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In Canada, can a limited corporation be used as an income tax shelter? | (Disclaimer: I am not an accountant nor a tax pro, etc., etc.) Yes, a Canadian corporation can function as a partial income tax shelter. This is possible since a corporation can retain earnings (profits) indefinitely, and corporate income tax rates are generally less than personal income tax rates. Details: If you own and run your business through a corporation, you can choose to take income from your corporation in one of two ways: as salary, or as dividends. Salary constitutes an expense of the corporation, i.e. it gets deducted from revenue in calculating corporate taxable income. No corporate income tax is due on money paid out as salary. However, personal income taxes and other deductions (e.g. CPP) would apply to salary at regular rates, the same as for a regular employee. Dividends are paid by the corporation to shareholders out of after-tax profits. i.e. the corporation first pays income tax on taxable income for the fiscal year, and resulting net income could be used to pay dividends (or not). At the personal level, dividends are taxed less than salary to account for tax the corporation paid. The net effect of corporate + personal tax is about the same as for salary (leaving out deductions like CPP.) The key point: Dividends don't have to be paid out in the year the money was earned. The corporation can carry profits forward (retained earnings) as long as it wants and choose to issue dividends (or not) in later years. Given that, here's how would the partial income tax shelter works: At some point, for you to personally realize income from the corporation, you can have the corporation declare a dividend. You'll then have to pay personal income taxes on the income, at the dividend rates. But for as long as the money was invested inside the corporation, it was subject only to lesser corporate tax rates, not higher personal income tax rates. Hence the "partial" aspect of this kind of tax shelter. Or, if you're lucky enough to find a buyer for your corporation, you could qualify for the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption on proceeds up to $750,000 when you sell a qualified small business corporation. This is the best exit strategy; unfortunately, not an easy one where the business has no valuable assets (e.g. a client base, or intellectual property.) * The major sticking-point: You need to have real business revenue! A regular employee (of another company) can't funnel his personally-earned employment income into a corporation just to take advantage of this mechanism. Sorry. :-/ |
Lump Sum Investing vs. Dollar Cost Averaging (as a Long Term Investor) | I think you're not applying the right time scale here. ESPP (Employee Stock Purchase Plan) is usually vesting every 6 months. So every half a year you receive a chunk of stocks based on your salary deduction, with the 15% discount. Every half a year you have a chunk of money from the sale of these stocks that you're going to put into your long term investment portfolio. That is dollar cost averaging. You're investing periodically (every 6 months in this case), same (based on your salary deferral) amount of money, regardless of the stock market behavior. That is precisely what dollar cost averaging is. |
Is it possible to get life insurance as a beneficiary before the person insured dies? | The short answer is "No". There a 2 ways to get cash from a life insurance policy. If the policy has cash value greater than the surrender value, then the difference can be borrowed, but will generally increase premiums in the future. The other method, available on many term policies allows the owner to receive part of the death benefit if the insured has a physician willing to certify that he/she will probably pass away within a 12 month period. Several carriers also offer cash benefits for critical care. |
Multi-user, non-US personal finance and budget software | My wife and I have been ridiculously happy with YNAB. It's not "online," but syncs across our phones & computers using Dropbox. It supposedly supports different locales and currencies, but I have never needed to try that out. |
How can I determine if my rate of return is "good" for the market I am in? | Do you recall where you read that 25% is considered very good? I graduated college in 1984 so that's when my own 'investing life' really began. Of the 29 years, 9 of them showed 25% to be not quite so good. 2013 32.42, 2009 27.11, 2003 28.72, 1998 28.73, 1997 33.67, 1995 38.02, 1991 30.95, 1989 32.00, 1985 32.24. Of course this is only in hindsight, and the returns I list are for the S&P index. Even with these great 9 years, the CAGR (compound annual growth) of the S&P from 1985 till the end of 2013 was 11.32% Most managed funds (i.e. mutual funds) do not match the S&P over time. Much has been written on how an individual investor's best approach is to simply find the lowest cost index and use a mix with bonds (government) to match their risk tolerance. "my long term return is about S&P less .05%" sounds like I'm announcing that I'm doing worse than average. Yes, and proud of it. Most investors (85-95% depending on survey) lag by far more than this, many percent in fact) |
Is real (physical) money traded during online trading? | This is my two cents (pun intended). It was too long for a comment, so I tried to make it more of an answer. I am no expert with investments or Islam: Anything on a server exists 'physically'. It exists on a hard drive, tape drive, and/or a combination thereof. It is stored as data, which on a hard drive are small particles that are electrically charged, where each bit is represented by that electric charge. That data exists physically. It also depends on your definition of physically. This data is stored on a hard drive, which I deem physical, though is transferred via electric pulses often via fiber cable. Don't fall for marketing words like cloud. Data must be stored somewhere, and is often redundant and backed up. To me, money is just paper with an amount attached to it. It tells me nothing about its value in a market. A $1 bill was worth a lot more 3 decades ago (you could buy more goods because it had a higher value) than it is today. Money is simply an indication of the value of a good you traded at the time you traded. At a simplistic level, you could accomplish the same thing with a friend, saying "If you buy lunch today, I'll buy lunch next time". There was no exchange in money between me and you, but there was an exchange in the value of the lunch, if that makes sense. The same thing could have been accomplished by me and you exchanging half the lunch costs in physical money (or credit/debit card or check). Any type of investment can be considered gambling. Though you do get some sort of proof that the investment exists somewhere Investments may go up or down in value at any given time. Perhaps with enough research you can make educated investments, but that just makes it a smaller gamble. Nothing is guaranteed. Currency investment is akin to stock market investment, in that it may go up or down in value, in comparison to other currencies; though it doesn't make you an owner of the money's issuer, generally, it's similar. I find if you keep all your money in U.S. dollars without considering other nations, that's a sort of ignorant way of gambling, you're betting your money will lose value less slowly than if you had it elsewhere or in multiple places. Back on track to your question: [A]m I really buying that currency? You are trading a currency. You are giving one currency and exchanging it for another. I guess you could consider that buying, since you can consider trading currency for a piece of software as buying something. Or is the situation more like playing with the live rates? It depends on your perception of playing with the live rates. Investments to me are long-term commitments with reputable research attached to it that I intend to keep, through highs and lows, unless something triggers me to change my investment elsewhere. If by playing you mean risk, as described above, you will have a level of risk. If by playing you mean not taking it seriously, then do thorough research before investing and don't be trading every few seconds for minor returns, trying to make major returns out of minor returns (my opinion), or doing anything based on a whim. Was that money created out of thin air? I suggest you do more research before starting to trade currency into how markets and trading works. Simplistically, think of a market as a closed system with other markets, such as UK market, French market, etc. Each can interact with each other. The U.S. [or any market] has a set number of dollars in the pool. $100 for example's sake. Each $1 has a certain value associated with it. If for some reason, the country decides to create more paper that is green, says $1, and stamps presidents on them (money), and adds 15 $1 to the pool (making it $115), each one of these dollars' value goes down. This can also happen with goods. This, along with the trading of goods between markets, peoples' attachment of value to goods of the market, and peoples' perception of the market, is what fluctates currency trading, in simple terms. So essentially, no, money is not made out of thin air. Money is a medium for value though values are always changing and money is a static amount. You are attempting to trade values and own the medium that has the most value, if that makes sense. Values of goods are constantly changing. This is a learning process for me as well so I hope this helps answers your questions you seem to have. As stated above, I'm no expert; I'm actually quite new to this, so I probably missed a few things here and there. |
Why buy stock of a company instead of the holding company who has more than 99% of the stocks | In a situation like this, I presume you'd invest in the child company if you thought that the child company would increase in value at a higher rate than the parent. You'd invest in the parent company if you thought the parent company would perform well as a whole, but you did not want to assume the risk of an individual company underneath it. Say the child company is worth 100 million, and the parent company is worth 500 million. You've invested a sum of money in the child company. The child company performs very well, and increases in value by, say, 20 million. As the parent company owns the child, we could say it also increases in value by roughly 20 million. The difference is proportional - Your investment in the child sees a 20% gain in value, whereas your investment in the parent sees a 4% gain in total value, as in this example the parent company, which owns nearly 100% of the child company, is worth 5x more and thus proportionally sees 1/5 the increase in value, due to it being worth more as a whole. Think of it similarly to a mutual fund or ETF that invests in many different stocks on the market. As the market does well, that mutual fund or ETF does well, too. As the mutual fund is made up of many individual stocks, one stock performing very well, say at a 10-20% increase in value, does not raise the value of the ETF or mutual fund by 10-20%. The etf / mutual fund will perform slightly better (Assuming all other components remain equal for this example), but only proportionally to the fraction of it that's made up of the stock that's performing well. |
What is a good way to keep track of your credit card transactions, to reduce likelihood of fraud? | Read your bill, question things that don't look familiar. People who steal credit card numbers don't bother to conceal themselves well. So if you live in Florida, and all of the sudden charges appear in Idaho, you should investigate. Keeping charge slips seems counter-productive to me. I already know that I bought gasoline from the station down the street, a slip of paper whose date may or may not align with the credit card bill is not very useful. The half-life for a stolen card is hours. So you tend to see a bunch of charges appearing quickly. If someone is stealing $20 a week from you over an extended period of time, the theif is probably someone you live or work with, and paper slips won't help you there either. |
Where can I find information on the percentage of volume is contributed by shorts? | You can do a lot of deduction FINRA keeps a "REG-SHO" list created daily that tells what the daily short volume is. March 26th 2014's list: http://regsho.finra.org/FNSQshvol20140326.txt If you are talking about the United States, this answer may be better ;) |
Record retention requirements for individuals in the U.S.? | Indeed the IRS publication references the 3-6 year time span. And no limit for fraud. But. I get a notice that some stock I owned 10 years ago has a settlement pending, and the records of this stock purchase and sale would potentially get me back some money. I get my Social Security statement (the one they stopped sending, but this was before then) and I see the 1995 income shows zero. Both of these were easily resolved with my returns going all the way back, and my brokerage statement as well. For the brokerage, I recently started downloading all statements as PDFs, and storing a copy away from home. Less concerned about the bank statements as I've never had an issue where I'd need them. |
Why do volatility stocks/ETFs (TVIX, VXX, UVXY) trend down in the long-term? | In an attempt to express this complicated fact in lay terms I shall focus exclusively on the most influential factor effecting the seemingly bizarre outcome you have noted, where the price chart of VIX ETFs indicates upwards of a 99% decrease since inception. Other factors include transaction costs and management fees. Some VIX ETFs also provide leveraged returns, describing themselves as "two times VIX" or "three times VIX", etc. Regarding the claim that volatility averages out over time, this is supported by your own chart of the spot VIX index. EDIT It should be noted that (almost) nobody holds VIX ETFs for anything more than a day or two. This will miminise the effects described above. Typical daily volumes of VIX ETFs are in excess of 100% of shares outstanding. In very volatile markets, daily volumes will often exceed 400% of shares outstanding indicating an overwhelming amount of day trading. |
15 year mortgage vs 30 year paid off in 15 | Yes. It does cost the same to pay off a "15 year in 15" year versus a "30 year in 15 year" mortgage. After all, the 30 year amortization period is only used by the lender to calculate the monthly payment he'll expect, while, unbeknownst to him, you are using a 15 year amortization and the same rate to calculate the payments you'll really make. One factor: Can you make extra payments at the level you want, without incurring penalties from the lender? Most mortgages have prepayment limits. After all. he's seeing his nice steady 30 years of cash flow suddenly shortened. He has to go out and find someone else to lend the unexpected payments to... EDIT: Closed mortgages, with pre-payment charges are the norm here in Canada; open mortgages predominate in the US http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/corp/nero/jufa/jufa_018.cfm |
Estimated Tax on Unplanned Capital Gains | In general, you are expected to pay all the money you owe in taxes by the end of the tax year, or you may have to pay a penalty. But you don't have to pay a penalty if: The amount you owe (i.e. total tax due minus what you paid in withholding and estimated taxes) is less than $1000. You paid at least 90% of your total tax bill. You paid at least 100% of last year's tax bill. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc306.html I think point #3 may work for you here. Suppose that last year your total tax liability was, say, $5,000. This year your tax on your regular income would be $5,500, but you have this additional capital gain that brings your total tax to $6,500. If your withholding was $5,000 -- the amount you owed last year -- than you'll owe the difference, $1,500, but you won't have to pay any penalties. If you normally get a refund every year, even a small one, then you should be fine. I'd check the numbers to be sure, of course. If you normally have to pay something every April 15, or if your income and therefore your withholding went down this year for whatever reason, then you should make an estimated payment. The IRS has a page explaining the rules in more detail: https://www.irs.gov/help-resources/tools-faqs/faqs-for-individuals/frequently-asked-tax-questions-answers/estimated-tax/large-gains-lump-sum-distributions-etc/large-gains-lump-sum-distributions-etc |
Why are banks providing credit scores for free? | Why are banks all of a sudden providing people their credit scores for free? Because it is a really good idea. On an ABC Bank website, it has: "Check your credit score for free" button. You click it. Not only will it come up with a credit score, but it could also trigger a marketing workflow. If it is direct mail, email, or a phone call a banker could contact you for help with a debt product. This marketing could also be targeted, say a person with a high score could be targeted for a mortgage. A person with a low or medium score could be targeted for ways and products to improve their score. Now if you run XYZ bank and not do the same, you are losing a competitive advantage to banks that offer this. Not only will your customers be less happy, but you will lose a great marketing opportunities. Face it, the only people that worry about their credit score are people that are in the market to borrow. Which again, is more information. If you have someone that never checks their credit score, or has their credit frozen, then it is wise not to market to them debt products. |
Why doesn’t every company and individual use tax-havens to pay less taxes? | There are tax free bonds in the United States. They are for things like public housing and other urban projects. They are tax free for everyone but only rich people buy them. Why? The issue is that the tax free nature of the bond is included in its yield. So rather than yielding say a 5% return, they figure that the owner is getting 20% off due to not paying taxes. As a result, they only give a 4% return but are as risky as a 5% return investment. Net result, only rich people invest in tax free bonds. "Rich" is defined here to mean people paying a 20% tax on long term investment returns. Or take the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction, which has been in the news recently. Again, it is technically open to everyone. But there is also a standard deduction that is open to everyone. For the typical family, state and local taxes might be 5% of income. So for a family making $100k a year, that's $5k. The same family can take a $13k or so standard deduction instead of itemizing. So why would they take the smaller deduction? As a practical matter, two groups take the SALT deduction. People rich enough to pay more than $13k in state and local taxes and people who also take the mortgage interest deduction. So it helps a lot of people who are rich quite a bit. And it helps a few middle class people some. But if you are lower middle class with a $30k mortgage on a tiny house and paying 4% interest, then that's only $1200 a year. Add in property taxes of $3000 and SALT of $2.8k and that's only $7k. Even if the person gives $3k to charity, the $13k deduction is a lot better and requires less paperwork. Contrast that with someone who has $500k mortgage at 3.6% interest. That's $18k in interest alone. Add in a SALT of $7k and property taxes of $50k, and there's $75k of itemized deductions, much better than $13k. Now a $7k donation to charity is entirely deductible. And even after the mortgage interest deduction goes away, the other $64k remains. |
Is there a way to open a U.S. bank account for my LLC remotely? | Yes, it is possible. Although there may be red tape for a business account, Alliant Credit Union offers completely online signup and their representatives are reachable by email. You'll probably need to send in the LLC articles this way http://www.alliantcu.com/checking-accounts.html (as pointed out by @littleadv this site defaults to "personal checking" accounts, there is a business checking tab which doesn't generate a direct link, some might miss that) And even if there are a ton of regulations that some pencil pushers at larger banks anecdotally cite (without citing), there will be enough banks that don't care. Good Luck |
Why is retirement planning so commonly recommended? | In addition to the choice that saving for retirement affords - itself a great comfort - the miracle of compounding is so great that even if you chose to work in old age, having set aside sums of money that grow will itself help your future. The are so many versions of the "saving money in your 20s" that equals millions of dollars that the numbers aren't worth showing here. Still, any time value of money example will illustrate the truth. That said, time value of money does start with the assumption that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. Inflation, after all, eats away at the value of a dollar. It's just that compounding so outshines inflation that any mature person who is willing to wait, should be convinced. Until you work the examples, however, it's not at all obvious. It took my daughter years to figure out that saving her allowance let her get way better stuff. The same is true of everyone. |
What options do I have at 26 years old, with 1.2 million USD? | Since you mentioned moving, you can buy real state very cheap here in Mexico that will give you income monthly. I will tell you some numbers in case you're interested. Now to investments: you can buy houses for rent, and prices are as follows: Average house $25k which will give about $220 monthly of income. Let's say you buy 20 of these that would be $4400 USD monthly. Now you have a very high standard here and you will never have to work again, and each year the income will increase about 2% and you still have $576k left. |
Cheapest way to "wire" money in an Australian bank account to a person in England, while I'm in Laos? | I've been doing a bunch of Googling and reading since I first posed this question on travel.SE and I've found an article on a site called "thefinancebuff.com" with a very good comparison of costs as of September 2013: Get the Best Exchange Rate: Bank Wire, Xoom, XE Trade, Western Union, USForex, CurrencyFair by Harry Sit It compares the following methods: Their examples are for sending US$10,000 from the US to Canada and converting to Canadian dollars. CurrencyFair worked out the cheapest. |
Debt collector has wrong person and is contacting my employer | Use with moderation. Powerful stuff. Your caller could be an offshore scammer too. Summarizing from http://www.creditinfocenter.com/rebuild/debt-validation.shtml: You can dispute the debt, and demand that the collector give you the name and address of the original creditor and show that it isn't past the statute of limitations. If they can't "validate" the debt by providing that info, in writing, they must drop it until they can do so. You can sue (though generally not for very much) if they don't. You may have to make this request in writing, so it has a paper trail. A valid verification respond must include: If they don't respond within 30 days, they are in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FDCPA section 809b), and you can send registered mail threatening them with a lawsuit if they don't immediately drop it and remove it from your credit report. They should respond to that within two weeks, and if they don't have darned good evidence will probably cave. If they can prove you do owe the money ... Well, you can hope they aren't licensed to collect in your state; if they aren't you can try to challenge them on that basis. Unlikely to work. If they agree, remember to send a copy of the letter to the credit reporting agencies to make sure it's taken off your record. If this isn't enough to resolve it, you'll probably need to bring suit. That's another long list of steps; I'm going to refer you to the linked site rather than summarize them here since at that point you should get a lawyer involved to make sure it's done promptly. |
Question about being a resident | One thing to consider besides what rules Oregon has, is what rules your old state have. Of course the lack of income tax in Nevada means that most people are trying to convince their new state they are still a resident of Nevada. You are a full-year Oregon resident if you live in Oregon all year. You are also a full-year Oregon resident, even if you live outside Oregon, if all of the following are true: Part-year resident: You are a part-year resident if you moved into or out of Oregon during the tax year. The requirement for financial life means that you should: change all your Nevada banks to Oregon banks; Change all your mail to Oregon; Sell any property or end any leases you have in Nevada. Or course you need to research the rules for in state college tuition, death with dignity if any apply to you. In border areas you must be careful to establish residency for children to attend public schools. Some families try to cheat to get their children into a better school. |
Using stable short-term, tax-free municipal bond funds to beat the bank? | Banks' savings interest is ridiculous, has always been, compared to other investment options. But there's a reason for that: its safe. You will get your money back, and the interest on it, as long as you're within the FDIC insurance limits. If you want to get more returns - you've got to take more risks. For example, that a locality you're borrowing money to will default. Has happened before, a whole county defaulted. But if you understand the risks - your calculations are correct. |
Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do? | Go to the police. This is fraud and is illegal. Sure, this will hurt your friend but better now then when he starts abusing of his position to fraud even more people... Original comment by Bakuriu sorry for not giving credit |
Would it make sense to buy a rental property as an LLC and not in my own name? | Don't worry about the spam mail. If you get a loan, it will be based on your personal credit. I don't know if you can get a real estate loan for your LLC, even if it owns many properties. Typically you get the loan in your own name, then transfer title to the LLC. The LLC does offer good liability protection. The downside is that it can be expensive (at least in California) and requires some work. You may have to pay an annual tax, and file (multiple) tax returns. It may not be worth it for one property. But it definitely a good idea if it is not too expensive. |
Consequences of buying/selling a large number of shares for a low volume stock? | If you are the only one who puts in a large market buy order, then it would definitely push the price up. How much up would depend on how many would be willing to sell at what price point. It would also be possible that your trade will not get executed as there are no sellers. The same would be true if you put in a large sell order, with no buyers. The price would go down or trade not get executed as there aren't enough buyers. |
What type of pension should I get? | If your new employer has a Final Salary or defined benefit type pension scheme, join it. DB plans are attractive because they are often less a risk for the employee. If your employer has a defined contribution scheme and contributes to it, join it and contribute at least up to the maximum amount that they will match – otherwise you are leaving free money on the table. You also probably need to sit down with an independent adviser for what to do with your existing pension (is it a DC or DB) and if you want to have a pension outside of your employer. |
How to choose a company for an IRA? | I use TIAA-Cref for my 403(b) and Fidelity for my solo 401(k) and IRAs. I have previously used Vanguard and have also used other discount brokers for my IRA. All of these companies will charge you nothing for an IRA, so there's really no point in comparing cost in that respect. They are all the "cheapest" in this respect. Each one will allow you to purchase their mutual funds and those of their partners for free. They will charge you some kind of fee to invest in mutual funds of their competitors (like $35 or something). So the real question is this: which of these institutions offers the best mutual and index funds. While they are not the worst out there, you will find that TIAA-Cref are dominated by both Vanguard and Fidelity. The latter two offer far more and larger funds and their funds will always have lower expense ratios than their TIAA-Cref equivalent. If I could take my money out of TIAA-Cref and put it in Fidelity, I'd do so right now. BTW, you may or may not want to buy individual stocks or ETFs in your account. Vanguard will let you trade their ETFs for free, and they have lots. For other ETFs and stocks you will pay $7 or so (depends on your account size). Fidelity will give you free trades in the many iShares ETFs and charge you $5 for other trades. TIAA-Cref will not give you any free ETFs and will charge you $8 per trade. Each of these will give you investment advice for free, but that's about what it's worth as well. The quality of the advice will depend on who picks up the phone, not which institution you use. I would not make a decision based on this. |
Why does Google Finance show the NASDAQ Composite way up but Yahoo! Finance shows it slightly down? | First - Google's snapshot - Then - Yahoo - I took these snapshots because they will not exist on line after the market opens, and without this context, your question won't make sense. With the two snapshots you can see, Yahoo shows the after hours trades and not just the official market close for the day. The amount it's down is exactly tracked from the close shown on Google. Now you know. |
Free "Rich Dad" education, with "free gift": Is it legitimate, or is it a sales ploy? | Robert Kiyosaki's is basically a get-rich quick author. But to answer your question: It is a sales pitch in disguise. See Marketplace's report on a Kiyosaki seminar, which reveals that the free work shop is a sales pitch for a 3-day work shop which costs several hundred dollars. And the 3-day workshop is a sales pitch for "advanced" training which can cost as much as $45,000 (presumably in Canadian dollars, as the report was done in Canada). He does touch on some basic sound principles, but it's mixed with a lot of really bad (and in some cases illegal) advice. You'll do much better to invest your time and money in reading materials that aren't advertised via infomercials. Kiyosaki may well be rich, but it's from selling his Rich Dad-branded material, not from investing in real estate, or any other investment portfolio See also John T. Reed's guru rating, and his review of Kiyosaki's book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. |
Why is auto insurance ridiculously overpriced for those who drive few miles? | because it cost the insurer more, obviously. while this sounds snarky, it's important to realize that actual insurance companies set their insurance rates based on actual historical costs. for some reason people who report low miles have cost the company more dollars per reported mile than people who report high miles. in that sense, insurance is not overpriced. if it were truly overpriced, then an insurer would specialize in such insurance and make a killing on the free market. the more interesting questions is why do drivers who claim to travel very few miles cost the insurance companies so much per mile? that question has a host of possible answers and it's difficult to say which is the largest cost. here are just a few: |
Free brokerage vs paid - pros and cons | Emotion aside, you can calculate the cost of the funds you have tied up at the bank. If I can earn 5% in a CD, my "free" checking with minimum $5000 balance really costs me $250/yr. You have money tied up, I understand, but where would you place it otherwise, and at what return? The subject of frequent trading even at zero cost is worth addressing, but not the real subject of your question. So, I'll leave it for elsewhere. |
How to rebalance a portfolio without moving money into losing investments | Also, almost by definition rebalancing involves making more trades than you would have otherwise; wouldn't the additional trading fees you incurred in doing so reduce the benefits of this strategy? You forgot to mention taxes. Rebalancing does or rather can incur costs. One way to minimize the costs is to use the parts of the portfolio that have essentially zero cost of moving. These generally are the funds in your retirement accounts. In the United States they can be in IRAs or 401Ks; they can be regular or Roth. Selling winners withing the structure of the plan doesn't trigger capital gains taxes, and many have funds within them that have zero loads. Another way to reduce trading fees is to only rebalance once a year or once every two years; or by setting a limit on how far out of balance. For example don't rebalance at 61/39 to get back to 60/40 even if it has been two years. Given that the ratio of investments is often rather arbitrary to begin with, how do I know whether I'm selling high and buying low or just obstinately sticking with a losing asset ratio? The ratio used in an example or in an article may be arbitrary, but your desired ratio isn't arbitrary. You selected the ratio of your investments based on several criteria: your age, your time horizon, your goals for the money, how comfortable you are with risk. As these change during your investing career those ratios would also morph. But they aren't arbitrary. These decisions to rebalance are separate from the ones to sell a particular investment. You could sell Computer Company X because of how it is performing, and buy stock in Technology Company Y because you think it has a better chance of growing. That transaction would not be a re-balancing. Selling part of your stock in Domestic Company A to buy stock in international Company B would be part of a re-balancing. |
Usage of a sell stop order | It depends to some extent on how you interpret the situation, so I think this is the general idea. Say you purchase one share at $50, and soon after, the price moves up, say, to $55. You now have an unrealized profit of $5. Now, you can either sell and realize that profit, or hold on to the position, expecting a further price appreciation. In either case, you will consider the price change from this traded price, which is $55, and not the price you actually bought at. Hence, if the price fell to $52 in the next trade, you have a loss of $3 on your previous profit of $5. This (even though your net P&L is calculated from the initial purchase price of $50), allows you to think in terms of your positions at the latest known prices. This is similar to a Markov process, in the sense that it doesn't matter which route the stock price (and your position's P&L) took to get to the current point; your decision should be based on the current/latest price level. |
Can I cash a cashier's check at any bank? | Cashiers check is as good as cash. I use them all the time as banks don't carry over 2-3k anymore. I can bring the cashiers check anywhere and thus cash it for u without an account. It's basically a piece of paper that says these funds are set aside from the issuers account just for and only for the check. That's why it's accepted anywhere. It's a gurantee from one bank to another that the funds are there waiting to be transferred. The whole point of the check is so the funds are available immediately. The bank will call the issuing bank verify the Check is real and than cash it immediately. You don't pay a fee to buy the cashiers check just to wait for it to clear like a normal free check. Its immediate and just as good as cash. I use them weekly/monthly for amounts from 5k up to over 100k. |
Archive Financial Records by Account or by Year | First, I try to keep electronic records (with appropriate backups) whenever it seems feasible: utility bills, credit card statements, bank statements, etc. This greatly cuts down on storage space, and are kept forever. For hard copy records, it depends on the transaction. I try to balance filing time and recover time, by how likely it is that I will need to access a record in the future. I'm much less likely to need the receipt for this mornings coffee at Starbucks than I am to need the utility bill for my rental property (100%, come tax time). For instance, by default I file my credit card receipts, that don't get filed elsewhere, by year with all cards kept together, and cull them after 5-7 years. I keep all of the credit card receipts, just because it is less effort for me than making a decision about what to keep and what to discard. I put them in an accordion file by month of charge, and keep two, for the current year and previous years. At the beginning of each year, I get rid of the receipts in the oldest file and reuse it. Anything that needs to be kept longer that a couple of years gets filed separately. Certain records are kept together. For example, car repair/maintenance receipts are filed by vehicle and kept for the life of the vehicle (could be useful when its sold, to provide the repair history). All receipts for the rental property are kept together, organized by account. I'll keep these until the property is sold. All tax related receipts that don't have a specific file are kept together, by year, along with the tax return. |
Is there a term for the risk of investing in an asset with a positive but inferior return? | In my opinion the risk is about the lost opportunity cost. You can find a lot of articles about it on the net. In big shortcut opportunity cost takes place each time you have to choose between two or more options and the tradeoff effect have its price. It is defined as value of best alternative solution. Quite good definition from wikipedia is as follows: In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative forgone, in a situation in which a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives given limited resources. Assuming the best choice is made, it is the "cost" incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would be had by taking the second best choice available Note that opportunity cost is not the sum of the available alternatives when those alternatives are, in turn, mutually exclusive to each other – it is the value of the next best use. As you probalby think, this situation often happens in financial world, where investors always seek best from their point of view way to invest capital. |
Calculate Estimated Tax on Hobby Business LLC | You are on the right track, for tax purposes its all ordinary income at the end of 2016. If the free lance "employer" will withhold fed,state and local tax, then that takes care of your estimated tax. If they can't or won't, you will need to make those estimates and make payments quarterly for the fed and state tax at your projected tax liability. Or, you can bump up withholding by your day job employer and cover your expected tax liability at year end without making estimated tax payments. |
What taxes are assessed on distributions of an inherited IRA? | Distributions from an inherited IRA will be taxed as ordinary income and there are required minimum distributions for the inherited account. Assuming you were 55 at the time of your mother's death, your life expectancy according to the IRS is 29.6 years. Your required yearly distributions on $200,000 would be roughly $6800. For each year that you didn't withdraw that, you would owe a 50% penalty of the distribution amount (~$3400). That's probably better than the tax hit you would take if you pulled it all in as income in a 5 year window (ie. all right now since you're at the end of the window). |
Why can Robin Hood offer trading without commissions? | They mostly make money off of the spread between your order and the spread of the buy and sell currently in the market. As others have previously explained, their buy/sell spreads are a little lacklustre. |
How does 1099 work with my own company | Can I work on 1099 from my own company instead of on W2? The reason is on W2 I can't deduct my commute, Health Insurance and some other expenses while on 1099 I think I can able do that. Since I am going to client place to work not at my own office, I am not sure whether I should able to do that or not. If you have LLC, unless you elected to tax it as a corporation, you need neither 1099 nor W2. For tax purposes the LLC is disregarded. So it is, from tax perspective, a sole proprietorship (or partnership, if multiple members). Being a W2 employee of your own LLC is a bad idea. For all these above expenses, which can I use company's debit/credit card or I need to use only my personal debit/credit card? It would be better to always use a business account for business purposes. Doesn't matter much for tax per se, but will make your life easier in case of an audit or a legal dispute (limited liability protection may depend on it). If I work on 1099, I guess I need to file some reasonable taxes on quarterly basis instead of filing at year end. If so, how do I pay my tax on quarterly basis to IRS? I mean which forms should I file and how to pay tax? Unless you're a W2 employee, you need to do quarterly estimate payments using form 1040-ES. If you are a W2 employee (even for a different job, and even if it is not you, but your spouse with whom you're filing jointly) - you can adjust your/spouse's withholding using form W4 to cover the additional tax liability. This is, IMHO, a better way than paying estimates. There are numerous questions on this, search the site or ask another one for details. |
Quarterly dividends to monthly dividends | Technically you should take the quarterly dividend yield as a fraction, add one, take the cube root, and subtract one (and then multiple by the stock price, if you want a dollar amount per share rather than a rate). This is to account for the fact that you could have re-invested the monthly dividends and earned dividends on that reinvestment. However, the difference between this and just dividing by three is going to be negligible over the range of dividend rates that are realistically paid out by ordinary stocks. |
Sales Tax: Rounded Then Totaled or Totaled Then Rounded? | First of all to answer the basic question "Is one method correct? Might it depend on local laws?" Yes it does depend on local laws. Because ultimately the business will have to file forms with the sate/county/city. These forms are going to ask for the total sales based on the tax category (tax free, x%, y%). Each transaction could have parts that fall into each category. The local taxing authority decides what goes into each category. The local taxing authority also determines how often the business needs to submit the taxes. They can even decide to base the rates used by where the customer lives. A business is not required to charge directly for sales tax. That is why frequently at sporting events, the price on the menu notes that all sales taxes are included. I suppose not directly charging a sales tax makes the monthly calculation harder, but the state will still get their money. Rounding up at the end of the entire transaction is enough to make sure they collect enough taxes, so they don't have to dip into their profits. |
Do individual stocks have futures trading | There's a market for single stock futures. The market (however small) is OneChicago, "an Equity Finance Exchange offering security futures products." I don't know how easy access is for retail investors. |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | Sometimes it's not entirely about take-home pay. A pay raise can affect other things like: These things need to be considered since they also affect quality of life. |
How do you declare an interest free loan? | I am neither a lawyer nor a tax accountant, and if you're dealing with serious money I suggest you consult a professional. But my understanding is: If you make a loan at zero interest or at below-market rates, the IRS will consider the difference between the interest that you do charge and the market rate to be a gift. That is, if someone could get a loan from a bank and he'd pay $1000 in interest for the year, but instead you loan him the money as a friend interest free, than as far as the IRS is concerned you have given him a $1000 gift, and you could potentially have to pay gift tax. Or they might "impute" the interest to you and tax you on $1000 of additional income. If you have no agreement on repayment terms, if it's all, "Hey Joe, just pay me back when you can", then the IRS is likely to consider the entire "loan" to be a gift. There's an annual exclusion on gifts -- I think it's now $13,000 -- so if you loan your buddy fifty bucks to tide him over until next pay day, the IRS isn't going to get involved in that. They're worried about more serious money. And yes, the IRS does "police loan rates". The IRS examines exact numbers for all sorts of things. If, say, you go on a 100-mile overnight business trip, and the company gives you $10,000 for travel expenses, the IRS is likely to say that this is not a tax-deductible travel expense at all but a sham to hide part of your salary from taxes. Or if you donate a pair of old socks to charity and declare a $500 charitable contribution deduction, the IRS will say that that is not a realistic value for a pair of old socks and disallow the deduction. Etc. A small discrepancy from market rates can be justified for any number of reasons. If the book value of a used car is $5000 and you sell it to your neighbor for $4900, the IRS is unlikely to question it, there are any number of legitimate business reasons why you had to give a discount to make the sale. But if you sell it to him for $50, they may declare that this is not a sale but a gift. Etc. |
How to search efficiently for financial institutions, credit cards, etc (At least in Canada)? | Searching for Banks or Credit Unions based on their high interest accounts is likely to be a giant waste of your time. The highest you might find is 1.5% not clearing inflation. For anything less than 100k youre better off putting it in a money market fund until you know what you want to do with it, which you can find anywhere. |
How does a bank make money on an interest free secured loan? | In addition to all the points made in other answers, in some jurisdictions (including the UK where I live) the consumer credit laws require the lender to allow the borrower to pay off the loan at any time. If the lender charges interest and the borrower pays off the loan early then the lender loses the interest that would have been paid during the rest of the loan period. However if the actual interest is baked into the sale price of an item and the loan to pay for it is nominally "0%" then the borrower still pays all the interest even if they pay off the loan immediately. If you think this game is being played then you can ask for a "cash discount" (or similar wording: I once had problems with a car salesman who thought I meant a suitcase full of used £20s), meaning you want to avoid paying the interest as you are not taking a loan. |
What is the formula for determining estimated stock price when I only have an earning per share number? | See this link...I was also looking an answer to the same questions. This site explains with an example http://www.independent-stock-investing.com/PE-Ratio.html |
Can a trade happen "in between" the bid and ask price? | As far as i understand the big companies on the stock markets have automated processes that sit VERY close to the stock feeds and continually processes these with the intention of identifying an opportunity to take multiple small lots and buy/sell them as a big lot or vice/versa and do this before a buy or sell completes, thus enabling them to intercept the trade and make a small profit on the delta. With enough of these small gains on enough shares they make big profits and with near zero chance of losing. |
Trader Fostering Program on Futures Day Trading | I am a bit at a loss as to how you can read the same book, that inspired Warren Buffet, and take away that trading 600 contracts per month is a way to prosperity. As a fellow engineer I can say with assurance this speculation scheme is doomed to failure. Crossing out the word gamble was a mistake. Instead you should focus on two things. The first is your core business, which is signal processing. Work and strive to be the best you can. Seek out opportunities to increase your income while keeping your costs low. As an engineer you have an opportunity to earn an above average salary with very low costs. Second would be to warehouse some of those earning and let others who are good at other things work for you. You may want to read the Jack Bogle books and seek an asset allocation model. I tend to be more aggressive then he would suggest, but that is a matter of preference. You don't really have the time, when you focus on your core business, to manage 6 trades a month let alone 600. Put your contributions on auto pilot and a surprisingly short time you will have a pile of cash. |
Free service for automatic email stock alert when target price is met? | Sure, Yahoo Finance does this for FREE. |
Taxes due for hobbyist Group Buy | You do actually have some profits (whatever is left from donations). The way it goes is that you report everything on your Schedule C. You will report this: Your gross profits will then flow to Net Profit (line 31) since you had no other expenses (unless you had some other expenses, like paypal fees, which will appear in the relevant category in part II), and from line 31 it will go to your 1040 for the final tax calculation. |
Why do put option prices go higher when the underlying stock tanks (drops)? | There are two components of option valuation, the value that's "in the money" and the "time value." In the case of the $395 put, that option was already in the money and it will move less than the stock price by a bit as there will still be some time value there. $22.52 is intrinsic value (the right word for 'in the money') and the rest is time. The $365 strike is still out of the money, but as jldugger implied, the chance of it going through that strike is better as it's $6.66 closer. Looking at the options chain gives you a better perspective on this. If Apple went up $20 Monday, and down $20 Tuesday, these prices would be higher as implied volatility would also go higher. Now, I'd hardly call a drop of under 2% "tanking" but on the otherhand, I'd not call the 25% jump in the option price skyrocketing. Options do this all the time. Curious what prompted the question, are you interested in trading options? This stock in particular? |
Should retirement fund be equal to amount of money needed for financial independence? | I want to know ideally how much should a person save for retirement funds? A person should save enough such that your total retirement resources will equal the amount you personally need for a comfortable retirement at the point in time when the person desires to retire. If you want to retire at 40, you may need to save quite a lot each year. If you want to retire at 70, you may need to save less each year. If you will have a pension, you may wish to save somewhat less than someone who won't have a pension. The same is true for Social Security (or your local equivalent). I am getting a feeling retirement funds is equal to financial independence because one can live without needing to borrow money from anyone. Sort of, but it depends on your goals. Some who are financially independent never choose to retire, but choose jobs without regard to financial need. |
How can I deal with a spouse who compulsively spends? | Based on the conversations in the comments, I believe a pragmatic solution would be the best immediate course of action, while still working on the long term addiction issues. The first step is to get your husband to agree to give you all of his credit cards and let you manage the money for a set period of time, say 3 months, to see how it goes. (In my experience people are more likely to agree to being uncomfortable for a finite period of time, rather than indefinitely.) Step 2 is to provide him a means for making purchases on his own, but with a limited budget. Here are some examples: Perhaps a combination of the above options would work best. Another thing to consider is to set up alerts with your bank so that you are notified of certain purchases (or all) that are made by your husband. This varies by bank, but nowadays most will allow you to receive text/email immediately when the purchase happens, and can be set to certain amounts or categories. There is a definite psychological difference between, "If I buy this, my spouse will find out at the end of the month and berate me." and "If I buy this, my spouse is going to run in here in 30 seconds and berate me." The latter might actually be a deterrent on its own, and you may likely have the opportunity to undo the purchase if you wish to. As a side note, it's important to realize that the above suggestions are still allowing for some limited amount of enabling and temptation to occur. If the addiction is such that it is hazardous to one's health (for example drugs or alcohol addiction), then I don't believe this would be the best course of action. These suggestions are based on my impression that the biggest concern at the moment is financial, and I believe these ideas help to mitigate that. Good luck. |
What do these numbers mean? (futures) | The other answer covers the mechanics of how to buy/sell a future contract. You seem however to be under the impression that you can buy the contract at 1,581.90 today and sell at 1,588.85 on expiry date if the index does not move. This is true but there are two important caveats: In other words, it is not the case that your chance of making money by buying that contract is more than 50%... |
When is the best time to put a large amount of assets in the stock market? | The one thing we know for certain is that holding large amounts of cash isn't ideal - inflation will eat away at your wealth. It's understandable that you're hesitant to put all your wealth in common stock. The S&P 500's price/earnings is 18.7 right now - a little high by historical standards. But consider that the S&P 500 has given a CAGR of approximately 10% (not inflation-adjusted) since 1970. If you don't time the market correctly, you could miss out on considerable gains. So it's probably best to invest at least a portion of your wealth in common stocks, and just accept the risk of short-term losses. You'll likely come out ahead in the long run, compared to an investor who tries to time the market and ends up holding cash positions for too long. If you really think US stocks are overpriced, you could look at other markets, but you'll find similar P/Es in Europe and Japan. You could try an emerging market fund like VEMAX if you have the risk tolerance. Let's say you're not convinced, and don't want to invest heavily in stocks right now. In the current market, safe cash alternatives like Treasury bills offer very low yields - not enough to offset inflation tax. So I would invest in a diversified portfolio of long-term bonds, real estate, maybe precious metals, and whatever amount of stock you're comfortable with. |
How to calculate new price for bond if yield increases | I am currently trying out some variations (moving terms around ...) of the formula for the present value of money The relationship between yield and price is much simpler than that. If you pay £1015 for a bond and its current yield is 4.69%, that means you will receive in income each year: 4.69% * £1015 = £47.60 The income from the bond is defined by its coupon rate and its face value, not the market value. So that bond will continue to pay £47.60 each year, regardless of the market price. The market price will go up or down according to the market as a whole, and the credit rating of the issuer. If the issuer is likely to default, the market price goes down and the yield goes up. If similar companies start offering bonds with higher yields, the market price goes down to make the bond competitive in the market, again raising yield. So if the yield goes up to 4.87%, what is the price such that 4.87% of that price is £47.60? £47.60 / 4.87% = £977.48 Another way to think of it: if the yield goes up from 4.69% to 4.87%, then yield has increased by a factor of: 4.87% / 4.69% = 1.0384 Consequently, market price must decrease by the same factor: £1015 / 1.0384 = £977.48 |
High-risk investing is better for the young? Why? | Would my high-risk investment choices, aside from the main question, have any bearing on the road I want to go down and test (managing mutual/hedge funds)? Absolutely! First of all, understand that hedge fund managers are managing other people's money. Those people desire a certain risk profile and expected return, so your hedge fund will need to meet those expectations. Plus, hedge fund managers don't typically get fixed fees alone - they also get a percentage of any gains the fund makes; so managers have a vested interest in making sure that hedge funds perform well. |
Is an interest-only mortgage a bad idea? | If you took a fixed loan, but paid it off at the accelerated rate, you would ultimately pay less total dollars in interest. So compare the actual amount paid in interest over the course of the loan rather than the interest rate itself. That should be your answer. Also, plan on failing in your plan to pay it off and see how that will affect you. |
I'm only spending roughly half of what I earn; should I spend more? | Your Money or Your Life is a great book on this topic. |
Is there any reason not to buy points when re-financing with intent not to sell for a while? | There is the opportunity cost. Let's say it cost you $1000 to buy 0.25% discount. Over N number of years that saves you let's say $2000 thus your profit is $1000. What if you took that $1000 and invested it? Would you have more than $2000 after N number of years? Obviously answering this question is not easy but you can make some educated guesses. For example, you can compare the return you'll likely get from investing in CD or treasury bond. A bit more risky is to invest in the stock market but an index fund should be fairly safe and you can easily find the average return over 5 - 10 year period. For example, if your loan is $200,000 at 0.25% per year you'll get $500 in savings. Over 10 years that's $5000 - $1000 to buy the point, you end up with $4000. Using the calculator on this site, I calculated that if you invested in the Dow Jones industrial average between 2007 and 2017 you total return would have been 111% (assuming dividends are reinvested) or you would've had a total of $2110. I'm not sure how accurate those numbers are but it seems likely that buying points is a pretty good investment if you stay in the house for 10 years or more. |
How are exchange rates decided for each country? | Rates are arrived at by the cumulative buying and selling on the foreign exchange market, much the same way that stock prices are arrived at. If there are more people wanting to buy dollars with euros, EUR/USD goes down. If more people want to buy euros with dollars, then EUR/USD goes up. The initial rate was about $1.18 per euro when it began trading on January 1st, 1999. It replaced the European Currency Unit at that time, which was a weighted basket of currencies of (more or less) the participating countries. You're correct about the printing press in the US and other countries. The exchange rates do reflect in part how much of a relative workout those printing presses get. |
Will a credit card issuer cancel an account if it never incurs interest? | Some years ago a call center operator told me a bit more than they probably should have. They like to see a lot of money go through the card, but very little staying on the card. Yes, they make money on the interest but one card defaulting blows away the profit on a lot of other cards. The 3% take from the merchants is both reliable and up-front, not 6 months down the line when (and if) you pay the interest. So if you want to make your credit card company happy, pay your bills in full every month. I have credit far beyond my actual means because I run work expenses on my personal card, I was told they didn't care (and had already guessed) that it wasn't my money. The point was I was handling things in a way they liked. Not quite at Palladium status, but cards with $200 annual fees are mine for the asking, and I haven't paid interest since the early 1990's. |
What is the equation for an inflation adjusted annuity held in perpetuity? | The question lacks specificity, i.e. when does the initial investment occur, now or one period from now? If now then it is a perpetuity due. I will consider under 2 scenarios, A and B, relating to the size of the initial investment. A. Assuming that the initial investment (C_0) occurs now and each payment thereafter has the relationship (1+g) with this investment then the relevant base equation is that for the present value of a growing perpetuity due, expressed in terms of C_0, i.e. PVGPD= [C_0*(1+g)*(1+i)]/(i-g). Now, to suit the question asked, we can see that i=fixed rate of return (f) and g = expected inflation rate (e) such that we can rewrite the equation as PVGPD = [C_0*(1+e)*(1+i)]/(i-e]. We know that f = is a fixed nominal rate and must be adjusted for e to calculate the real rate (r) according to the equation f=(1+r)*(1+e)-1. Therefore PVGPD = [C_0*(1+e)(1+(1+r)(1+e)-1)]/((1+r)*(1+e)-1-e] Tidying up PVGPD = {C_0*(1+r)(1+e)^2}/[r(1+e)] PVGPD = [C_0*(1+r)*(1+e)]/r B. Assuming that the initial investment (X) is not equal to each subsequent perpetual payment (C_1) then the relevant base equation is that for the the initial investment plus the present value of a growing perpetuity, i.e. PVGP= X + [C_1/(i-g)] Rewriting PVGP = X + [C_1/(f-e)] Substituting PVGPD = X + {C_1/[(1+r)*(1+e)-1-e]} Tidying up PVGPD = X + C_1/[r*(1+e)] |
How do you write a check with cents? | In the US, Section 3.114 of the Uniform Commercial Code sets the rules for how any confusion in checks or other business transactions is handled: "If an instrument contains contradictory terms, typewritten terms prevail over printed terms, handwritten terms prevail over both, and words prevail over numbers." If there was any ambiguity in the way you wrote out the amount, the institution will compare the two fields (the written words and the courtesy box (digits)) to see if the ambiguity can be resolved. The reality is that the busy tellers and ATM operators typically are going to look at the numeric digits first. So even if they happen to notice the traditional "and..." missing, it seems highly unlikely that such an omission would cause enough ambiguity between these the two fields to reject the payment. Common sense dictates here. I wouldn't worry about it. |
Magazine subscription leads to unauthorized recurring payment | You have a subscription that costs $25 They have the capabilities to get that $25 from the card on file if you had stopped paying for it, you re-upping the cost of the subscription was more of a courtesy. They would have considered pulling the $25 themselves or it may have gone to collections (or they could courteously ask if you wanted to resubscribe, what a concept) The credit card processing agreements (with the credit card companies) and the FTC would handle such business practices, but "illegal" wouldn't be the word I would use. The FTC or Congress may have mandated that an easy "opt-out" number be associated with that kind of business practice, and left it at that. |
Is it a good practice to keep salary account and savings account separate? | This seems like a risky setup. All it takes is one missed or delayed transfer for you to overdraw your "savings". There is a benefit to keeping your regular expenses and savings separate, and I can see some benefits in having multiple checking accounts depending on how you organize your finances, but I don't see a benefit to having a paycheck go to one account and all regular spending (and "savings") come from another. It requires some regular maintenance to transfer money over to use for regular spending. I suppose if you have a checking account that earns interest, but requires direct deposits, and a savings account that earns slightly higher interest you could squeeze out a bit, but it's probably not worth the effort these days unless you have a LOT of money going in and out. Also, it should not be easy to tap into savings, but your day-to-day spending should be very accessible. All those factors suggest (to me) that your paycheck should go into your regular spending account, and keep your savings separate. |
Why do I see multiple trades of very small quantities? | Probing for hidden limit orders usually involves sending the orders and then cancelling them before they get filled if they don't get filled. With trades actually going through multiple times for small amounts it looks more like a VWAP strategy where the trader is feeding small volumes into the market as part of a larger trade trying to minimize average cost. It could be probing but without seeing the orders and any cancels it would be difficult to tell. edit: I just had another thought; it could possibly be a market maker unwinding a bad position caused by other trading. Sometimes they drip trades into the market to prevent themselves from hitting big orders etc. that might move back against them. This is probably not right but is just another thought. source: I work for an organization that provides monitoring for these things to many large trading organizations. |
Total price of (AAPL option strike price + option cost) decreases with strike price. Why? | On July 20, when you posted this question, AAPL was trading almost at 115. The market charges an extra premium for buying an option that is in the money (or on the money like this case) over one that is out of the money. In order for the 130 Call to be worth something the market has to go up 15 points. Otherwise you lose 100% of your premium. On the other hand with the 115 every point that the market goes up means that you recover some of that premium. It is much more likely that you recover part of your premium with the 115 than with the 130. With the higher probability of losing part of the premium, the sellers are going to be reluctant to write the option unless they receive larger compensation. |
Any experience with maxing out 401(k)? | Don't forget to also build up an emergency fund - retirement saving is important, but you don't want to be caught in a situation where you need money for an emergency (lose your job, get hit by a bus, etc.) and it's all locked away in your 401(k). |
How to pay with cash when car shopping? | When you pay cash for a car, you don't always necessarily need to pay cash. You just aren't using credit or a loan is all. A few options you have are: Obviously no dealer expects anyone to just have the cash laying around for a car worth a few thousand dollars, nor would you bother going to your bank or credit union for the cash. You can simply get a cashier's check made out for the amount. Note that dealers may not accept personal checks as they may bounce. After negotiations at the dealer, you would explain you're paying cash, likely pay a deposit (depending on the price of the car, but $500 would probably be enough. Again, the deposit can be a check or bank deposit), and then come back later on with a cashier's check, or deposit into a bank account. You would be able to do this later that day or within a few days, but since you've purchased a new car you would probably want to return ASAP! |
How Does A Special Memorandum Account Work | Here is another explanation of an SMA. SMA refers to the Special Memorandum Account which represents neither equity nor cash but rather a line of credit created when the market value of securities in a Reg. T margin account increase in value. For example, assume the market value of securities purchased at a cost of $10,000 on margin (at 50%) increase in value to $12,000. This $2,000 increase in market value would create SMA of $1,000, which provides the account holder the ability to either: 1) buy additional securities valued at $2,000 (assuming a 50% margin rate) without depositing up additional funds; or 2) withdraw $2,000 in cash, which may be financed by increasing the debit balance if the account holds no cash. It should be noted that while an increase in market value over original cost creates SMA, a subsequent decline in market value has no effect on SMA. SMA will only decline if used to purchase securities or withdraw cash and the only restriction with respect to its use is that the additional purchases or withdrawals do not bring the account below the maintenance margin requirement. SMA will also increase on a dollar for dollar basis in the event of cash deposits or dividends. More details at http://ibkb.interactivebrokers.com/article/66 |
At what percentage drop should you buy to average down | Only average down super blue chips with a long history or better still, ETFs or index type funds. I do it with income producing funds as I'm a retiree. Other people may have much shorter horizins. |
What is the contribution limit for a SEP-IRA? | Both are saying essentially the same thing. The Forbes articles says "as much as 20% [...] up to a maximum of $50,000". This means the same as what the IRS page when it says the lesser of a percentage of your income or a total of $53,000. In other words, the $53k is a cap: you can contribute a percentage of your earnings, but you can never contribute more than $53k, even if you make so much money that 20% of your earnings would be more than that. (The difference between 20% and 25% in the two sources appears to reflect a difference in contribution limits depending on whether you are making contributions for employees, or for yourself as a self-employed individual; see Publication 560. The difference between $50k and $53k is due to the two pages being written in different years; the limits increase each year.) |
What happens to 401(k) money that isn't used by the time the account holder dies? | A 401k plan will ask you to name a beneficiary who will receive the funds if you don't withdraw them all before death. Usually, a primary beneficiary and a secondary beneficiary is requested. If you don't specify a beneficiary, your estate is the beneficiary by default. Note that the name supplied to the 401k plan is who will get the money, and you cannot change this by bequeathing the money in your will. For example, if you neglected to change the beneficiary upon divorce, it is useless to say in your will that the money in the 401k plan goes to your new wife; the 401k plan will give it to your ex-wife who still remains the beneficiary of your 401k Money in a 401k plan is what is called income with respect to a decedent (IRD) on which income tax is levied, and it is also is part of your estate and thus liable to be subject to estate tax. The latter is true even if the 401k plan assets are not mentioned anywhere in your will, and even if the assets got sent to your ex-wife which is not what you wanted to have happen. There are various estate tax exceptions for spouse beneficiaries (no estate tax due now, but will be charged when the spouse passes away). With regard to income tax, the beneficiaries of a 401k plan (similarly IRAs, 403b plans etc) generally get to take the whole amount and pay the income tax themselves. Edit in response to littleadv's comments: Each 401k plan is different, and some plans, especially the smaller ones, may prefer to distribute the 401k assets as a lump sum rather than allow the beneficiaries to withdraw the money over several years (and pay income tax on the amount withdrawn each year). This is because there are far too many rules and regulations to trip over when making withdrawals over several years. The lump sum distribution can be transferred into a newly established Inherited IRA (see the Nolo article linked to in @littleadv's answer for some details and some pitfalls to avoid) and the income tax is thus deferred until withdrawals occur. Spouse beneficiaries are entitled to more generous rules than non-spouse beneficiaries. If your heirs are otherwise well provided for and you are in a philanthropic mood (or you don't want to give 'em a dime, the ungrateful... who never call, not even on Father's Day!), one way of avoiding a lot of tax is to make the beneficiary of your 401k be one or more of your favorite charities. In fact, if your testamentary inclination is to make some charitable bequests as part of your will, it is much more advantageous to give money from a tax-deferred account to the charity (size of estate is reduced, no income tax paid by anyone on amount given), and bequeath assets in non-retirement accounts to one's heirs (bequests are not taxable income, and heirs get a step up in basis for assets that have appreciated) rather than the other way around (heirs pay income tax as they withdraw the money from tax-deferred account) Estate planning is a complicated business, and you really should talk to a professional about such matters and not rely on advice from an Internet forum. |
Where should I park my rainy-day / emergency fund? | This is probably a good time to note that credit is not a liquid asset, and not an emergency fund. Credit can be revoked or denied at any time, and Murphy's law states that you may have issues with credit when everything else goes wrong too. |
is the bankruptcy of exchange markets possible? | You seem to think that stock exchanges are much more than they actually are. But it's right there in the name: stock exchange. It's a place where people exchange (i.e. trade) stocks, no more and no less. All it does is enable the trading (and thereby price finding). Supposedly they went into mysterious bankruptcy then what will happen to the listed companies Absolutely nothing. They may have to use a different exchange if they're planning an IPO or stock buyback, that's all. and to the shareholder's stock who invested in companies that were listed in these markets ? Absolutley nothing. It still belongs to them. Trades that were in progress at the moment the exchange went down might be problematic, but usually the shutdown would happen in a manner that takes care of it, and ultimately the trade either went through or it didn't (and you still have the money). It might take some time to establish this. Let's suppose I am an investor and I bought stocks from a listed company in NYSE and NYSE went into bankruptcy, even though NYSE is a unique business, meaning it doesn't have to do anything with that firm which I invested in. How would I know the stock price of that firm Look at a different stock exchange. There are dozens even within the USA, hundreds internationally. and will I lose my purchased stocks ? Of course not, they will still be listed as yours at your broker. In general, what will happen after that ? People will use different stock exchanges, and some of them migth get overloaded from the additional volume. Expect some inconveniences but no huge problems. |
How to minimise the risk of a reduction in purchase power in case of Brexit for money held in a bank account? | If you are really worried your best bet is to move all your cash from Sterling into a foreign currency that you think will be resilient should Brexit occur. I would avoid the Euro! You could look at the US Dollar perhaps, make sure you are aware of the charges for moving the money over and back again, as you will at some stage probably want to get back into Sterling once it settles down, if it does indeed fall. Based on my experience on the stock markets (I am not a currency trader) I would expect the pound to fall fairly sharply on a vote for Brexit and the Euro to do the same. Both would probably rebound quite quickly too as even if there is a Brexit vote it doesn't mean the UK Government will honour the outcome or take the steps quickly. ** I AM NOT A FINANCIAL ADVISOR AND HAVE NO QUALIFICATIONS AS SUCH ** |
Is it worth it to reconcile my checking/savings accounts every month? | My wife and I are paid every two weeks. I go on line see the exact deposit, add it to register, and see what checks cleared. In effect, I reconcile twice per month, and the statement can't be different that what their system tells me. Since the online site shows "last statement balance" I feel there's no need to bother with the paper, nothing left to reconcile. |
How do financial services aimed at women differ from conventional services? | Less so today, but there was a time that women played a smaller role in the household finances, letting the husband manage the family money. Women often found themselves in a frightening situation when the husband died. Still, despite those who protest to the contrary, men and women tend to think differently, how they problem solve, how they view risk. An advisor who understands these differences and listens to the client of either sex, will better serve them. |
Why is there so much variability on interest rate accounts | In answering your question as it's written: I don't think you're really "missing" something. Different banks offer different rates. Online banks, or eBanking solutions, such as CapitalOne, Ally, Barclays, etc., typically offer higher interest rates on basic savings accounts. There are differences between Money Market accounts and Standard Savings accounts, but primarily it comes down to how you can access your cash. This may vary based on bank, but Ally has a decent blurb about it: Regular savings accounts are easy to open and, when you choose an online bank like Ally Bank, you tend to get interest rates that are more competitive than brick-and-mortar counterparts, according to Bankrate.com. Additionally, as a member of the FDIC, Ally Bank gives you peace of mind knowing that the money in your Ally Bank Online Savings Account is insured to the maximum allowed by the law. Money market accounts are easy to open, too. And again, online banks may offer better rates than traditional banks. Generally, you have a bit more flexibility of access with a money market account than you do with a savings account. You can access funds in your Ally Bank Money Market Account through electronic fund transfers, checks, debit cards and ATM withdrawals. With savings accounts, your access is limited to electronic funds transfers or telephone withdrawals (and in-person withdrawals at traditional banks). Both types of accounts are subject to federal transaction limits. Here's a bit more information about a Money Market Account and why the rate might be a little bit higher (from thesimpledollar.com): A money market deposit account is a bit different. The restrictions on what a bank can do with that money are somewhat looser – they can often invest that money in things such as treasury notes, certificates of deposit, municipal bonds, and so on in addition to the tight restrictions of a normal savings accounts. In other words, the bank can take your money and invest it in other investments that are very safe. Now outside of your question, if you have $100K that you want to earn interest on, I'd suggest looking at options with higher rates of return rather than a basic savings account which will top out around 1% or so. What you do with that money is dependent on how quickly you need access to it, and there are a lot of Q&A's on this site that cover suggestions. |
Is the Investopedia simulator an accurate representation of real stock trading? | Using any simulator will never be exactly the same as real trading. One reason is that a simulator will always execute your trades at the exact price you want, but that may not always happen in real life. For example, if you place a limit order to buy 1000 shares of a stock at 10.50, and the price drops down to exactly 10.50, then the simulator will execute your trade and you will have 1000 shares at 10.50. But in real life, the price of the stock may drop to 10.50, but other people may have buy orders ahead of you. If the price of the stock drops to 10.50 but then starts going up again, you may not get all the shares that you wanted (or you may not even get any shares at all) due to the fact that people were ahead of you. In real trading there is also slippage, which you don't see in a simulator. For example, if you have a stop order to sell 1000 shares of a stock if it drops to 7.50, then the simulator will sell all 1000 shares at 7.50 if the price drops to 7.50. But in real trading, if the price drops to 7.50, then you may not be able to sell all 1000 shares at 7.50 if there's not enough liquidity or the market is moving very fast. You may end up selling 100 shares at 7.50, 100 shares at 7.49, 100 shares at 7.48, 50 shares at 7.47, 50 shares at 7.46, 200 shares at 7.45, and 400 shares at 7.44. Another thing is that you don't experience the emotional aspect of trading with a simulator. If you buy a stock in a simulator and it goes down, it's not real money, so you may be more willing to hold it and wait for it to come back up. But if you are trading real money and the stock goes down, you may not be so willing to hold if it goes down. You may be more apt to sell the stock for a small loss before the loss gets too big. |
Is keeping old credit cards and opening new credit cards with high limits and never using an ideal way to boost credit scores? | Problems with your plan (in no particular order) there is a limit, once they have decided that you have enough credit they won't offer any more. If the economy changes (like it did in 2008) they can reduce the limit on existing accounts. If you don't use them, they may decide to close them. Using existing cards will encourage the bank to increase the limit on that card. opening cards can make some lenders nervous. Having a new card close to when you are applying for a mortgage or a car loan can make them less likely to lend you the max. You have to decide: Are you trying to buildup your credit limit? or your credit score? |
(Legitimate & respectable) strategies to generate "passive income" on the Internet? | One such place where you can sell your photos is iStockPhoto. They are pretty picky about the photos they allow, so you should be a pretty good photographer and have good equipment. It can take a while to build up an interest in your photos, but once you do you can make some decent money off it. My sister is a semi-pro photographer and makes about $500 a month off photos she sells there. |
In a competitive market, why is movie theater popcorn expensive? | To add to Jason's answer; a further mechanism is that of monopoly rents which you mention in your question. Movie theatres are often in shopping complexes (which themselves may offer a particular cinema exclusivity), or physically remote from each other, making price comparison more difficult. Different companies may not offer the same movies (similar to the way phone companies offer difficult-to-compare contract pricing). Once you've paid for your movie ticket, if you're suddenly thirsty or peckish, the theatre is the only place selling snacks. Many theatres (including film theatres) discourage (or refuse) patrons from consuming products purchased elsewhere on site. A sense of "capture" is reinforced with ticket collection at the entrance or some form of barrier (inside vs outside the cordon). A theatre can thus capture their patrons and then leverage that access in order to discriminate amongst the higher-paying consumers mentioned by Jason. |
What are the implications of a corporate stock repurchase or share buyback program? | The future shares will be fewer in number, yet have claim to less cash in the bank. All in all, there's little reason the shares would rise in value. Say there are 1M shares, trading at $10. Market cap is $10M of course. Now, there happens to be $2M cash in the bank so each share had about $2 cash. By taking the $2M and buying 200K shares, 800K shares remain, but why would you think they'd be valued at $12.50? The same $10 value per share is now an $8M market cap as $2M has been disbursed, no less so than if it were given out in a dividend. |
Investment / Savings advice in uncertain economy | An alternative to a savings account is a money market account. Not a bank "Money Market" account which pays effectively the same silly rate as a savings account, but an actual Money Market investment account. You can even write checks against some Money Market investment accounts. I have several accounts worth about 13,000 each. Originally, my "emergency fund" was in a CD ladder. I started experimenting with two different Money market investment accounts recently. Here's my latest results: August returns on various accounts worth about $13k: - Discover Bank CD: $13.22 - Discover Bank CD: $13.27 - Discover Bank CD: $13.20 - Discover Savings: $13.18 - Credit Union "Money Market" Savings account: $1.80 - Fidelity Money Market Account (SPAXX): $7.35 - Vanguard Money market Account (VMFXX): $10.86 The actual account values are approximate. The Fidelity Money Market Account holds the least value, and the Credit Union account by far the most. The result of the experiment is that as the CDs mature, I'll be moving out of Discover Bank into the Vanguard Money Market account. You can put your money into more traditional equities mutual fund. The danger with them is the stock market may drop big the day before you want to make your withdrawl... and then you don't have the down payment for your house anymore. But a well chosen mutual fund will yield better. There are 3 ways a mutual fund increase in value: Here's how three of my mutual funds did in the past month... adjusted as if the accounts had started off to be worth about $13,000: Those must vary wildly month-to-month. By the way, if you look up the ticker symbols, VASGX is a Vanguard "Fund of Funds" -- it invests not 100% in the stock market, but 80% in the stock market and 20% in bonds. VSMGX is a 60/40 split. Interesting that VASGX grew less than VSMGX...but that assumes my spreadsheet is correct. Most of my mutual funds pay dividends and capital gains once or twice a year. I don't think any pay in August. |
Portfolio Diversity : invest $4000 into one account or $1000 into 4 accounts? | You spread money/investment across different accounts for different reasons: All this is in addition to diversification reasons. Investing all your money into one stock, bond, Mutual fund, ETF is risky if that one segment of the economy/market suffers. There is a drawback to diversification of accounts. Some have minimum amounts and fee structures. In the original question you asked about 1,000 per account. That may mean that some accounts may be closed to you. In other cases they will charge a higher percentage for fees for small accounts. Those issues would disappear long before you hit the 1,000,000 per account you mentioned in your comment. One problem can occur with having too much diversification. Having dozens of funds could mean that the overlap between the funds might result in over investing in a segment because you didn't realize that one stock segment appeared in 1/3 of the funds. |
Is there a limit on the dollar amount of a personal check? | Like the old American Express commercial: "no preset spending limit". It is really up to the bank(s) in question how big a cheque they are willing to honour. A larger amount would likely be held longer by a receiving institution to ensure that it cleared properly, but nothing written in law (in Canada, that I am aware of). |
Is it ever logical to not deposit to a matched 401(k) account? | If your plan permits loans, deposit enough through the year to maximize the match and then take a loan from the plan. Use the loan portion to pay your student loan. Essentially you have refinanced your debt at a (presumably) lower rate and recieved the match. You pay yourself back (with interest) through your payroll. The rates are typically the prime rate + 1%. The loans are subject to a lesser of 50% vested account balance or $50,000 provision. |
Maintaining "Woman Owned Business" while taking on investor | In addition to finding another woman investor, you have an equitable option that is not unreasonable: ask your partner to buy out 3% worth of shares from you (which then gives her 54%, allowing you to then sell 5% to an investor and have it not dilute her below 51%: .54 * .95 = .513). That keeps you whole but also keeps your woman-owned-business status. |
Do individual stocks have futures trading | As others have pointed out, they do in fact exist. But it may be worth pointing out a possible reason that they are not as popular as commodities futures. If I want exposure to the oil market (for example,) buying oil futures has a big advantage over buying oil. Namely, I don't actually need to store the oil; I can roll over my position rather than taking delivery. On the other hand, buying single stock futures does not have such a compelling advantage over buying the stock itself, so most people would simply do the latter. (Although stock futures might provide some other advantages in some very specialized situations.) |
How often do typical investors really lose money? | How often do investors really lose money? All the time. And it's almost always reason number 1. Let's start with the beginner investor, the person most likely to make some real losses and feel they've "learned" that investing is no better than Vegas. This person typically gets into it because they've been given a hot stock tip, or because they've received a windfall, decided to give this investing lark a try, and bought stock in half a dozen companies whose names they know from their everyday lives ("I own a bit of Google! How cool is that?"). These are people who don't understand the cyclic nature of the market (bear gives way to bull gives way to bear, and on and on), and so when they suddenly see that what was $1000 is now $900 they panic and sell everything. Especially as all the pundits are declaring the end of the world (they always do). Until the moment they sold, they only had paper losses. But they crystallised those losses, made them real, and ended at a loss. Then there's the trend-follower. These are people who don't necessarily hit a bear market, or even a downturn, in their early days, but never really try to learn how the market works in any real sense. They jump into every hot stock, then panic and sell out of anything that starts to go the wrong way. Both of these reactive behaviours seem reasonable in the moment ("It's gone up 15% in the past week? Buy buy buy!" and "I've lost 10% this month on that thing? Get rid of it before I lose any more!"), but they work out over time to lots of buying high and selling low, the very opposite of what you want to do. Then there's the day-trader. These are people who sit in their home office, buying and selling all day to try and make lots of little gains that add up to a lot. The reason these people don't do well in the long run is slightly different to the other examples. First, fees. Yes, most platforms offer a discount for "frequent traders", but it still ain't free. Second, they're peewees playing in the big leagues. Of course there are exceptions who make out like bandits, but day traders are playing a different game than the people I'd call investors. That game, unlike buy-and-hold investing, is much more like gambling, and day-traders are the enthusiastic amateurs sitting down at a table with professional poker players – institutional investors and the computers and research departments that work for them. Even buy-and-hold investors, even the more sophisticated ones, can easily realise losses on a given stock. You say you should just hold on to a stock until it goes back up, but if it goes low enough, it could take a decade or more to even just break even again. More savvy stock-pickers will have a system worked out, something like "ok, if it gets down to 90% of what I bought it for, I cut my losses and sell." This is actually a sensible precaution, because defining hard rules like that helps you eliminate emotion from your investing, which is incredibly important if you want to avoid becoming the trend-follower above. It's still a loss, but it's a calculated one, and hopefully over time the exception rather than the rule. There are probably as many other ways to lose money as there are people investing, but I think I've given you a taste. The key to avoiding such things is understanding the psychology of investing, and defining the rules that you'll follow no matter what (as in that last example). Or just go learn about index investing. That's what I did. |
How can I save on closing costs when buying a home? | Do I need to pay for an inspection, or am I likely to save enough money from skipping it to cover potential problems that they would have caught? A home inspection costs hundreds of dollars. The average is $315. Inspections regularly catch things that cost tens of thousands of dollars to fix, e.g. a new roof or a cracked foundation. You also might find that a home inspection is required for your mortgage. do I need a realtor, or can I do their job myself? Unless you are a licensed realtor or you buy directly from a seller without a realtor, the fee (charged to the seller) will be the same regardless of whether you have a realtor. The seller's realtor will share the fee with your realtor if you have one. So you can do the work yourself (perhaps not as well), but you won't save money by doing so. If you have a lot of flexibility in when you purchase, you could look for especially cheap properties with motivated sellers. Arrange financing ahead of time (before you find a house), so you can close quickly. Some sellers will give you a discounted price to finish the sale quickly. Even small savings on the price of a house will outweigh most savings on closing costs. |
Can a put option and call option be exercised for the same stock with different strike prices? | You could have both options exercised (and assigned to you) on the same day, but I don't think you could lose money on both on the same day. The reason is that while exercises are immediate, assignments are processed after the markets close at the end of each day. See http://www.888options.com/help/faq/assignment.jsp for details. So you would get both assignments at the same time, that night. The net effect should be that you don't own any stock (someone would put you the stock, then it'd be called away) and you don't have the options anymore. You should have incoming cash of $1500 selling the stock to the call exerciser and outgoing cash of $1300 buying from the put exerciser, right? So you would have no more options but $200 more cash in your account in the morning. You bought at 13 and sold at 15. This options position is an agreement to buy at 13 and sell at 15 at someone else's option. The way you lose money is if one of the options isn't exercised while the other is, i.e. if the stock is below 13 so nobody is going to opt to buy from you at 15, but they'll sell to you at 13; or above 15 so nobody is going to opt to sell to you at 13, but they'll buy from you at 15. You make money if neither is exercised (you keep the premium you sold for) or both are exercised (you keep the gap between the two, plus the premium). Having both exercised is surely rare, since early exercise is rare to begin with, and tends to happen when options are deep in the money; so you'd expect both to be exercised if both are deep in the money at some point. Having both be exercised on the same day ... can't be common, but it's maybe most likely just before expiration with minimal time value, if the stock moves around quickly so both options are in the money at some point during the day. |
The difference between Islamic Banks and Western Banks | I'm not sure of the theological basis against usury in sharia law. IIRC, sharia forbids excess compensation, and the modern interpretation of this includes interest. Rules about banking are common in religious faiths. The Catholic church viewed interest as the "selling of time", and since time is a force controlled by god, charging interest was a heretical practice. For private transactions, modern Islamic banking is a relatively new phenomenon that emerged in the postwar period. I don't think this method of banking is a "house of cards", it's just different. Some US states, like California, also subject lenders to higher levels of risk. (ie. borrowers can walk) |
How can a person with really bad credit history rent decent housing? | She can find a landlord that doesn't do credit checks. Maybe on Craigslist? She may end up paying more, have a bigger security deposit, etc. She can get someone else (not you) to sit her down and explain to her frankly that she's messing things up for herself and her children by being a poor manager of her finances. As her credit score improves, more opportunities will open up for her. Co-signing the loan is an option, but I do think you're wise not to do that. |
Should I have to pay income tax on contribution to home office rent from company? | This is essentially a reimbursement of your expense. Since you can deduct the expense, the fact that the reimbursement is taxable doesn't affect you much. You deduct your home office expenses on your annual tax return using form 8829. See the IRS site for more details. If you're asking about the UK tax, there may be some other considerations, but from the US tax perspective it is (nearly) a wash. |
$700 guaranteed to not be touched for 15 years+, should I put it anywhere other than a savings account? | If you plan on holding the money for 15 years, until your daughter turns 21, then advanced algebra tells me she is 6 years old. I think the real question is, what do you intend for your daughter to get out of this? If you want her to get a real return on her money, Mike Haskel has laid out the information to get you started deciding on that. But at 6, is part of the goal also teaching her about financial stewardship, principles of saving, etc.? If so, consider the following: When the money was physically held in the piggy bank, your daughter had theoretical control over it. She was exercising restraint, for delayed gratification (even if she did not really understand that yet, and even if she really didn't understand money / didn't know what she would do with it). By taking this money and putting it away for her, you are taking her out of the decision making - unless you plan on giving her access to the account, letting her decide when to take it out. Still, you could talk her through what you're doing, and ask her how she feels about it. But perhaps she is too young to understand what committing the money away until 21 really means. And if, for example, she wants to buy a bike when she is 10, do you want her to see the fruits of her saved money? Finally, consider that if you (or you & your daughter, depending on whether you want her to help in the decision) decide to put the money in a financial institution in some manner, the risk you are taking on may need to be part of the lesson for her. If you want to teach the general principles of saving, then putting it in bonds/CD's/Savings etc., may be sufficient, even if inflation lowers the value of the money. If you want to teach principles of investing, then perhaps consider waiting until she can understand why you are doing that. To a kid, I think the principles of saving & delayed gratification can be taught, but the principles of assuming risk for greater reward, is a bit more complex. |