What does quantitative easing 2 mean for my bank account?
QE2 will mean that there are about $500 billion dollars in existence which weren't there before. These dollars will all be competing with the existing dollars for real goods and services, so each dollar will be worth a little less, and prices will rise a little. This is inflation. You can probably expect 1.5%-2% annual inflation for the US dollar over the next several years (the market certainly does in the aggregate, anyway). This is in terms of US-based goods and services. QE2 will also reduce the amount of other currencies you can get for the same dollar amount. The extent to which this will occur is less clear, in part because other currencies are also considering quantitative easing. Your long-term savings should probably not be in cash anyway, because of the low returns; this will probably affect you far more than the impact of quantitative easing. As for your savings which do remain in cash, what you should do with them depends on how you plan to dispose of them. The value of a currency is usually pretty stable in terms of the local economy's output of goods and services - it's the value in international trade which tends to fluctuate wildly. If you keep your savings in the same currency you plan to spend them in, they should be able to maintain their value decently well in the intermediate term. IMO, QE2 will likely have no perceptible impact in the near term. Keeping all of your savings in a bank guarantees that you will lose money to inflation & taxes. I'd suggest consulting a financial advisor -- preferably someone who understands issues facing someone with assets in the US and Canada. In terms of what portion of your savings should be in USD vs. CAD, that's going to depend on your situation. I'd probably want more assets in the place that I'm living in for the next several years. Probably means next to zero chance of having decent rates on savings accounts for the near future - who needs your money if banks can have government money for free? Probably no short-term effects on you besides that.
In my experience earning interest is not enough to keep the account in a non-dormant state. If payment of interest was the trigger to reset the clock then no savings account would ever be considered dormant. In general as the account got close to the deadline we were notified that a single transaction moving money into or out of the account would reset the clock. I have had this happen in recent years with a bank account and a credit union account.  In researching for the exact definition of a dormant account I found this regarding interest on the FDIC website: That means that the state law may set the definition, it also means that you should look at the information regarding the bank policy. I did try and see if the rules for a credit union are the same. The added twist with a credit union is that if the account is closed, they are no longer a share holder and that brings into the discussion voting rights. So the policy/guidelines is even more complex. If the account does go inactive state law will define what happens to the account, and how you can get the funds back. Can I transfer directly from my US saving account to their Axis bank in India? Yes you can. any kind of tax  my parents need to pay? No. From you parents point of view, its a Gift from their daughter and would come under the provisions of Gift Tax [and Not Income Tax]. Gifts from specified relatives [Daughter /sons /parent /siblings] is tax free. It would make sense to keep some paper work around this, for example a simple letter stating that this is a Gift, specify the amount, the date of transfer, the amount actually credited, details of the credit [Bank Statement]. If there is a scrutiny by income tax, it would ease things. any kind of tax I need to pay? In India NO. In US I am assuming your have already paid tax hence no tax. I have a BA in Quantitative Economics. The only other two econ majors in my graduating class found GOOD work right away and 6 years later seem well onto their ways into a good careers. Same goes for one I knew the before us and one after. All but one of us had either a math or a stats minor.  I plan on returning to the industry later this year after teaching English abroad. Here is what I can tell you after reading tons of job postings and the experiences of my friends:  There is more demand now than ever, but demand is, as someone mentioned above, for a quantitative type. What I would like to say differently is that this doesn't have to be a deep mathematically based type of quantitative person like a quant. You could and should master the technology end of quantitative careers.  I strongly recommend taking a course that uses or teaches SAS for stats and/or SQL for relational database management. If you can get an internship in either of the two, especially the latter, then you should have numerous opportunities like a STEM major would. I would also reccomended learning some Python, especially for data science or management, and R, which is a programming language for data science. Anything else related to big data is good too.  The quantitative side of econ has been creeping into STEM for several years now and its respective career field should be viewed much more broadly than before.  Finally I'd like to share something I read on Gary Mankiw's blog a semester too late: test out various fields of work in econ while still in undergrad. See if you can get something quantitative like being a research assistant, something financial like investment banking, or something legal or political. Those categories might be a bit different today but I hope you got the point. "The ""conventional wisdom"" is that you should have about 5% of your portfolio in gold. But that's an AVERAGE. Meaning that you might want to have 10% at some times (like now) and 0% in the 1980s. Right now, the price of gold has been rising, because of fears of ""easing"" Fed monetary policy (for the past decade), culminating in recent ""quantitative easing."" In the 1980s, you should have had 0% in gold given the fall of gold in 1981 because of Paul Volcker's monetary tightening policies, and other reasons. Why did gold prices drop in 1981? And a word of caution: If you don't understand the impact of ""quantitative easing"" or ""Paul Volcker"" on gold prices, you probably shouldn't be buying it." This was such a wonderful and clear explanation. It has helped me to understand (at 28) a concept that I have always been a bit murky on. I would feel safe making the bet that you are a teacher of some sort. I would find it extremely interesting to hear you thoughts on why we don't use the gold standard anymore. Do you work in finance? The catch is that you're doing a form of leveraged investing. In other words, you're gambling on the stock market using money that you've borrowed. While it's not as dangerous as say, getting money from a loan shark to play blackjack in Vegas, there is always the chance that markets can collapse and your investment's value will drop rapidly. The amount of risk really depends on what specific investments you choose and how diversified they are - if you buy only Canadian stocks then you're at risk of losing a lot if something happened to our economy. But if your Canadian equities only amount to 3.6% of your total (which is Canada's share of the world market), and you're holding stocks in many different countries then the diversification will reduce your overall risk.  The reason I mention that is because many people using the Smith Maneuver are only buying Canadian high-yield dividend stocks, so that they can use the dividends to accelerate the Smith Maneuver process (use the dividends to pay down the mortgage, then borrow more and invest it). They prefer Canadian equities because of preferential tax treatment of the dividend income (in non-registered accounts). But if something happened to those Canadian companies, they stand to lose much of the investment value and suddenly they have the extra debt (the amount borrowed from a HELOC, or from a re-advanceable mortgage) without enough value in the investments to offset it. This could mean that they will not be able to pay off the mortgage by the time they retire! It's because a lot of the QE money is parked in excess reserves at the fed. They pay a high enough interest rate to prevent outflows into the rest of the market. We are seeing huge amounts of price inflation in certain asset classes. Things like cryptocurrency and the stock market. "No.  This is too much for most individuals, even some small to medium businesses.  When you sell that investment, and take the cheque into the foreign bank and wire it back to the USA in US dollars, you will definitely obtain the final value of the investment, converted to US$. Thats what you wanted, right?  You'll get that.  If you also hedge, unless you have a situation where it is a perfect hedge, then you are gambling on what the currencies will do. A perfect hedge is unusual for what most individuals are involved in. It looks something like this:  you know ForeignCorp is going to pay you 10 million quatloos on Dec 31.  So you go to a bank (probably a foreign bank, I've found they have lower limits for this kind of transaction and more customizable than what you might create trading futures contracts), and tell them, ""I have this contract for a 10 million quatloo receivable on Dec 31, I'd like to arrange a FX forward contract and lock in a rate for this in US$/quatloo.""  They may have a credit check or a deposit for such an arrangement, because as the rates change either the bank will owe you money or you will owe the bank money. If they quote you 0.05 US$/quatloo, then you know that when you hand the cheque over to the bank your contract payment will be worth US$500,000.  The forward rate may differ from the current rate, thats how the bank accounts for risk and includes a profit. Even with a perfect hedge, you should be able to see the potential for trouble.  If the bank doesnt quite trust you, and hey, banks arent known for trust, then as the quatloo strengthens relative to the US$, they may suspect that you will walk away from the deal.  This risk can be reduced by including terms in the contract requiring you to pay the bank some quatloos as that happens.  If the quatloo falls you would get this money credited back to your account.  This is also how futures contracts work; there it is called ""mark to market accounting"".  Trouble lurks here.  Some people, seeing how they are down money on the hedge, cancel it.  It is a classic mistake because it undoes the protection that one was trying to achieve.  Often the rate will move back, and the hedger is left with less money than they would have had doing nothing, even though they bought a perfect hedge."