What is the best and most optimal way to use margin
This essentially depends on how you prefer to measure your performance. I will just give a few simple examples to start. Let me know if you're looking for something more. If you just want to achieve maximum $ return, then you should always use maximum margin, so long as your expected return (%) is higher than your cost to borrow. For example, suppose you can use margin to double your investment, and the cost to borrow is 7%. If you're investing in some security that expects to return 10%, then your annual return on an account opened with $100 is: (2 * $100 * 10% - $100 * 7%) / $100 = 13% So, you see the expected return, amount of leverage, and cost to borrow will all factor in to your return. Suppose you want to also account for the additional risk you're incurring. Then you could use the Sharpe Ratio. For example, suppose the same security has volatility of 20%, and the risk free rate is 5%. Then the Sharpe Ratio without leverage is: (10% - 5%) / 20% = 0.25 The Sharpe Ratio using maximum margin is then: (13% - 5%) / (2 * 20%) = 0.2, where the 13% comes from the above formula. So on a risk-adjusted basis, it's better not to utilize margin in this particular example.
"Congratulations on a solid start. Here are my thoughts, based on your situation: Asset Classes I would recommend against a long-term savings account as an investment vehicle. While very safe, the yields will almost always be well below inflation. Since you have a long time horizon (most likely at least 30 years to retirement), you have enough time to take on more risk, as long as it's not more than you can live with. If you are looking for safer alternatives to stocks for part of your investments, you can also consider investment-grade bonds/bond funds, or even a stable value fund. Later, when you are much closer to retirement, you may also want to consider an annuity. Depending on the interest rate on your loan, you may also be able to get a better return from paying down your loan than from putting more in a savings account. I would recommend that you only keep in a savings account what you expect to need in the next few years (cushion for regular expenses, emergency fund, etc.). On Stocks Stocks are riskier but have the best chance to outperform versus inflation over the long term. I tend to favor funds over individual stocks, mostly for a few practical reasons. First, one of the goals of investing is to diversify your risk, which produces a more efficient risk/reward ratio than a group of stocks that are highly correlated. Diversification is easier to achieve via an index fund, but it is possible for a well-educated investor to stay diversified via individual stocks. Also, since most investors don't actually want to take physical possession of their shares, funds will manage the shares for you, as well as offering additional services, such as the automatic reinvestments of dividends and tax management. Asset Allocation It's very important that you are comfortable with the amount of risk you take on. Investment salespeople will prefer to sell you stocks, as they make more commission on stocks than bonds or other investments, but unless you're able to stay in the market for the long term, it's unlikely you'll be able to get the market return over the long term. Make sure to take one or more risk tolerance assessments to understand how often you're willing to accept significant losses, as well as what the optimal asset allocation is for you given the level of risk you can live with. Generally speaking, for someone with a long investment horizon and a medium risk tolerance, even the most conservative allocations will have at least 60% in stocks (total of US and international) with the rest in bonds/other, and up to 80% or even 100% for a more aggressive investor. Owning more bonds will result in a lower expected return, but will also dramatically reduce your portfolio's risk and volatility. Pension With so many companies deciding that they don't feel like keeping the promises they made to yesterday's workers or simply can't afford to, the pension is nice but like Social Security, I wouldn't bank on all of this money being there for you in the future. This is where a fee-only financial planner can really be helpful - they can run a bunch of scenarios in planning software that will show you different retirement scenarios based on a variety of assumptions (ie what if you only get 60% of the promised pension, etc).  This is probably not as much of an issue if you are an equity partner, or if the company fully funds the pension in a segregated account, or if the pension is defined-contribution, but most corporate pensions are just a general promise to pay you later in the future with no real money actually set aside for that purpose, so I'd discount this in my planning somewhat. Fund/Stock Selection Generally speaking, most investment literature agrees that you're most likely to get the best risk-adjusted returns over the long term by owning the entire market rather than betting on individual winners and losers, since no one can predict the future (including professional money managers). As such, I'd recommend owning a low-cost index fund over holding specific sectors or specific companies only. Remember that even if one sector is more profitable than another, the stock prices already tend to reflect this. Concentration in IT Consultancy I am concerned that one third of your investable assets are currently in one company (the IT consultancy). It's very possible that you are right that it will continue to do well, that is not my concern. My concern is the risk you're carrying that things will not go well. Again, you are taking on risks not just over the next few years, but over the next 30 or so years until you retire, and even if it seems unlikely that this company will experience a downturn in the next few years, it's very possible that could change over a longer period of time. Please just be aware that there is a risk. One way to mitigate that risk would be to work with an advisor or a fund to structure and investment plan where you invest in a variety of sector funds, except for technology. That way, your overall portfolio, including the single company, will be closer to the market as a whole rather than over-weighted in IT/Tech. However, if this IT Consultancy happens to be the company that you work for, I would strongly recommend divesting yourself of those shares as soon as reasonably possible. In my opinion, the risk of having your salary, pension, and much of your investments tied up in the fortunes of one company would simply be a much larger risk than I'd be comfortable with. Last, make sure to keep learning so that you are making decisions that you're comfortable with. With the amount of savings you have, most investment firms will consider you a ""high net worth"" client, so make sure you are making decisions that are in your best financial interests, not theirs. Again, this is where a fee-only financial advisor may be helpful (you can find a local advisor at napfa.org). Best of luck with your decisions!" "The brain is a muscle and cannot function at optimal performance for 540 minutes straight.  What's been shown is a best we can do it for 90 minute stretches although [some](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/science-tells-you-how-many-minutes-should-you-take-a-break-for-work-17/380369/) show closer to an hour, followed by a ~20 minute break.  So at best your 9 hours of ""work"" is optimized at 7 hours of actual work.  Edit: No, the brain is not literally a muscle." The optimal way to pay off all cards in the least amount of time is a waterfall approach, with the most money going to the account with the highest interest rate, or in the event of a tie, the lowest balance. Then when that account is paid off, go to the next one. There's a bit of wiggle room if one is tax deductible, but in this case, there shouldn't be. So, what you should do is pay off card 2, then 1, then 3, using the waterfall scheme. You have correctly identified that card 2 will be paid off in 18 months. Figure out what the balance will be on Card 1 at that time, and how long the new payment of $1105 will take to get it paid off. Then figure out how long it'll take to pay off card 3 with $1365. Without crunching the numbers myself, I'm guessing you'll be debt free in about 26 months or so, that card 3 will be paid off before you are done with Card 1. So what you'd do in that case is pay off card 1 using the combined total payment. &gt; I don't think anyone is blaming animal agriculture on its own for global warming issues. At the same time its undeniable at this point to say animal agriculture is not a leading environmental problem, even if it is 'just 14.5% of emissions', the deforestation, the ridiculous amounts of fresh water needed, and the untreated sewage wastage. .   You have the same problem with soybeans ([Geraldes Castanheira, 2013](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652613003442)), it's a problem with production that affects all agriculture.  And when you look at plant sources of protein they have very similar water use as meat:  Source|L/kg :--|--: Lentils|1,549 US Pork|1,406 US Beef|1,258 Beans|1,108 NL Beef|829 NL Pork|706 Dried peas|526 US Chicken|490 Oatmeal|439 Hemp seed|429 Artichokes|340 NL Chicken|242 Soybean flour|127  From ([Mekonen, 2012](http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Mekonnen-Hoekstra-2012-WaterFootprintFarmAnimalProducts.pdf)) and ([Mekonen, 2010](http://waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/Report47-WaterFootprintCrops-Vol1.pdf)) looking at blue (surface/ground water) and grey (water needed to clear pollutants) water use.  &gt; Also, so your argument is that hey we're producing enough food for everyone even though its an extremely inefficient way of producing calories - so whats to worry about? As much as we'd like to think we have unlimited resources, we don't. Our gluttony is destroying the planet. In addition to the environmental costs, it simply doesn't make sense to allocate the majority of our crops to feed and grow the billions of land animals when we could allocate those crops to foods that can feed people directly.  The point is that we can double the earth population without running out of food, and then we can add another 40% in the US by simply not throwing away the food, then we can optimize land use, and not all land is suitable for growing crops so we get more food by using it for meat.  Food production is simply not an issue.  &gt; You may not like to admit it, vegan and plant-based when it comes to food are the equivalents of 'clean energy', and animal based foods is akin oil and coal. Which is probably why vegan fast food is attracting the biggest investors. It's the future.  An optimized scenario includes meat as not all land is suitable to farming, and you have seafood and wildlife.  At this point being vegan is more like being religious. "With (1), it's rather confusing as to where ""interest"" refers to what you're paying and where it refers to what you're being paid, and it's confusing what you expect the numbers to work out to be. If you have to pay normal interest on top of sharing the interest you receive, then you're losing money. If the lending bank is receiving less interest than the going market rate, then they're losing money. If the bank you've deposited the money with is paying more than the going market rate, they're losing money. I don't see how you imagine a scenario where someone isn't losing money. For (2) and (3), you're buying stocks on margin, which certainly is something that happens, but you'll have to get an account that is specifically for margin trading. It's a specific type of credit with specific rules, and you if you want to engage in this sort of trading, you should go through established channels rather than trying to convert a regular loan into margin trading. If you get a personal loan that isn't specifically for margin trading, and buy stocks with the money, and the stocks tank, you can be in serious trouble. (If you do it through margin trading, it's still very risky, but not nearly as risky as trying to game the system. In some cases, doing this makes you not only civilly but criminally liable.) The lending bank absolutely can lose if your stocks tank, since then there will be nothing backing up the loan." "This is actually a very complicated question. The key reading in this area is a seminal paper by Almgren & Chriss, ""Optimal Execution of Portfolio Transactions"" (2000). They show that there's a tradeoff between liquidating your portfolio faster and knowing the value with more certainty, versus liquidating more slowly (and likely for a higher price) but with less certainty. So for example, if you sold your entire position right now, you would know almost certainly how much you would get for the position. Or, you could sell off your position more slowly, and likely get more money, but you would have less certainty about how much you would get. The paper is available online at http://www.courant.nyu.edu/~almgren/papers/optliq.pdf" What you're getting at is the same as investing with leverage. Usually this comes in the form in a margin account, which an investor uses to borrow money at a low interest rate, invest the money, and (hopefully!) beat the interest rate.  is this approach unwise? That completely depends on how your investments perform and how high your loan's interest rate is. The higher your loan's interest rate, the more risky your investments will have to be in order to beat the interest rate. If you can get a return which beats the interest rates of your loan then congratulations! You have come out ahead and made a profit. If you can keep it up you should make the minimum payment on your loan to maximize the amount of capital you can invest. If not, then it would be better to just use your extra cash to pay down the loan.  [are] there really are investments (aside from stocks and such) that I can try to use to my advantage? With interest rates as low as they are right now (at least in the US) you'll probably be hard-pressed to find a savings account or CD that will return a higher interest rate than your loan's. If you're nervous about the risk associated with investing in stocks and bonds (as is healthy!), then know that they come in a wide spectrum of risk. It's up to you to evaluate how much risk you're willing to take on to achieve a higher return. It depends on your cost structure and knowledge of the exchanges. It could be optimal to make a manual exchange selection so long as it's cheaper to do so. For brokers with trade fees, this is a lost cause because the cost of the trade is already so high that auto routing will be no cheaper than manual routing. For brokers who charge extra to manually route, this could be a good policy if the exchange chosen has very high rebates.  This does not apply to equities because they are so cheap, but there are still a few expensive option exchanges. This all presumes that one's broker shares exchange rebates which nearly all do not. If one has direct access to the exchanges, they are presumably doing this already. To do this effectively, one needs: For anyone trading with brokers without shared rebates or who does not have knowledge of the exchange prices and their liquidities, it's best to auto route.