I don't know how i got accepted for a non secured credit card in the first place but no way im blowing all my credit on something i can get for free. My credit limit is somewhat non-exorbitant at the moment. They said if i pay my bill on time for 5 months they will likely raise my credit limit so maybe then.

Parents signed me up for a adjustable life insurance policy a while ago. I pay $10 a month. Death benefit of $22k. Surrender cash value is $1551. Should I cancel this? I am young, healthy, unmarried and no kids although the last two points will likely change in the next 10 or so years. I already get basic life insurance benefits at work.

I wouldn't cancel it. Things to keep in mind. Purchasing a new life insurance policy always becomes more expensive as you age. You don't know what your health or weight will be like in the future should you want to go through underwriting if you have children and want more. Should you leave your current job for whatever reason you will lose the life insurance you currently have through your company.

Cancel it and invest the money, assuming you aren't already maxing out your retirement/IRA options.

Yes I would cancel

If u were married with kids I may reconsider

Nah, term for the win. A $22k policy doesn't do anything anyway to provide for wife/kids.

The roi On term is pretty bad

EV of putting money elsewhere is much higher for a young healthy person

Wut? I was referring to if he had wife/kids and needed life insurance. You don't buy insurance for ROI.

I think he was just misusing the term ROI and was basically saying the same thing as you (22k does pretty much nothing for the wife/kids, better off cancelling/investing)

Is it generally encouraged to hold on to $ in HSAs rather than spending as a young person?

I'm gonna have some physical therapy expenses coming up. I've got 1-2k in N HSA I could draw from, or could just pay out of pocket. What are the main factors that should push me one way or the other?

I might be wrong but I think it is best if you pay with cash if you can afford it because:

You can pay X in cash and leave X in your HSA which will grow completely tax free,

Or

You can pay X from your HSA and then invest X in a taxable brokerage which will grow at a slower rate due to taxes.

From I've read on Boglheads forum, it depends.

If you're already fully funding HSA and Roth, then pay medical bills with cash. (Save all receipts and you can reimburse yourself in the future at any time tax free.)

If you can't afford to fully fund both HSA and Roth, then submit medical bills for HSA reimbursement and invest that in Roth. This essentially converts those dollars to tax free dollars forever right now.

Thanks guys, sounds like cash is the way to go.

FWIW I fully fund my Roth but not my HSA--I've been building up some cash in case I want to make a down payment sometime soon. Tough to evaluate the tax benefit of HSA contribution vs the desire to make a down payment in the near future.

HSA is honestly probably my favorite investment vehicle, assuming you can invest the money you accumulate in it.

Tax-free going in. Tax-free coming out for medical expenses for life. Can make normal IRA type distributions at retirement age (tax would be due).

Assuming that EVERYONE will have medical expenses in retirement, this is really the only completely tax free retirement savings option. It's definitely better as a supplement to other retirement savings, but I LOVE accumulating cash in a HSA and paying for medical expenses out of pocket while you're young. Definitely gives you an easy way to tap the money for medical if it's ever needed in an emergency.

Or he just meant that insurance has a negative ROI.

dang, sounds like I have been missing the boat for HSA. My wife contributes to one, $100 every two week pay period. I do not know any specifics(max contributions per year) but I better start thinking about this.

Anyway, we pay out of it often, when perhaps, we should not be. Looking at the transaction history, for instance, we have paid(wrote a check) for dental expenses and probably eye care(transaction was at Wal-Mart, I assume it was contacts or something for my wife). I simply glanced at a few transactions, there are more. I could have afforded to pay those out of pocket, would that have been recommended?

What are my best reading resources to brush up on the HSA and how to maximize its use? Also, we use a local bank in a small town, the savings rate has to be the nut low(.3% in fact). What or where are the best HSA options?

Max contribution will depend on if you have single or family coverage.

If you can invest the money in the HSA, then it's a huge win to avoid using the HSA money to pay for medical costs. Obviously that's going to be highly dependant on your income. It's not a BAD thing to use the HSA like it's designed to save all taxes on medical costs at all. It's just awesome in the long term to use it like a retirement account.

We use HSABank.com. When we moved to this as a company, they seemed like the best overall...low fees, easy ameritrade account setup, and didn't seem like fly-by-night. I've been happy with them overall.

Can someone please explain to me what is going on with VNQ?

I know they changed the index they track a few months back.

It just seems like recently it's been inversely correlated with the market. Or maybe I'm just seeing things...?

They did change the index to track more broadly the real estate market.

That has nothing really to do with recent performance tho...all broad REIT indexes are behaving similarly. Personally, I think it's overblown selling in response to fears of a rising interest rate environment.

I'm thinking about allocating more to REIT's as a result. I'm at ~10% REIT right now, split between VNQ and VNQI.

Heh, I'm at 14% split evenly between VNQ and VNQI. BTFD!

It's just so weird. Today it's down while every single other ETF I have is up and that has been the pattern for quite a while now. It's been on a precipitous drop overall ever since they changed the underlying index it tracks.

I just thought it would've stabilized long ago after the initial hit and returned to basically correlating with the market. I don't really delve deep into these things I just buy and hold, but my brother and I were talking about the next possible bubble and he mentioned bonds being really overpriced right now. Bond markets have a big effect on real estate markets, right? meh

Newbie question here:

Naspers owns a ~$150B stake in Tencent, but their market cap is only $103B. The thing is, investors have known about this gap for a long time. (A quick Google search gives me a bunch of inconclusive articles.)

So what I want to understand is why the market has priced Naspers as such, relative to how Tencent is priced. Is it because people distrust South African companies? Or is Tencent way overpriced? I'm guessing it's something else I'm missing completely.

Thanks in advance for any information. I'm just trying to learn here.

Consensus in investment community is the rest of their businesses are very sketchy (which is why it trades 60% of BV). The TCEHY stake has a tax liability as well if Naspers tried to sell. Similar to YHOO + BABA situation how YHOO owned a big ol' stake in BABA and the US operating business had a negative valuation.

Ahh ok, gotcha. Thanks for the answer.

The higher the bond yields, the less attractive risky investments like Reits are. If I can get 3% on a risk-less bond, then Reits better yield a lot more than 3%. Hence the drop in REIT values. Also, people fear Amazon is killing store foot traffic.
https://screener.fidelity.com/ftgw/e...NEWS_SVC000290

I know the conventional advice is to never spend HSA money, wondering if my situation is different and google is unhelpful.

I'm a Canadian working in the US, may be here to retirement, may go back after 10 years, may only be here a couple years, up in the air at this point. If I were to go back, do I lose any of the tax benefits of my HSA? Would I have to withdraw the funds and pay a penalty? If so, could the tax savings on medical expenses be worth losing out of the tax protection on the account growth?

Any advice appreciated!