5? What if they have the kid after you already hired them for a lower wage?  >Define value for me  usefulness of something. A piece of wood has a low value. A piece of wood I cut straight so its a board and can be used in construction has a higher value. A board in an area with few trees has a higher value. A board that is made from a superior wood has a higher value. The guy that collects wood has a low value. The guy that has the skills / tools to make wood into boards has a higher value. The guy that can transport boards to areas without wood has a value...etc  >Not everyone worships money or the 'free' market.  ok?  >But try and imagine you have her life.  Why? I wouldn't pump out kids when I make min wage. I wouldnt work the same dead end job for ever. I wouldnt make any of these awful choices. And if I did, I would expect anyone to be forced to help me. Charity is a thing, and one Im happy to participate in.  >No life is not fair  She chose this life, whats not fair about consequences?  >slavery wasn't fair  Yes, how does that apply here?  >If you think it's ok for this to be how it is, we have nothing to speak further about.  Again, this is of her making, no one is forcing her to do anything   >no I cannot come up with a number, congratulations.  Right because living wage and other emotionally charged verbiage is nonsensical.  >Also the argument that a teenager doesn't need to be paid a living wage is ridiculous.  why?  >It's the exact argument that's been used to under pay women.  Oh boy, this has be debunked so many times Im sad you still think this is a thing. If women were truly underpaid, why woudnt greedy corps hire only women?  >Maybe empathizing on this scenario is beyond you.  I empathize with someone born with say a disability. You chose to do nothing with your life, no advancement, not trying, then have kids in the middle of this wreck, no you get little sympathy from me on that.


I think it's messed up, I'm not saying I would run my personal life or my personal business in that way, but yes, within the law, everyone should pretty much do whatever they can to advance their own cause as much as possible. Yes, if we as a society feel that this behavior is not good or beneficial, we should disallow it.


"Ah the old ""I'm not racist, I have black friends"" defense. Cool.   I have heard of guilt by association but it is not at all relevant. A higher percentage of of whites owned slaves than the percentage of Muslims who are radicalized. You're saying that you're guilty of that ""by association""? What a stupid thing to say."


"To be able to truly short something you technically need to be able to borrow the security so you can sell it.  There needs to be a system for borrowing in place to be able to do this which is very robust for large U.S. stocks but doesn't exist for CDOs mainly due to the complex legal structures around them.   However, the word ""short"" is commonly used in finance to mean profiting from a loss of value of something.  So the use in the movie title, though a bit confusing, was fine. Credit Default Swaps are not technically insurance as you don't need own the thing you are ""insuring"" (and for a few other reasons).  However, I agree with the movie that thinking of them as insurance is a pretty good way to understand them.  As you are playing a monthly premium to for a contract that pays out when something goes very wrong.   However, the movie was a little fast a loose as CDS of various types were regularly traded well before the bubble even started.  Though maybe not that particular type of CDS.  So while they may have been ""expensive"" it was the easiest route and reasonable idea."


"Canada did not introduce income taxes before World War I.  Specifically deficits forced them to in the later part of the war: The Conservatives opposed income tax as they wanted to attract immigrants primarily from the United Kingdom and the United States, as opposed to Eastern Europe, and they wanted to give their preferred choice of newcomers some incentive to come to Canada. Wartime expenses forced the Tories to re-consider their options and in 1917 the wartime government imposed a ""temporary"" income tax to cover expenses. Despite the new tax the Canadian government ran up considerable debts during the war and were unable to forego income tax revenue after the war ended. With the election of the Mackenzie King-led Liberal government, much of the National Policy was dismantled and income tax has remained in place ever since. So from a Canadian point of view they were introduced as part of the war effort."


Not sure how well it suits your case, but did you consider 'car sharing' yet? If you find someone reliable in your neighbourhood, who only needs the car within the week, it might be possible to divide your park and insurance costs by 2. Another option might be private car rentals (for example from relayrides.com). The prices seem considerably lower than $600/weekend. At least here in Germany this is getting more and more popular, especially in cities.


Start with the bank where you have your checking and savings account. They can streamline some of the paperwork, because they can see how much you make, and have access to several years worth of bank statement. Legitimate mortgage companies do publish their rates. But there is no guarantee that you will qualify for the best rate without them knowing your credit score, salary, and down payment information.  There is no way to know that you have the best rate because of the time lag involved. You will pick the best one you can work with, but the rates can change every day.  Even when you lock in the rates, other companies can drift lower. Once you have started down the application process you will reach a point where switching companies will cost you time and money. Once you decide to purchase a house, the contract usually only gives you a few weeks to prove that you have financing in place. Therefore you will have to start the process before deciding on the house. Some advance work is needed to give you an idea of the maximum monthly payment you can afford, which will then based on the rate and down payment determine the maximum house you can buy. I have had good luck with my credit union, but there is no guarantee that yours will be competitive. Keep in mind that while rates are very important, some people also value customer service, and also like that the mortgage won't be sold to out of town investors.


That's true, and I hope they don't stand for it. It's about time we, after 700 years of failure, give up on fractional reserve banking and let the market decide it's own currency.   But the people will only fix it *after* it's broken at this point, and the clear decision is to wait it out in real assets. In which case you avoided exposure to the recession and the crash of the dollar, and increased your wealth by getting out before it broke.


"Gimli's Corollary: ""People who aren't successful *love* to hear success explained away as luck""  What a waste of time.  Yes, luck *is a factor* in success. And yes, there are people who are where they are solely because of luck. But I'm tired of seeing the hard work, determination, insight, and brilliance that a lot of great people put in to get where they are dismissed as ""oh they were just lucky."""


Careful.  I would personally need a LOT more than $5 more per hour to go from W-2 employment to 1099 employment.  It boils down to two reasons: (1) employers pay a huge amount of taxes on behalf of their employees, and (2) you would have to pay all of your own withholding up front. Your current proposal from them doesn't account for that. There are also risks that you face as a 1099.  On the first item, your employer currently pays 6.2% of your Social Security tax. You pay the other 6.2%. If you go to 1099 status, you will be self-employed as an independent contractor and have to pay the full 12.4% out of your increased 1099 wages.  On the second item, your employer also does your withholding out of your paychecks based on what you tell them on a form W-4. If you're disciplined enough to pay this out yourself in estimated taxes every time you get a paycheck, great. Many people aren't and just see a much bigger paycheck with no taxes out of it, and end up with a large tax bill at the end of the year.  Overall, there are some other considerations like healthcare and other benefits. These will not be available to you as a 1099 employee. You can also be terminated spontaneously, unless you have a specific contract length with the company.  As I see it, not including any benefits you would receive, you're looking at LESS money in your pocket at $50/hr as a contractor than at your $48/hr. Your pay net social security deductions is: $48 x 40 hrs x 52 weeks = 99,840 * .938 = 93,649.92. As a 1099 @ $50/hr you would net $50 x 40 hrs x 52 weeks = 104,000 * .876 = 91,104.  Then there are the rest of taxes, etc to figure out your real take-home pay.  I'm not a tax advisor, but I would be very careful to get the whole picture figured out before jumping. I would ask for a lot more with the added risk you would take as an independent, too.


"You are right on track with your idea of setting up a separate account for invoiced income. Create a new account with the type other asset and call it ""Receivables"" (or something similar). Every time you invoice a client, enter a credit to this account with the amount of the invoice. Once the client pays and you deposit a check, enter a transfer from the ""Receivables"" account to the bank account. EDIT I overlooked that you wish to account for not-yet-invoiced income. I think that's a bad idea. It will become confusing and will give you the false sense that your financial condition is better than it really is. There are plenty of stories about businesses that have stellar sales, but fail because of lack of cash flow (the business' bills become due before it gets paid by its own customers)."


I guess it is an effort vs. reward thing then. If you are born into the upper class you can put in 1% of the effort of someone who is lower class and get 10x the reward, including the fact you get to think that your position in the world is based solely on your efforts and nothing else, simply because you are surrounded by privilidged people who are all in the same situation.   If you grew up rich you probably don't even know what work is. Of course everyone thinks nobody knows what hard work is by them. When I was a kid I used to think I knew, then I got to the real world.


> They already have the benefit of barely paying taxes.  I agree that the poor don't pay a fair share of taxes but that's because they don't get a fair share of income.  As soon as someone with modest skills and a full time job can afford a modest life with health care and retirement, I would support raising their taxes.


He seems like a bright guy, but let's not forget he doesn't pay enough taxes, and if the government had access to that capital that this guy is clearly withholding by not paying his fair share, they would engage in more productive ventures.


In general, for a home you live in, there's maintenance, which is just that, you pay to keep your house in good repair.  There's also real improvements. I spend $xxx to turn my poured cement basement into living space. Here, I keep my receipts and the cost (although not my labor) is added to the basis of my home when I sell.  The couple things that may offer a deduction have to do with energy. When I insulated my basement, there was a state tax credit which I got back when I filed taxes. There are also credits for installing solar panels.  What you've described in your question just sounds like one of the small joys of home ownership.


"I look ahead for sizes.  I was at the thrift store and saw a good condition, good brand winter coat that will likely fit my daughter next year, so I bought it.  I also bought a snowsuit my baby can wear when he's 6 months (~5 months pregnant now).  When it starts getting cold next fall, I'll be set, rather than wasting time and money running around town trying to find winter gear.  This applies for any regular stores you visit (Costco, thrift stores, kids resale stores, etc): look for clearance/discounted kids clothes in the next few sizes up, even off-season.   This works especially well for basics you need lots of (PJs, socks, etc) and more expensive things where you don't want to be desperate when shopping for them. You're always ""buying low."""


Sticking strictly to the money aspects. I am also assuming United States. The lender will need to know before applying for the loan that the property will be a rental, they may even need to know the scope of the number of renters. Insurance. There are two types you will need to include Income taxes.  If you do run a profit you will have taxes. The surprising thing for many first time landlords is that they don't realize that the principal of the loan payment is not considered a deductible expense. Of course there is a benefit to depreciation.


"> Being concerned for people isn't naive, it is naive to think slightly above minimum wage retail employees ever had a fighting chance.  > You are naive to think these people ever had a chance to begin with.  > It is naive and gullible to think the Sears' employees ever had a chance.  When did I say they had a fighting chance?  What part of ""fucked"" leads you to believe that they had a fighting chance?  Surely everything I've said is that they did not, do not and will not have a fighting chance.  If I thought they had a chance I wouldn't be so upset.  To repeat myself yet again - these people are fucked.  All people working in retail are fucked;  and it's very likely that there's going to be a collapse and almost everyone without a specific technical skill that's in demand is going to be fucked.    _All these people are fucked.  They never had a fighting chance.  Things were bad for them when they were working; things are going to be much worse for them now.  And I am sad._  Is this clear to you now?  This is what I've said from the beginning - but somehow simply expressing sympathy for all these people getting fucked is so controversial that people somehow feel compelled to claim that I'm a supporter of exploitative capitalism.  > The good news is a $9/hr job is easier to find than a $100,000/year job. These Sears employees can go work at Khols or Panera Bread for very little loss in income.  Can you give me any evidence of your claim?  There are five job searchers for every open position in the United States.  Businesses are not expanding, why would they be hiring unskilled labor?  They're sitting on large piles of cash, waiting for the recession to end - and if it doesn't, why, they now have a guaranteed pool of labor at near-slavery prices.    Even if we had enlightened businesses, which we do not, the logical thing to do during a recession is not to hire unskilled labor and have them sit around all day, but upgrade the training on your skilled labor force, modernize your infrastructure, streamline your processes, so when the recession lifts you have a modern company that can outcompete others.  Look to Germany for a guide.  The German Model, where businesses, the unions and the government _cooperate_ to keep their companies efficient and their jobs profitable, has _worked_ for two generations.  The fact that they can compete aggressively in the world markets, provide a social safety net for their citizens, while also paying at least part of the costs for the kleptocracies in the EU (we're looking at you, Greece) shows how effective it is."


"I""m at an incredibly fast growing startup in Austin, TX, [Socialware](http://www.socialware.com)... Seriously, what is this insanity about 100 hour work weeks?  They'd very quickly see diminishing returns if a death march would initiated, followed by a developer revolt."


The best description of P2P lending process I saw comes from the SEC proceedings. They are very careful about naming things that are happening in the process. Prosper got back to business after this order, but the paper describes succinctly how Prosper worked when its notes haven't yet been registered by the SEC. These materials contain a lot of responsible comments on how crowdfunding, including P2P lending, works.


The article is talking about relative cost. You could use the cash Schiller P/E ratio as a proxy. That's unit of price per unit of earning. The answer to your question is one time in history, during the 2000 dot com bubble. It's higher than 2008 before the downturn. You are paying more for the same earnings. That has nothing to do with the size of the economy and everything to do with interest rates being too low for too long


Their product is inferior to competitors now.  They've substituted value, quality and service for marketing.  I stopped going to Mcdonalds because of cold fries, wilted lettuce, and terrible service.  Go to a Burger King and you'll never get soggy fries.


"You're confused. This has nothing to do with taxes. It has to do with screwing people out of profit-sharing.  The shell company pays bogus/hyper-inflated fees to the parent company, who pays taxes on them.  That way, the contract with the shell company that says ""you get 5% of the profits"" now means nothing."


Sure I'll play this silly little game.  >the us gov't was >10x smaller before 1900.  Not specified therefore absolutely meaningless. Ten times smaller how?  By volume?  >but the US had the richest poor,  Again, this is a relative term to which you haven't given any relation.  >you don't know economics.  Not the original poster, but I'm pretty sure everything you know of economics comes from Econ 101, Ayn Rand or both.  >the soviet union had a system where the rich and poor were forced to be relatively equal, but everyone was poor as hell!  I'm not going to spend 10 minutes diagramming this sentence.


Payday loan usually are the following to deliver speedy economic elimination when you require these essentially the most. Payday loan usually are immediate car loans that must be paid off for the up coming pay day. Consequently, it is very important that you're mindful of if you should employ then when not to ever apply cash advance loans. Cash advance loans on the recommended businesses are exquisite for sudden conditions.


I seem to remember that put returns are actually way worse than what CAPM would predict based on their negative market correlation. Apparently something about negative skewness, jump risk and/or exposure to change in volatility carrying risk premia of their own.  I'm not an expert, but if one can bear these risks, it may be better to replace some equity exposure with *short* puts rather than buying them. (That's what I'm doing a bit. But not very enthusiastically at the moment, with implied volatilities at such extremely low levels...)


I'm amazed anyone is able to airbnb honestly.  I've stayed in about 6 of them, and most neighborhoods and apartment complexes are super butthurt about airbnb, when like half of the people living there are large families or have more people in a unit than an airbnb anyways.  2 people staying in a 3br when 1 or two people stay there normally is no different than 4 people living in the 3br yearround, except that the airbnb example uses less apartment and community resources anyways.


If the firm treats you as an employee then they are treated as having a place of business in the UK and therefore are obliged to operate PAYE on your behalf - this rule has applied to EU States since 2010 and the non-EU EEA members, including Switzerland, since 2012. If you are not an employee then your main options are: An umbrella company would basically bill the client on your behalf and pay you net of taxes and NI.  You potentially take home a bit less than you would being 100% independent but it's a lot less hassle and potentially makes sense for a small contract.


This answer is based to the book Fundamentals and Techniques of Financial Management and where you can found the explanation of Value of Money in Time.  Referencies: Braga, Roberto, 1937 - Fundamentos e Técnicas de administração financeira/Roberto Braga.- 1.ed - 23.reimpr. -São Paulo : Atlas, 2015. In the Financial Math deals with:  Currency - Corresponding to payments and / or receipts of a transaction Time - Regarding the period between the date of the operation and the periods in which payments or receipts should occur Interest - Regarding the remuneration due for the use of the money during the term of the operation. is very interesting to buy this book --- http://p.pw/baj8W6 --- or searching in LojasMarques.com


"Most of our cards (except for debit ones) still have raised numbers, because you can't stop business for silly things like power outages! You just haul out the old-school ""kachunk"" machines and take the cards that way.  Who cares about security? That gets in the way of profit."


What's really worrisome is that people are buying larger and more expensive vehicles. People look at longer terms as an opportunity to buy something they really shouldn't be since hey, I can take it for two more years for the same payment.


Most free stock screeners for UK stocks, even those mentioned above, are very poor and not worth the effort really, and searching for stock screeners on a search engine will only bring up stock screeners for USA stocks. The best free UK stock screener (registration is required although this is FREE) is without any doubt on www.digitallook.com who also provide many other features like five year fundamentals, charts, prospects, etc, which can easily be downloaded onto a spreadsheet. I really wouldn't look elsewhere to be honest unless you are prepared to pay.


You can look at the company separately from the ownership. The company needs money that it doesn't have, therefore it needs to borrow money from somewhere or go bankrupt.  And if they can't get money from their bank, then they can of course ask people related to the company, like the two shareholders, for a loan. It's a loan, like every other loan, that needs to be repaid. How big the loan is doesn't depend on the ownership, but on how much money each one is willing and capable of giving. The loan doesn't give them any rights in the company, except the right to get their money back with interest in the future.  Alternatively, such a company might have 200 shares, and might have given 75 to one owner and 25 to the other owner, keeping 100 shares back. In that case, the shareholders can decide to sell some of these 100 shares. I might buy 10 shares for $1,000 each, so the company has now $10,000 cash, and I have some ownership of the company (about 9.09%, and the 75% and 25% shares have gone down, because now they own 75 out of 110 or 25 out of 110 shares). I won't get the $10,000 back, ever; it's not a loan but the purchase of part of the company.


. Implementing latest principle that will keep simple and stupid, the target ad will be blustering with responses from the audience. Such responses show the business dominance in market.  So following such successful advertisiments will surely make your position on top.


Yeah, this is either fake news, or the whole story isn't being told. But who knows, because it's the Washitpost, who don't allow adblocker users to view pages.  The only reason workers would turn down higher wages if if tipping were banned. And at any restaurant with decent wages, tipping MUST be banned by management, with prominent signs telling customers NOT to tip - even a dollar.


"To first understand exactly how collection agencies work it is important to know the background of the industry. The industry started shortly after the great depression. consumers were no longer able to pay for their accounts and companies did not know how to collect. As far-fetched as it seems one of the booming industries was the mafia. Pa and ma shops were paying for protection; some because they were not given a choice.  Since the ""protection"" industry was doing well some of the ""employees"" (for lack of better terms) had the idea of collecting debt from the companies that were not getting paid. Sears, Macy's and several other creditors decided to sell the unpaid debt to these collectors. Remember, during this era there was no FDCPA to protect consumers. The FDCPA was actually created because the mafia collectors were going door to door to collect and they were not nice about it.  In the meantime there was another industry (for lack of better words)   rapidly expanding around the eastern part of the U.S. - none other   than the mafia. Did the Godfather go and introduce himself and make a   sales pitch to Sears offering to collect monies due to them? Not   hardly. But as with any business, ideas were made and created that   spurred from the main ideology of the original business. Associates of   the mafia marketed to the stores such as Sears and offered to collect   the past due debt. The big sell on this.. creditors did not have to   pay for the services - the customer did. Originally this “protection”   industry was all about protecting the small ma and pop shops for a fee   but this time ma and pa did not have to pay - the debtor did. The idea   of collecting  past due debts spread like wildfire. It was easy money   and there was nothing illegal about it. The actual idea behind   collecting past due debt from creditors was genius. It was a legit,   collectable debt… for a price. This is why and how the FDCPA was created. So when you deal with a third party collection agency you need to know that you are dealing with the dirtiest of dirtiest people. The people that are hired as debt collectors are your typical ex-felons. There is a reason for this. The good news is now there are laws put into place to protect your rights and your safety.  Agencies purchase what is called ""paper"". There is ""good"" and ""bad"" paper. Good paper are accounts just sold from the original creditor. This includes all good information on the debtor such as phone number, address etc. Sometimes the debt is collected and sometimes not. Either way it is common for a collection agency to resell the paper to another collection agency. This is called 3rd placement."


"I don't ascribe your ""success"" to luck at all.  To me it sounds like your workaholism has deprived you of your mental health and it will increasingly affect your physical health as you go through your 20s and into your 30s.  You're not successful, you're sick."


You cannot transfer money to a credit card account. You can transfer balances, or pay off the card with money from a bank account. Even if you could transfer money to a credit card, there's no way to do it without the credit card number.  As Pete B. pointed out, this does sound like fraud.


I learned most of this stuff from 3 textbooks in school probably totaling $900 between the 3. I imagine you don't want to spend the cash on that. I would suggest finding a source online. A lot of the surface level stuff you are looking for can be found online on websites like Investopedia. They are a great resource and are free usually.


First of all, a person that relies on their ability to tap a line of credit to cover an emergency isn't generally the kind of person that has investments they can cash out to cover the debt. That being said, my personal reasons for having a liquid emergency fund revolve around bank errors and identify theft. I used to work for a company that made bank software. Errors are a common occurrence. You'd be surprised how many transactions are still input by human hands despite our computerized world. All it takes is one typo to wipe out your ability to swipe plastic for a few days. This has actually happened to me. My utility company sent me a bill for $240 and wound up taking $2400 by accident, overdrawing my account and sending me into a fee spiral. They fixed their mistake... several days later. The snowball of fees from other transactions that bounced took another two months to correct. In the meantime, I also had my mortgage payment due. In the US, you can't pay your mortgage with credit, and for those who rent, many landlords won't let you pay with credit either. I have also seen this scenario play out twice with other people I've known who've had their ID stolen. Yes, the bank will cover the fraud after a lengthy process. But the disruption causes fees and overdrafts to quickly snowball out of control. I have a separate savings account at a different bank for this kind of thing, and I have a few hundred dollars cash in my house at all times. Having a liquid emergency fund allows you to quickly stabilize the situation and gives you walking around money for those times where the banking system becomes your enemy for a time.


The key word you forgot to include from Slide 29 is: Free-Riding Investopedia defines free-riding as: In the context of a brokerage firm, a free rider problem refers to a situation where a client has been allowed to purchase shares without actually paying for them, and then subsequently sells the shares (ideally for profit). The problem with this scenario is that the client, if allowed to free ride, can profit from a stock trade without actually using any of his or her own capital. This is illegal. I have not heard of any issues with this type of action being a problem with trading accounts in Australia, nor have I been able to find any such rules on the ASX website or any of by brokers websites. So I think this may be an issue in the USA but not Australia. You should check the rules in any other countries you wish to trade in.


It is interesting to consider the Netherlands which is part of the Euro zone. Germany uses 1 and 2 cent coins. Adjacent is the Netherlands where items remain priced to the cent but cash totals are rounded to the nearest 5c so 1 and 2c coins are out of circulation.


From you question I understand that you are not an Indian citizen, are staying in India, and transferring your funds for your living / expenses in India. There is no limit on such transfers and the amount is not taxed.   The tax comes into picture if you are treated as a resident in India from a tax perspective. Even then the tax is not because you have transferred the funds into India, but the policy of taxing global income. The article at http://www.pwc.in/en_IN/in/assets/pdfs/foreign-nationals-working-in-india.pdf should give you more inputs.


"Believe it or not, unless you directly contact an accountant with experience in this field or a lawyer, you may have a tough time getting a direct answer from a reputable source.  The reason is two fold.  First, legally defining in-game assets is exceptionally difficult from a legal/taxation stand point.  Who really owns this data?  You or the company that has built the MMO and manages the servers containing all of the data? You can buy-and-sell what is effectively ""data"" on their servers but the truth is, they own the code, the servers, the data, your access rights, etc. and at any point in time could terminate everything within their systems.  This would render the value of your accounts worthless! As such, most countries have overwhelmingly avoided the taxation of in-game ""inventory"" because it's not really definable.  Instead, in game goods are only taxed when they are exchanged for local currency.  This is considered a general sale.  There may be tax codes in your region for the sale of ""digital goods"".  Otherwise, it should be taxed as sale a standard good with no special stipulations. The bottom line is that you shouldn't expect to find much reliable information on this topic, on the internet.  Law's haven't been welled defined, regarding in-game content worth and taxing of sales and if you want to know how you should pay your taxes on these transactions, you need to talk to a good accountant, a lawyer or both."


"Usually the big institution that ""floats"" the stock on the market is the one to offer it to you. The IPO company doesn't sell the stock itself, the big investment bank does it for them. IPO's shareholders/employees are generally not allowed to sell their shares at the IPO until some time passes. Then you usually see the sleuth of selling."


Instagram becomes the most attractive or prominent social network in the universe. Many business owners use Instagram to use advertising opportunities that companies can use Facebook's laser address options. Companies are trying to make their impact on Instagram to generate a new account that is famous from the start. It is difficult to criticize them. Therefore, many people always find ways to buy Active Instagram Cheap Follower, and the demand will never settle down. People want to see or advertise a profile that looks and feels prominent or famous, but they do not want to spend a lot of money on it.


"The markets are not as information efficient as some might have you believe. But on the contrary, looking up what the aggregate professional analysts have said is also part of ""doing your homework"""


"I think the real problem here is dealing with the variable income. The envelope solution suggests the problem is that your brother doesn't have the discipline to avoid spending all his money immediately, but maybe that's not it. Maybe he could regulate his expenses just fine, but with such a variable income, he can't settle into a ""normal"" spending pattern. Without any savings, any budget would have to be based on the worst possible income for a month. This isn't a great: it means a poor quality of life. And what do you do with the extra money in the better-than-worst months? While it's easy to say ""plan for the worst, then when it's better, save that money"", that's just not going to happen. No one will want to live at their worst-case standard of living all the time. Someone would have to be a real miser to have the discipline to not use that extra money for something. You can say to save it for emergencies or unexpected events, but there's always a way to rationalize spending it. ""I'm a musician, so this new guitar is a necessary business expense!"" Or maybe the car is broken. Surely this is a necessary expense! But, do you buy a $1000 car or a $20000 car? There's always a way to rationalize what's necessary, but it doesn't change financial reality. With a highly variable income, he will need some cash saved up to fill in the bad months, which is replenished in the good months. For success, you need a reasonable plan for making that happen: one that includes provisions for spending it other than ""please try not to spend it"". I would suggest tracking income accurately for several months. Then you will have a real number (not a guess) of what an average month is. Then, you can budget on that. You will also have real numbers that allow you to calculate how long the bad stretches are, and thus determine how much cash reserve is necessary to make the odds of going broke in a bad period unlikely. Having that, you can make a budget based on average income, which should have some allowance for enjoying life. Of course initially the cash reserve doesn't exist, but knowing exactly what will happen when it does provides a good motivation for building the reserve rather than spending it today. Knowing that the budget includes rules for spending the reserves reduces the incentive to cheat. Of course, the eventual budget should also include provisions for long term savings for retirement, medical expenses, car maintenance, etc. You can do the envelope thing if that's helpful. The point here is to solve the problem of the variable income, so you can have an average income that doesn't result in a budget that delivers a soul crushing decrease in quality of living."


But there is a number one here, the Community Reinvestment Act which made it too easy for unqualified people to get home loans, pushed by Bill Clinton, who i strongly supported during his presidency.   I clearly remember thinking 'the economy will boom for a few years, but this can't end well'.


I'd suggest you contact the Office of the Controller of Currency, who regulates BOA and file a complaint. This whole deal seems shady.  According to the OCC FAQ, the fact that they closed the account is in their prerogative. However, I would think they are obligated to quickly return your funds, but can't find anything specific to that. The banks are very sensitive to having complaints filed against them, so if nothing else this may encourage them to be more helpful, even if your complaint isn't actionable. OCC Complaint Process. This topic on how long a bank can hold a large deposit before making funds available may also be helpful.


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The 20x number is drawn directly from the assumption that it should be easy to get more than 4% average return on investment. After lots of historical studies,  Monte Carlo simulations, and the like there was a consensus that saving more didn't significantly increase the odds of achieving at least the desired yearly income sustainably. (That's the same calculations the insurance firms use as the starting point for writing annuities.) There are also some assumptions about inflation and its interaction with the market built into this rule-of-thumb. Note that this is 20x what you want as post-retirement income, not necessarily 20x your current income. I have a moderately frugal lifestyle, And my budget confirms that my actual spending -- even in years when I allow myself a splurge -- is well below my current income, with the excess going into the investments. To sustain my lifestyle, I need that lower number plus any taxes that'll be due on it plus whatever I want to allocate as average emergency reserve... and theoretically I should be able to base the 20x on that lower number. When I run estimates (Quicken has a tool for this, so does my credit union, I  presume others are widely available), they tend to confirm this. I'm still using the higher number for planning, though. I don't feel any need to retire early (though I have issues with my current manager), and I have no objection at all to being able to afford better toys on occasion. Or to leaving a legacy to friends, relatives, and/or charity. But it's nice to know exactly when I could punt the day job if I wanted to.


Makes sense so long as you can afford it while still maintaining at least six months living reserves. The sooner you own outright a decreasing asset the better which should be considered when selecting your loan term. However, with today's low rates and high performing stock market you may want to consider allowing that money to be put to better use. It all depends how risk adverse you are. That emotional aide of this decision and emotions have value, but only you can determine what that value is. So - generally speaking, the sooner you own an asset of decreasing value the better off you are, but in exceptionally low interest rate environments such as today there are, as mentioned, other things you may want to consider. Good luck and enjoy your new ride. Nothing better then some brand new wheels aye.


I won't be finalized with my thesis until Spring so I'm afraid all I could do was mention it with my research interests, but my director said my work so far has publication potential.   He also said applying to Berkeley wouldn't be outrageous, our program has decent placements in econ programs, but he's not in finance and our school doesn't have a finance department so I'm not too sure how much credit to give that endorsement.   By flagship I mean the states primary public university, University of Washington, Ohio State, etc.   Thanks for the advice.


You can't defer reporting of the RRSP purchases.  The financial institution will report those purchases to CRA, and the CRA expects to see you report those purchases on your return.  If they don't match, expect to be audited and to pay penalties.  However, you can defer the tax deduction of those purchases until later years. That means you but you must have the RRSP contribution room available in the year you make the purchase.  So if you have $50 000 of contribution room, you can contribute $50 000 all at once and deduct $16 667 in the next 3 years.  However, if you only have $20 000 of contribution room, CRA will make your life very unhappy if you contribute $50 000 all at once.  In that case, your best bet is to contribute enough to use all your contribution room and repeat each year as you get more contribution room. Also, you have a $2000 lifetime overcontribution limit.  That means whatever contribution room you have, you can contribute $2000 more.  But you won't be able to deduct that amount, and you don't get more overcontribution space each year.


There's no downplaying the importance of something as simple as that.  But I think that Future covers it:  > Employees care about your business… but only when you prove you care about them first.  Managers have the most immediate influence over the comfort of their employees while on the job. Comfortable office furniture, equipment that doesn't suck, amenities to make being at work more of a pleasure - all means of showing employees they're treated as valuable professionals.


This is a remarkable limit that most business telephones are outfitted with. It fills in the head or colleague. Already, just huge associations may make sense of how to keep running with this limit subsequently of its high cost.


The offset account is the way to go. The rate is higher and even if interest rates fall further when you go to renew your term deposit the interest rate for that will be lower as well. Also, with a term deposit you will be penalised if you take the money out before the end of the term. Regarding tax, you will pay tax at your marginal tax rate on every dollar earned from the Term deposit ( as long as your income is above the $18,000 tax free threshold). If the mortgage is for your primary residence then you will not pay any tax on the money in your Offset Account, as you are not earning any interest in this account you are saving interest on your mortgage. So definitely the way to go would be with the offset account, you'll get an effective higher interest rate, it will help you pay off your mortgage sooner, the money is always on call, and you will pay no tax.


And that's fine, it's THEIR network that may or may not provide Internet access, they can do what they want with your data (redirect requests or block certain access) while you're using it just as landowners can tell you where you can go and what you can do on their land. Sure, it's shitty, but it's their right to be shitty about it.  If you don't want to be subject to that, don't connect to their WiFi network.


That’s how sellers sell their home fast. It provides extensive listing exposure because hundreds of thousands visit the military rental homes every day. In fact, it is one of the top 25 most visited real estate homes in the U.S. getting millions of visitors looking to buy or sell a military home every month.


If the organization is a non-profit. You can search by EIN on Charity Navigator's website FOR FREE. https://www.charitynavigator.org/


Just 30 years ago China was at a level that is now found in countries of Africa. They have been progressing faster than any country that went from deep poverty to a modern economy.  Of course, they are still a couple of decades away from being at the level of Western Europe and the US, but the gap is closing fast.


"but simple economics also proves that if you have no savings (most millennials do not these days at least in Canada) and you have no income, then you have no entertainment or more importantly no shelter and food. I would understand taking a cashier job instead of store manager job because of the fewer hours and responsibility, but does ""no income"" not mean you go hungry? If that is true, where are they getting their food from?"


The cable companies know that this will only last a few more years. Pretty soon everyone alive will have grown up in an age where if they wanted to watch something, and they couldn't pay for it they just watched it anyway.


">Wait until you read about someone mentioning one of the main reasons main street took those losses was because of the municipalities, state, and federal pensions invested into those CDSs.   Credit Default Swaps were the ""insurance"" scams, that's different.  Municipalities purchased CDOs and not CDS'es.  Someone correct me if I am wrong.  The CDS's were also a problem, but of a different sort.  CDS allowed people to take out insurance on a competing product.  Imagine me taking out a fire insurance on your house.  Things like that.  CDO = Collaterized Debt Obligation (this is the paper which represents hundreds of mortgage slices mixed and matched by some bullshit software algorithm that promised to predict risk accurately)  CDS = Credit Default Swap (this is an ""insurance"" paper which is not regulated like all the other normal and legitimate insurance, that insures the CDO garbage above... so if your, or even your competitor's CDO goes into the shitter, you can collect on your CDS bullshit; so the CDS was supposed to be a hedge against the CDO failure)"


As a San Franciscan that takes public transit to work every day, I can vouch for the fierce opposition against further development. There are still plenty of cars around, mind you, but I know I'm not the only one who would rather leave my ride at home.


"Its the economics subreddit. People post here to talk about economics. I assume people here have attention spans long enough to read a few paragraphs.  I can understand your issue with principal. I understand people who will willingly take a worse system that costs more just to fuck over a drug addict. I'm not one of them.  Personally, I would pay zero dollars extra to fuck over drug addicts and I have no desire to have worse quality care so drug addicts can be denied care.  I want the system that is a good balance between cost and quality. Sure, the trade off of paying ""less for better"" is when everyone else is covered, there will be people who I don't like, and who made poor choices that will also get that coverage. I suppose one could make a single payer system that also doesn't cover drug addicts. Maybe that would be ideal for you. However, studies also find that paying for these drug addicts/lazy assholes also saves money in the long run. I assume you don't want to explore the theories as to why statistically this is the case because you know.....TL DR.  I'm sorry you don't like the ideas. Don't worry about ideas. Worry about facts and reality. Base what you ""agree with"" on reality. I'm going to go out on a limb, I think if you thought about it, saving yourself and your family money for better treatment will rank higher than the principal of denying treatment to those who you don't like.    Once you establish what you value, abandon ideology. See what works best with what you value and go from there. I would make a guess that one of the reasons Americans are absolutely ripped off when it comes to medical costs is because people don't agree with ""ideas""."


Two adages come to mind. Never finance a depreciating asset. If you can't pay cash for a car, you can't afford it. If you decide you can finance at a low rate and invest at a higher one, you're leveraging your capital.  The risk here is that your investment drops in value, or your cash flow stops and you are unable to continue payments and have to sell the car, or surrender it. There are fewer risks if you buy the car outright.  There is one cost that is not considered though.  Opportunity cost.   Since you've declared transportation necessary, I'd say that opportunity cost is worth the lower risk, assuming you have enough cash left after buying a car to fund your emergency fund. Which brings me to my final point.  Be sure to buy a quality used car, not a new one.  Your emergency fund should be able to replace the car completely, in the case of a total loss where you are at fault and the loss is not covered by insurance. TLDR: My opinion is that it would be better to pay for a quality, efficient, basic transportation car up front than to take on a debt.


In order to calculate the ratio you are looking for, just divide total debt by the market capitalization of the stock. Both values can be found on the link you provided. The market capitalization is the market value of equity.


Tax concerns aside, there are managerial pros and cons for internal billing.  For cost control purposes it's common to break individual business activities into divisions/sections which have a P&L or are cost centers. At that point, if you know (for example) that your quality control inspections cost on average 1% of your product cost then one might bill internally for use of this cost center.  One argument for doing this is it makes those who are billed more cautious about using internal resources as there's a direct cost allocation. It also benchmarks that resource against outsourcing- for example it may be significantly cheaper to use an external resource. There can therefore be a 'healthy tension' between the cost center and user which in theory results in pressure for the cost center to improve efficiency.   In practice I've found there are some significant cons. First issue is with cost allocation. The cost center in an attempt to make their service appear more efficient will battle to get minimal overhead costs allocated to them, creating friction between departments. Second and I think a major issue is a blanket cost for use of a service invariably winds up with a lot of exceptions. In the previous example there may be some very large programs where a 1% inspection fee winds up with a huge sum of money, one that the product team may argue unfairly reduces their net income and therefore compensation. Then there's the administrative cost of what essentially is passing money from the left hand to the right even if just on paper. Third issue is with some activities you might not want to provide a disincentive for people to use the service- for example charging a product team for quality assurance may result in skipped QA processes for the benefit of cost savings.  What I've found works better is creation of cost centers with management of those centers. This is common in companies that have a matrix organizational structure. Using the same example again, QA costs are broken out and completely separated from other areas and QA management is benchmarked independently.


There's no demand? Of course there's demand, demand is infinite in the sense that everyone wants things to make their lives better. Sure, maybe there are some people that have maxed out their credit and physically can't buy any more stuff, but they still need to buy food/clothes/housing. The problem is not a demand problem, it is a supply side problem. Central banks have over levered the system to a point where investors and entrepreneurs do not know what the govt is going to do next to try to fix it. Is there a huge tax increase on the horizon? Is more reactionary legislation going to be passed? Many established businesses have a hard enough time keeping up with the regulations that are already on the books, and in many industries such as the financial industry, it is physically impossible to get through an audit without paying fines for doing something wrong, because no one can follow every single rule theyve written. So yes, the regulatory environment is far more uncertain than it was even a decade ago, let alone 30 or 40 years ago.


It misses :-  [My Hero](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233084/) , [The Goodies](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065296/) , [Monty Python's Flying Circus](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063929/) - understandably .  The [Carry On](http://www.imdb.com/keyword/carry-on/) series - eg. [Carry On Up the Khyber](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062782/) . [Bless This House](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066633/) . [George and Mildred](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073995/) . [Man about the House](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069607/) .  and stand up's :-  [The Morecambe & Wise Show](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063930/) , [The Two Ronnies](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066721/) , [Alas Smith & Jones](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088475/) , [The Dave Allen Show](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0131162/) .


Is it right that I request form W-9 or form W-8BEN (for non U.S.   citizens) from the affiliate users before sending them payments? Not just OK. Required. I know that I have to send form 1099, but I don't know where does this   form should go to. Should I send it to the IRS or the affiliate user   or both? Both. There's also form 1096 that you need to send to the IRS.  Read the instructions. Should I send form 1099 once a year or each time I make a payment to   the affiliate? Once a year. Read the instructions. Do I have to send form 1099 when the money earned by the affiliate hit   a certain threshold or I have to send it anyway? $600 or more requires the form, but you can send for any amount. Read the instructions. Is there any other forms or documents to request from or send to the   affiliate user or the IRS? There may be additional forms. Especially if the recipient is a foreign person and you withhold taxes. Talk to your tax adviser.


Indeed. So goes the theory that redistribution would lead to inflation (or run away inflation). But isn't that exactly what The Fed is trying to do? It could also or alternatively indicate that assets are way overvalued which would also be a bad situation. Which is it?


Unless it is in the contract that you must replace it then this should be replaced by your insurance. They sent you a box that was defective, consumer grade electronics are designed for at least 85 deg C (185F) and unless they can prove your car was hotter than that they sent you a defective unit.  That being said, I do not think it would be worth suing them for that low amount, I would suggest you get a new insurance company. The current company clearly values your business less than 185 pounds(?) and this issue will happen multiple times since the company has no incentive to buy better products if customers keep footing the bill.


For a long time, I thought that all the nice things that I live with I could only have because other people somewhere in the world went with less. That I had a nice life only because through magical economy and forced servitude, someone else had a bad life. Then I heard the parable of specialization.  There are 3 people. Alice is a farmer, Bob is a farmer, and Charlie is a candlestick maker. Every person needs to eat 1 potato and 1 egg every day to live. There is no money.  Alice has always had a knack for making eggs, and trained herself to become even better. Bob has a nice field with fertile soil, and so is quite good at making potatoes. Alice spends her morning making 2 eggs, and her afternoon making 1 potato, while Bob uses his morning to make 1 egg, and his afternoon to make 2 potatoes.  In the evening, Alice brings her 1 extra egg to Charlie, trades it for a 1-hour candle, goes back home to eat her 1 egg and 1 potato, and read her book for an hour before going to bed. Bob does the same thing, except he trades his 1 extra potato for a 1-hour candle. Charlie can make 1 1-hour candle in the morning, and 1 1-hour candle in the afternoon. He eats the 1 egg and 1 potato he got, and goes to bed.  One day, Alice and Bob meet at their fence, and talk about the books they're reading and how they can only read for 1 hour each night, and how much food they each produce. Then they get an idea and agree on a new plan.  Now, Alice spends her morning making 2 eggs, and her afternoon making 2 eggs, for a total of 4 eggs every day. Bob starts making potatoes only, and makes 4 every day. At the end of the day, Alice gives Bob 1 egg, in exchange for 1 potato. Alice then brings her 2 extra eggs to Charlie, and Bob brings his extra 2 potatoes. Charlie now starts getting 2 eggs and 2 potatoes every day. So he gets a lovely wife, Daniel, from the next county over, and trains her to make 1-hour candles. She's just as good as Charlie, and makes 2 per day.  So now, Alice gets 2 1-hour candles for her 2 extra eggs, and reads for 2 hours every night before bed. She's happy. Bob also gets 2 1-hour candles for his 2 extra potatoes, and reads for 2 hours before bed. He's also happy. Charlie uses the 2 eggs and 2 potatoes he gets to feed himself and Daniel every day, and Charlie and Daniel play in bed every night. Charlie and Daniel are happy.  And so, because of specialization, we start with 3 unhappy people, and end with 4 happy people and 0 unhappy people. Good lives can be gotten without making other people suffer.


"Joke warning: These days, it seems that rogue trading programs are the big market makers (this concludes the joke) Historically, exchange members were market makers. One or more members guaranteed a market in a particular stock, and would buy whatever you wanted to sell (or vice-versa). In a balanced market -- one where there were an equal number of buyers and sellers -- the spread was indeed profit for them. To make this work, market makers need an enormous amount of liquidity (ability to hold an inventory of stocks) to deal with temporary imbalances. And a day like October 29, 1929, can make that liquidity evaporate. I say ""historically,"" because I don't think that any stock market works this way today (I was discussing this very topic with a colleague last week, went to Wikipedia to look at the structure of the NYSE, and saw no mention of exchange members as market makers -- in fact, it appears that the NYSE is no longer a member-based exchange). Instead, today most (all?) trading happens on ""electronic crossing networks,"" where the spread is simply the difference between the highest bid and lowest ask. In a liquid stock, there will be hundreds if not thousands of orders clustered around the ""current"" price, usually diverging by fractions of a cent. In an illiquid stock, there may be a spread, but eventually one bid will move up or one ask will move down (or new bids will come in). You could claim that an entity with a large block of stock to move takes the role of market maker, but it doesn't have the same meaning as an exchange market maker. Since there's no entity between the bidder and asker, there's no profit in the spread, just a fee taken  by the ECN. Edit: I think you have a misconception of what the ""spread"" is. It's simply the difference between the highest bid and the lowest offer. At the instant a trade takes place, the spread is 0: the highest bid equals the lowest offer, and the bidder and seller exchange shares for money. As soon as that trade is completed, the spread re-appears. The only way that a trade happens is if buyer and seller agree on price. The traditional market maker is simply an entity that has the ability to buy or sell an effectively unlimited number of shares. However, if the market maker sets a price and there are no buyers, then no trade takes place. And if there's another entity willing to sell shares below the market maker's price, then the buyers will go to that entity unless the market's rules forbid it."


VXX VZX XVIZ and there are plenty others correlated to market volatility if you want the wildest hedge, use VXX, it is also the most liquid


Whether your card will work, I believe, depends on the institution that issued it. You'll just have to try. What I can tell you, is that the process of using a debit card or credit card in the US is fairly straight forward. If your card has a chip, you'll 'insert' your card, chip end first, into the bottom slot of the reader, assuming the reader has one. This technology is still being distributed / accepted, so you may encounter some areas where they don't have this, or they have an insert or sign that says something along the lines of 'No chip reader / swipe instead'. If your card doesn't have a chip, which looks like the bottom end of a cellular phone's SIM card, you just swipe your card in the reader. There will / may be on-screen prompts, which will explain any additional input necessary from you. Depending on how they 'process' your card - As a debit card or credit card (They can 'process' a debit card as if it's a standard credit card), you may or may not be asked to enter your debit card's PIN. If they process it as debit, you'll have to enter your PIN. If they process it as if it were a credit card, it will still go through but you'll be asked to sign the receipt.  IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO NOTE: You need to find out whether your card issuer will charge you foreign transaction fees when you use your Indian debit card in the US.  Is the card carrying a different currency than the US?


No, they aren't. So the fact they are willing to essentially take bribes is worse than Comcast. Comcast has 1 goal: to make money. They are doing that very well, can't blame them there.  The government has one goal: run the country as effectively as possible. They are sacrificing that goal for money. That's worse.


The company I work with uses Intuit QuickBooks Online and have had zero problems with it. The functionality is effective and it fits the size of our company as well. (Not huge, but I wouldn't consider it a 'small business') Also, you can try a 30 day free trial. QuickBooks Simple Start focuses on small business accounting, so for this reason it has a cleaner interface and is simple to use. QuickBooks Simple Start compared to Quicken Home This article doesn't exactly have a bright light shining on Quickbooks, but I think it's fair to show you other alternatives: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2382514,00.asp [Note that it is from 2011]


"It depends on many factors, but generally, the bid/ask spread will give you an idea. There are typically two ways to buy (or sell) a security: With a limit order, you would place a buy for 100 shares at $30-. Then it's easy, in the worst case you will get your 100 shares at $30 each exactly. You may get lucky and have the price fall, then you will pay less than $30. Of course if the price immediately goes up to say $35, nobody will sell at the $30 you want, so your broker will happily sit on his hands and rake in the commission while waiting on what is now a hail Mary ask. With a market order, you have the problem you mention: The ticker says $30, but say after you buy the first 5 shares at $30 the price shoots up and the rest are $32 each - you have now paid on average $31.9 per share. This could happen because there is a limit order for 5 at $30 and 200 at $32 (you would have filled only part of that 200). You would be able to see these in the order book (sometimes shown as bid/ask spread or market depth). However, the order book is not law. Just because there's an ask for 10k shares at $35 each for your $30 X stock, doesn't mean that by the time the price comes up to $35, the offer will still be up. The guy (or algorithm) who put it up may see the price going up and decide he now wants $40 each for his 10k shares. Also, people aren't obligated to put in their order: Maybe there's a trader who intends to trade a large volume when the price hits a certain level, like a limit order, but he elected to not put in a limit order and instead watch the ticker and react in real time. Then you will see a huge order suddenly come in out of nowhere. So while the order book is informative, what you are asking is actually fundamentally impossible to know fully, unless you can read the minds of every interested trader. As others said, in ""normal"" securities (meaning traded at a major exchange, especially those in the S&P500) you simply can't move the price, the market is too deep. You would need millions of dollars to budge the price, and if you had that much money, you wouldn't be asking here on a QA site, you would have a professional financial advisor (or even a team) that specializes in distributing your large transaction over a longer time to minimize the effect on the market. With crazier stocks, such as OTC and especially worthless penny stocks with market caps of $1 mil or less, what you say is a real problem (you can end up paying multiples of the last ticker if not careful) and you do have to be careful about it. Which is why you shouldn't trade penny stocks unless you know what you're doing (and if you're asking this question here, you don't)."


One thing I didn't see mentioned - my major bills are all electronic transfer, i.e. there is no check mailed. A bill due in 2 days can be set up now, and still paid the day after tomorrow. Try that with a check. There are smaller companies that are not done that way and a check mailed, but you state the due date not the mailing date. So the bank still has the obligation to get it there. This is how my particular bank works.


Probably a big fat NO. Update re this edit: NOTE: I'm not suggesting that I melt the coins. I'm just suggesting that I hold onto the nickels and sell them later when they are worth more than 5 cents. For example, you can sell coins with silver in them for far above their face value. This is silly as an investment.  Right up there with stockpiling cars. :)   The increase in value will likely never be enough to make the cost/hassle of storage worth it.  As MrChrister states, it is a fine idea as a collection, but not as a stockpile. Edit (from the comments): I am surprised I did not latch onto this in the previous update.  Silver is considered a previous metal, nickel and copper are not.  BTW, the U.S. nickel is 25% nickel and 75% copper. Also, how in the world do you plan on actually selling a stockpile of nickels?


Take the long term view.  Build up the cash.  Once you have enough cash in the bank, you don't need a credit score.  With 6 months living expenses in the bank after paying 20% down on a small house, he should have no issues getting a reasonably priced mortgage.   However, if he waited just a bit longer he might buy the same house outright with cash. When I ran the computations for myself many years ago, it would have taken me half as long to save the money and pay cash for my home as it did for me to take a mortgage and pay it off.


That's a matter of opinion.  He has enriched the US stock markets by $4 trillion dollars already.  That affects me and many others.  Unemployment is at a 30 year low.  Interest rates are stable and rising slowly.  Inflation is stable.  The housing market is healthy.  Cease fire in Syria.  We are no longer arming radicals in Syria.    There are many positive things happening right now.  They just aren't widely reported.


There can be the question of what objective do you have for buying the stock. If you want an income stream, then high yield stocks may be a way to get dividends without having additional transactions to sell shares while others may want capital appreciation and are willing to go without dividends to get this. You do realize that both Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline are companies that the total stock value is over $100 billion yes? Thus, neither is what I'd see as a growth stock as these are giant companies that would require rather large sales to drive earnings growth though it may be interesting to see what kind of growth is expected for these companies. In looking at current dividends, one is paying 3% and the other 5% so I'm not sure either would be what I'd see as high yield. REITs would be more likely to have high dividends given their structure if you want something to research a bit more.


Unfortunately, sex is such an important and intimate part of our human mind.It is hardly surprising that it generates so many problems for so many people. In the world all men want girls to fuck for her level.Do not be afraid to say what is on your mind, just as long as you are not making it sound like you are acting out a part of a porn movie. For instance, when you tell your partner how good his or her skin feels on yours, it shows that the slow, close and passionate moment of love.


Well, in a sense I agree. You need to educate your damn self of the insanity of the world because nobody else will for you. And you need to work harder at getting the fuck out of that world and into the one you know you're supposed to be in.


Stock price is based on supply and demand. Unless the stock you are looking to buy usually has very low volume trading 100 shares isn't likely to have any effect on price. There are many companies that have millions or tens of millions of shares trade daily. For stocks like that 100 shares is barely a trivial percentage of the daily volume. For thinly traded stocks you can look at the bid and ask size but even that isn't likely to get you an exact answer. Unless you are trading large volumes your trade will have no effect on the price of shares.


Ways to build credit without applying for credit cards: It takes some time for these types of actions to positively affect you.  I'd say at the very least 6 months.  You won't get the full benefit for several years.  However, the earlier you get started, the better.


"So very true, and I've heard most of these used in the way they describe. Although, they're missing ""We need to get some headlights on this"" = ""We just got surprised by our lack of common sense. Let's not let that happen again!""  I think that one's low hanging fruit, and our best practices dictate that we capitalize on that because of the easy ROI. It's just due diligence, really."


If you just want to save for retirement, start with a financial planning book, like this one: http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Simple-Financial-Strategies-People/dp/0743269942 and here's my editorial on the investing part: http://blog.ometer.com/2010/11/10/take-risks-in-life-for-savings-choose-a-balanced-fund/ If you're thinking of spending time stock-picking or trading for fun, then there are lots of options.  Web site: Morningstar Premium (http://morningstar.com) has very good information. They analyze almost all large-cap stocks and some small caps too, plus mutual funds and ETFs, and have some good general information articles. It doesn't have the sales-pitch hot-blooded tone of most other sites. Morningstar analyzes companies from a value investing point of view which is probably what you want unless you're day trading. Also they analyze funds, which are probably the most practical investment. Books: If you want to be competent (in the sense that a professional investor trying to beat the market or control risk vs. the market would be) then I thought the CFA curriculum was pretty good: However, this will quickly teach you how much is involved in being competent. The level 1 curriculum when I did it was 6 or 7 thick textbooks, equivalent to probably a college semester courseload. I didn't do level 2 or 3. I don't think level 1 was enough to become competent, it's just enough to learn what you don't know. The actual CFA charter requires all three levels and years of work experience. If you more want to dabble, then Benjamin Graham's The Intelligent Investor certainly isn't a bad place to start, but you'd also want to read some efficient markets stuff (Random Walk Down Wall Street, or something by Bogle, or The Intelligent Asset Allocator http://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Asset-Allocator-Portfolio-Maximize/dp/0071362363, are some options). It wouldn't be bad to just read a textbook like http://www.amazon.com/Investments-Irwin-Finance-Zvi-Bodie/dp/0256146381 which would be the much-abridged version of the CFA level 1 stuff. If you're into day trading / charting, then I don't know much about that at all, some of the other answers may have some ideas. I've never been able to find info on this that didn't seem like it had a sketchy sales pitch kind of vibe. Honestly in a world of high-frequency trading computers I'm skeptical this is something to get into. Unless you want to program HFT computers: http://howtohft.wordpress.com/


Nothing.  Retail is not going to go away, it will change and transmutate, and just like evolution it will be a gradual change with some pieces falling off the cliff, but no disasters.  AMZN / WMT are leading the change, others will follow; most of the retail business models will become antiquated and replaced.


target audience smaller businesses that deal with logistics as a secondary (but necessary) part of their business (ie charlie's cake factory, alice's airplane repairs, steve's steelworks)  or  target audience smaller business that deal with logistics directly as as a primary part of their business (ie wilson's warehouse, connie's courier, laura's LTL shipping company)  ?


[] [Fitch Ratings is expecting China's first local government bond defaults, but timing uncertain] (https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/25/fitch-ratings-is-expecting-chinas-first-local-government-bond-defaults-but-timing-uncertain.html)  [] [China LGFVs: fears mount of bond defaults] (http://www.financeasia.com/News/439998,china-lgfvs-fears-mount-of-bond-defaults.aspx)  [][Growing Chinese corporate bond defaults improve market transparency but could scare investors] (https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/25/growing-chinese-corporate-bond-defaults-improve-market-transparency-but-could-scare-investors.html)  [][Why are Chinese bond defaults surging?] (https://www.breakingviews.com/features/breakdown-why-are-chinese-bond-defaults-surging/)


Are there particular, established businesses that provide these   services? Yes! There are many fee-based financial advisors that provide such services. These might help:  http://www.ricedelman.com/galleries/default-file/how-to-choose-financial-advisor.pdf http://www.ricedelman.com/cs/education/article?articleId=990#.Us7cyPRDt1Y


"While the other people have tried to answer your question as thoroughly as possible, I fear they are entirely incorrect in answering your question itself as it stands. The answer is that there are no usual terms. There are a handful of different options coming out now for this exact scheme. Examples include the UK Governments ""Help To Buy"" scheme. Accomodation is offered at a normal rate, and a small portion of the rent is set aside each month. At the end of a fixed period, that money becomes a deposit which the letter hands over to a mortgage provider who accepts it as a deposit. This might well be a terminology thing, since the other scenario which people described falls into the same name you've used. That scenario is where the investor who owns the property is considering sale of the property, and is happy to negotiate a price up front for the next year. Usually the rent and price is higher than the market rate because if the market goes well over the next year they could end up out of pocket. Putting that into perspective, over that year they are gaining their $1,000 a month or so, but having $100,000 invested means a return of 12%. If the property value is over $250,000 which I believe to be more likely, they are achieving a return of (I think) 4.8%. That's not a bad rate, by any means, but realistically they are losing a bit more for maintenance, and they could be making more from their money. If the market were to go up in that time by more than 4.8% (my house, for instance, increased in value by over 15% in the last 12 months), they are making a substantial loss since you are getting a house at 15% below the market rate. The total works out to a 10.2% loss for them. Note that I don't know the US housing market at all, I'm speaking mostly from my experience of the market here in the UK. This is what I hear, what I see, and what I've played. To summarise a bit: Make sure you check your terms before signing anything."


How do tax cuts for a corporation decrease available labor or increase demand for labor?  I know wages are complex but what company is going to get a tax cut and say, “Ya know what, we’re not paying as much taxes so raises for everyone.”?  Maybe if the company uses that money to buy stuff, there will be demand on those companies that produce those products.


There's also no way we'll ever walk around with computers in our pockets that can calculate a trajectory for a lunar insertion orbit in less than a second yet we all do.  That we've gone through two major employment revolutions (industrialization, mechanization) and there's still in general enough things that people have to do that we can rely on employment to drive the economy I don't see that being a guarantee that this will continue for a third and fourth rounds.  So we pose a 'what if?'.  What if there is another revolution in automation and we no longer need people to move things around, sell things or clean?  That covers all of retail, shipping and most service sector jobs.  Even if we still need some people in the loop we could see what happened to manufacturing where employment drops 10:1 or 100:1 because all the grunt work is now done by machine.  What happens when there's no more jobs that you can do without a Bachelors minimum education?  There are a lot of people who just aren't cut out for those kinds of jobs and would hate having to do them - not to mention do them poorly.  What does that world look like?  Yes it's the stuff of Sci-fi right now but so is today's world to people only 40 years ago.


You can lookup SWIFT codes here.  Based on the search I conducted on March 30, 2015, PayPay US's SWIFT is PPALUS66, and PayPal Europe's SWIFT is PPLXLULL.  Since they have two listed, it would be safe to contact PayPal directly and ask which SWIFT they would like to be used.


I'd bet good money that you're right on the button there. I can foresee a cottage industry for local part replacements easily cropping up in places with a strong DIY-nerd presence. If parts in some certain area break with enough frequency, you'll get customers chomping at the bit to pay what it would have cost to buy and ship, if they can instead get the replacement part printed in a couple hours. Screw waiting for the auto parts store to ship from their warehouse 5 hours away, when I can just get that distributor cap printed, to spec, *with customizations*, in half that time. This is so much of a game changer that you won't even know critical mass has hit until it does.  At the same time, I can also see some company trying to make an example of local print-a-part shops to protect dwindling part-supplier profits by calling in the fuzz to bust printing joints with narcotics-style closure raids, subpoenas, middle-of-the-night warrants, and that sort of thing. I don't think that stage will last long because customer backlash will be deadly, but it's well known that the last stage of a dying business model involves denial and desperate legal thrashing-about.


"A **Synthetic CDO** is the devil incarnate.  From the CDS buyer (aka Insurance buyer's) point of view: if you want *protection* on some credit/debt-security/loan and **can't find a willing counterparty**, just get ""investors in a CDO"" to supply it, in small portions in mass!  The poor tranche buyers won't even be aware that their **""tranche LOSS""** constitutes final full default-recovery payment on the defaulted credit to the CDS buyer.   CDOs are making a come back (slowly but surely) b/c there's a lot of ""JUNK"" accumulated in the **""Levered Loan/Mezzanine Market""**. So industry finds it's favored vehicle to dispose of said junk, hiding behind two counterparties couched in different semantic cloaks: ""CDS BUYER"" on one side, and ""CDO INVESTOR"" on the other.  To boot, red-meat free-market publications like WSJ then say (asif) ""O, buyers are dying for yield, there's great demand"". LOL. This completely obfuscates fact that a humble cdo investor is **entering the INSURANCE BIZ** against some very dodgy ""assets"".  (would you insure stage IV cancer patients for $1mn at annual premium of, say $5000?)"


You could make an entry for the disputed charge as if you were going to lose the dispute, and a second entry that reverses the charge as if you were going to win the dispute.  You could then reconcile the account by including the first charge in the reconciliation and excluding the reversal until the issue has been resolved.


I think PA is probably the biggest factor.  All the older PA residents that used to go there just go to PA casinos.  They don't care about the beach.  If they want to go to a beach, they go to a nice beach.    For most of the younger gamblers, the extra drive isn't worth the time to go to a slum with a shitty beach when you don't have to.    Also did they say no smoking in NJ casinos? WTF that's just stupid. I don't smoke but i do love it when I gamble


In most circumstances prices do not change on a daily basis on most goods and services, and just because inflation is high does not mean all prices of every good and service has to increase over the short term.  Prices are determined by costs of doing business, manufacturing costs and wage growth, and by competition.  For example, if one product has very little competition and costs to produce it have gone up, then the seller might increase prices by 10% to cover their cost of buying the goods off the manufacturer, whilst another product may have plenty of competition, the seller has sourced a new manufacturer from overseas with lower manufacturing costs, they might lower their selling costs by 5% to better compete and increase their sales. Inflation figures are calculated from a set basket of goods and services, and if inflation increases it does not mean that all prices in that basket have gone up, only that the aggregate for the whole basket of goods and services has gone up since the last inflation figures were calculated.


"Title insurance protects you from losing rights to your property in case of a court decision. Let's look at an example I recently found in local newspapers. One old woman sold her apartment to person A. The deed was attested by a notary public who verified that indeed in was that old woman putting her signature on the deed. Then person A sold the apartment to person B, etc, then after several deals some unfortunate Buyer bought that apartment. The deal looked allright, so he's got a mortgage to pay for the apartment. Later it turned out that the old lady died three months before she ""sold"" the apartment and the notary public was corrupt. Old lady's heirs filed a lawsuit and the deal was void. So the ultimate Buyer lost all rights to the apartment although he purchased it legally. This is the case when title insurance kicks in. You need one if there's a chance for a deal to be deemed void."


Only jerks use Safari  (note - in my experience for a large retailer, those that use that browser are more likely to leave negative feedback on their shopping experience, even though we make sure every feature is more than compatible and works for them)


Well, I can tell you that most of the executive staff at GoDaddy don't even live in Phoenix where HQ is.  They fly in sometime on Monday (some on Sunday, to be fair) and then work until sometime late Thursday and fly home.  Long weekends, every weekend.  The rest of us (when I worked there) enjoyed our quiet Mondays and Fridays.


"What do I mean by infrastructure? Well, if you're doing algorithmic trading, you have to have something monitoring data and making decisions on its own, presumably. How do you set that up? There are many ways, and some are better than others.  First is a problem of scale. If you're a newbie starting out with some small set of equity tick data, perhaps just trades for instance, you can whip together something that can handle that pretty easily. Check out http://www.marketdatapeaks.com/ though. That's your messaging rates you have to deal with once you go full data feeds direct from all the exchanges. 6.65 million messages/events per second. That's a lot. And if you fall behind, you lose your lunch.  Building a robust system that allows you to easily backtest and deploy strategies is crucial as well. The speed at which you're able to conduct the backtest matters a lot. Doing that rapidly, and accurately is not easy. For a broad market-data handling algo design (and now, clearly, for very specific things you can design one that'll handle stuff better for that one corner case, but this is for general algo trading), optimally you have some sort of setup where you have a:  [feed handlers] -> [tickerplant] -> [mkt data subscribers/CEP] -> [order management system] -> [broker]   in this setup you have feed handlers that are taking the raw exchange feeds and pushing them to a consolidated tickerplant, where CEP subscribers can come through and sub to the data they want (perhaps I just want ES futures on one, and only want to arb CMCSA and CMCSK on another -- you dont want each CEP subscriber getting your full feed for all tickers all the time, its a waste). so more or less, each independent strategy is its own subscriber to the tickerplant, taking whatever data it wants and only that data (could be ""give me all the trades and quotes for all nasdaq stocks, but not book depth"" for instance).  your CEP does whatever maths it has to do to figure out trading decisions, and when it does, it sends it to your order management system which does your risk checks, etc (""do you have enough money to place this trade?"" ""do you already have a position in this?"" ""are you trading against yourself?"" ... million other things). your OMS knows how to talk to your broker/directly to the exchange depending on your setup. Assuming all your risk checks pass, off the order goes to the exchange, and it deals with the fill msgs, etc.  Now, as far as speed is concerned - try to do all of this at 6.5 million events/second. It's hard. Some strats/cep subscribers will run faster than others, some are slower, some need to keep a full book to work while some work on just trades. Your OMS depending on if youre using only market data sources may need to keep its own book to place orders on behalf of your subscribers if they lack information about various markets (think all the twitter trading bots these days for instance), etc.  If you look back at the above setup as well, you'll notice some interesting things. [tickerplant] -> [cep subscriber] portion can stay the same for live trading or backtesting. This is huge. The only thing that changes here for backtesting is that if you're trying to backtest, you can take historical data (query it out of your hopefully column-store database) and push it into your tickerplant rather than having it come from a live feed through the feed handler. Your tickerplant and cep subscriber will never know the difference, so you can use the same exact code for backtesting as you can for live. On the other end, you obviously cant send historical orders to your live broker, so you need to code a simulated OMS that does the backtest simulation (another huge piece of software to code that is hard to do well). But, for backtesting, your setup is staying largely the same except those two end pieces. This means that testing/deving/deploying strats can be pretty rapid, and uses the same code base for live and historical, which helps you eliminate bugs and have to code everything twice.  Backtesting design: [historical mkt data db] -> [tickerplant] -> [mkt data subscribers/CEP] -> [order management system simulator/backtester]  These are just a few of the many problems that you hit when trying to dev good infra. There are like a million more. Point was simply, it's complicated. And C++ is a good lang. I use a wide variety of languages depending on exactly whats going on and how fast the code needs to be. With a proper tickerplant design, youre using some ipc protocol so a subscriber can be coded in any language. Check out http://www.zeromq.org/ -- thats an excellent piece of software to use to make a tickerplant out of, think they even have a design for one in the docs if I recall. With that, your CEP subscribers can be in any language - perhaps pure C if you need the speed, perhaps .NET or Java if you dont (check out http://esper.codehaus.org/ for a Java implement of a CEP subscriber, nEsper for the C# port of that I believe). But I use C, C++, C#, python, R, x86 asm for a few very minor things, and a lang or two I can't mention here."


"So you believe people are free to have opinions, act on them. But what is a business except a bunch of people interacting with others? Do you stop being human when you walk through the doors of your work? Using terms like ""companies should provide a service"" sounds like they are staffed by machines, and we should force them to do whatever they want, which is troubling.  In my opinion, companies should be free not to bake cakes for neo-nazis or gay couples. Of course, I would boycott the latter, as would many people, I suspect. The free market forces people to cooperate, because bigoted organization will lose business.  My biggest problem with Paypal's decision is I'm not sure I trust them to determine who is a ""hate group"" fairly, like you said. (Of course, I trust the government even less.) But the good news is if they implement their policy unfairly, then they'll get slapped by the invisible hand and go broke. The free market is one of the freest, most democratic systems we have."


They are easing QE as the economy does better, but it will remain a tool that central banks use forever. I doubt they'll actually get to none, that would require things to go too well for too long. If we start heading toward a surplus Conservatives will put pressure on for tax cuts, and Progressives will put pressure on for govt spending.


The chances are good that the interest you are going to pay on the debt is going to be higher than the interest you are going to receive on any type of short term investments. That would make the paying off of the debt worth more to you in the long run than saving your money. Note that without the particulars of your situation this is all just theory crafting so consult the details of you loan agreements. I cannot imagine that a credit provider did not discuss this with you before you put pen on paper.


There are two or three issues here. One is, how quickly can you get cash out of your investments? If you had an unexpected expense, if you suddenly needed more cash than you have on hand, how long would it take to get money out of your Scott Trade account or wherever it is? I have a TD Ameritrade account which is pretty similar, and it just takes a couple of days to get money out. I'm hard pressed to think of a time when I literally needed a bunch of cash TODAY with no advance warning. What sudden bills is one likely to have? A medical bill, perhaps. But hey, just a few weeks ago I had to go to the emergency room with a medical problem, and it's not like they demanded cash on the table before they'd help me. I just got the bill, maybe 3 weeks after the event. I've never decided to move and then actually moved 2 days later. These things take SOME planning. Etc. Second, how much risk are you willing to tolerate? If you have your money in the stock market, the market could go down just as you need the cash. That's not even a worst case scenario, extreme scenario. After all, if the economy gets bad, the stock market could go down, and the same fact could result in your employer laying you off. That said, you could reduce this risk by keeping some of your money in a low-risk investment, like some high-quality bonds. Third, you want to have cash to cover the more modest, routine expenses. Like make sure you always have enough cash on hand to pay the rent or mortgage, buy food, and so on. And fourth, you want to keep a cushion against bookkeeping mistakes. I've had twice in my life that I've overdrawn a checking account, not because I was broke, but because I messed up my records and thought I had more money in the account than I really did. It's impossible to give exact numbers without knowing a lot about your income and expenses. But for myself: I keep a cushion of $1,000 to $1,5000 in my checking account, on top of all regular bills that I know I'll have to pay in the next month, to cover modest unexpected expenses and mistakes. I pay most of my bills by credit card for convenience --and pay the balance in full when I get the bill so I don't pay interest -- so I don't need a lot of cushion. I used to keep 2 to 3 months pay in an account invested in bonds and very safe stocks, something that wouldn't lose much value even in bad times. Since my daughter started college I've run this down to less than 1 months pay, and instead of replacing that money I'm instead putting my spare money into more general stocks, which is admittedly riskier. So between the two accounts I have a little over 2 months pay, which I think is low, but as I say, I'm trying to get my kids through college so I've run down my savings some. I think if I had more than 6 months pay in easily-liquidated assets, then unless I expected to need a bunch of cash for something, buying a new house or some such, I'd be transferring that to a retirement account with tax advantages.


This is a typical scam. Yes, you just got listed with the terrorists as trying to launder money internationally.  Terrorist organizations will try to find someone in the US who will accept deposits from overseas sources then send that money to one of their operatives.  Cooperate with whichever police force comes knocking on your door. Pray that it isn't Homeland Security. They do not need warrants.


The middle class needs support, not eroding. Negative interest rates would work for starters in getting that corporate profit capital moving in society, not this avoidance of responsibility from above by passing the buck to the people. By the same token therefore, voting more is not going to solve things quicker. Why say 'politics will not fix this' and then declare 'vote someone in to change it fast' after throwing a few figures and catchphrases at us? A convoluted, nonsensical waste of time.


"I said ""at least,"" meaning that I narrowed my odds to ""at least"" even odds from the national average of 1/4 college graduates finding a job after school. I wanted to make damn sure I was that one in four. I never had any doubts myself, and I had a backup plan for moving forward if a job didn't materialize."