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Made more than $600. Company does not issue 1099-MISC's. Enter income as general income? | I'm not sure how this gets entered in TurboTax, but this income from the company should be included in the Schedule C (or C-EZ) Line 1 Gross Receipts total, along with all of your 1099-MISC income from your business and any other income that your business took in. You don't need a 1099 from them, and the IRS doesn't care (at least from your perspective) if you got a 1099 or not; in fact, they probably expect you to have some non-1099 income. We don't know why the company chose not to issue 1099 forms, but luckily it isn't your concern. You can fill out your tax return properly without it. Note: This answer assumes that you didn't have any tax withheld from your checks from this company. If you did have tax withheld, you'll need to insist on a 1099 to show that. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Trying to understand Return on Capital (Joel Greenblatt's Magic Formula version) | I've spent enough time researching this question where I feel comfortable enough providing an answer. I'll start with the high level fundamentals and work my way down to the specific question that I had. So point #5 is really the starting point for my answer. We want to find companies that are investing their money. A good company should be reinvesting most of its excess assets so that it can make more money off of them. If a company has too much working capital, then it is not being efficiently reinvested. That explains why excess working capital can have a negative impact on Return on Capital. But what about the fact that current liabilities in excess of current assets has a positive impact on the Return on Capital calculation? That is a problem, period. If current liabilities exceed current assets then the company may have a hard time meeting their short term financial obligations. This could mean borrowing more money, or it could mean something worse - like bankruptcy. If the company borrows money, then it will have to repay it in the future at higher costs. This approach could be fine if the company can invest money at a rate of return exceeding the cost of their debt, but to favor debt in the Return on Capital calculation is wrong. That scenario would skew the metric. The company has to overcome this debt. Anyways, this is my understanding, as the amateur investor. My credibility is not even comparable to Greenblatt's credibility, so I have no business calling any part of his calculation wrong. But, in defense of my explanation, Greenblatt doesn't get into these gritty details so I don't know that he allowed current liabilities in excess of current assets to have a positive impact on his Return on Capital calculation. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Trying to understand Return on Capital (Joel Greenblatt's Magic Formula version) | Just to clarify things: The Net Working Capital is the funds, the capital that will finance the everyday, the short term, operations of a company like buying raw materials, paying wages erc. So, Net Working Capital doesn't have a negative impact. And you should not see the liabilities as beneficial per se. It's rather the fact that with smaller capital to finance the short term operations the company is able to make this EBIT. You can see it as the efficiency of the company, the smaller the net working capital the more efficient the company is (given the EBIT). I hope you find it helpful, it's my first amswer here. Edit: why do you say the net working capital has a negative impact? | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
My employer doesn't provide an electronic pay stub and I need one to get a car loan | You have a few options and sometimes challenges help us improve our situation. First, you can not borrow to buy a car. Reducing the massive depreciation that cars undergo will help you be wealthier. It is hard to find a good use car that you can buy for cash, but it will play out best for your finances in the long run. If your heart is set on borrowing, I would encourage you to go to the bank/credit union where you have your checking account. They will see your history of deposits and may grant you a loan based on that. Also you are likely to get a better deal from the bank than from the car dealer. Thirdly, you can simply go to your employer's HR department and ask them. Surely someone has applied for a loan during the company's history. What did they do for them? | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
In your 20s how much money should you have and how to properly use & manage it? | You need a budget. You need to know how much you make and how much you spend. How much you earn and what you choose to spend you money on is your choice. You have your own tolerance for risk and your own taste and style, so lifestyle and what you own isn't something that we can answer. The key to your budget is to really understand where you money goes. Maybe you are the sort of person who needs to know down to the penny, maybe you are a person who rounds off. Either way you should have some idea. How should I make a budget? and How can I come up with a good personal (daily) budget? Once you know what you budget is, here are some pretty standard steps to get started. Each point is a full question in of itself, but these are to give you a place to start thinking and learning. You might have other priorities like a charity or other organizations that go into your priority like. Regardless of your career path and salary, you will need a budget to understand where you money is, where it goes, and how you can reach your goals and which goals are reasonable to have. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
In your 20s how much money should you have and how to properly use & manage it? | If you are just barely scraping by on your current income, then you shouldn't be thinking about buying a car or house unless you can present (at least to yourself) clear evidence that doing so will actually lower your monthly expenses. Yes, there are times when even buying depreciating assets such as a car can lower your expenses, but you need to think hard about whether that is the case or if it is just something you want to get because you feel you "should". Remember the old adage that rich people buy themselves income streams (investments that either earn money or reduce expenses), while poor people buy expenses. If you are in the situation of barely scraping by on your current income, then the first step in my mind is to find out exactly what you are spending your money on (do this for a month or two, and then try to include non-regular or rarely-occuring bills such as subscriptions, insurance, perhaps utilities, and so on). Once you know where your money is going right now, outline that in a budget. At this point, you aren't judging your spending, but rather simply looking at the facts. Once you have a decent idea of where your money is going, only then try to think about what you can cut back on. Some things will be easier than others to change (it's much easier to cancel a premium TV channels package than to move to cheaper living quarters, for example, although in some cases simply picking the low-hanging fruit alone won't help you). Make a revised budget for the next month based on the new numbers, and try to live by it. Keep writing down what you actually spend your money on, then rinse and repeat. (Of course, you can make a budget for whatever period of time works for you; if you get paid every two weeks, budgeting per two weeks might be easier than budgeting per month.) The bottom line is that a budget is useless without a follow-up process to see how well your spending actually matches the budgeted amounts, so you need to spend some time following up on it and making adjustments. No budget will ever match reality exactly; think of the budget as a map, not a footstep-by-footstep guide for getting from A to B. When you find some wiggle room in your budget (for example, let's say you decide to cancel the premium TV channels package you got some time ago because it turns out you aren't watching much TV anyway), don't put that money into a "discretionary spending" category. There is an old rule in personal finance that says pay yourself first. If you are able to find $5/month of wiggle room, put it into savings of some kind. If you are unsure what kind of savings vehicle you should use, I'd suggest starting off with a simple savings account; it certainly won't earn you a great return (you'll be lucky if you can keep up with inflation), but it will get you into the habit of saving which at this point is a lot more important. And make that savings transfer as soon as the money hits your account. If you can, get the depositor to put a portion of your income directly into the savings account; if you cannot, make the transfer yourself immediately afterwards. And try to force yourself to live with the money that's left, not touching the savings account. Ideally, you should save a decent fraction of your income - I've seen figures everywhere from 10% to 25% of your after-tax income recommended by various people - and start out by budgeting that to savings and then working with whatever is left. In practice, saving anything and putting the money anywhere is much better than saving nothing. Just make sure that the savings are liquid (easy to convert to cash and withdraw without a penalty, should the need arise), set up a regular bank transfer for whatever amount you can find in that budget, and try to forget about it until you get the bank statement for the savings account and get that warm, fuzzy feeling for actually having a decent amount of money set aside should something ever happen making you need it. Then, later, you can decide whether to use the money to buy a car, start a company, take early retirement, or something entirely different. Having the money will give you the options, and you can decide what is more important to you yourself. Just keep on saving. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Credit Card Points from Refund | Because your friend isn't going to like the ~2% charge they have to pay to the credit card company on the $10,000 purchase. Credit card companies make money off of transactions. The cardholder normally doesn't pay any transaction fees (and in fact can make a profit via rewards), but the merchant has to pay a certain amount of money to the credit card company for the transaction. In this case, the apartment owners ate the charge, likely because it was easier for them to send a check than to refund the cost of the fee through the credit card company. If you started doing this a lot to take advantage of this, I would imagine they would get smart and refuse your business (it'll be pretty obvious what you're doing if you're not signing any leases). | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Credit Card Points from Refund | That transaction probably cost the merchant $0.50 + 3% or close to $5. They should have refunded your credit card so they could have recouped some of the fees. (I imagine that's why big-box retailers like Home Depot always prefer to put it back on your card than give you store credit) Consider yourself lucky you made out with $0.15 this time. (Had they refunded your card, the 1% of $150 credit would have gone against next month's reward) Once upon a time folks were buying money from the US Mint by the tens of thousands $ range and receiving credit card rewards, then depositing the money to pay it off.. They figured that out and put a stop to it. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Can I open a bank account in the US remotely? Will I pay taxes for the money on it? | Answering for US tax only: The bank account makes absolutely zero difference. If you are not a US national and not resident in the US, but earn income from a US employer/client/customer, generally that income is not subject to US tax (no matter where it is banked). However there are (complicated) exceptions, particularly if you are considered to be operating a 'trade or business' in the US or US real estate is involved. Start at https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/nonresident-aliens and proceed through pub 519 if you have time to spend. I do not know (or answer) about Argentinian taxes. Whether you can find a US bank that wants to open and maintain an account for a foreigner (which is extra paperwork and regulation for them) is a different Q, that is already asked and answered: B1/B2 visas do not allow you to work, but that isn't really in scope of money.SX and belongs over on travel.SX (or expatriates.SX for longer stay); https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/25416/work-as-freelancer-while-tourist-in-us-for-an-already-existing-us-client seems to cover it. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
What is the name of inverse of synergy? (finance) | You could call it "multiple streams of income" a la Robert Allen and others. Or you could call it "Do once, sell many" or something like that. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
What is the name of inverse of synergy? (finance) | I'd probably call it an intangible or indirect benefit. Not sure what the trade term is. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
My Boss owes money but I am named on letter from debt collection agency (UK) | I would not be overly concerned unless they started contacting you directly on your personal time or it showed up on your credit report. It is very likely that you are listed simply for their own records. This is correct for them to do, since you spoke to them in the past as an agent of your company. There should not be any legal connection to your personal finances. If it continues to be a concern, I would question whether I wanted to work for such an employer. I do not know your entire situation, but this kind of misbehavior is a red flag if not addressed. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
My Boss owes money but I am named on letter from debt collection agency (UK) | You havent signed a contract, so you are only an authorised contact so you have nothing to worry about at all. Your credit reference can only be affected if you are a signed party on the contract. I would imagine that they wont remove your details as you may assist them by contacting your emplorer, and effectively chase the debt for them especially if you seem to be family member or a friend of the business owner. How did you find out about the debt, did they phone you? If you really want peace of mind, you could write to them and confirm that you are not authorised to be contacted by phone or in writing regarding the debt, and that you are not in anyway liable for the debt and that your contact details must be put beyond use, and as you are concerned, say that if they take any further action against you such as affect your credit ref etc then you will take them to 'your' local magistrates court to seek compensation. Use strong terms and insist they must do what you ask rather than just say that you would like something done etc. Say that you 'Will' take further action which is generic, and that you 'May' do specific things so that it sounds strong but you haven't have committed to any thing in particular. This would most likely be more than enough to stop further contact. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Income Tax and Investments | The $50k is subject to the appropriate income taxes, which may include FICA taxes including the employer share if you are self employed. The after tax money can then be invested with the amount invested being the cost basis (I.e., if you invest $40k you will have a cost basis of $40k). In future years you will have taxes due if any of those investments pay dividends (or capital gain distributions). Once you sell you will have a capital gain or loss that you will pay taxes on (or take a deduction if a loss). Now you can improve this picture if you are able to put some of your money into a retirement account (either a tax deductible or a ROTH). With retirement accounts you do not pay tax on the capital gains or dividends. If you use a tax deferred account your tax is higher but that is because you were also investing Uncle Sam's portion of your pay check. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Income Tax and Investments | Unless you make those investments inside a tax-deferred account, you will have to pay income-taxes on that money this year. Because you made that money through your own business, you will also have payroll taxes due on that money this year. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Record retention requirements for individuals in the U.S.? | Here is an IRS Publication 552 covering records retention The publication covers many areas, including proof of income, bank statements, old tax returns. There is a table that talks about how long to keep the records. In general it is 3 to 6 years. But for property it is 3 to 6 years after you dispose of the property. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
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. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Are Investment Research websites worth their premiums? | Anyone who claims they can consistently beat the market and asks you to pay them to tell you how is a liar. This cannot be done, as the market adjusts itself. There's nothing they could possibly learn that analysts and institutional investors don't already know. They earn their money through the subscription fees, not through capital gains on their beat-the-market suggestions, that means that they don't have to rely on themselves to earn money, they only need you to rely on them. They have to provide proof because they cannot lie in advertisements, but if you read carefully, there are many small letters and disclaimers that basically remove any liability from them by saying that they don't take responsibility for anything and don't guarantee anything. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
How do I claim HST compensation on my personal Ontario income taxes? | Your income and expenses for the business should be independent of HST. That is, if you charged somebody 100 + 13 HST, you have revenue of 100. You're going to send the 13 to the government later, it's not part of your revenue. If you go out and buy something for 10 + 1.30 HST, you record 10 as an expense. You're going to take the 1.3 off the 13 you would have sent the government, it's not part of your expenses. And so on. I am not sure what you mean by "HST compensation" but if it came from the government, and it needs to be declared as income, there will be information to that end in the letter that comes with the cheque. (For example, if they pay you interest on your refund, the letter reminds you to include that money in next year's income.) | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Legal requirements to sell design content, artwork and also freelance in India? | There is no requirement to open a company. You can work as freelancer. You need to report income and file returns. If your income is more than exempt limit, pay taxes. Apply for a PAN number if you don't have one yet. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Paying estimated taxes in a quarter with losses | Yes, if you're caught up you can skip the quarter. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
How do I receive payment from the USA to my current account in India | There is nothing called best; Depending on the amounts there are several options and each will cost some money. If your business is still small customers are individuals try PayPal it will be easy for everyone. The other options are accepting Credit Card, you would need to set-up card gateway on your website etc Simple wire transfer, it will cost more both for your customers and to you. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Insider trading in another company? | This information is clearly "material" (large impact) and "non-public" according to the statement of the problem. Also, decisions like United States v. Carpenter make it clear that you do not need to be a member of the company to do illegal insider trading on its stock. Importantly though, stackexchange is not a place for legal advice and this answer should not be construed as such. Legal/compliance at Company A would be a good place to start asking questions. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Is robinhood backed up by an insurance company | robinhood is a member of finra, just like any other broker. as such, they can't legally "lose" your assets. even if they file bankruptcy, you will get your money back. obviously, any broker can steal your assets, but i doubt robinhood is any more likely to steal from you, even if you are rich. here is a quote from an article on thestreet.com: So, despite the name, the Robinhood philosophy isn't about stealing from rich, but rather taking perks often reserved for top-tier investors and giving them to the everyman trader | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Can a husband and wife who are both members of the same LLC file a joint tax return? | Since from the question it seems that you're talking about the US taxation, I'll assume that. You can definitely continue filing jointly. Being members of a partnership has no bearing on how you file your own tax return. The partnership will distribute K-1 to each of you separately, but you'll report both of them on the same return. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
I am a contractor with revenue below UK's VAT threshold. Should I register for VAT? | I love the flat rate VAT scheme. It's where you pay a percentage based on your industry. An example might be Computer repair services, where you'll pay 10.5% of your total revenue to the HMRC. But you'll be invoicing for VAT at 20% still. Would definitely recommend registering for it since you're expecting to cross the threshold anyway. And like DumbCoder said, you also get a first year discount of 1%, so in the example above, you'd end up paying 9.5% VAT on your turnover. I personally found it a pain to invoice without VAT (my clients expected it), so registering made sense regardless of the fact I was over threshold. The tricky bit is keeping under the £150k turnover so you stay eligible for the flat rate. It does get more complex otherwise. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
I am a contractor with revenue below UK's VAT threshold. Should I register for VAT? | If I remember correctly, once you're about to exceed the threshold you really don't have a choice and have to register for VAT. As DumbCoder mentions, the quarterly VAT returns isn't that much of a hassle, plus if you fall under a certain threshold, you can sign up for the annual accounting scheme for VAT, which means you'll have to only put in a single return, but HMRC takes more payments out over the course of the year. This is what I did when I ran my own limited company in the UK. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
I am a contractor with revenue below UK's VAT threshold. Should I register for VAT? | (1) Should I register for VAT? – If it is below the threshold amount it is purely voluntary. If you register for VAT, you would have to charge VAT and then do returns every quarter. If you can take up this bit of hassle, it doesn't make much of a difference. One thing you need to consider: you get 1% discount during your first year of registering for VAT. If you want to save this discount for when you really need to pay VAT, it could be helpful. (2) What benefits would registering for VAT include? – Except for reclaiming VAT, where you pay VAT for business expenses, not much. (3) Would I not just hold onto the monies for HMRC ? – You wouldn't hold any money for HMRC. They will send you notifications if you do not file your returns and pay your VAT quarterly. And get everything cleared from your accountant. If your accountant doesn't answer properly, make it clear you need proper answers. Else change your accountant. If you do something wrong and HMRC gets after you, you would be held liable – your accountant can take the slip if you signed on all business documents provided by your accountant. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
I am a contractor with revenue below UK's VAT threshold. Should I register for VAT? | The most important thing to remember is that being VAT registered, you must add VAT to every bill, so every bill will be 20% higher. If the bill payer is a company, they don't care because they deduct the 20% VAT from their own VAT bill. If the bill payer is a private person, their cost of your services has just gone up by 20% and it is going to hurt your business. So the question is, what kind of customers do you have? But if your customers are companies, then the flat rate scheme mentioned above is very little work and puts a nice little amount of extra cash in your pocket (suitable if your bills are mostly for your work and not for parts that you buy for the customer and bill them for). | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
I am a contractor with revenue below UK's VAT threshold. Should I register for VAT? | If you are providing VAT-liable services (you probablly are) and you register normally for VAT then you will be able to reclaim VAT on your buisness purchases but you will have to charge VAT to your clients. So the question really comes down to will your clients regard you adding VAT to their invoices as a price increase or not. That is likely to depend on whether your clients are in a position to claim-back the VAT you charged them. If you are working mostly for VAT registered buisnesses who perform primerally vat-liable (including zero-rated) activities then registering for VAT is likely in your financial interests (though it does mean more paperwork). The flat-rate scheme may be better still. If you are working mostly for private individuals, non VAT registered buisnesses or buisnesses which primerally perform VAT exempt* activities then registering for VAT when you don't have to is most likely not in your financial interests. * Note: VAT exempt and zero rated for VAT are very different things even though they look similar to the customer. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Was on debt..can I now enter UK on visitor visa | Whether or not you'll be allowed to enter the UK is a topic for a different forum (and really more a topic for a lawyer rather than strangers on the internet). That being said, as a non-lawyer giving my opinion of the situation, you should be granted access to the UK as the banks/money lenders/phone companies don't have a relationship with Border Entry. With regards to debts in the UK, there is some precedent to debts being waived after a certain period of time, but the minimum is 6 years for unsecured debt, and the companies you owe money to can still chase you for payment, but can't use legal proceedings to force you to pay. However, the big caveat to this is that this only applies to residents of England and Wales. From the cleardebt.co.uk site: What is out of date debt? Debts like these are covered by the Limitation Act 1980, which is a statute of limitations that provides time scales as to how long a creditor can chase you (the debtor) for an unpaid debt. The Limitation Act 1980 only applies when no acknowledgement of a debt has been made between you and the creditor for six years for unsecured debts or 12 years for mortgage shortfalls and secured loans. This law only applies to residents of England and Wales. When does debt go out of date? If the creditor fails to maintain contact with you for six years or more, you may be able to claim that the outstanding debt is statute barred under the Limitation Act 1980. This means the creditor cannot use the legal system to enforce payment of the outstanding debt. The time limit starts from when you last acknowledged owing the debt or made a payment to the account. When can a creditor pursue an unsecured debt? You may think a creditor has written off your debt if you haven’t heard from them for a long time. The reality is that the debt still exists. The creditor can still contact you and they are entitled to chase the outstanding debt, even if the debt has been statute barred, but they are unable to use legal proceedings to force you to pay. Creditors can pursue an unsecured debt if: | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
What securities is Return of Capital applicable to? | Off the top of my head, I don't know of any publicly-traded companies that routinely earmark distributions as return of capital, but theoretically, it's certainly applicable to any publicly-traded company. The Wikipedia article gives one situation in which a publicly-traded company may use return of capital: Public business may return capital as a means to increase the debt/equity ratio and increase their leverage (risk profile). Since return of capital is a distribution, it shrinks the firm's equity, thus increasing its leverage. Investopedia also has an article, Dividend Facts You May Not Know, that gives an example of when return of capital might be used: Sometimes, especially in the case of a special, large dividend, part of the dividend is actually declared by the company to be a return of capital. In this case, instead of being taxed at the time of distribution, the return of capital is used to reduce the basis of the stock, making for a larger capital gain down the road, assuming the selling price is higher than the basis. For instance, if you buy shares with a basis of $10 each and you get a $1 special dividend, 55 cents of which is return of capital, the taxable dividend is 45 cents, the new basis is $9.45 and you will pay capital gains tax on that 55 cents when you sell your shares sometime in the future. A company may choose to earmark some or all of its distribution as return of capital in order to provide shareholders with a more beneficial tax treatment. The IRS describes this different tax treatment: Distributions that qualify as a return of capital are not dividends. A return of capital is a return of some or all of your investment in the stock of the company. A return of capital reduces the basis of your stock. These distributions don't necessarily count as taxable income, except in some instances: Once the basis of your stock has been reduced to zero, any further non-dividend distribution is capital gain. The IRS also states: A distribution generally qualifies as a return of capital if the corporation making the distribution does not have any accumulated or current year earnings and profits. In this case, the firm is lowering its equity because it's paying distributions out of that equity instead of accumulated earnings/profits. A company may use return of capital to maintain a distribution even in times of financial difficulty. In the context of closed-end funds, however, return of capital can be much more complicated and can affect the fund's performance and reputation in numerous ways. Also, JB King is correct in cautioning you that "return of capital" is not the same thing as "return on capital*. The latter is a method for valuing a company and determining "how efficient a company is where it comes to using its resources." (to quote JB King's comment again). | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
How to save money on currency conversion | If you want to convert more than a few thousand dollars, one somewhat complex method is to have two investment accounts at a discount broker that operations both in Canada and the USA, then buy securities for USD on a US exchange, have your broker move them to the Canadian account, then sell them on a Canadian exchange for CAD. This will, of course, incur trading fees, but they should be lower than most currency conversion fees if you convert more than a few thousand dollars, because trading fees typically have a very small percentage component. Using a currency ETF as the security to buy/sell can eliminate the market risk. In any case, it may take up to a week for the trades and transfer to settle. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Buying a house 50/50 | This question is really a variation of rent vs buy. Try looking at it this way - If you bought it 50/50 and rented it out, what would you both get? Now, moved in, you are effectively collecting that rent, but half is your own money, half is from the partner. Is the half you are getting the from the partner equal to 1/4 of the mortgage. This sounds convoluted, but once you spell all the numbers out, it would be clear. Without the deal as you present it, you'd be paying the partner to 'live in his half.' | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Buying a house 50/50 | I don't like it using percentages makes no sense. Find out what market value is for rent and pay 1/2 of that to your partner, adjust annually. You partner should be protected from inflation if he is going to invest in real estate. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
What do I need as documentation in order to pay taxes in the Netherlands? | The Dutch tax office is pretty decent, although slightly overburdened. Don't expect a lot of help, but they're not generally known for making a lot of problems. Digital copies are fine, for instance. They will send you your first VAT notice. You probably would have known if your company would have been incorporated, so I'll assume you're just trading as a natural person. That means you still have to file VAT returns, but the business income is just filed annually as "other income". For the VAT part, you'll need to invoice your customers. Keep a copy of those invoices for your own bookkeeping, and keep track of the matching customer payments. Together these form the chief evidence of your VAT obligation. You also have a VAT deduction from your purchases (it's a Value-Added Tax, after all). Again, keep receipts. The usual VAT period is 3 months, so you'd pay VAT 4 times a year. But if you would pay less than 1883 euro, you might not need to pay at all and just need to file annually The income part is easy with the receipts you had for VAT purposes anyway. Dutch Tax Office, VAT, in English | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Can you sell a security through a different broker from which it was purchased? | I'm in the US and I once transferred shares in a brokerage account from Schwab to Fidelity. I received the shares from my employer as RSUs and the employer used Schwab. After I quit and the shares vested, I wanted to move the shares to Fidelity because that is where all my other accounts are. I called Fidelity and they were more than happy to help, and it was an easy process. I believe Schwab charged about $50 for the transfer. The only tricky part is that you need to transfer the cost basis of the shares. I was on a three-way phone call with Schwab and Fidelity for Schwab to tell Fidelity what the purchase price was. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Can you sell a security through a different broker from which it was purchased? | Many brokers allow you to transfer shares to another broker without selling them. It depends on what kind of account and who the broker is for what forms you might have to fill out and what other hoops you might have to jump through. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Investment options for f1 visa students in USA | There's no limitation on what you can invest in, including trading stocks (as long as trading is not a business activity, like day-trading or investing for others). You just need to make sure you have a tax ID (either ITIN or SSN) and pay taxes on all the gains and dividends. Also, consider your home country tax laws, since you're still tax resident in your home country (most likely). | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Are American Eagle $20 gold coins considered “securities”, requiring dealers to be licensed to sell them as such? | No. Securities brokers/dealers in the United States are licensed to broker debt and equity in corporations. (There are additional, commodities licenses to broker derivatives.) $20 American Eagle coins, or any other type of physical currency or physical precious metals can be traded or brokered by anyone without a specific license (except maybe a sales tax registration). The only situation where a securities license would be required is if a legal entity is holding the coins and you deal/broker an interest in that legal entity. For example, dealing in SPDR Gold Shares or a similar structure holding either physical assets or the right to purchase those assets (like a commodity pool) would require a securities and/or commodities dealing license. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Why UK bank charges are not taken account when looking on interest for taxation? | When I left the UK four years ago, free banking is still an option and I'm pretty sure it still is. Therefore, you have chosen to have a bank account with a 5.00/month charge. In return for this charge, you will be eligible to receive certain benefits. For example; reduced borrowing costs, discounted mortgage rates, free overdraft on small amounts, "rewards" for paying household bills by direct debit, and things of this sort. Amongst these benefits may be preferential savings rates. However, from HMRC's point of view it will be the extra perks you are paying for with your monthly charge. You have chosen to pay for the account and HMRC is not interested in how you choose to spend your money, only in the money you earn. While I agree with you that it does have an element of unfairness, the problem is how would you divide the cost amongst the various benefits. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Why UK bank charges are not taken account when looking on interest for taxation? | Because your profit from the capital IS 100 quid. Capital gains is not like running a business and doesn't come with tax deductions. It's up to you to pick saving scheme that maximizes your profit (either via low costs or highest possible rate). | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
How are days counted when funding a new account within 10 days | If the wording is "within 10 days" then its 10 days. Calendar days. Otherwise they would put "10 business days", for example. Usually, if you need to do something within 10 days from today, the first day to count is today. I would expect "within" to mean that you can fund in any of the days up to the 10th. But that's me, trying to read English as English. Why don't you call the bank and ask them? | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
How do I evaluate reasonability of home improvement projects? | If you're looking for some formula, I don't think one exists. People talk about this all the time and give conflicting advice. If there was a proven-accurate formula, they wouldn't be debating it. There are basically 3 reasons to do a home improvement project: (a) Correct a problem so that you prevent on-going damage to your home. For example, have a leaking roof patched or replaced, or exterminate termites. Such a job is worthwhile if the cost of fixing the problem is less than the cost of future damage. In the case of my termite and leaking roof examples, this is almost always worth doing. Lesser maintenance problems might be more debatable. Similarly, some improvements may reduce expenses. Like replacing an old furnace with a newer model may cut your heating bills. Here the question is: how long does it take to repay the investment, compared to other things you might invest your money in. Just to make up numbers: Suppose you find that a new furnace will save you $500 per year. If the new furnace costs $2000, then it will take 4 years to pay for itself. I'd consider that a good investment. If that same $2000 furnace will only cut your heating bills by $100 per year, then it will take 20 years to pay for itself. You'd probably be better off putting the $2000 into the stock market and using the gains to help pay your heating bill. (b) Increase the resale value of your home. If you are paying someone else to do the work, the harsh reality here is: Almost no job will increase the resale value by more than the cost of getting the job done. I've seen many articles over the years citing studies on this. I think most conclude that kitchen remodeling comes closet to paying for itself, and bathrooms come next. New windows are also up there. I don't have studies to prove this, but my guesses would be: Replacing something that is basically nice with a different style will rarely pay for itself. Like, replacing oak cabinets with cherry cabinets. Replacing something that is in terrible shape with something decent is more likely to pay back than replacing something decent with something beautiful. Like if you have an old iron bathtub that's rusting and falling apart, replacing it may pay off. If you have a 5-year-old bathtub that's in good shape but is not premium, top of the line, replacing it with a premium bathtub will probably do very little for resale value. If you can do a lot of the work yourself, the story changes. Many home improvement jobs don't require a lot of materials, but do require a lot of work. If you do the labor, you can often get the job done very cheaply, and it's likely that the increase in resale value will be more than what you spend. For example, most of my house has hardwood floors. Lots of people like pretty hardwood floors. I just restained the floors in two rooms. It cost me, I don't know, maybe $20 or $30 for stain and some brushes. I'm sure if I tried to sell the house tomorrow I'd get my twenty bucks back in higher sale value. Realtors often advise sellers to paint. Again, if you do it yourself, the cost of paint may be a hundred dollars, and it can increase the sale price of the house by thousands. Of course if you do the work yourself, you have to consider the value of your time. (c) To make your home more pleasant to live in. This is totally subjective. You have to make the decision on the same basis that you decide whether anything that is not essential to survival is worth buying. To some people, a bottle of fancy imported wine is worth thousands, even millions, of dollars. Others can't tell the difference between a $10,000 wine and a $15 wine. The thing to ask yourself is, How important is this home improvement to me, compared to other things I could do with the money? Like, suppose you're considering spending $20,000 remodeling your kitchen. What else could you do with $20,000? You could buy a car, go on an elaborate vacation, eat out several times a week for years, retire a little earlier, etc. No one can tell you how much something is worth to you. Any given home improvement may involve a combination of these factors. Like say you're considering that $20,000 kitchen remodeling. Say you somehow find out that this will increase the resale value by $15,000. If the only reason you were considering it was to increase resale value, then it's not worth it -- you'd lose $5,000. But if you also want the nicer kitchen, then it is fair to say, Okay, it will cost me $20,000, but ultimately I'll get $15,000 of that back. So in the long run it will only cost me $5,000. Is having a nicer kitchen worth $5,000 to me? Note, by the way, that resale value only matters if and when you sell the house. If you expect to stay in this house for 20 years, any improvements done are VERY long-term investments. If you live in it until you die, the resale value may matter to your heirs. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
How do I evaluate reasonability of home improvement projects? | The exact answers depend on what you're going to do and what you started with and what your local market is like ... But a bit of websearching (and/or asking a good general contractor) will yield a table of typical improvement in sale price from various renovations. One thing you'll discover is that unless you are staring with something almost unsellable, few if any if thgem return more than you paid for them; getting back 85% is exceptionally good. A possible exception is energy-saving measures; basic air-seaking and attic insulation improvements pay back their cost relatively quickly, and solar can do so if you have a decent site for that -- and these are often subsidized in one way or another by government or utilities. For most things, thoiugh, the real answer is to ask yourself what would make the house better for you and your family, and what that would be worth to you. If you can get it done for less than that, go for it. It's a good idea to put together as complete a list vas possible before starting, since some will be considerably less expensive if done in the right order or at the same time. (Redo your roofing before installing rooftop solar panels, if possible; as one example.) Then prioritize thiose by what will improve your enjoyment of the house most. You'll probably get better specific advice over in the Home Improvement area of Stack Exchange. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Pay Yourself With Credit Card Make Money With Cash Back [duplicate] | This is basically a form of credit card kiting, it's not necessarily illegal but it can be. It is, however, against the TOS in pretty much every merchant agreement (including Paypal and Square), so you'd most likely have your account suspended, and the merchant could pursue legal action if they felt they could prove intent to deceive. It's not practical given actual fee structures, but even if it were, most merchants are quite good at detecting this sort of thing and quick to shut down accounts. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Pay Yourself With Credit Card Make Money With Cash Back [duplicate] | The idea is old as dirt, and some millions of people had it before you. Credit card swipes cost you between 2.4 and 4.5%, depending on the cards, the provider, and the amounts, plus potentially a fixed small amount per swipe. Of course, a 2% cash back card cost more than 2% to swipe; and a 3% cash back card cost more than 3% to swipe; those guys are not morons. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Need your help and suggestion | How much amount can we transfer from India to the USA? Is the limit per year? As I understand your father in law is Indian Citizen and his tax paid earnings need to be transferred outside of India. Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme by RBI, one can transfer upto 2,50,000 USD. Please check with your Bank for the exact paperwork. A form 15CA and 15CB [by CA] are required to establish taxes have been paid. What documents we have to present to the bank? See above. Should money be transferred to company's account(Indian Company) to USA company? or can be transferred to my husband's account. Transfer of funds by a Indian Company to US Company has some restrictions. Please check with CA for details. If you father in law has sold the Indian Company and paid the taxes in India; he can transfer the proceeds to his son in US as per the Liberalized Remittance Scheme. Can they just gift the whole amount to my husband? What will be the tax implication on my husband's part in USA and on my father in law in India. The whole amount can be gifted by your father in law to your husband [his son]. There is no tax implication in India as being an Indian resident, gift between close relatives is tax free. There is no tax implication to your husband as he is a US Citizen and as per gift tax the person giving the gift should be paying the applicable taxes. Since the person gifting is not US Citizen; this is not applicable. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Once stock prices are down, where to look for good stock market deals? | Indexes are down during the summer time, and I don't think it has something to do with specific stocks. If you look at the index history you'll see that there's a price drop during the summer time. Google "Sell in May and go away". The BP was cheap at the time for a very particular reason. As another example of a similar speculation you can look at Citibank, which was less than $1 at its lowest, and within less than a year went to over $4 ( more than 400%). But, when it was less than $1 - it was very likely for C to go bankrupt, and it required a certain amount of willingness to loose to invest in it. Looking back, as with BP, it paid off well. But - that is looking back. So to address your question - there's no place where people tell you what will go up, because people who know (or think they know) will invest themselves, or buy lottery tickets. There's research, analysts, and "frinds' suggestions" which sometimes pay off (as in your example with BP), and sometimes don't. How much of it is noise - I personally don't think I can tell, until I can look back and say "Damn, that dude was right about shorts on Google, it did go down 90% in 2012!" | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Once stock prices are down, where to look for good stock market deals? | Something you might want to consider, instead of going out bargain hunting in hopes of picking something up on the cheap is to start doing you research now for a stock you would like to have in your portfolio and watch it for news that might cause it to go down before picking it up when it is down for a bit. As you pointed out with the BP stock, prior to the incident it was a solid stock that was being held in a number of funds. By identifying solid stocks now you can also make the decision on the basis of the news to if the fundamentals under the stock are severely impacted or if it just a temporary dip in prices. Also, you might want to index funds such as VTI that are tied to the overall market and also pay dividends. When the market tends down for awhile you can buy some shares that you can either hold for dollar-cost averaging or sell off again once the market picks up. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Once stock prices are down, where to look for good stock market deals? | Keep in mind, that bargain hunting will fail you from time to time. I know a lot of guys who bought Nortel at $10, planning to hold it until the inevitable recovery. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Once stock prices are down, where to look for good stock market deals? | Do your own research There are hundreds of places where people will give you all sorts of recommendations. There is as much noise in the recommendations as there is in the stock market itself. Become your own filter. You need to work on your own instinct. Pick a couple of sectors and a few stocks in each and study them. It is useful to know where the main indexes are going, but - unless you are trading the indexes - it is the individual sectors that you should focus on more. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Corporate Coverdell ESA Tax Liability | Not sure how authoritative it is, but according to this site, yes: Can a corporation, partnership or other non-living entity make the contribution to an ESA? Yes. The tax law does not restrict the ability to make contributions to living individuals. Corporations and other entities may make contributions without regard for the usual donor income limit. However, the same site indicates that you can just give the child the $2K and have them contribute to their own ESA, so yes, the income limit is pretty easy to get around. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
How to Transition From Employee to Employer? | Having been both I see the pros and cons Employers: I personally hated all the paperwork. Government forms, legal protection, insurance, taxes, payroll, accounting, year ends, bank accounts, inventory tracking, expenses. The best bosses don't worry about the product, they worry about maintaining an environment that is good for the product. Good employees who are happy will make good products that you can sell to customers who are happy with your company. I personally went back to employee because I wanted to go home at night and forget about work. Employers cannot do that. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Where are all those unsold vehicles? | When the 2016 models come out, the dealership marks down the 2015 model and then it sells pretty fast. The process doesn't take that long in the car market because the 2015 models are just as good as the 2016 so if they are just a little cheaper, they will sell quickly. If you want a 2008 Audi that has never sold, you are going to be looking for a long time. The same thing happens in every industry. Where are the older versions of digital cameras? Cell phones? Blenders? Digital pianos? Any item that changes from year to year sits on shelves for a little while after its replacement comes out until the retailer reduces its price by enough and it sells. The only exceptions are goods that depreciate very quickly or go bad, which are recycled or thrown away (like fresh produce, for example). It seems kind of crazy at first that essentially all goods that are produced by the economy are consumed, but that's the magic of capitalism: prices make markets clear. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Where are all those unsold vehicles? | Other than being reduced to clear as others have suggested quite a few get sold to large motor stores. You can often go in and find last years model with around delivery mileage at a very knocked down rate because most people would prefer the latest model direct from the dealer. Doing this allows dealers to clear old stock incredibly quickly so they can promote the newest model exclusively. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | The "$1000 is no money at all" people are amusing me. Way back in the mists of time, a very young me invested on the order of ~$500 in a struggling electronics manufacturer I had a fondness for. An emotional investment, not much money, but enough that I could get a feel for what it was like owning stock in something. That stock's symbol was AAPL. This is admittedly a rare outcome, but $1000 invested over the long term isn't not worth doing. If for no other reason then when the OP has "real" money, he'll have X+$1000 invested rather than X, assuming 0% return, which I doubt. It's a small enough amount that there are special considerations, but it's a solid opportunity for learning how the market works, and making a little money. Anyway, my advice to the OP is as follows: | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | $1000 is not that much, and I think the best you can do with them is keeping them in a high-yield savings account (look at the online savings accounts that give 1% and more, not the regular bank savings accounts which are worthless). If you need money all of a sudden (for a school book, or rent, or bills, or some other emergency expense), you don't want to deal with selling stocks or funds (which may be at loss) or breaking into your CD's. It is usually considered a good practice to keep cash that would keep you afloat for 5-6 months in savings or some cash equivalent, as an emergency fund. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | At that sum, it essentially doesn't matter what you do, unless you just want to outright gamble the money. Let's look at some options: "High" interest guaranteed savings. A five year CD returns a sad 2% right now. That means if you invest all $1,000 into a CD, by 2016 you will have earned $105.08 in interest. Think about that: About a hundred bucks over the next five years. Of course, with 3% inflation, that $105.08 will be worth about $90.57. In fact, the total amount will be worth $953.25. Your "doing something with your money" did nothing. Stocks can return significantly more interest, but there is no guarantee. Even if you made 20% year on year, you would only make maybe $1,500 in returns or so in the next 5 years, and 20% every year is like Warren Buffet territory--totally unrealistic. That's also not taking into account inflation. And neither of these is taking into account taxes! However, if you go to a casino and gamble the $1,000, it is possible you could turn it into significantly more. It's very much unlikely, and I do not advise it at all, but it's possible. The point is, you need money to make money, and, in some sense, $1,000 is not money at all. I recommend you work on your skills, knowledge, and preparation for making money in the future, and by 25 or so you can really be cooking with gas. Don't waste your efforts trying to find a brilliant way to make a few hundred bucks over the next half decade. Save the money and find ways to try to double it by earning money on small projects. Then challenge yourself to double it again, and keep honing your skills. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | If you're looking for ways to turn $1000 into more, don't just think of ways it can make money -- also consider whether there are any ways you can use it to save money. Among the advantages of this approach is that you're not taxed for reducing your expenditures. The good news is that there are a lot more ways to save a little bit of money on a $1000 budget than there are to make a little money on that budget. The bad news is that most of them will require some additional input: labor. Have you taken an economics course? Capital + Labor => output. I don't know what you spend your money on exactly, but some thoughts: You may find more opportunities for things like this as you move out from college and into your own apartment (/house) and the university isn't taking care of as many of your needs. Just don't confuse yourself about where the line is between actually saving money that you were going to spend anyway, and just consuming more. Consumption is fine in and of itself (and ultimately it's what you have money for) but doesn't make you financially better off. Also, when considering what to do with the money, don't just think "I can spend $2000 on this bike and it will ultimately save me gas money" unless you also know how to think "I could spend $200 on a slightly lesser bike and still save all the gas money, or maybe even spend $20 on a yard sale bike.". Consider borrowing kitchen equipment from the parents, instead of buying new stuff, or buy it at a yard sale. Also, make sure you actually will use the things you buy. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | Put them in Cds. Better than a savings account, you won't lose capital unlike the stock market. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
What are the options for a 19-year-old college student who only has about $1000? | Kid, you need to start thinking in thresholds. There are several monetary thresholds that separate your class from a more well funded class. 1) You cannot use margin with less than $2000 dollars Brokers require that you have at least $2000 before they will lend to you 2) In 2010, Congress banned under 21 year olds from getting access to credit. UNLESS they get cosigned. This means that even if you have $2000, no broker will give you margin unless you have a (good) credit history already. There was a good reason for this, but its based on the assumption that everyone is stupid, not the assumption that some people are objective thinkers. 3) The brokers that will open an account for you have high commissions. The commissions are so high that it will destroy any capital gains you may make with your $1000. For the most part. 4) The pattern day trader rule. You cannot employ sophisticated risk management while being subject to the pattern day trader rule. It basically limits you from trading 3 times a day (its more complicated than that read it yourself) if you have less than $25,000 in one account. 5) Non-trade or stock related investments: Buy municipal or treasury bonds. They will give you more than a savings account would, and municipals are tax free. This isn't exactly what I would call liquid though - ie. if you wanted to access your money to invest in something else on a whim. 6) What are you studying? If its anything technical then you might get a good idea that you could risk your money on to create value. But I would stick to high growth stocks before blowing your $1000 on an idea. Thats not exactly what I would call "access to capital". 7) Arbitrage. Lets say you know a friend that buys the trendy collectors shoes at discount and sells them for a profit. He might do this with one $200 pair of tennis shoes, and then use the $60 profit different to go buy video games for himself. If he wanted to scale up, he couldn't because he never has more than $200 to play with. In comparison, you could do 5 pairs ($200 x 5) and immediately have a larger operation than him, making a larger profit ($60 x 5 = $300, now you have $1300 and could do it again with 6 pairs to make an even great er profit) not because you are better or worked at it, but solely because you have more capital to start with. Keep an eye out for arbitrage opportunities, usually there is a good reason they exist if you notice it: the market is too small and illiquid to scale up with, or the entire market will be saturated the next day. (Efficient Market Theory, learn about it) 8) Take everything I just taught you, and make a "small investor newsletter" website with subscribers. Online sites have low overhead costs. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Won an incentive trip in 2013, left employer in 2014, received an earning statement with no cash but a huge tangible bonus listed | I had experience working for a company that manufactures stuff and giving products to the employees. The condition was to stay employed for a year after the gift for the company to cover its cost (I think they imputed the tax), otherwise they'd add the cost to the last paycheck (which they did when I left). But they were straight-forward about it and I signed a paper acknowledging it. However, in your case you didn't get a product (that you could return when leaving if you didn't want to pay), but rather a service. The "winning" trip was definitely supposed to be reported as income to you last year. Is it okay for them to treat me differently than the others for tax purposes? Of course not. But it may be that some strings were attached to the winning of the incentive trip (for example, you're required to stay employed for X time for the company to cover the expense). See my example above. Maybe it was buried somewhere in small letters. Can they do this a year after the trip was won and redeemed? As I said - in this case this sounds shady. Since it is a service which you cannot return - you should have been taxed on it when receiving it. Would the IRS want to know about this fuzzy business trip practice? How would I report it? Here's how you can let them know. Besides now understanding the new level of slime from my former employer is there anything else I should be worried about? Could they do something like this every year just to be annoying? No, once they issued the last paycheck - you're done with them. They cannot issue you more paychecks after you're no longer an employee. In most US States, you are supposed to receive the last paycheck on your last day of work, or in very close proximity (matter of weeks at most). | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Accounting for reimbursements that exceed actual expenses | I've been in a very similar situation to yours in the past. Since the company is reimbursing you at a flat rate (I assume you don't need to provide documentation/receipts in order to be paid the per diem), it's not directly connected to the $90 in expenses that you mention. Unless they were taking taxes out that would need to be reimbursed, the separate category for Assets:Reimbursable:Gotham City serves no real purpose, other than to categorize the expenses. Since there is no direct relationship between your expenses and the reimbursement, I would list them as completely separate transactions: Later, if you needed to locate all of the associated expenses with the Gotham trip, gnucash lets you search on memo text for "Gotham" and will display all of the related transactions. This is a lot cleaner than having to determine what piece of the per diem goes to which expenses, or having to create a new Asset account every time you go on a trip. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
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.) | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Who maintains receipt for employee expense reimbursements? | In the normal course of events, you should receive a separate check for the amount of the purchase, and that amount should not be included in your wages as shown on your W-2 statement. If the amount is included on your paycheck, it should still be listed separately as a non-taxable item, not as part of wages paid. In other words, the IRS should not even be aware that this money was paid to you, there is no need to list the amount anywhere on your income tax return, and if you are paranoid about the matter, staple the stub attached to the reimbursement to a copy of your bank statement showing that you deposited the money into your account and save it in your file of tax papers for the year, just in case the IRS audits you and requires you to document every deposit in your checking account. The amount is a business expense that is deductible on your employer's tax return, and your employer is also required to keep documentation that the employee expense reimbursement plan is running as per IRS rules (i.e., the employer is not slipping money to you "under the table" as a reimbursement instead of paying you wages and thus avoiding the employer's share of FICA taxes etc) and that is why your employer needs the store receipt, not a hand-written note from you, to show the IRS if the IRS asks. You said you paid with "your own cash" but in case this was not meant literally and you paid via credit card or debit card or check, then any mileage award, or points, or cash back for credit card use are yours to keep tax-free, and any interest charges (if you are carrying a revolving balance or paid through your HELOC) or overdraft or bounced check fees are yours to pay. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Dalbar: How can the average investor lose money? | It appears that there's a confusion between the different types of average. Saying "the average investor" generally means the most common type of small-scale unsophisticated investor - the mode (or possibly median) investor. However, while this class of investors is numerous, each of them has assets that are quite small compared to some other types of investors; and the market average performance is determined proportionally to the amount of assets held, not to the number of holders; so the performance of large investors "counts" that much more. For any measure, the mode of performance can be (and often is) different from the mean performance - in this case, Dalbar is saying that the most common results are lower than the (weighed) average results. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Dalbar: How can the average investor lose money? | How is it possible for the average investor to underperform the market? The "average" investor probably makes some bad decisions. You also might need to take transaction costs into play (including borrowing on margin), so that there's a natural "erosion" of returns across the market. Meaning if transaction/borrowing costs are 1%, and the market return is 5%, the "average investor" Alternatively, if by "average" they mean the average of the population, not weighted by amount, it's plausible that the mass of smaller investors perform slightly worse than the smaller number of large investors (and have larger relative transaction costs), thus having a lower average on a per-capita basis. Doesn't the fact that investors can consistently underperform the market by making poor decisions, imply that an investor could consistently outperform the market by making the opposite decisions? No. If my investment decisions cause me to earn only a 10% return compared to the "average" 12% return, then making the opposite decision will cause me to lose 10%, not to make 14%. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Dalbar: How can the average investor lose money? | I think you are mixing two different concepts here. The average investor, in the quoted reference, means an average single investor like you or like me. the average investor consistently under-performs the market. However, you then ask the question and you seem to refer to all investors as a group; individuals, institutions, investment banks, et al. since together, investors own 100% of the stock in every company? Every investor could match the performance of the market easily and at low fees by simply buying an S&P index fund and holding it. In fact, some investors can even beat the market with the addition of some stocks. Here is the ten-year chart of Berkshire-Hathaway B compared to the S&P 500. There are other examples. However, few of us have the discipline to do so. We read questions here every week about the coming turbulence in the market, about the next big trend, about the next bubble, etc. The average investor thinks he is smarter than the market and buys on a whim or sells likewise and misses out on the long, slow overall growth in the markets. Finally, the title of your question is “Dalbar: How can the average investor lose money?” I doubt that the average investor loses money in the past several years. Not making as much money as is easily possible is not at all the same as losing money. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
What will my taxes be as self employed? | Whether you're self-employed or not, knowing exactly how much tax you will pay is not always an easy task. Various actions you can take (e.g., charitable donations, IRA contributions, selling stocks) may increase or reduce your tax liability. One tool I've found useful for estimating federal taxes is the Excel 1040 spreadsheet. This is a spreadsheet version of the income tax return form. It is not official and is not created by the IRS, but is maintained as a labor of love by a private individual. In practice, however, it is pretty much an accurate implementation of the tax calculation algorithms encoded in the tax forms and instructions. The nice thing about it is that it's a spreadsheet. You can plug numbers into various slots in the spreadsheet and see how they affect your federal tax liability. (You may also owe state taxes depending on what state you live in.) Of course, the estimates you get by doing this are only (at most) as accurate as your estimates of the various numbers you plug in. Still, I think it's a free and useful way to get a ballpark estimate of your tax liability based on numbers that you can more easily estimate (e.g., how much money you expect to earn). | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
What will my taxes be as self employed? | The amount of the income taxes you will owe depends upon how much income you have, after valid business expenses, also it will depend upon your filing status as well as the ownership form of your business and what state you live in. That said, you will need to be sure to make the Federal 1040ES quarterly prepayments of your tax on time or there will be penalties. You also must remember that you will be needing to file a schedule SE with your 1040. That is for the social security taxes you owe, which is in addition to your income taxes. With an employer/employee situation, the FICA withhoding you have seen on your paycheck are matched by the same payment by your employer. Now that you are self-employed you are responcible for your share and the employer share as well; in this situation it is known as self-employment tax. the amount of it will be the same as your share of FICA and half of the employer's share of FICA taxes. If you are married and your wife also is working self-employed, then she will have to files herown schedule SE along with yours. meaning that you will pay based on your business income and she will pay baed on hers. your 1040Es quarterly prepayment must cover your income tax and your combined (yours and hers) Self Employment taxes. Many people will debate on the final results of the results of schedule SE vrs an employee's and an employer's payments combined. If one were to provides a ball park percentage that would likely apply to you final total addition to your tax libility as a result of needing schedule SE would tend to fluctuate depending upon your total tax situation; many would debate it. It has been this way since, I first studied and use this schedule decades ago. For this reason it is best for you to review these PDF documents, Form 1040 Schedule SE Instructions and Form 1040 Schedule SE. As for your state income taxes, it will depend on the laws of the state you are based in. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Where do large corporations store their massive amounts of cash? | You can find out the general types of investments by reading the public corporation 10-Q report that is filed with the SEC it can be accessed via the EDGAR system. It will not tell you what securities they have, but it does identify the short term and long term investments categories and their value. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Where do large corporations store their massive amounts of cash? | Short term investments, treasuries, current accounts. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Where do large corporations store their massive amounts of cash? | They are using several banks, hedge funds or other financial institutions, in order to diversify the risk inherent to the fact that the firm holding (a fraction of) their cash, can be insolvent which would makes them incur a really big loss. Also, the most available form of cash is very often reinvested everyday in overnight*products and any other highly liquid products, so that it can be available quickly if needed. Since they are aware that they are not likely to need all of their cash in one day, they also use longer terms or less liquid investments (bonds, stocks, etc..). | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Where do large corporations store their massive amounts of cash? | For tax optimization, cash is stored mostly overseas, according to the New York Times. For Apple, everytime a song or an app is bought in Europe, Africa or Middle East, money flows to iTunes Sàrl, in Luxemburg. Royalties on patents flow internally from Apple in California to Apple in Ireland. Then profits flow to the Carribean. The problem is that cash cannot be brought back to the USA without huge taxes. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Does renting a room on AirBnB make all interest taxable? | What theyre fishing for is whether the money was earned in the U.S. It's essentially an interest shelter, and/or avoiding double taxation. They're saying if you keep income you make outside the US in a bank inside the US, the US thanks you for storing your foreign money here and doesn't tax the interest (but the nation where you earned that income might). There is no question that the AirBNB income is "connected with a US trade or business". So your next question is whether the fraction of interest earned from that income can be broken out, or whether IRS requires you to declare all the interest from that account. Honestly given the amount of tax at stake, it may not be worth your time researching. Now since you seem to be a resident nonresident alien, it seems apparent that whatever economic value you are creating to earn your salary, is being performed in the United States. If this is for an American company and wages paid in USD, no question, that's a US trade or business. But what if it's for a Swedish company running on Swedish servers, serving Swedes and paid in Kroner to a Swedish bank which you then transfer to your US bank? Does it matter if your boots are on sovereign US soil? This is a complex question, and some countries (UK) say "if your boots are in our nation, it is trade/income in our nation"... Others (CA) do not. This is probably a separate question to search or ask. To be clear, the fact that your days as a teacher or trainee do not count toward residency, is a separate question from whether your salary as same counts as US income. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Does renting a room on AirBnB make all interest taxable? | It says that you are exempt "as long as such interest income is not effectively connected with a United States trade or business". So the interest is from money earned from doing business with/through AirBnb, a US company. So you will have to report it. Even if your bank doesn't send you a 1099-INT, you have to report it, unless it is under $0.49 because the IRS allows rounding. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Is it bad practice to invest in stocks that fluctuate by single points throughout the day? | Yes. There are several downsides to this strategy: You aren't taking into account commissions. If you pay $5 each time you buy or sell a stock, you may greatly reduce or even eliminate any possible gains you would make from trading such small amounts. This next point sounds obvious, but remember that you pay a commission on every trade regardless of profit, so every trade you make that you make at a loss also costs you commissions. Even if you make trades that are profitable more often than not, if you make quite a few trades with small amounts like this, your commissions may eat away all of your profits. Commissions represent a fixed cost, so their effect on your gains decreases proportionally with the amount of money you place at risk in each trade. Since you're in the US, you're required to follow the SEC rules on pattern day trading. From that link, "FINRA rules define a “pattern day trader” as any customer who executes four or more “day trades” within five business days, provided that the number of day trades represents more than six percent of the customer’s total trades in the margin account for that same five business day period." If you trip this rule, you'll be required to maintain $25,000 in a margin brokerage account. If you can't maintain the balance, your account will be locked. Don't forget about capital gains taxes. Since you're holding these securities for less than a year, your gains will be taxed at your ordinary income tax rates. You can deduct your capital losses too (assuming you don't repurchase the same security within 30 days, because in that case, the wash sale rule prevents you from deducting the loss), but it's important to think about gains and losses in real terms, not nominal terms. The story is different if you make these trades in a tax-sheltered account like an IRA, but the other problems still apply. You're implicitly assuming that the stock's prices are skewed in the positive direction. Remember that you have limit orders placed at the upper and lower bounds of the range, so if the stock price decreases before it increases, your limit order at the lower bound will be triggered and you'll trade at a loss. If you're hoping to make a profit through buying low and selling high, you want a stock that hits its upper bound before hitting the lower bound the majority of the time. Unless you have data analysis (not just your intuition or a pattern you've talked yourself into from looking at a chart) to back this up, you're essentially gambling that more often than not, the stock price will increase before it decreases. It's dangerous to use any strategy that you haven't backtested extensively. Find several months or years of historical data, either intra-day or daily data, depending on the time frame you're using to trade, and simulate your strategy exactly. This helps you determine the potential profitability of your strategy, and it also forces you to decide on a plan for precisely when you want to invest. Do you invest as soon as the stock trades in a range (which algorithms can determine far better than intuition)? It also helps you figure out how to manage your risk and how much loss you're willing to accept. For risk management, using limit orders is a start, but see my point above about positively skewed prices. Limit orders aren't enough. In general, if an active investment strategy seems like a "no-brainer" or too good to be true, it's probably not viable. In general, as a retail investor, it's foolish to assume that no one else has thought of your simple active strategy to make easy money. I can promise you that someone has thought of it. Trading firms have quantitative researchers that are paid to think of and implement trading strategies all the time. If it's viable at any scale, they'll probably already have utilized it and arbitraged away the potential for small traders to make significant gains. Trust me, you're not the first person who thought of using limit orders to make "easy money" off volatile stocks. The fact that you're asking here and doing research before implementing this strategy, however, means that you're on the right track. It's always wise to research a strategy extensively before deploying it in the wild. To answer the question in your title, since it could be interpreted a little differently than the body of the question: No, there's nothing wrong with investing in volatile stocks, indexes, etc. I certainly do, and I'm sure many others on this site do as well. It's not the investing that gets you into trouble and costs you a lot of money; it's the rapid buying and selling and attempting to time the market that proves costly, which is what you're doing when you implicitly bet that the distribution of the stock's prices is positively skewed. To address the commission fee problem, assuming a fee of $8 per trade ... and a minimum of $100 profit per sale Commissions aren't your only problem, and counting on $100 profit per sale is a significant assumption. Look at point #4 above. Through your use of limit orders, you're making the implicit assumption that, more often than not, the price will trigger your upper limit order before your lower limit order. Here's a simple example; let's assume you have limit orders placed at +2 and -2 of your purchase price, and that triggering the limit order at +2 earns you $100 profit, while triggering the limit order at -2 incurs a loss of $100. Assume your commission is $5 on each trade. If your upper limit order is triggered, you earn a profit of 100 - 10 = 90, then set up the same set of limit orders again. If your lower limit order is triggered this time, you incur a loss of 100 + 10 = 110, so your net gain is 90 - 110 = -20. This is a perfect example of why, when taking into account transaction costs, even strategies that at first glance seem profitable mathematically can actually fail. If you set up the same situation again and incur a loss again (100 + 10 = 110), you're now down -20 - 110 = -130. To make a profit, you need to make two profitable trades, without incurring further losses. This is why point #4 is so important. Whenever you trade, it's critical to completely understand the risk you're taking and the bet you're actually making, not just the bet you think you're making. Also, according to my "algorithm" a sale only takes place once the stock rises by 1 or 2 points; otherwise the stock is held until it does. Does this mean you've removed the lower limit order? If yes, then you expose yourself to downside risk. What if the stock has traded within a range, then suddenly starts declining because of bad earnings reports or systemic risks (to name a few)? If you haven't removed the lower limit order, then point #4 still stands. However, I never specified that the trades have to be done within the same day. Let the investor open up 5 brokerage accounts at 5 different firms (for safeguarding against being labeled a "Pattern Day Trader"). Each account may only hold 1 security at any time, for the span of 1 business week. How do you control how long the security is held? You're using limit orders, which will be triggered when the stock price hits a certain level, regardless of when that happens. Maybe that will happen within a week, or maybe it will happen within the same day. Once again, the bet you're actually making is different from the bet you think you're making. Can you provide some algorithms or methods that do work for generating some extra cash on the side, aside from purchasing S&P 500 type index funds and waiting? When I purchase index funds, it's not to generate extra liquid cash on the side. I don't invest nearly enough to be able to purchase an index fund and earn substantial dividends. I don't want to get into any specific strategies because I'm not in the business of making investment recommendations, and I don't want to start. Furthermore, I don't think explicit investment recommendations are welcome here (unless it's describing why something is a bad idea), and I agree with that policy. I will make a couple of points, however. Understand your goals. Are you investing for retirement or a shorter horizon, e.g. some side income? You seem to know this already, but I include it for future readers. If a strategy seems too good to be true, it probably is. Educate yourself before designing a strategy. Research fundamental analysis, different types of orders (e.g., so you fully understand that you don't have control over when limit orders are executed), different sectors of the market if that's where your interests lie, etc. Personally, I find some sectors fascinating, so researching them thoroughly allows me to make informed investment decisions as well as learn about something that interests me. Understand your limits. How much money are you willing to risk and possibly lose? Do you have a risk management strategy in place to prevent unexpected losses? What are the costs of the risk management itself? Backtest, backtest, backtest. Ideally your backtesting and simulating should be identical to actual market conditions and incorporate all transaction costs and a wide range of historical data. Get other opinions. Evaluate those opinions with the same critical eye as I and others have evaluated your proposed strategy. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Is it bad practice to invest in stocks that fluctuate by single points throughout the day? | Eventually, you'll end up buying a stock at or near a high-water mark. You might end up waiting a few years before you see your "guaranteed" $100 profit, and you now have $5K to $10K tied up in the wait. The more frequently you trade, the faster your money gets trapped. There are two ways to avoid this problem: 1) Do it during strong bull markets. If everything keeps going up you don't need to worry about peaks...but then why would you keep cashing out for $1 gains? 2) Accurately predict the peaks. If you can see the future, why would you keep cashing out for $1 gains? Either way, this strategy will only make your broker happy, $8 at a time. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Is it bad practice to invest in stocks that fluctuate by single points throughout the day? | Its hard to write much in those comment boxes, so I'll just make an answer, although its really not a formal answer. Regarding commissions, it costs me $5 per trade, so that's actually $10 per trade ($5 to buy, $5 to sell). An ETF like TNA ($58 per share currently) fluctuates $1 or $2 per day. IXC is $40 per share and fluctuates nearly 50 cents per day (a little less). So to make any decent money per trade would mean a share size of 50 shares TNA which means I need $2900 in cash (TNA is not marginable). If it goes up $1 and I sell, that's $10 for the broker and $40 for me. I would consider this to be the minimum share size for TNA. For IXC, 100 shares would cost me $4000 / 2 = $2000 since IXC is marginable. If IXC goes up 50 cents, that's $10 for the broker and $40 for me. IXC also pays a decent dividend. TNA does not. You'll notice the amount of cash needed to capture these gains is roughly the same. (Actually, to capture daily moves in IXC, you'll need a bit more than $2000 because it doesn't vary quite a full 50 cents each day). At first, I thought you were describing range trading or stock channeling, but those systems require stop losses when the range or channel is broken. You're now talking about holding forever until you get 1 or 2 points of profit. Therefore, I wouldn't trade stocks at all. Stocks could go to zero, ETFs will not. It seems to me you're looking for a way to generate small, consistent returns and you're not seeking to strike it rich in one trade. Therefore, buying something that pays a dividend would be a good idea if you plan to hold forever while waiting for your 1 or 2 points. In your system you're also going to have to define when to get back in the trade. If you buy IXC now at $40 and it goes to $41 and you sell, do you wait for it to come back to $40? What if it never does? Are you happy with having only made one trade for $40 profit in your lifetime? What if it goes up to $45 and then dips to $42, do you buy at $42? If so, what stops you from eventually buying at the tippy top? Or even worse, what stops you from feeling even more confident at the top and buying bigger lots? If it gets to $49, surely it will cover that last buck to $50, right? /sarc What if you bought IXC at $40 and it went down. Now what? Do you take up gardening as a hobby while waiting for IXC to come back? Do you buy more at lower prices and average down? Do you find other stocks to trade? If so, how long until you run out of money and you start getting margin calls? Then you'll be forced to sell at the bottom when you should be buying more. All these systems seem easy, but when you actually get in there and try to use them, you'll find they're not so easy. Anything that is obvious, won't work anymore. And even when you find something that is obvious and bet that it stops working, you'll be wrong then too. The thing is, if you think of it, many others just like you also think of it... therefore it can't work because everyone can't make money in stocks just like everyone at the poker table can't make money. If you can make 1% or 2% per day on your money, that's actually quite good and not too many people can do that. Or maybe its better to say, if you can make 2% per trade, and not take a 50% loss per 10 trades, you're doing quite well. If you make $40 per trade profit while working with $2-3k and you do that 50 times per year (50 trades is not a lot in a year), you've doubled your money for the year. Who does that on a consistent basis? To expect that kind of performance is just unrealistic. It much easier to earn $2k with $100k than it is to double $2k in a year. In stocks, money flows TO those who have it and FROM those who don't. You have to plan for all possibilities, form a system then stick to it, and not take on too much risk or expect big (unrealistic) rewards. Daytrading You make 4 roundtrips in 5 days, that broker labels you a pattern daytrader. Once you're labeled, its for life at that brokerage. If you switch to a new broker, the new broker doesn't know your dealings with the old broker, therefore you'll have to establish a new pattern with the new broker in order to be labeled. If the SEC were to ask, the broker would have to say 'yes' or 'no' concering if you established a pattern of daytrading at that brokerage. Suppose you make the 4 roundtrips and then you make a 5th that triggers the call. The broker will call you up and say you either need to deposit enough to bring your account to $25k or you need to never make another daytrade at that firm... ever! That's the only warning you'll ever get. If you're in violation again, they lock your account to closing positions until you send in funds to bring the balance up to $25k. All you need to do is have the money hit your account, you can take it right back out again. Once your account has $25k, you're allowed to trade again.... even if you remove $15k of it that same day. If you trigger the call again, you have to send the $15k back in, then take it back out. Having the label is not all bad... they give you 4x margin. So with $25k, you can buy $100k of marginable stock. I don't know... that could be a bad thing too. You could get a margin call at the end of the day for owning $100k of stock when you're only allowed to own $50k overnight. I believe that's a fed call and its a pretty big deal. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Is it bad practice to invest in stocks that fluctuate by single points throughout the day? | The strategy has intrinsic value, which may or may not be obstructed in practice by details mentioned in other answers (tax and other overheads, regulation, risk). John Bensin says that as a general principle, if a simple technical analysis is good then someone will have implemented it before you. That's fair, but we can do better than an existence proof for this particular case, we can point to who is doing approximately this. Market makers are already doing this with different numbers. They quote a buy price and a sell price on the same stock, so they are already buying low and selling high with a small margin. If your strategy works in practice, that means you can make low-risk money from short-term volatility that they're missing out on, by setting your margin at approximately the daily price variation instead of the current bid-offer spread. But market makers choose their own bid-offer spread, and they choose it because they think it's the best margin to make low-risk money in the long run. So you'd be relying that: | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Any reason to keep around my account with my old, 'big' bank? | From my experience, payments from banks and other financial entities, such as loyalty programs, generally aren't as large as payments that go the other direction from consumer to bank. Thus, keeping a bank account open simply for some reward/loyalty points may just be changing your behavior for the wrong reasons. The more important scenario is whether or not you have any automated ACH payments or whether your bank account is linked to other services. Perhaps the biggest tell that you're in the clear is when those transactions start occurring from your credit union account. For example: If you had a direct deposit to your BMO bank account, make sure you see deposits start to appear in the credit union account. If you're making automatic withdraws to an online savings or brokerage account, make sure those transfers are stopped and that you instead see them coming out of your new credit union account. You shouldn't need to move the auto loan, but you will need to make sure you can pay it from the new account. Some financial advisors, such as in this BankRate article titled, Lenders can tap bank account for mortgage, even recommend keeping liabilities and assets at different locations. If for whatever reason your financial situation turned bleak, it would be more difficult for the bank to help itself to what's in your checking account. To avoid getting nickel and dimed to death by "payment processing fees", I tend to pay insurance bills yearly or semi-annually. Thus, consider if there is anything that may be coming due in the next 6 months. If so, you might want to get your new account hooked up while you still have all the routing numbers and account numbers in your head. It's a pain to dig this stuff up while also rushing to not be late. If all that is in order, close the account. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Any reason to keep around my account with my old, 'big' bank? | I'd add that bigger banks tend to have experience doing more complicated things. As an example, my local credit union (~12 offices), simply didn't have the software to wire money to a Canadian bank, as where Chase did. The Canadian routing number wasn't in the format of a US institution, and their software user interface just didn't allow for that number to be entered. Also, most smaller banks don't have international toll free (in-country) numbers for foreign access. Smaller banks also tend to have less sophisticated business banking tools and experience. If you take a Treasury bond approval to a small bank, they'll generally look at you like you have three heads. So the international side of things is definitely in the favor of big banks; they have a lot more money to dump on services. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
BoA Closed my Accounts and Froze my Funds. How can I get money back besides cashier's check? | I'd suggest you contact the Office of the Controller of Currency, who regulates BOA and file a complaint. This whole deal seems shady. According to the OCC FAQ, the fact that they closed the account is in their prerogative. However, I would think they are obligated to quickly return your funds, but can't find anything specific to that. The banks are very sensitive to having complaints filed against them, so if nothing else this may encourage them to be more helpful, even if your complaint isn't actionable. OCC Complaint Process. This topic on how long a bank can hold a large deposit before making funds available may also be helpful. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a self-directed IRA? | There is nothing wrong with self directed IRA's the problem is that most of the assets they specialize in are better done in other ways. Real estate is already extremely tax advantaged in the US. Buying inside a Traditional IRA would turn longterm capital gains (currently 15%) into ordinary income taxed at your tax rate when you withdraw this may be a plus or minus, but it is more likely than not that your ordinary income tax rate is higher. You also can't do the live in each house for 2 years before selling plan to eliminate capital gains taxes (250k individual 500k married couple). The final problem is that you are going to have problems getting a mortgage (it won't be a conforming loan) and will likely have to pay cash for any real estate purchased inside your IRA. Foreign real estate is similar to above except you have additional tax complexities. The key to the ownership in a business is that there are limits on who can control the business (you and maybe your family can't control the business). If you are experienced doing angel investing this might be a viable option (assuming you have a really big IRA you want to gamble with). If you want to speculate on precious metals you will probably be better offer using ETF's in a more traditional brokerage account (lower transactions costs more liquidity). | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a self-directed IRA? | This type of account will sell you just enough rope to hang yourself. Gold is at $1400 or so. Were you around when it first hit $800 in '79/'80? I was. No one was saying "sell" only forecasts of $2000. If you bought and held, you've still not broken even to inflation let alone simple market returns. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a self-directed IRA? | The main advantage and disadvantage I can see in a scenario like this are - how savvy and good an investor are you? It's a good way to create below-market average returns if you're not that good at investing and returns way above market average if you are... | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
What are the advantages/disadvantages of a self-directed IRA? | Our company does a lot of research on the self-directed IRA industry. We also provide financial advice in this area. In short, we have seen a lot in this industry. You mentioned custodian fees. This can be a sore spot for many investors. However, not all custodians are expensive, you should do your research before choosing the best one. Here is a list of custodians to help with your research Here are some of the more common pros and cons that we see. Pros: 1) You can invest in virtually anything that is considered an investment. This is great if your expertise is in an area that cannot be easily invested in with traditional securities, such as horses, private company stock, tax liens and more. 2) Control- you have greater control over your investments. If you invest in GE, it is likely that you will not have much say in the running of their business. However, if you invest in a rental property, you will have a lot of control over how the investment should operate. 3) Invest in what you know. Peter lynch was fond of saying this phrase. Not everyone wants to invest in the stock market. Many people won't touch it because they are not familiar with it. Self-directed IRAs allow you to invest in assets like real estate that you know well. Cons: 1) many alternative investments are illiquid. This can present a problem if you need to access your capital for withdrawals. 2) Prohibited transactions- This is a new area for many investors who are unfamiliar with how self-directed IRAs work 3) Higher fees- in many cases, the fees associated with self-directed IRA custodians and administrators can be higher. 4) questionable investment sponsors tend to target self-directed IRA owners for fraudulent investments. The SEC put out a good PDF about the risks of fraud with self-directed IRAs. Self Directed IRAs are not the right solution for everyone, but they can help certain investors focus on the areas they know well. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Why use accounting software like Quickbooks instead of Excel spreadsheets? | I would say that all of the reasons you list in your question are valid, and I would add the following... You are in the landscaping business, not the accounting business. If you manage everything in spreadsheets, at least one of you has to become the bookkeeper and leave the landscaping to the others. Spreadsheets are "agnostic" in how you use them, so you have to turn them into an accounting system, which means you're now not only more of a bookkeeper, but you're also more of a developer, too, and even less of a landscaper. Accounting software is already developed by developers who understand accounting. Using it requires you to only perform the data entry tasks, and then you can focus on the landscaping, customer service, sales and marketing, etc., things that actually contribute to your business. It is still good for you to understand basic accounting principles. Specialized accounting software will guide you through the process of learning and help you avoid making many of the costly mistakes you might have made in that learning process. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Why use accounting software like Quickbooks instead of Excel spreadsheets? | I think your reasons are good. Fundamentally accounting software is built to ensure you record your accounting data effectively with minimal mistakes and good auditing. But you still need to use the tool properly to get the benefit. One other advantage is that many accountants are familiar with, say QuickBooks, and can do your accounts more effectively if you use their preferred tool. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Why use accounting software like Quickbooks instead of Excel spreadsheets? | I would add to your reasons: Would you mow an entire lawn with a string trimmer just because you can, or would you buy a lawnmower? Use the right tool for the job. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
Why use accounting software like Quickbooks instead of Excel spreadsheets? | Since this is a cooperative I'm guessing your partners may want to be able to view the books so another key point you may want to consider is collaboration. QuickBooks desktop has all of these same issues because it is meant to be used on a single desktop. We're in an age of mobile devices, and especially in a business like landscaping it would be nice if certain aspects of record keeping could be done at the point and time where they are incurred. I'd argue you want a Software as a Service (SaaS) accounting package as opposed to "accounting software" which might come on a CD in the form of QuickBooks, Sage and others. Additionally, most of these will also have guides to help make sure you are properly entering your records. Most of these SaaS products also have customer success teams to help you along should you need assistance. Depending on the level of your subscription you may get more sophisticated handling of taxes, customized invoices or integrated payroll. Your goal is to keep accurate records so you can better run your business and maintain obligations like filing taxes. You're not keeping the records just to have them. Keep them in a place where they will work for you and provide the insights and functionality that will help your business grow and become successful. Accounting software will always win in this scenario over a spreadsheet. FULL DISCLAIMER: I work for Kashoo, a simple cloud accounting product designed for small businesses. But the points I mention above are true for Xero, QuickBooks Online and Wave as well as Kashoo. And if you really want expertise to go with the actual software consider service providers with a platform like: Indinero, Bench, easyrecordbooks or Liberty Accounting. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
Why use accounting software like Quickbooks instead of Excel spreadsheets? | Why use spreadsheets rather than writing your forms and formulas directly in a programming lanuage? Because you've got better things to do than reinvent the wheel, right? Same answer. ===== clarification, since the point apparently wasn't clear: Using a spreadsheet means you're writing and organizing and maintaining the formats and formulas yourself. Essentially, you are writing your own accounting program, using the spreadsheet program as your programming language. Nothing wrong with that, it just means you're doing work to produce something that you could have purchased instead. It's up to you to decide how the value of your time doing that work trades off against the cost of the commercial product. For many people, especially as the bookkeeping becomes more complex, that isn't a good investment of their time. The otherwise billable time it would take them to maintain the spreadsheet is worth more than the cost of buying an off-the-shelf product, and the product offers features that they wouldn't get around to adding to their own solution. Add to that the question of whether people find creating and tweaking spreadsheets rewarding or annoying. The right tool is always the one that lets you focus on what you actually care about, unless the cost is too high to justify it.Most folks care about getting the accounting task done a least cost/least efprt. Buying a solution is least effort; if the real cost including time/effort is also lower, that's the direction they're going to go. I maintained my own accounts, and did my taxes, in spreadsheets for quite some time. These days the time to do so, multiplied by what my time is worth, would exceed the cost of buying tools, and the commercial tools are more pleasant to use, less prone to accidents, and offer featured that I don't need but appreciate. I still use a stylesheet for one small calculation (rebalancing my invedtments) but thst's because I havean odd corner case the built-in tool doesn't handle well...not that it makes any practival difference, but being slightly off annoyed me. Your milage, obviously, will vary. Use the tool that suits your needs; others will do likewise. | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Why use accounting software like Quickbooks instead of Excel spreadsheets? | Here are the few points: Hope that helps, | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
Do shares purchased on FTSE AIM move with company to other markets? | Any shares you buy when a company is listed on one market will remain yours if the company moves to another market. Markets and exchanges like AIM are just venues for dealing in shares - indeed you can deal in those shares anywhere else that will allow you as well as on the AIM. The benefit of being listed in a market is that trade in the shares will be more "liquid" - there's more likely to be people who want to buy and sell them at any given time. The bigger concern would be what happens if the company does badly and drops out of the AIM entirely. You'd still be able to sell your shares to any willing buyer, but finding that buyer might get harder. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |
Contribute to both a SEP IRA and solo Roth 401(k)? | In addition to the normal limits, A Solo 401(k) allows you to contribute up to 20% of net profits (sole proprietor) or 50% of salary (if a corporation), up to $49,000. Note that the fees for 401(k) accounts are higher than with the IRA. See 401(k)s for small business. | Utilize your financial knowledge, give your answer or opinion to the input question or subject . Answer format is not limited. |
How to protect myself against unauthorized recurring CC charges? | The bank SHOULD be able to issue you a new card without letting vendors roll over the recurring payments. In fact, I've never had a bank move recurring payments to a new card automatically, or even upon request; they've always told me to contact the vendor and give them my new card number. So go back to the bank, tell them specifically that you have a security issue and you want the new card issued WITHOUT carrying over any recurring charges, and see if they can do it properly. If not: 1) Issue a "charge back" every time a bogus charge comes in. This costs the vendor money, and should convince them to stop trying to access your card. It's a hassle because you have to keep contacting the bank about the bad charges, but it won't cost you more than time and a phone call or letter. (The bank can tell you what their preferred process is for this.) 2) Consider moving to a bank that isn't stupidly over-helpful. | Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering |
How to protect myself against unauthorized recurring CC charges? | There is no way to stop any merchant from setting a recurring charge flag on a purchase. According to the following article, Mastercard and Visa encourages merchants to use this feature and even give them a better rate. I have found it impossible to stop these unauthorized transactions. The article sites that the merchant is allowed to march the charges across expired cards to find a good card that you might have as well as the article states they can cross banks to find you if you have the same type of card. Virtual account numbers will not protect you. Sorry but the only solution I have found is to close the account with the bank and move to a different type of card, mastercard to visa, or vice versa. This will only protect you for one move ,because if you have to do this again. Merchants that you thought were forgotten even years later will find you and post a charge legally. Virtual numbers from Mastercard or Visa won't stop them. I believe this is the number one reason for credit card fraud for consumers. There is no reason for a merchant to let anyone off the hook when the credit card company will side with them. The article below does state that Mastercard does have a "stop recurring payment" flag. Apparently no CSR tht I have talked to knows about it when I have asked to get a problem fixed. I have found that the only way to stop these charges from happening is to close all my visa and mastercard credit cards, pay with a check that you write and mail or a PayPal one time payment that is sent to pay for an invoice. Recurring Credit-Card Charges May Irk Consumers | Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open. |
Employer no longer withholds, how do I self administer 401k | You can't be doing it yourself. Only your employer can do it. If the employer doesn't provide the option - switch employers. The only way for you to do it yourself is if you're the employer, i.e.: self-employed. | Share your insights or perspective on the financial matter presented in the input. |
How to move (or not move) an LLC from Illinois to New Mexico? | Why not just leave it as is and register as foreign entity in New Mexico? You won't avoid the gross receipts tax, but other than that - everything stays as is. Unless Illinois has some taxes that you would otherwise not pay - just leave it there. | Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background. |