So the vending machine tore my $5 in pieces. What now?
According to the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, if you have clearly more than one-half of the current bill remaining, you should be able to take it to your bank and exchange it. But if for some reason your bank will not take it, you can submit it to Bureau of Engraving and Printing Office of Currency Standards. Question asked on http://www.moneyfactory.gov/faqlibrary.html I have some currency that was damaged. My bank will not exchange it for undamaged currency. What can I do? The Bureau of Engraving and   Printing's Office of Currency Standards processes all requests for   reimbursement for damaged United States currency. They decide the   redemption value of torn or otherwise unfit currency by measuring the   portions of the notes submitted. Generally, they reimburse the full   face value if clearly more than one-half of the original note remains.   Currency fragments measuring less than one-half are not redeemable. Go   to the Damaged Money section of our website for additional information   and the procedures to redeem mutilated currency. However take notice of this: Any badly soiled, dirty, defaced, disintegrated, limp, torn, worn, out   currency note that is CLEARLY MORE than one-half of the original note,   and does not require special examination to determine its value. These   notes should be exchanged through your local bank. There is usually contact information for the owner of the machine printed somewhere on it. Call that number. If it is in a business you could always try the clerk.  Whether you get your money back is up to that person, I suppose.
"Actually, calculating taxes isn't that difficult.  You will pay a percentage of your gross sales to state and local sales tax, and as a single-owner LLC your profits (after sales taxes) should pass through to your individual tax tax return (according to this IRS article. They are not cumulative since they have different bases (gross sales versus net profit). That said, when determining if your future business is profitable, you need to ask ""what aspects of the business can I control""? Can you control how much each item sells for? Increasing your prices will increase your gross margins, which should be higher than your fixed and variable costs.  If your margins do not exceed your costs, then you will note be profitable. Note that as a vendor you are at a slight disadvantage to a retailer, since tax has to be baked in to your prices.  A retailer can advertise the pre-tax price, and pass-through sales tax at the point of sale.  However, people expect to pay more at a vending machine, so the disadvantage is very small (you aren't directly competing with retailers anyways)." Personally, I buy newer luxury cars for two reasons.   1) Status symbol Newer cars have the latest looks, performance, and features like heated side mirrors and sensors that adjust cruse control speed when in heavy traffic etc.   2) Older cars have more wear and tear. No one has spent any significant amount of time in the car before and therefore you know the history of what the car has been through, like buying a new pair of pants.  You know that no one has pissed in them ;). After I have pissed in and tore up my now older luxury car, I sell it off and get a new one.  Cars wear out and as they get older, they need parts replaced.  My brother's Mazda, for example, just blew the head gasket after buying the car new and driving 130k miles over a four year period.  Part of the luxury for owning a new car is the luxury of time, not having your car spend any significant amount of time in a garage being worked on, unless you buy a Land Rover of course ;). "A few years back me and a couple of friends made about 100 of these on his 30 watt laser cutter. At the time I was using them for ring boxes, because I make spoon rings and wanted something to give to people for the nicer sterling rings. If I remember correctly we used high ply baltic birch plywood at 1/8"" thickness. The grade we were buying ran us about $30 for a 5'x5' sheet. We cut them into 11x16 sheets, because that's the max size for his laser, and cut roughly 5 out of each sheet. The ones we were making were of course much smaller than what you are looking at though. Materials alone ended up running about $.50 a piece, we were coating with one layer of teak oil. It was roughly ten minutes to cut out 5 boxes, then another ten minutes to pop them out of the plywood and assemble each one. Despite what has been stated, with tweaking, friction fit held up completely fine, we didn't use glue on a single one and I still have a few laying around that are holding up fine also. Anyway, say you are paying yourself roughly $20 an hour, and you can speed it up from what we did and make 20 in an hour, now you have $1 a piece in labor. Keep in mind if you go to a place to have these made, from my experience, most places will charge you roughly $1 a minute for laser time. Add engraving time if you want a logo or something on them, probably another minute per box, all in all in the end these are going to end up costing you $2.50-$3 a box if you have free access to a laser. I would imagine anyone making them for you would probably charge double that.   In the end after the first batch of both these boxes, some slightly different, and some jewelry trees, we found out that it's hard to sell these items for an affordable price and still make it worth your while. If I remember correctly we ended up selling most of the remaining boxes for about $4 a piece just to break even and cover all of our expenses. Of course, this is just my experience, if someone has a way to do this more efficiently and for a profit, I would be interested to hear it, because we still have the laser and probably 100 sheets of plywood left =D" Voluntarily assuming a loan is a bad idea, especially for a non-investment purpose. It would be one thing to take on a loan to operate a business or buy a piece of capital equipment, like a machine that would make you money. Borrowing money to have a more luxurious house is foolish. The smart move is to buy a good quality home that will meet your needs for as little as possible. Having $800,000 leaves a quit a bit of leeway in that department. You don't say where you live, but if this occurred in my area (eastern Massachusetts) I would buy a house for $500,000 and then invest the remaining $300,000. If I lived in the California bay area, it might be necessary to spend the whole $800,000. Either way there should be no need to borrow money. Also, if you buy a house for cash, often you can get a substantially better deal than if you have to involve a bank. Not owing anyone money is a huge psychological advantage in business and in life in general. View being debt-free as a springboard to success and happiness. If they really believed in their product, the juice, they should have just reorganized their structure to idk repackage it slightly. So then we can buy the squeezables in gas stations or something. Sounds pretty ready if people found out you could just squeeze em out. That's how you cut manufacture prices down and still reliever the MAIN product, the juice.  You can build the best machine in the world but if the product your selling doesn't need the machine, well you've just made a mechanical baby. Beautiful, expensive, and sure as hell don't make you money. Close your card, now. Let your credit card provider / bank know about the situation. Never, ever ever, give out your password. Not to a friend, not to your bank and not even to your cat. The issue yo have to consider is that under many state laws, you must give a merchant three opportunities to correct an issue before you can sue them, so check with your state before considering that option. Here's a link to the Federal Trade Commission's warranty information page, which may give you some ideas about what your options are. Keep in ind, if you let someone else work on the computer rather than the store you bought it from, you might give the guy a valid claim in court to throw out your lawsuit!  Many times, warranties will spell out the conditions under which repair work can or must be done, so make sure you follow every step to the letter in order to preserve your claim. I would strongly suggest that you start creating a paper trail for your claim.  Start by writing a very precise and detailed letter to the store owner, with copies of all relevant documents (your receipts, warranty papers, etc.) included.  Explain the entire history, including what steps you've taken to date to get him to honor the warranty.  Offer him the option to let you take the computer to another shop for repairs at his expense.  Then, send the letter by certified mail, return receipt requested, to the store owner so that he can't deny receiving your letter.  This is all in order to make the best case you can for your claim just in case you do have to sue him. Do not take the computer to anyone else until or unless he tells you in writing that he is willing to let you do that.  You don't want to risk him arguing that the other shop is responsible for the problems now. I hope this helps. Good luck! Where do I stand with this? The money was not your's. So co-operate with the bank to get this sent back ASAP. It is good that the equipment is still with you. Yes Bank would need evidence that you were a victim and not party to this crime. Co-operate with the relevant authorities and get this resolved. It is a lesson learnt where luckily no money was lost, but quite a bit of hassle and personal time lost.