183. Does high inflation help or hurt companies with huge cash reserves?
This is a reasonable question about inflation.  I would just like to note that inflation is nearly zero at the moment.  And interest rates are very low.  For a stable enterprise, borrowing cash is very easy right now.  Naturally, things could change in a year.  But the reason a company like Microsoft (but not just them) might hoard cash right now is that it gives them weight for buying up smaller firms, muscling rivals, and signaling their comfort level with the way things look for them.  It could also be because they are out of ideas for what to invest in, and/or are waiting for conditions to change before making any big decisions.  But with an interest rate at close to zero, and an inflation rate at close to zero, at the moment, inflation is not going to be a consideration in evaluating such a company.

184. If I have $1000 to invest in penny stocks online, should I diversify risk and invest in many of them or should I invest in just in one?
There's a grey area where investing and speculating cross. For some, the stock market, as in 10% long term return with about 14% standard deviation, is too risky. For others, not enough action.  Say you have chosen 10 penny stocks, done your diligence, to the extent possible, and from a few dozen this is the 10 you like. I'd rather put $100 into each of 10 than to put all my eggs in one basket. You'll find that 3 might go up nicely, 3 will flounder around, and 4 will go under. The gambler mentality is if one takes off, you have a profit.  After the crash of '08, buying both GM and Ford at crazy prices actually worked, GM stockholders getting nothing, but Ford surviving and now 7X what I bought it for.  Remember, when you go to vegas, you don't drop all your chips on Red, you play blackjack/craps as long as you can, and get all the free drinks you can.

185. Why is the fractional-reserve banking not a Ponzi scheme?
The fundamental underlying difference between a bank and a Ponzi scheme: When a bank lends money and charges interest, people can do things with that borrowed money which are worth it. (Building factories, starting businesses, or just enjoying the comfort and warmth of a single-family home instead of paying rent). This is why fractional-reserve banking is able to work. People may also do things which do not necessarily turn a financial profit (financing large purchases on a credit card) but are worth it in terms of an expenditure. They may also do stupid things (financing useless purchases on a credit card and wasting their money) or otherwise dispose of the money poorly (the new business fails, the home's value plummets, etc). A Ponzi scheme never really bothered to do useful things with the money. Social Security has been mentioned. Part of social security's setup involves the current population of workers paying the current population of retirees; their own retirements will have to be financed by the next generation. This design is not intrinsically a Ponzi scheme: both the population and the economy ought to remain growing for the intermediate future, so there will be at least as much money (and probably much more) for them to pay those bills. Unlike a Ponzi scheme, the idea that it will continue to attract new money to pay out existing claims is a realistic one. The real questions of its sustainability are a matter of specifics: is it collecting enough money to remain functional in the future, or is it outpacing the growth of the economy and the population?

186. Is it possible for me to keep my credit card APR at 0% permanently?
Banks don't care that you are responsible cardholder. They care to make money. Interest rates are basically 0% by government policy and the banks charge their responsible cardholders 20% interest rates. Think about that for one second, and realize they really do not care about your ability to avoid paying interest, they only need you to 'slip up' one month during your entire lifetime to make a profit from you. It is in their interest for you to get into a spending habit, from 0% promo rates, so that eventually a frivolous purchase or life changing event causes a balance to stay on the card for over one month.

187. Buying my first car out of college
I've seen this approach to buying/funding cars described in a couple of different ways over the years. Random thoughts:

188. Low risk withdrawal from market. Is there a converse to dollar-cost-averaging?
When you are a certain age you will be able to tap into your retirement accounts, or start receiving pension and social security funds. In addition you may be faced with required minimum distributions from these accounts.  But even before you get to those points you will generally shift the focus of new funds into the retirement account to be more conservative. Depending on the balances in the various accounts and the size of the pension and social security accounts you may even move invested funds from aggressive to conservative investments. The proper proportion of the many different types of investments and revenue streams is open to much debate. During retirement you will be pulling money out of retirement accounts either to support your standard of living or to meet the required minimum distributions. What to sell will be based on either the tax implications or the required distributions that will still maintain the asset allocation you desire.   If your distributions are driven by the law you will be selling enough to meet a specific required $ figure. You will either spend that money or move it into a low interest savings account or a non-retirement investment account. If trying to meet your standard of living expectations you will be selling funds that allow you to keep your desired asset allocation but still have enough to live on. Again you will be trying to meet a specific $ figure.  Of course you may decide at anytime in retirement to rebalance based on changes to your lifestyle, family obligations, or winning the lottery.

189. Is stock in a private corporation taxable?
This stock is the same as any other, but you need to keep clear in your head that you and your company are now different entities.  You (the person) will pay tax on capital gains and losses when you sell any stock that you hold in your own name.  You'll also owe "regular" tax if you draw a salary, etc.  The fact that it may be "your" company does not change these things. The company will not recognize a gain by selling stock to raise capital since it's nominally exchanging things of equal value, say $100 in cash for $100 in stock.  In order to sell stock, however, you MIGHT need to register with the SEC depending on how you're going about finding your investors, so keep that in mind.

190. Are there any disadvantages to DHA Investment Properties?
I think the strongest reason against DHA purchases (I don't consider them investments) is points 3 and 5 mentioned above. The resale market is only to other investors that are convinced its a good investment.If you can't sell to owner occupiers, you've just removed the MAJORITY of your potential pool of people to resell to - this has a devastating effect on your ability to make any capital gain from your investment - if you're not chasing capital gain...be sure to understand why! (see article below)The marketing people will have you believe that DHA is a great investment from a yield perspective...maybe so, I haven't crunched the numbers. But in my opinion, I would wonder - who cares?Yield is important to ensure you can hold the property, but if there is no capital growth and you can't sell it for a profit or release some equity to buy the next investment, then you've just put a massive road block in your wealth building path.I am at the asset accumulation phase of my investing journey, so my opinion is skewed towards capital growth investments. Unless you have a sizable equity base already, in my opinion $4-5 Million in debt free assets, then you should be looking for capital growth assets...not high yield.This article from Your Investment Property magazine, although now dated, gives a good example to illustrate my point on why capital growth is the sensible strategy during the asset building phase of your wealth creation journey: Why capital growth is still king  I think the strongest reason against DHA purchases (I don't consider them investments) is points 3 and 5 mentioned above.  The resale market is only to other investors that are convinced its a good investment. If you can't sell to owner occupiers, you've just removed the MAJORITY of your potential pool of people to resell to - this has a devastating effect on your ability to make any capital gain from your investment - if you're not chasing capital gain...be sure to understand why! (see article below) The marketing people will have you believe that DHA is a great investment from a yield perspective...maybe so, I haven't crunched the numbers. But in my opinion, I would wonder - who cares? Yield is important to ensure you can hold the property, but if there is no capital growth and you can't sell it for a profit or release some equity to buy the next investment, then you've just put a massive road block in your wealth building path. I am at the asset accumulation phase of my investing journey, so my opinion is skewed towards capital growth investments. Unless you have a sizable equity base already, in my opinion $4-5 Million in debt free assets, then you should be looking for capital growth assets...not high yield. This article from Your Investment Property magazine, although now dated, gives a good example to illustrate my point on why capital growth is the sensible strategy during the asset building phase of your wealth creation journey: Why capital growth is still king

191. Should I pay off my mortgage, begin retirement savings, or build my emergency fund?
Welcome to Money.SE. I will say upfront, Personal Finance is just that, personal, and you are likely to get multiple, perhaps conflicting, answers. Are you sure the PMI will drop off after 2 years? The rules are specific, and for PMI, when prepayments put you at that 78/80% LTV, your bank can require an appraisal, not automatically drop it. Talk to the banks, get confirmation, and depending what they say, keep hacking away at the mortgage.  After this, I suggest jumping on Roth IRAs. You are in the 15% bracket, and the Roth will let you deposit $5500 for each you and your wife. A great way to kickstart a higher level of retirement savings.  After this, I'm not comfortable with the emergency savings level. If you lose your job tomorrow (Funny story, my wife and I lost our's on the same day 3 years ago) and don't have enough savings (Our retirement accounts were good to just retire that day) you can easily run out of money and be late on the mortgage. It's great to prepay the mortgage to get rid of that PMI, but once there, I'd do the Roth and then focus on savings. 6 months expenses minimum.  We have a great Q&A here titled Oversimplify it for me: the correct order of investing in which I go in to more detail, as do 4 other members.  I am not getting on the "investments will return more than your mortgage cost" soapbox. A well-funded emergency fund is a very conservative bit of advice. With no matched 401(k), I suggest a balance of the Roth savings and prepayments.  From another great post, Ideal net worth by age X? Need comparison references you should have nearly 1 year's salary (90K) saved toward retirement.  Any question on my advice, add a comment and I will edit in more details.

192. My university has tranfered me money by mistake, and wants me to transfer it back
Confirming whether the payment was an error The simplest method is to confirm manually with the University whether the payment was a mistake and satisfy that between yourselves. If you're concerned it's fraudulant, I recommend calling the University finance office on a phone number you find on their website, or call one of the people you know. Reversing the payment To formally reverse the payment, I'd check your Product Disclosure Statement on your account with the bank. There's almost always a fee involved where a payment is reversed. It's probably easiest to just issue the payment back to the university to an agreed BSB/Account Number.

193. Is it possible to make money by getting a mortgage?
This answer is based on Australian tax, which is significantly different. I only offer it in case others want to compare situations. In Australia, a popular tax reduction technique is "Negative Gearing". Borrow from a bank, buy an investment property. If the income frome the new property is not enough to cover interest payments (plus maintenance etc) then the excess each year is a capital loss - which you claim each year, as an offset to your income (ie. pay less tax). By the time you reach retirement, the idea is to have paid off the mortgage. You then live off the revenue stream in retirement, or sell the property for a (taxed) lump sum.

194. What should I do with my $10K windfall, given these options?
I've been listening to Dave Ramsey a lot lately, and he encourages (encourage might be too light of a word for him) this priority list for budgeting: I would strongly advise you to tackle this list before you start to think about any sizable "fun" spending.  If you don't have #1, set that aside first. The options you mentioned: New roof: You should ask yourself "what is the potential cost of not getting a new roof?" If you can save up for it a little at a time, while putting most of the rest of your money to paying off debt, that's what I would do.  Unless, of course, there is damage or risk of damage to your house by not doing it now. Then, you need to do the same measurement (of doing the roof now) against the goal of saving three to six months of expenses.  Especially in your case, with your mortgage underwater, you want to be sure you are prepared should anything happen (for example, losing a job, and potentially being forced to move for a new job). Cars/student loan: (Refer to #3 above — in other words, yes).

195. Does doing your “research”/“homework” on stocks make any sense?
TL;DR: Sure, "do your own homework" is sometimes a cop out. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our homework. I agree that in many cases this is a cop-out by commentators. However, even if you believe in perfect market efficiency, there is benefit in "doing your homework" for many reasons. One of which you already mention in the question: different stocks all with the same "value" might have widely ranging risk. Another factor that might vary between stocks is their tax consequences. High dividend stocks might be a better fit for some buyers than others. One stock might be priced at $40 because there is a small chance they might get regulatory approval for a new product. This might make this stock very risky with a 20% of being $150 in 12 months, and a 80% chance of being $20. Another stock might be priced at $40 because the company is a cash cow, declining in revenues but producing a large dividend of $0.40 per quarter. Low risk, but also with some potential tax disadvantages. Another stock might be priced at $40 because it's a high growth stock. This would be less risky than the first example, but more risky than the second example. And the risk would be more generalized, i.e. there wouldn't be one day or one event that would be make or break the stock. In short, even if we assume that the market is pricing everything perfectly, not all stocks are equal and not all stocks are equally appropriate to everyone. Sometimes when we hear an analyst say "they should have done their homework" they are really saying "This was a high risk/high reward stock. They should have known that this had a potential downside." And that all assumes that we believe in 100% pure market efficiency. Which many disagree with, at least to some extent. For example, if we instead subscribe to Peter Lynch's theories about "local knowledge", we might believe that everyone has some personal fields of expertise where they know more than the experts. A professional stock analyst is going to follow many stocks and many not have technical experience in the field of the company. (This is especially true of small and mid cap stocks.) If you happen to be an expert in LED lighting, it is entirely feasible (at least to me) that you could be able to do a better job of "doing homework" on CREE than the analysts. Or if you use a specialized piece of software from a small vendor at work, and you know that the latest version stinks, then you will likely know more than the analyst does. I think it is somewhat akin to going to a doctor. We could say to ourselves "the doctor is more knowledgeable about me than medicine, I'm just going to do what they tell me to do." And 99% of the time, that is the right thing to do. But if we do our "homework" anyway, and research the symptoms, diagnoses, and drugs ourselves as well, we can do get benefits. Sometimes we just can express our preferences amongst equal solutions. Sometimes we can ask smarter questions. And sometimes we have some piece of knowledge that the doctor doesn't have and can actually make an important discovery they didn't know. (And, just like investing, sometimes we can also have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and do ourselves harm if we go against the advice of the professionals.)

196. Is there any sort of tax write off for unfulfilled pay checks?
Unfortunately, no.  Think about the numbers. If you work for me, and I pay you $1000, you owe tax on $1000. If you still work, but I don't pay you, you have no tax due, but there's no benefit for you to collect for my stealing your time.

197. Filing 1040-NR when I have been outside the US the entire year?
Yes, you can still file a 1040nr. You are a nonresident alien and were:  engaged in a trade or business in the United States Normally, assuming your withholding was correct, you would get a minimal amount back. Income earned in the US is definitely Effectively Connected Income and is   taxed at the graduated rates that apply to U.S. citizens and resident aliens. However, there is a tax treaty between US and India, and it suggests that you would be taxed on the entirety of the income by India. This suggests to me that you would get everything that was withheld back.

198. What considerations are there for making investments on behalf of a friend?
There's a sizable community of people and fiscal advisers who advocate not managing the money at all. Set your passive investor friend with automatic bank draft into a simple three/four fund portfolio of low cost index funds and never never ever trade.  See https://www.bogleheads.org/RecommendedReading.php You might be able to beat the stock market for a few years, but probably not over the long term.  Most mutual fund professionals don't.  Playing with your own money is one thing: playing with other people's money is a whole other ball game.

199. Borrowing money to buy shares for cashflow?
Buying individual/small basket of high dividend shares is exposing you to 50%+ and very fast potential downswings in capital/margin calls. There is no free lunch in returns in this respect: nothing that pays enough to help you pay your mortgage at a high rate won’t expose you to a lot of potential volatility. Main issue here looks like you have very poorly performing rental investments you should consider selling or switching up rental usage/how you rent them (moving to shorter term, higher yield lets, ditching any agents/handymen that are taking up capital/try and refinance to lower mortgage rates etc etc). Trying to use leveraged stock returns to pay for poorly performing housing investments is like spraying gasoline all over a fire. Fixing the actual issue in hand first is virtually always the best course of action in these scenarios.
