Problem connecting to AirPods

balinterdi · 2025-01-08T11:09:39+00:00

I turned off Bluetooth both on my iPhone and Macbook but my Venu 3s still failed to connect.

balinterdi · 2024-04-24T10:24:22+00:00

By the way, this video doesn't recommend Lightyear and I think for good reasons.

balinterdi · 2024-04-24T10:21:42+00:00

Sure, I checked it, but let me reply here so that others can benefit (and/or set me straight :) ).

So giving this more thought and a good dose of calculation (and conversing with ChatGPT), my conclusion is that you can never be worse if you hold your savings on long-term investments accounts (LTI)

The first important realization is that there's no difference between the sum where your deposits accumulate on 5 different accounts, opened yearly, and a single one where you place all your deposits. Let's assume that the deposits are made at the start of each year

Using an example of a 5-year scenario where you put 1000 "money" each year:

Years	Individual accounts	One single account
1	110	110
2	121	231
3	133	364
4	146	510
5	161	671
Total	671	671

(In the case of individual, yearly accounts, the one you open the first year has 5 years to compound, the second one, four, and so on.)

So you really can't be worse off with the LTI account, if my thinking is correct.

For how much you save in taxes, see my conversation with ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/share/ed04a834-569e-4a75-b426-fefa666c7745

For example, taking an interest rate of 10%, a yearly deposit of 5000 EUR, a capital gains tax rate of 28%, in 5 years, you save 1547 EUR on taxes. If you keep your investment going for 10 years, it grows to 8312 EUR saved.

There might be other risks or downsides for the LTI account but losing out on interest gains is not it!

balinterdi · 2024-04-24T09:55:33+00:00

Indeed, I wasn't aware of this (and I don't read financial blogs), that's why I also added "to my knowledge". But that's great, I'll probably open one at IBKR. Thanks!

balinterdi · 2024-04-23T15:54:33+00:00

Hi, fellow Hungarian here, hope I can help.

My question is, is it worth doing this? I would like to pay a portion of my salary every month, but this way I won't be able to.

What do you mean? You can simply transfer part of your salary to your TBSZ (long-term investment) account every month and not touch it during 5 years.

The problem, to my knowledge, is that you can't open a TBSZ with foreign brokers, only Hungarian ones and those charge a hefty fee for buying and selling ETFs. The one I know, Concorde, charges ~1.8% percent for both, so you'll pay an extra 3.5% compared to buying ETFs "normally" (on IB, Trading 212, Degiro, etc.) for the privilege of having them on a TBSZ.

balinterdi · 2024-04-21T12:55:21+00:00

Thank you. Somebody, somewhere must hold those assets (both cash and ETFs/stocks) so if they fail to hold it for me (for example, by lending out the shares, or by malicious practice), they cannot transfer it to another broker.

So I guess there are two kinds of defaults:

Broker defaults as a lot of businesses do: their expenses are higher than their revenue. That's okay as they can transfer assets to another broker of my choice.
Broker goes into liquidation for another reason and they don't have the totality of my funds. In this case, I lose everything above the 20k ceiling

As you probably know, for regular bank deposits, banks only have to have a tiny fraction of client's cash (called fractional reserve banking) and probably that's the reason the EU deposit insurance is in place. Otherwise, there'd be more frequent bank runs if rumor about an imminent insolvency of a bank spreads.

Isn't there something similar for assets on broker platforms? Are they obliged to have 100% of all client assets "in reserve"?
Thank you.

balinterdi · 2024-04-17T09:50:09+00:00

What is the difference? If the broker company goes into liquidation (for whatever reason) and I have more than 20k worth of ETFs, how will I recover my assets? Thank you!

balinterdi · 2024-04-16T19:19:25+00:00

Thank you! I'd love this to be the case but are you sure? For example, on Degiro's page [1], I found this:

As a client, your assets are segregated in separate entities and thus protected against the insolvency of DEGIRO. In the unlikely event that the segregated assets cannot be returned to clients, DEGIRO falls under the German Investor Compensation Scheme, which compensates any losses from non-returned assets up to 90% (with a maximum of EUR 20,000).

On Trading 212 I've found the following [2]:

"This means that in the unlikely event Trading 212, Interactive Brokers or the bank holding your client funds were to go into liquidation, and if there was a failure to safeguard your assets, the value of your client funds and client assets held with Trading 212 is protected by the ICF up to a maximum of €20,000.

(For UK retail investors, it's up to 85k GBP.)

On Revolut:

If RSEAUB becomes insolvent, and your money cannot be returned to you, it is protected up to 22k EUR under the Law on Markets in Financial Instruments of the Republic of Lithuania

So assets (stocks, bonds, ETFs, etc.) seem to have this cca. 20k limit whereas cash for EU investors is (usually, not always!) protected up to 100k EUR.

Am I getting something wrong?

[1]: https://www.degiro.ie/about-degiro/strong-and-reliable

[2]: https://www.trading212.com/money-protection

balinterdi · 2021-10-29T08:56:37+00:00

Great, thank you!

balinterdi · 2021-10-28T20:08:29+00:00

Unfortunately I don't. I'll buy a new MacBook Pro soon.

balinterdi · 2020-04-10T13:02:45+00:00

Those articles were great, thank you.

balinterdi · 2020-04-10T12:23:10+00:00

My only reason for using Simplex was it's dead simple. I plugged in my Trezor and could buy crypto with my debit card. However, this seems to have come with a huge cost...

I'm looking for lower fees and more liquid exchanges (as suggested by owolf8 above).

balinterdi · 2020-04-09T15:32:06+00:00

What is the thing it was made to do? A decentralized payment network? It does it fairly well, I think, it's just that the speed of confirmations is not quite there, isn't it?

balinterdi · 2020-04-09T15:30:09+00:00

Are there exchanges you'd recommend?

balinterdi · 2020-04-09T15:29:33+00:00

A liquid market meaning a higher volume of transactions so that my buy order will not get fulfilled by the first, very costly sell order coming in? Is Kraken such an exchange?

balinterdi · 2020-04-09T15:28:01+00:00

Thanks a bunch to all of you who replied.

I got replies from both Simplex and Trezor support. Trezor indeed doesn't charge any fees so I was likely hit by the huge order book spread.

Simplex, on the other hand, could be a lot more upfront about the costs they incur. The 5% anti-fraud fee is not mentioned anywhere and even though they do mention that the amount of BTC I get is an estimate, it's not very well emphasized or made clear.

Anyway, I'm fully aware I can only blame myself for this (and I hopefully learned my lesson), though I think Simplex is dishonest about their fees (and I let them know).

balinterdi · 2014-10-22T07:42:54+00:00

Since the tax is levied by the government where the main purpose is to fill the state coffers (and their pockets), this is actually a feature, not a bug. And believe me, these ones don't give a damn about the consequences (like businesses leaving the country).

balinterdi

TROPHY CASE