Learn more about CD penalties and how to avoid them. Why CDs Charge Early Withdrawal Penalties The bank wants you to keep your money invested for a set period, which may be six months or a year, or even perhaps five years. It’s willing to pay you a higher interest rate return if you do so. The bank benefits from having certainty about how long it can use your money....
Chapter 13 is less about the elimination of debt (Chapter 7) and more about the reorganization of your finances. The Chapter 13 process requires that the debtor (that’s what we call the person who files the bankruptcy case) make a monthly payment to a Chapter 13 Trustee for a period of 36 to 60 months. The Trustee then distributes that money to the debtor’s creditors who have filed proper claims....
Think of it as a personal recommendation, focusing on your character rather than your job experience. A potential employer might ask for a character reference in addition to other employment references as a way to learn more about you. If you don’t have professional references you can use, a character reference can be a good alternative. If you’re not asked for a reference letter, you might consider offering one anyway....
As a Financial Advisor, he built a practice helping individuals and businesses achieve their financial goals. Toward the end, he started focusing on helping business owners receive full value for their work upon exiting their business. He has also had the opportunity to train, develop, and support new advisors to build their own practices and help their clients achieve their goals. This included helping with case design, product knowledge, investment analysis, investment recommendation, portfolio construction, asset management, financial statement analysis, business planning, and business exit strategies....
Knowing how an investor might open one of these tax-advantaged accounts will shed more light on how they work and help you understand more about Roth IRA accounts as compared to mutual funds. How a Roth IRA Works A Roth IRA is a type of retirement account created by Congress. It differs from a traditional IRA in several notable ways. You can put aside a certain amount of money each year, up to a maximum that’s known as the “contribution limit....
“Clawback” is an interesting word. It sounds pretty dramatic, and it can be because it can force someone to give back money as a penalty. A clawback provision in a business contract is a provision that requires something to be given back, depending on the circumstances. How Clawbacks Work Let’s say a business has a chief executive officer (CEO) whom it wants to reward for keeping the company profitable. Maybe the CEO has a golden parachute contract....
Learn more about closely held corporations, how they work, and their pros and cons. What Is a Closely Held Corporation? Closely held corporations are businesses where a few individuals own the majority of shares. Alternate name: Close corporation The vast majority of small corporations in the U.S. are closely-held. To qualify as a closely held corporation, a business must fit the following requirements: Have more than 50% of the value of its outstanding stock owned, directly or indirectly, by five or fewer individuals at any time during the last half of the tax yearNot be a personal service corporation...
Commodity traders often claim to be in either the technical or fundamental camp. In fact, most commodity traders utilize both methods. Successful traders know that in these markets, it’s hard to have too much data. To begin trading commodities using technical analysis, you will need to have a brokerage account in which you’re able to trade futures contracts, the main way traders play the commodity markets. Your trading platform will let you create a price chart of the market you are interested in trading, with the addition of technical indicators that go beyond simple observation of pricing data on a graph....
To help you navigate the real estate jargon and terms you will see in a commercial lease, here are some common office and commercial leasing terms and their general explanations. Some of these terms may be used differently in various regions of the country, so be sure to ask the precise meaning of a term when you are negotiating a lease. Lessor The lessor is the person who is granting the lease and who has the legal obligations related to the lease contract; the landlord....
From prepping your finances to finding the right house to securing a mortgage loan, you’ll find many moving parts. Get them right, and that dream home is yours. Stray off course? And it could cost you serious cash or that dream house entirely. Are you preparing to buy your first home? Here are common homebuying mistakes experts see—and how you can avoid them on your own journey to buying a house....
Immediate annuities are sometimes referred to as single premium immediate annuities (SPIA). There are several ways immediate annuities work, but the three primary types are fixed payout, inflation-indexed, and variable. Understanding the differences can help you determine which one is best for you. Fixed Immediate Annuity In a fixed annuity, you place funds into an account with an insurance company, which determines the amount of income you receive each month....
While no one likes to think that a boating or watercraft accident could happen to them, the truth is that there are thousands of boating accidents in the U.S. every year. While practicing boating safety helps keep accident numbers down, there always is a chance the unthinkable will happen. There were 5,265 recreational boating accidents in 2020, resulting in 767 deaths, 3,191 injuries, and about $62.5 million in property damage....
When President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) into law on December 22, 2017, it cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, the lowest rate since 1939. The Pass-Through Business Deduction The TCJA also initiated a 20% deduction on qualified business income for pass-through businesses. This deduction ends after 2025. Pass-through businesses include sole proprietorships, partnerships, limited liability companies, and S corporations. They also include real estate companies, hedge funds, and private equity funds....
A group of 104 organizations representing borrowers wrote an open letter last week calling on the Education Department to overhaul its income-driven repayment program like it did the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. In October, the department issued a special waiver temporarily letting past payments from public servants count toward forgiveness when they didn’t before. “We are continuing to explore ways to improve and are looking carefully at the experiences of borrowers on income-driven repayment plans to ensure that the promise of forgiveness is kept for borrowers on those plans,” a department spokesperson said when asked for a response to the letter....
Even though it is annoying to have an extra fee tacked onto your purchase, you will likely continue to encounter these surcharges. Here’s what you need to know about these fees. Are Credit Card Surcharges Legal? The short answer is yes, it is legal for a merchant to impose a surcharge. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2017 protected surcharges as a form of free speech from merchants. Retailers can also require a minimum purchase amount when you use credit cards....
In this article, we break down the basics of recording debit and credit transactions, as well as outline how they function in different types of accounts. Double-Entry Accounting Most businesses, including small businesses and sole proprietorships, use the double-entry accounting method. This is because it allows for a more dynamic financial picture, recording every business transaction in at least two accounts. It works like this: A debit is entered into at least one account, then a corresponding credit of the same amount, but of opposite value, is recorded into at least one account....
How the Discover it Quarterly Rewards Work There are a trio of Discover cards that offer 5% cash back on a rotating schedule of categories, including both the Discover it Cash Back, the Discover Student Cash Back cards, and the Discover NHL card. To earn the elevated cash back each quarter, you’ll first need to activate the offer online or via the Discover app. You’ll be able to activate the bonus categories up to a month in advance and anytime during the quarter....
Over the weekend, credit card offer watchers found that cardholders who use their rewards to buy a gift card may now get 10%-25% more value than they would by redeeming for cash, depending on the retailer. For example, a $50 Old Navy gift card can be purchased for $40 of cash-back rewards right now, as confirmed by The Balance via the Discover cash-back rewards center on Monday. That translates to a point value of 1....
Tools Discretionary fiscal policy uses two tools. They are the budget process and the tax code. The first tool is the discretionary portion of the U.S. budget. Congress determines this type of spending with appropriations bills each year. The largest is the military budget. All other federal departments are part of discretionary spending too. The budget also contains mandatory spending. This includes payments from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and interest payments on the national debt....
Expansionary monetary policy deters the contractionary phase of the business cycle. But it is difficult for policymakers to catch this in time. As a result, you typically see expansionary policy used after a recession has started. How It Works The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, is a good example of how expansionary monetary policy works. It usually uses three of its many tools to boost the economy. It rarely uses a fourth tool, changing the reserve requirement....
