Will My Spouse and Children Receive Social Security Benefits if I Die?
Spouses and children can and do receive social security benefits upon the death of a person who paid into the system. A spouse who is older than 60 will always be able to receive either a majority of the benefit that was (or would have been) paid to you, using their own age against the full benefit amount that was part of your benefit equation. Children, including dependent grandchildren, can receive a payment equal to 75% of your full benefit amount until they are about 18. Continue reading...
Do I Need Professional Help to Prepare a Will?
Whether you need professional help depends on the size of your estate and the complexity of your wishes for how to distribute your assets. Generally speaking, however, it makes sense to hire legal help to create your last will and any related trusts, as often times the cost to doing so is less than the cost of probate court and duress to your heirs in settling the estate themselves. What is a Living Will? What is the Difference Between a Will and a Trust? How Much Does it Cost to Prepare a Will? Continue reading...
What is Investment Interest Expense?
IIE is deductible from taxes, and is usually used to deduct the interest paid on a margin loan used to buy taxable securities, when there is a gain to offset. Investment interest expense is the term for interest which has been paid in order to hold an investment position. It comes into play when filing taxes. An individual can list interest expenses on a Form 1040. The most common place to incur an interest expense when investing is through the use of margin in an investment account. Continue reading...
How Do You Store Your Bitcoin?
In your “bitcoin wallet,” of course... Once you have acquired bitcoin, you will want to make sure that you store it in a secure fashion that suits your taste and needs. You have several options for this, since technically all you’re storing is a few lines of code, and this can be done on a computer, in a cloud, on a removable storage device, or on some sort of physical medium such as paper or even a physical manufactured bitcoin. Continue reading...
What is the Cup-and-Handle (Bullish) Pattern?
Pattern trading in the security market isn’t new. For years — decades even— traders have been scouring charts on a daily basis in search of pattern formations. The thinking has been that if you found a pattern early in its formation, maybe you could capitalize on a trade by predicting where the security was headed. The Cup-and-Handle pattern is a great example of how this works. Here is an image of the geometric pattern formation: Continue reading...
What is an Accounts Payable Subsidiary Ledger?
Accounts payable may have enough items within it to require its own department in the company, or just a subsidiary ledger to supplement the General Ledger of the company. A subsidiary ledger gives full details of a line-item in the general ledger, especially when it is too detailed to include in the general ledger. The Accounts Payable Subsidiary Ledger will contain all of the transaction details for each credit and debit in the Payables history from a specific period. Continue reading...
What is Turnover Ratio?
Turnover ratio is a term that can be used in reference to the rate at which a company goes through its physical inventory, or that a mutual fund sells and replaces its investment holdings. In the context of a company’s inventory of goods, a high turnover ratio is a positive sign. It means that a company is selling plenty of its products and is not wasting money on more warehousing space than it needs. This kind of turnover ratio is calculated as the cost of goods sold in a period divided by the average inventory during that time. In the context of mutual funds and ETFs, turnover ratio is a negative thing if it is high. Continue reading...
What is an 'expiration date' in reference to option trading?
An ‘expiration date’ refers to the time when an option contract must either be acted upon by the owner (buying or selling the security in question) or left to expire. With derivatives such as options and futures, there will be an expiry, or expiration date in the contract, after which they expire worthlessly. Most options contracts will expire in 3, 6 or 9 months from when they are generated, and they all share the same expiration day of the month on their contracts in the United States, which is the 3rd Friday of the month at 4 PM. Continue reading...
What are Envelopes and Trading Bands?
Moving average envelopes and trading bands help traders filter their decisions to trade. These tools set thresholds on the amount of movement above and below a moving average to trigger a decision to trade (or at least prompt further consideration by the trader). A moving average envelope often takes a moving average line for a security or index and duplicates it, moving one line a certain percentage above and one a certain percentage below (the distance may depend on volatility levels). Price fluctuations in a security then might trigger a decision to sell when the price hits the upper band, or a decision buy when the price hits the lower band. If it crosses the bands it might be seen as a new trend. Continue reading...
What is the Lehman Aggregate Bond Index?
The Lehman Aggregate Bond Index is a broad bond index, widely considered the best total bond market index to track performance across various types of bonds. The index includes government bonds, mortgage backed securities, corporate bonds, and asset backed securities with maturities greater than a year. It is used by many money managers as a measuring stick for tracking the relative performance of a managed bond portfolio. Continue reading...