/finance/ - Finance

Grew up poor-ish, started an apprenticeship, spend all my money on weed, started an actual job, spent more money on weed, bought a book on finances, spent all my money on drugs, asked a bank on advice and was turned down, got a better paying job, stopped spending all my money on drugs, accumulated money, expected a child, invested money, had a child, invested more money.

Achieved 10k+ recently.

Split accounts with the other half a few months back, trying to dig out of a big hole (actually have a little in savings now so feeling pretty hopeful). She was spending $600 of my paycheck on mobile games, weed, clothes, and fast food, along with 100% of her paycheck... I should have probably walked but I guess I'm holding out hope that the one I fell in love with is still in there somewhere and she isn't just a user. The nice part is that I now have $600 a month even after covering the bills to try to fix this (will still take years). At least there's not a convoy of Amazon trucks coming to my house anymore.

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>>351
$600 is basically a tube of 20 silver 1 oz coins every month. That's not just pocket change.

>>352
Possibly a good call. Already getting into the prepping scene but will only have so much room for canned beans. Maybe a few coins would diversify things a bit.

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>>353
I mostly stack 1 oz .999 coins as a means of beating inflation and currency crisis. For prepping purposes, smaller old coins of .800 to .925 silver that are common and well-recognized in your country might make more sense, if you can get them for a good price.
In the early part of this year, I bought 200 swiss 1 franc coins, when one dealer had them on sale for 2.95 euros (comes out to 21.97 euros/oz). They're not listed in this guide, but the swiss coins are comparable to the french ones (.835 silver, each coins weighing 5 grams so having 4.175 g of silver content).

I don't really know anything about crypto (I only buy silver & gold coins) but this might be of interest to americans:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/us-cbdc-western-sanctions-against-russia
From what I've read previously, the american FedNow infrastructure has already been going through stress testing since last year.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fednow-instant-payments-are-coming-and-cbdcs-will-follow
https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/apocalypse-fednow

CBDCs are game over.

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Kim Dotcom knows what's up.
I already asked myself some questions about wtf is going on back in 2015, when the mass immigration started into Europe. I came to that conclusion (the goal is to destabilize the society) but I couldn't understand WHY. Now finally in the past few years, after watching Catherine Austin Fitts interview on planetlockdownfilm.com, I finally got it, when she explained that the dollar system is finished and they've known that for a  long time already. Her videos are worth watching if you haven't seen them yet.
What I'm doing (to answer Dotcom's question): I've been trading all fiat in my investment and bank accounts into physical silver & gold coins, plus  stacking a lot of canned food (I have over a year's worth). I know they'll to everything to push adpotion of the CBDC, but I'm betting that it will eventually fail. However, those who didn't manage to salvage their savings into some form of hard assets will be wiped out as a result of all the crashes, bank failures, currency devalutations, cyberattacks, and general chaos.

AgoraDesk has shut down.
Quite a big blow to the monero ecosystem.

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>>347

My very basic layman understanding is the Japanese government started printing money with the explicit purpose of directly investing it in the stock market. This created a simultaneous situation of mass inflation and businesses gaining huge amounts of capital to do with as they pleased. So they started spending money like it was going out of style (it basically was, due to the inflation).  BUT, the important caveat is that because this cash was going to industries that were exporting Japanese goods, the yen started to GAIN value on the international markets because everyone wanted yen so they could buy cheap quality Japanese goods. 
The reason it all collapsed is because currency exchanges caught on to what the Japanese government was doing and stopped wanting to buy the yen, and because the domestic speculative investments primarily in real estate started outpacing the amount of actual money people and businesses had on hand to actually pay for things. 

The reason it still hasn’t recovered is both social and economic. Economic because the government is still trying to pay off the massive debt they incurred from the speculative investments, and social because it soured a lot of Japanese on investment so now they grub their shekels like their life depends on it meaning it’s very hard to get seed capital in the country.

>>221
I'm more familiar with this theory: >>86 But what you write might be true, the problem is that I only really followed it until the crash, and as far as I know it's not that the government prints cash directly, instead the central bank (remember, it's supposed to be a totally independent institution from the government, even though I highly doubt that this is actually true in any country, but I digress) just outright buys stocks on the stock market with money they print for this one purpose. They also keep interest low in order to encourage people to spend, because it means that loans are cheap but keeping your money in bonds and deposits will not give them enough profit to outpace inflation, so they too should buy stocks and property and consumer goods and whatnot. But as you wrote it just doesn't work, and (regardless of the actual reasons) the real problem is that they have been doing it for around 3 decades without even considering any alternatives, because the textbooks say that this is what they are supposed to do.

>>85 (OP) 
>However I don't think that alone explains why Japan ended up with a staggering level of public debt, nor explains why people are refusing to settle in countrysides where living costs are cheaper.
Japan is a country where a junior (in any aspect) must never advise or talk back to a senior, the majority of the population is computer illiterate, copyright fraud is rampant, taxation of private transportation is out the ass, but the majority of public transportation is privately owned. All of this results in a culture where even if your boss is going to bankrupt the company it's job loss to tell him that, legal slander to whistleblow, and there's so much red tape (both governmental and social) that starting a competing firm isn't possible since you will be blacklisted by your job's current clients if it gets off the ground.

>Why not move to the countryside?
It's inconvenient. Cars are seen as a luxury product in Japan, so you have to pay roughly a quarter of the car's price in taxes every year to keep it unless it's a farm vehicle or company vehicle that can be written off on taxes, and if you DO have a train or bus station, it's both an arm and a leg for tickets and you probably only have like two chances to catch a train/bus back home where it's still a 45 minute walk home. Sure you could bike to the city but that's lik

>>87
Different problems, and Japan addressed it "well" today relative to their economy. For Americans the housing bubble is more from zoning laws and construction laws preventing expansion in areas where suburban neighborhoods want to be built cheaply. Construction unions also play a role in keeping out DIY as does renting culture of generational housing. For China it's the fact that the housing market is synonymous with the stock market because it's the only legal investment there  and you need 2-3+ houses to get a bitch.

Japan in contrast incentivizes rebuilding homes every 20-40 years instead of generational houses which in turn makes construction affordable, and their building code is basically the bare minimum to not cause an accident where a bunch of people die when it comes to DIY. This means that in many cases resource companies speak directly to clients instead of construction companies and lawyers.

>>229
So THAT'S why there's such a huge push to get rid of everyone's cars in the U.S..

What's there to refute? The only question left is if I'll make out like a bandit or go broke.

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What are any of those numbers even going to mean when they switch to a CBDC? They're currently setting up the infrastructure for it.

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>>234
Those numbers don't show instability in the dollar value, anon. They show instability in workers. Nobody's working any more.

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>it’s a bubble!

Deutsche bank says next year should be a soft landing. Be ready to get your portfolios btfo.

Bribery or not, the American student loan system is predatory and needs to be castrated. The economy is fucked regardless and the absurdly high taxes americans are expected to pay are more than enough to keep the government afloat.
Maybe if they spent less money on Israili gibs or literally burning it in the desert they wouldn't need to fuck over young adults and patients.

>>158
>is that it's not just enough to know it; you also need to start building a portfolio, throwing yourself at people, and perhaps picking up certificates
In my experience, this is incredibly true. I'm certain all of my jobs in embedded development was due to my portfolio of independent projects with only a helping hand of my degree to get in the door. My classes never taught me much of embedded design, pcb design or much practical programming. All of those things I had to learn on my own. My employees were impressed I could even hold a soldering iron since it's not really taught anywhere. My GPA was also a little rough. Learning seemingly unrelated skills also helps. I never knew that fumbling around with a personal website to learn the basics of HTML and CSS, or messing with an old computer to make a home server would help in embedded, but it does. Learning programming has been a great skill for me, and I highly recommend picking it up, even if it's just to automate something boring in your life, like organizing data, moving files around, or have something like Excel not suck so much.

>>164
>My employees were impressed I could even hold a soldering iron
Lol, that's something even I can do, and I'm not doing embedded shit.

>>164
A soldering iron is a big hot pen. Its very obvious how to hold. But this is another example of the value of a skill being overlooked in HR. Is there even a way of putting such skills on your resume to get the actual hiring people (future bosses) to notice without getting mad at HR? Similarly when it comes to salary negotiations, HR does not give a shit about this and in my experience will attempt to undervalue you. The best thing I ever did was twist HRs arm to get more out of them and even then I still feel undervalued.

Would it be incredibly stupid to cash out my 401k with my employer to pay off my student loans? Currently have about $11k in it so I would get about $9k after taxes and fees/penalties for cashing out early. Currently have about $20k in student loans, which I could probably pay off within two years with my current employment status. Should I even be putting money in a 401k instead or prioritizing getting out of debt? My employer's plan is very generous (up to 10% matching which I am taking advantage of) but I'm not sure which one I should be focusing on.

I have seen some posts about one US bank in California going through some problems. I doubt this is enough to influence the of the banking sector or trigger anything 2008 level. Why are people so excited about it?

>>226
Because after COVID and the whole Ukrainian happening the world economy is in a bit of a disarray, so people except bad things to happen, therefore they are looking for the signs of those bad things finally starting to happen. Apparently this is what happened:
>the bank in question kept nearly all of its money in bonds
>bonds have a fixed interest rate*, a face value and a market value
>the face value and a market value are different, because bonds released at different times can have different interest rates, and you don't want to pay $100 for a bond with a face value of $100 and a 5% interest rate if you can instead pay for a bond that has a face value of $100 and an interest rate of 10%
>if a central bank raises the interest rate then bonds released after the raise have to have a higher interest rate
>this means that bonds released before the raise go down in market value simply because they are not as good an option
>in this case you can either keep your old bonds and accept that you get less money overall
>or sell them at a discount to someone who doesn't mind the lower interest rate, and use the proceedings to buy newer bonds
Now, the bank wanted to sell its ol

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>>224
The euro doesn't have a good future. I can't get rid of my euros fast enough.

>>226
SVB was basically THE bank to go to for vaporware and tech company loans. They also heavily used ESG in determining if you got lending money or not. Roughly 90% of their customers were tech businesses who shouldn't have qualified for FDIC. Them alone collapsing isn't a big deal but SVB has caused all the other woke nonsense banks to reassess their assets which is causing runs on the banks.

While not apparent at the time of your post, the feds have also promised people with money in SVB UNLIMITED INSURANCE for all their bad decisions which incentivizes the Chinese and other bad actors to buy into SVB in order to try and buy American debt on the cheap.

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>>230
> bad actors
You already have the baddest of actors in charge of the State Department and Federal Reserve. What the chinese do or don't do won't have any significant effect in the grand scheme. At most they'll manage to make a few bucks and maybe afford to buy some more tonnes of gold to shore up their BRICS system.
In fact, Biden just veto'd a new bill that was against ESG investing. So expect the woke stuff to remain in place all across the board in american firms.
Credit Suisse also just went bust, but it was being badly managed for a long time, so it's not a big surprise. And also it has the woke virus.

I remember one of the Hayate movies had the idiot character involved in a highly leverage trade that lost her millions. I think she paid off the debt with an equally leveraged trade. Anyways, every dip is an opportunity for success and failure at the same time.

I'm thinking of buying out-of-the-money calls on VIXY, please talk me out of it, anon.
>is trading at only $17 despite market uncertainty
>historically has reached highs as far as $160 during similar bear markets (e.g. 2018)
>big number makes my penis feel big
There's also UVXY, which is a 1.5x leveraged version of VIXY, going for only $13.
Something about this feels stupid, IV is already at levels higher than they were during that 2018 crash, surely this can't work, and I hope some smart 'non can tell me why. **I'm still going to do it anyways.

>fucked up spoiler
Looking closer at .VIX and VIXY I'm even more confused. The .VIX was at 19.85 in early 2018, back when VIXY spiked to $160, but the .VIX is at 31.75, and VIXY is still trading low, even relative to other periods of high .VIX this same year. I'd wager it probably has to do with VIXY trading futures on .VIX rather than the .VIX directly, but why isn't have no idea why or what I'm doing.
Still, if understanding is right, these calls are dramatically underpriced, I'm looking at an [$18 10/28 Call] on UVXY that only needs a (by historical standards) small spike to start printing money, and it's only going for $75. I'm probably misunderstanding or ignoring something obvious that'll bite my ass later, but fuck, man, it beats buying scratch tickets.
Maybe predicting the timing of the catalyst for a .VIX spike is the biggest factor keeping prices on these options low? Again I'm hoping someone smarter than me on options is here and can call me out as a retard.

Christ I shouldn't write long posts at midnight, I wrote that like a ESL retard.

>>190
I'm not knowledgable at all about this but its interesting to read about. Good luck.

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>>71
It looks like the map only cares about USA and China, and China while still were a communist country, it was always an outlier, so I can imagine countries actually traded more with USA than China. Also note that the Chinese economy only really took off 20-30 years ago, while USA were mostly stable during this timeframe (image from kikepedia, so take it too with a grain of salt). An USA vs USSR in the 80s and USA vs China now comparison probably would make more sense.
But on the other hand, Romania is like the whitest country on the map, while they were the most (along with Yugoslavia) fuck Moscow, we're doing things our own way country in the bloc, so who knows.

>>72
>It looks like the map only cares about USA and China
I see, I guess ˝A map that shows if a given country traded more with the USA or the PRC in a given year˝ does not have the same ring to it. 
>An USA vs USSR in the 80s and USA vs China now comparison probably would make more sense.
It seems to be one of those things that are hard to cram on a map, even if you use a fancy interactive one, because to do it properly you would have to include a chart or list that shows all trade partners by percentage for every country, and that is overwhelming enough so that you really could not see the forest from the trees.

wire service he had used for years to pay vendors in Ukraine had suddenly stopped working.

He contacted AmEx for an explanation. A representative told him that the company had suspended service in the country. “I understand Russia, but why Ukraine?” Mr. Nayandin, who is based in Fairfax County, Va., said he told the AmEx rep.

Like many American companies, AmEx suspended operations in Russia and Belarus after Western governments bombarded the two countries with sanctions. But AmEx went a step further by shutting down a service in war-torn Ukraine that businesses use to make cross-border payments.

“In light of the war in Ukraine and the changing sanctions environment, which has made it difficult to provide a reliable customer experience, we have suspended a wire transfer service, FXIP, which is used by a small number of companies to make vendor payments to recipients in Ukraine,” an AmEx spokesperson said in a statement.

AmEx’s better-known card business remains fully functional in Ukraine, the spokesperson said.

Sprawling sanctions meant to cripple Russia’s financial system sometimes trip people and businesses out of their reach, even in Ukraine, the country they were meant to help.

Financial firms often take an overzealous approach to interpreting penalties due to the harsh penalties for violations. The potential extension of sanctions to new targets may also make companies cautious about who they do business with.

“From a business perspective, if the deal size is small, why take the risk? said Robert Clifton Burns, senior counsel at the law firm Crowell & Moring LLP.

>>79
I cannot find anything about how this FXIP thing works from a technical perspective, but what makes international wire-transfers somehow complicated is that the national banking systems are not directly connected (hence SWIFT and everything else discussed ITT). The usual solution is that a bank opens an account at a foreign bank, and use that as an ˝access point˝ to the banking system of that country. I suspect AmEx also has at least one bank account in every country where it's available, in order to deal with card payments, and this system piggybacks on that. So instead of using the normal method of sending funds from a bank account in one country to a foreign bank account, they credit the sender's money on the AmEx bank account in the sender's country, and then the once receiving the funds gets them from the AmEx bank account in his country. 

In short, it really has nothing to do with the technological side of things, instead they simply decided that they won't use their Ukrainian bank account to send money to individuals and businesses.

>>101 (OP) 
I think he wanted to shitpost like usual, but then he (or some sort of assistant or manager or whatever) thought that this might somehow or an other get him into trouble. Musk is a good investor, and by that I mean he is good at convincing others to throw money at various things, but he also seems to be a shitposter at heart. It's best to just ignore him, except if you really do have too much money.

>>105
>Musk is a good investor
Musk is a good conman.

>>105
>Musk is a good investor, and by that I mean he is good at convincing others to throw money at various things,
>>108
>Musk is a good conman.
Conmen are good investors, exactly because they are good conmen. The world is such a horrible place in no small part because we have too many people who only want to see numbers go up, and they will throw money at anything that promises a good enough return of investment.