A Poverty Cause is any organization that works with the TILE community to improve the lives of the billions around the world – and here in the United States – who suffer under the crushing weight of poverty. Poverty is a complicated issue, therefore, Poverty Causes address a variety of poverty-related dimensions from access to clean water, education, and providing loans to help the poor start small businesses.
Archive for the ‘Level 1’ Category
A Poverty Cause is…
Monday, August 10th, 2009A Shareholder is…
Monday, August 10th, 2009A shareholder is a person, company, or organization that owns stock in a company.
Supply is…
Monday, August 10th, 2009Supply is the amount of a good or service made available to consumers.
Why do some stocks pay dividends while others don’t?
Monday, August 10th, 2009A dividend is something “extra” that you get for being an investor or shareholder. It comes from additional money a company has after its normal profits are tallied. When a company makes these extra profits, it has two choices: pay dividends to its investors or reinvest it back into the company.
If a company is young and on the move, it usually chooses to reinvest these profits. That’s because it still has a lot of potential to grow and grow quickly. These extra funds would help it do so.
On the other hand, when a company has already built a reputation, it typically uses the profits to pay dividends to its shareholders instead. Investors often interpret the choice to offer dividends as a sign of a company’s confidence in its business. Other investors specifically invest in dividend yielding stocks as a strategy. Even though the company may not be growing by leaps and bounds, it can still deliver top-notch value to its investors, hence, the dividend. For instance, a long-standing company like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) might pay a dividend while a faster moving company like Google might choose to reinvest those funds.
Why do companies release annual reports?
Monday, August 10th, 2009Every public company is required by the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) to provide a document known as an annual report. In this annual report, the firm describes the financial results of the past year and also the outlook for the future. It is the place for the company to communicate business objectives, strategy, governance, and financial metrics to current and future investors.
The annual report is given to shareholders, and is also made available to the general public. Basically, anyone who wants to know how a company has been doing in the past and where the company wants to be going in the future will find an annual report quite useful.
Settle Price is…
Monday, August 10th, 2009Settle price is an average of the trading prices in the futures market during the last few minutes of trading.
What happens if you don’t pay back a loan?
Monday, August 10th, 2009Normally, people who can’t pay their loans declare bankruptcy, which is basically an acknowledgment that you are incapable of recovering from your debt. If you’re really in over your head, sometimes bankruptcy can be the only option, but it’s generally a last resort – your debts are forgiven, but your credit score takes a massive hit. And with a low credit score, it’ll be a lot harder for you to get loans in the future.
But suppose you don’t declare bankruptcy and just soldier on without repaying what you owe. What happens then? At first, you probably just continue “rolling-over” the loan and paying more and more interest on the item you purchased. If you took out a loan for a tangible item, the lender usually comes to repossess it. For example, if you’ve leased a car and you stop paying the lease, the company that loaned you the car will just take it back.
But if there’s no way for the lender to repossess the loan (if the loan was money, for example), the company has to take the matter to court. The lender can decide either to sue you (which basically forces you to either pay back the loan, declare bankruptcy, or be convicted in court), or to garnish your wages, which means that a judge decides to award a certain percentage of your paycheck to your creditor until the loan is repaid.
Once you get into serious debt, it’s very difficult to get out unscathed, so it’s better to avoid that decline altogether; you’ll just get forced into one of the above positions, and all of them have unpleasant consequences.
How much do you have to give to make your contribution count?
Monday, August 10th, 2009How much you give to charity really isn’t as important as the fact that you give something. However, you might consider that charitable organizations spend a whole bunch of their time and money just asking you for more cash. If you only give a couple dollars a year to an organization, it might get eaten up just by all their continued efforts to get you to give more. So it makes sense to focus on the causes that you really care about, and give more to them. To learn more about which causes matter to you, check out the TILE GIVE section.
A Money Manager is…
Monday, August 10th, 2009A money manager is a finance professional who advises his or her clients on where to invest their money and manages their portfolio for them.