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The DollarVisor Blog

Short guides that answer one money question at a time, across insurance, credit cards, loans and investing.

400 guides (page 10)

Investing How Are Dividends Taxed? Qualified vs Ordinary How dividends are taxed comes down to one label. Qualified dividends get the long-term capital gains rates of 0%, 15% or 20%. Ordina… Read the guide → Investing The Wash Sale Rule, Explained With Examples The wash sale rule blocks your tax deduction when you sell a security at a loss and buy a substantially identical one within 30 days… Read the guide → Investing Tax-Loss Harvesting: Rules, Limits and Deadlines Tax loss harvesting means selling a losing investment on purpose so the loss cancels a taxable gain. Losses offset gains of the same… Read the guide → Investing Capital Gains Tax: Short vs Long-Term 2026 Rates The capital gains tax you owe depends almost entirely on one date: the day you bought. Hold more than a year and the federal rate is… Read the guide → Investing Preferred vs Common Stock: What’s the Difference Common stock buys ownership, a vote and the full upside. Preferred stock buys a bigger fixed dividend and a place ahead of common in… Read the guide → Investing What Is Paper Trading? How to Practice First Paper trading is placing fake trades at real prices, using a broker's simulator. Our verdict: use it for two to four weeks to learn… Read the guide → Investing Limit Order vs Market Order: When to Use Each In the limit order vs market order choice, a market order guarantees you trade and a limit order guarantees your price. Our verdict… Read the guide → Investing What Is Short Selling? (And Why It’s Risky) Short selling means borrowing a stock, selling it, and buying it back later. You profit if the price falls. Our verdict: the payoff… Read the guide → Investing What Is an IPO? How Regular Investors Buy In An IPO is the first time a private company sells shares to the public. Most people never buy at the offer price, because brokers han… Read the guide → Investing Growth vs Value Stocks: What’s the Difference? Growth vs value stocks comes down to price. Growth stocks are priced for fast expansion; value stocks are priced cheaply against the… Read the guide → Investing Market Cap Explained: Small vs Mid vs Large Market cap is the share price multiplied by every share the company has issued. It prices the whole company, not one slice of it. FI… Read the guide → Investing What Is a Stock Split? What Happens to Your Money A stock split multiplies your share count and divides the price by the same ratio. One second later your position is worth exactly w… Read the guide → Investing Fractional Shares: How They Work, Who Offers Them Fractional shares let you buy a slice of a stock or ETF for as little as $1 instead of paying the full share price. Fidelity, Schwab… Read the guide → Investing VOO vs VTI: Which Vanguard ETF to Pick? VOO holds 506 large US companies. VTI holds 3,531 companies of every size. Both charge 0.03%. Our verdict on VOO vs VTI: pick VTI if… Read the guide → Investing What Is the S&P 500? How to Invest in It The S&P 500 is a list of 500 large US companies, weighted by size, that covers about 80% of the US stock market. You cannot buy… Read the guide → Investing Target-Date Funds: How They Work, Pros and Cons Target date funds are one-fund retirement portfolios that shift from stocks to bonds automatically as a chosen year approaches. Our… Read the guide → Investing What Is a Mutual Fund? How They Actually Work Asking what is a mutual fund has a short answer: it is a company that pools money from many investors and buys a basket of stocks or… Read the guide → Investing What Is an Expense Ratio? (What’s Too High) An expense ratio is the yearly percentage a fund takes out of your money to run itself. Our verdict: for a plain US stock or bond in… Read the guide → Investing Can You Lose Money in a 401(k)? Yes. Can you lose money in 401k accounts? You can, and millions of people did in 2022, when the average Vanguard balance fell 20%. O… Read the guide → Investing 401(k) Vesting Explained: When the Match Is Yours 401k vesting decides how much of your employer's match you actually own. Your own payroll contributions are yours from day one. The… Read the guide → Investing How to Roll Over a 401(k) Into an IRA A 401k rollover to IRA is one phone call and one instruction: make it a direct rollover, with the check payable to your new custodia… Read the guide → Investing What Happens to Your 401(k) When You Quit? Nothing happens to your 401(k) when you quit on day one. The money stays invested and it stays yours. What changes is who is in char… Read the guide → Investing 403(b) vs 401(k): What’s the Difference? The 403(b) vs 401(k) question is mostly settled by your employer: both plans run on the same tax rules and share the same $24,500 em… Read the guide → Investing What Is a 457(b)? How It Compares to a 401(k) A 457(b) plan is a retirement account for state and local government workers and some nonprofit staff. It shares the 401(k)'s $24,50… Read the guide →