One of the best kept secrets in personal finance is annualcreditreport.com. It's run jointly by Transunion, Experian, and Equifax and is the only federally mandated and authorized source for obtaining a free credit report. You don't hear too much about it because the companies that run it aren't crazy about the fact that they have to give everyone a free credit report each year which is why you have all these freecreditreport.com sites out there. You can get all three at once for free there.
Annualcreditreport.com is great for getting a snapshot of what people see when they pull your credit report. The one thing it doesn't give you, though, is your actual credit score. That's where sites like freecreditreport.com come in and require a subscription to give you your score. If you want to get an idea of your actual score, you can try signing up at creditkarma.com. It has partnered with Transunion to give you an actual credit score for free, among other things (it's analogous to a Mint.com, but purely for your credit score.) Easiest way to get a credit card is through your bank. BofA, Chase, Citi all offer intro cards with no annual fee that's tied directly to your checking account, but a lot of smaller banks and credit unions will have similar offerings. The idea is that because they can see things like your average balance over time and direct deposit activity, they can offer you credit with more confidence that you'll pay it back than a 3rd party like American Express can. If you're truly serious about improving your credit, and absent compelling reasons to the contrary, you should start shifting all of your spend from your debt card/cash to a credit card and, most importantly, paying down that credit card every month. You don't mention why you've never had a credit card before, but I'm assuming you just used a debit card for everything and never thought or needed to get an actual credit card. If that's the case, it shouldn't really be any skin off your nose to open one up with your bank and start using it regularly. I have to say, I'm shocked the only options you found were huge annual fee cards with such low limits -- if you don't mind, what were these awful, awful cards you found?
Just as a note, CreditKarma does not provide your credit score. They provide something they call their TransRisk score, which does not exactly correlate with any major credit score.
Finance jobs I got a PM about this so Ill post a general overview of different areas: Investment Banking IB is typically the prerequisite for Private Equity and Hedge Fund front-office jobs. I posted about it before, but IB is very competitive right out of college. If you dont graduate from an Ivy League school , youll need at least a 3.5 GPA at minimum. The money as a 1st-year analyst starts around 75-85k base salary plus bonuses which, if your group and (and the economy) does extremely well and you work at a bulge bracket (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley), you can make upwards of $130K out of school. Plus theres the myths of the hard-partying and lingerie model-fucking lifestyles (mostly bullshit). Sounds awesome right? Its fine if you dont mind working 80-100 hours a week, sometimes more. You literally wake up at 6, get to work around 730-8, and you can leave around 2AM (or not at all) 5 days a week. You have to really like the work, which is editing presentations, LBOs, etc, not the most stimulating sometimes. Its great if youre 22-23 and dont care about the hours and youre looking to PE or HF where your earnings can be in the stratosphere (500K-???). Its terrible if youre in your late 20s or early 30s and in a relationship. Personally, i think theres much easier ways to get rich and its not worth sacrificing your whole life. Audit/Accounting Most people immediately think Big 4 public accounting (E&Y, KPMG, PWC, Deloitte). Most of the time, theyre right because those firms recruit "livestock" or recent grads who dont mind long hours (no where near IB though), traveling, etc. Most go into a Big 4 then go to a private bank and do Corporate Finance, Wealth Management, Internal Audit, or on a CFO/Controller path. You analyze risks and controls and test them in coordination with an external firm and regulators (OCC, usually). Starting salary ranges based on experience from starting at 45-60K and can go up to 130-150K in senior levels (up to 300K-$1 million if you become a partner in a large firm). The trade off is, the work-life balance is a hell of a lot better and not nearly as many douchebags. Plus, theres plenty of exit opportunities in other departments in your bank or firm, especially if you get an MBA.
Another credit question... I got into credit card debt in college, and ended up closing the card while continuing to make payments over 4 years. I just paid it off, but this leaves me with available credit of only my $500 secured card. I want to buy a house soon, so I'm interested in maximizing my credit score, but I don't want to have too many inquiries on my report, so I don't know whether or not I should apply for a new card. So tl;dr, which is better: less available credit with fewer inquiries, or more available credit with more inquiries?
You're better off to wait. In addition to having the inquiries show up, one of the factors that affects your score is the average age of your accounts. Having a new account on your report will bring down that age substantially, lowering your score. It's best not to open anything until after you secure the mortgage. If you can manage your accounts properly, you're better off to never close a credit card account because the age of the account adds so much to your score, plus if you have a zero balance it helps with your debt ratio. Having a balance of $1000 out of $20,000 available is far better than a $200 balance with $500 available. It's counter-intuitive, but that's how they do it. Be sure you check your credit report before you apply for a mortgage, before you even shop for a house. Be sure to have anything incorrect removed. You can even have some correct things removed. I had a collection on one of my reports that I had no idea was out there. It was from a $50 copay from an emergency room visit a few years ago that the hospital had just turned over to an agency. I only found out about it when I checked my reports after I had been offered a poor rate on some credit account. When I started to refinance my mortgage last year, I called the collection agency and told them my sob story and the lady agreed to remove it from my report. My score went up over 100 points by having that removed. I just had to wait a little longer before I applied for the refinance.
Just to point something out that goes along with this, when your debt utilization ratio is calculated they go off the most recent month's closing balance, so just trying to pay everything off in full a day before you get your credit checked isn't going to cut it, if you want nothing to show up you have to pay off the card in full right before the statement closing date, not the grace period date. Or if you want to play it safe just pay your credit in full now and don't use it until the application process is complete.
Thanks for the info. I hadn't thought about age of the account. I just knew about the utilization ratio, which has been killing my score for the past 4 years, showing available credit as $500 and outstanding balances of $5k+. Now that the account is paid off, I am just anxious to bring it up. Thanks again!
Facebook stock is now valued at half of its IPO. Insider Peter Thiel liquidates his shares........ And it couldn't have happened to a bigger douche of a CEO. Anyone taking long on this?
The short sellers are going to suck it dry and it's going to become toxic probably by end of Q3. And yeah, Thiel is a pompous douchebag.
When the IPO first was valued, they were talking $22, then it got bumped to $38 and that was WAY overvalued. I think it drops to the low $16's before it starts to make a push back into the $20's by Q1 2013 and then it breaks from there. Either they start making decent revenue and figure out how to make growing income off Facebook or they fail and it becomes a junk stock like Sirius or Sprint.
I'm in a bit of a bind. I have to give an in depth analysis on a company in four weeks. Problem being I don't know anything about PE ratio, RIM models, Capital structure, Basel III, EPS, historical and Relative models, margin of safety etc etc. Is there a book or resource out there that can give me a crash course in figuring this stuff out?
Work or school? CFA institute level 2 exam materials or Kaplan test prep of same exam. Also go read some sell side research reports and get a feel for approach.
So its been a few years since I was in school but I remember all of my buddies having zero problems getting student loans, guys with no credit getting 30-50k easy. The Wife is 8k short for her last 2 semesters, 8k total. She has shit credit because of medical bills and got denied twice today for loans. I cosigned for her and STILL got denied, I have good credit (730), with only one 30 day late charge from about 5 months ago, that's the only one ever. I have gotten approved for a 40k auto loan, any credit card I wanted and I can't get the wife approved for 8k? WTF is going on? So anyway, any of you know an easy way to get an 8k student loan? I swear they used to just give the money away to anybody.
School, but we (if I don't fuck this up) manage a small fund of roughly 1.3 mil. The models we use are RIM, RV, and Historical P/E. I can figure the math out on my own, but I need a bit of guidance on what to include for data etc though. An example would be how to account for a company that has done large acquisitions (Oracle). I have access to Morningstar.
AAPL just fell strongly through support. With a follow up day of selling tomorrow I could see it dropping heavily...next level of support isn't until the ~$400ish mark. This is the second day of selling on above-average volume. Could be a great short on the next pullback. Thoughts? (Also I really just want to get this thread going again. Where muh stock nutz at?)
Apple is a tough one to go short on, at least enough to make it worth while. It has weird little upticks that oddly coincide with product announcements rather than releases. The big drop everyone thought would occur when Jobs died didn't happen. In fact it went the opposite way and the shorters got fucked. I'd stay away with that one. Go long or go home with Apple.
I wouldn't go long on a stock that has been on a solid downtrend since mid-september. Any change in the trend would be likely to occur at the price range it just broke (down) through. Apple carries a hefty price tag, but that also means it has significant point moves even when the % change is low, making it a great look for options. Also, Google is looking very promising, but it closed too high today. If it closes at its 30-day average (~$710-715) in the next few days there's a definite entry there. Should hopefully see that by the end of this week or early next.
But that move can swing the other way. Yeah down from September, but overall an upward trend since 2011. If you're absolutely going to go short on it, do it after Feb 1 but before March. Not sure when they're 10K is out, but Im willing to bet Apple will see a nice uptick by months end.