I used to have a somewhat fancier-sounding title on my company’s website back in the day. I received a couple of these types of calls back then. The story was quite similar, so I won’t go into detail recounting it. However, it became clear quite quickly that “Investment corporation” “Here are our great values” wasn’t a real company, but rather a setup built with a nonsense generator and relying on the caller’s gift of gab.
In that case, there was intentionally a guy speaking slightly poorer English doing the priming first, so they could get two non-native English speakers talking to each other and let any possible errors or ambiguities get “lost in translation”.
Alarm bells went off immediately after the first call, and after verifying the website, the whole setup was pretty clear. However, I continued the calls a bit further (I had time to chat while driving across Finland), and it was quite interesting to see how things progressed.
At the end, some Irish guy came on who actually tried to give me a bank account number, saying the money goes here, etc. At that point, I stated that I had figured out their game from the very first call and had just been wasting their time. He hung up quickly and went off to find a new fish for the hook.
It’s absolutely great when a professional can explain what life in a nursing home is like. Journalists’ headlines and their lack of familiarity with the subject must be frustrating for the professionals who work with life and death every day. Having observed memory disorders up close for a long time, that is an excellent description of that daily reality!
Alright, battle helmets on and pack a two-week survival kit for the root cellar… Jymy flips to accumulate mode, should we abandon all hope? Sorry, sarcasm warning.
Visiting a facility like this also makes you think about your own old age. My grandfather spent his last few years in an “elderly storage facility.” All the doors there were locked, and there were no loose items anywhere. The residents mostly just mumbled to themselves in their beds. It was such a depressing experience that it really made me think about my own final years. I intend to make a living will where I permit nursing staff or my spouse, within the limits of the law, to decide on my life in the event of dementia, if I am no longer capable of doing so myself.
I stopped visiting at the point when my grandfather no longer recognized me. He became confused and aggressive, so he gained no joy from my visits. I wanted to preserve the memories of how he was before. I feel no guilt about stopping the visits. I also didn’t feel that my children gained anything positive from these visits.
We had a very good and warm relationship, and I visited my grandparents quite often. His body started failing about 15 years before he died, and he said even then that he was ready to go. Apparently, just sitting in a chair didn’t feel like a life worth living anymore. However, his mind still worked for a long time after that and his talk made sense, until one day it didn’t anymore. The decline was quite short and sharp after that.
That’s exactly it. Similar experiences with Esperi from my own inner circle. Municipal money is welcome, but there doesn’t seem to be investment in anything else. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were decision-makers in the management of the company in question. Although… ouch… Finland is the world’s least corrupt country… I forgot about that…
Regarding @suppis’s excellent post, that’s unfortunately how it seems to be. What’s horrific about this is the feeling that we’ve already grown accustomed to this kind of news/events = the new normal. Who could stop the clock and change the wrong direction of development…
Nice “Karpolla on asiaa” vibes in the latest Vartti. @Verneri_Pulkkinen could hand out a few reindeer roasts at the end of the next episode to those who invested in “brother stocks” (veliosakkeet)
I chuckled at the choices, considering Arnold is a few years older than Powell and Willis is a mere couple of years younger. It really shows how the era of movie action heroes is long gone.
Thanks Suppis. (I’ll have to turn that into a haiku at some point)
Yes, you have to restrict many people’s movement there. My own mother, who suffers from a degenerative muscle disease, sometimes forgets she hasn’t walked in years and tries to heave herself out of bed. For her, a raised bed rail is enough, but a belt will probably have to be used on the wheelchair (reclining model) at some point. The staff reads these situations quite well, at least for now.
I usually dismiss these as vulture-like clickbait headlines—they always have to be investigated, of course, but I believe almost all of them are correctly handled situations and not some ‘got p*ssed off and duct-taped them down’ scenario.
Thanks for the Vartti! Solid stuff, especially the live sledding hill was exciting
So this movie needs new heroes to save us from the villains of the 2020s.
My point is that this whole setup is completely surreal—at least for a boomer like me, nearing the twilight of middle age, for whom the Cold War era now looks like child’s play.
A movie star saved us back then too, namely Ronald Reagan—as he knew how to surround himself with competent advisors.
(This should probably go to the coffee room, let’s see how it goes)
Isn’t this a classic misunderstanding? Actually, it is more tax-efficient to take the money as capital gains than as dividends. In capital gains, the deemed acquisition cost (hankintameno-olettama) is always taken into account (if it is beneficial), so the taxable portion of the capital gain is at most 80%. And this, of course, requires that the stock has skyrocketed in the portfolio and the holding period is under 10 years. With dividends, the taxable portion is 85%, meaning a larger portion is taxed at the capital gains tax rate.
It depends on the capital turnover. If the shares are realized without being able to use the deemed acquisition cost, it is more efficient to receive the returns through dividends.
Personally, I like the aspect of stock investing where the money is safe (provided that your entire bankroll isn’t tied up in Hyzon and Nikola, but is diversified with, say, 10% of the funds elsewhere). With all the talk about scams, data breaches, and so on, and who knows what AI will bring in its wake…
In my mind, I have three levels of security for my money. I trust the current account the least, and I only keep about a thousand there. The next level is the trading account, from which funds are immediately available for my own use, but it’s already a step harder for an outsider to withdraw them; for instance, it can’t be done with a debit card. The highest level of security is direct stock investments, which can’t be converted into cash in a current account without a longer period of time and the use of more than one set of bank credentials. Nothing disappears from there in an instant. Nor unexpectedly, especially when you monitor your portfolio every day.
There is no scenario where dividends are more tax-efficient than selling. The most disadvantageous scenario for selling is a holding period of less than 10 years where the stock has skyrocketed more than fivefold. Even in this case, the 20% deemed acquisition cost (hankintameno-olettama) can be used, meaning that 80% of the euros received through selling are taxable, whereas in the same scenario, 85% of dividends would be taxable income.
EDIT: stryker’s example below provides an instance where combining dividends with selling creates a scenario where optimization can be achieved with dividends.
I wonder how people are playing Bittium right now? Multiples are pretty stretched. Are long-term holders selling now that it’s at its peak, while new investors buy in out of FOMO so they don’t miss out on potential future gains? And have foreign funds caught onto this yet? There’s certainly potential, but also risk, and these future opportunities won’t be fully reflected in the upcoming interim reports yet. You can get a sense of direction from them, though. Interesting to follow. Is Bittium Finland’s new Nokia? I mean in a good way, not a bad one.
A) The stock doubles, you sell the shares and make a €10,000 profit. You pay €3,000 in taxes, leaving you with a €7,000 profit after taxes.
B) The stock doubles, the company pays a €10,000 dividend, after which you sell the shares. You pay €2,550 in taxes, leaving you with a €7,450 profit after taxes.
The deemed acquisition cost (hankintameno-olettama) is required for dividends to not be tax-efficient in this case.
This is true, I also think the money is safer. Now, of course, many Helsinki investors are chuckling. It’s somehow hard to imagine that the shares would be stolen; it’s cash that scammers are interested in. On the other hand, you can play with the idea that if a scammer were stuck with a pitiful loss-making portfolio, they might realize that crime doesn’t pay and head for a real job.
