What does “Income generated in the U.S.” mean?
It means you must pay federal (and possibly state) tax on any income you produce in America -- including Internet and mail-order sales. Tax treaties may keep you from having to pay tax on it again in your own country, or may not.
"When you hold units of the DLR/DLR.U (TSX) ETF, you are indirectly holding U.S. dollars cash or cash equivalents. The ETF can be thought of as a container. The container gives you the convenience of holding USD in, say, CAD-denominated accounts that don't normally provide for USD cash balances. The ETF price ($12.33 and $12.12, in your example) simply reflects the CAD price of those USD, and the change is because the currencies moved with respect to each other. And so, necessarily, given how the ETF is made up, when the value of the U.S. dollar declines vs. the Canadian dollar, it follows that the value of your units of DLR declines as quoted in Canadian dollar terms. Currencies move all the time. Similarly, if you held the same amount of value in U.S. dollars, directly, instead of using the ETF, you would still experience a loss when quoted in Canadian dollar terms. In other words, whether or not your U.S. dollars are tied up either in DLR/DLR.U or else sitting in a U.S. dollar cash balance in your brokerage account, there's not much of a difference: You ""lose"" Canadian dollar equivalent when the value of USD declines with respect to CAD. Selling, more quickly, your DLR.U units in a USD-denominated account to yield U.S. dollars that you then directly hold does not insulate you from the same currency risk. What it does is reduce your exposure to other cost/risk factors inherent with ETFs: liquidity, spreads, and fees. However, I doubt that any of those played a significant part in the change of value from $12.33 to $12.12 that you described." "Also note that a share of voting stock is a vote at the stockholder's meeting, whether it's dividend or non-dividend. That has value to the company and major stockholders in terms of protecting their own interests, and has value to anyone considering a takeover of the company or who otherwise wants to drive the company's policy. Similarly, if the company is bought out, the share will generally be replaced by shares in whatever the new owning company is. So it really does represent ""a slice of the company"" in several vary practical ways, and thus has fairly well-defined intrinsic value linked to the company's perceived value. If its price drops too low the company becomes more vulnerable to hostile takeover, which means the company itself will often be motivated to buy back shares to protect itself from that threat. One of the questions always asked when making an investment is whether you're looking for growth (are you hoping its intrinsic value will increase) or income (are you hoping it will pay you a premium for owning it). Non-dividend stocks are a pure growth bet. Dividend-paying stocks are typically a mixture of growth and income, at various trade-off points. What's right for you depends on your goals, timeframe, risk tolerance, and what else is already in your portfolio." It is important to remember that the tax brackets in the U.S. are marginal.  This means that the first part of your income is taxed at 10%, the next part at 15%, next at 25%, etc.  Therefore, if you find yourself just on the edge of a tax bracket, it really does not make any difference which side of that line you end up falling on. That having been said, of course, reducing your taxable income reduces your taxes.  There are lots of deductions you can take, if you qualify.  Depending on what type of health insurance coverage you have, a Health Savings Account (HSA) is a great way to shelter some income from taxes.  Charitable contributions are also an easy way to reduce your taxes; you don't really personally benefit from them, but if you'd rather send your money to a good cause than to Uncle Sam, that's an easy way to do it. Frequently people saving money for a down payment, or for their emergency fund, feel that they need to find a way to speedup the process via methods that will generate more interest than a bank account or a CD. Once they have reached their goal they also feel that having the money sitting around not generating income is a missed opportunity. All investments that aren't 100% safe introduce risk. To entice you to invest they offer the opportunity make more money than a bank account or CD. But the downside is that the extra money isn't guaranteed. In fact the introduced risk also opens up the investment to the possibility of losses, including a total loss. You have identified risks with bank accounts and CDs. With the bank account you will generally lose money vs. inflation. With a CD the investment is less liquid if you sell early, or you want/need to sell 1/2 a CD, you will give up some of that extra income. Also if rates on a CD rise next month you are stilled locked into your current rate til the CD ends. Putting some or all of the money you are saving for the house into a risky investment means that you may shorten or extend the time period. Nobody knows.  by investing in real estate we can offset the risk of real estate   going up in the next couple years: if real estate goes up we will   still be able to use our down payment for a comparable house as of   now. Inversely, if real estate goes down we will lose on the down   payment but be able to get a house cheaper. Unless the REIT matches the market of residential real estate in your city/metropolitan region there is no guarantee that home prices in your city will move the same way the REIT does.  A recent listing of the 10 largest holdings of the index is: none of these tell me what home prices in my neighborhood will do next year. "?  You quoted an oft cited oft disproven false factoid. It's extremely biased. Like you seem to be.   Most of those ""self made"", notice those quotes, people came from money. Their business is ""self made"", with family money. Like the article implies." "These types of diagrams appear all throughout Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad book.  The arrows in the diagrams represent cash flow. For example, the first two diagrams of this type in the book are:  The idea being presented here is that an asset generates income, and a liability generates expenses.  According to the book, rich people spend their money buying assets, while middle class people buy liabilities. The diagram you posted above does not appear in the edition of the book I have (Warner Books Edition, printed in 2000).  However, the following similar diagram appears in the chapter titled ""The History of Taxes and the Power of Corporations"":  The idea behind this diagram is to demonstrate what the author considers the tax advantages of a personal corporation: using a corporation to pay for certain expenses with pre-tax dollars.  Here is a quote from this chapter: Employees earn and get taxed and they try to live on what is left.  A corporation earns, spends everything it can, and is taxed on anything that is left.  It's one of the biggest legal tax loopholes that the rich use.  They're easy to set up and are not expensive if you own investments that are producing good cash flow.  For example; by owning your own corporation - vacations are board meetings in Hawaii.  Car payments, insurance, repairs are company expenses.  Health club membership is a company expense.  Most restaurant meals are partial expenses.  And on and on - but do it legally with pre-tax dollars. This piece of advice, like so much of the book, may contain a small amount of truth, but is oversimplified and potentially dangerous if taken a face value.  There are many examples, as JoeTaxpayer mentioned, of people who tried to deduct too many expenses and failed to make a business case for them that would satisfy the IRS." From the Massachusetts Department of Revenue:   1st - Massachusetts Source Income That is Excluded   Massachusetts gross income excludes certain items of income derived from sources within Massachusetts: non-business related interest, dividends and gains from the sale or exchange of intangibles, and qualified pension income. 2nd - Massachusetts Source Income That is Included:   Massachusetts gross income includes items of income derived from sources within Massachusetts. This includes income: 3rd - Trade or business, Including Employment Carried on in Massachusetts:   A nonresident has a trade or business, including any employment carried on in Massachusetts if: A nonresident generally is not engaged in a trade or business, including any employment carried on in Massachusetts if the nonresident's presence for business in Massachusetts is casual, isolated and inconsequential. A nonresident's presence for business in Massachusetts will ordinarily be considered casual, isolated and inconsequential if it meets the requirements of the Ancillary Activity Test (AAT) and Examples. When nonresidents earn or derive income from sources both within Massachusetts and elsewhere, and no exact determination can be made of the amount of Massachusetts source income, an apportionment of income must be made to determine that amount considered Massachusetts gross income. 4th - Apportionment of Income:   Apportionment Methods:   The three most common apportionment methods used to determine Massachusetts source income are as follows:   Gross income is multiplied by a:   So if you go to Massachusetts to work, you have to pay the tax.  If you collect a share of the profit or revenue from Massachusetts, you have to pay tax on that.  If you work from Oregon and are paid for that work, then you don't pay Massachusetts tax on that.  If anything, your company might have to pay Oregon taxes on revenue you generate (you are their agent or employee in Oregon).   Does the answer change depending on whether the income is reported at 1099 or W-2? This shouldn't matter legally.  It's possible that it would be easier to see that the work was done in Oregon in one or the other.  I.e. it doesn't make any legal difference but may make a practical difference.   All this assumes that you are purely an employee or contractor and not an owner.  If you are an owner, you have to pay taxes on any income from your Massachusetts business.  Note that this applies to things like copyrights and real estate as well as the business.   This also assumes that you are doing your work in Oregon.  If you live in Oregon and travel to Massachusetts to work, you pay taxes on your Massachusetts income in Massachusetts. "As best as I can understand, your payout is based on your AIME, which   is also capped at that same $118,500, so Trump's payout should also be   equivalently small, exactly proportional to this cap Not sure what you want from Bernie here, but that is correct. Is it accurate to say that Trump will be paid by social security as   though his actual income was $118,500, rather than his full income? Assuming Trump does pay that much (depends on how much of his income is actually subject to the FICA/SE tax), yes, it is accurate. However I believe what confuses you is the point Bernie Sanders made about people getting the same benefit while being rich. Bernie's point was that Trump and the likes don't need the social security income, while they're still getting it. Social Security is designed (at least theoretically) to be the safety net for people of age who cannot provide for themselves, thus it is not supposed to be ""you get what you paid"" system. This is a political discussion though. Social Security system, by definition, is based on a major principle of any socialist society: we as a group should support those who cannot support themselves. Thus, Bernie's point is that we shouldn't support Trump (and the likes) at all since they don't need that money. But they should still pay the tax to allow supporting those who do need, but cannot pay in."