what is the likely reason that the bank have a different year end than the other companies
The exact Financial calander followed is different for different regions/countires. The difference is more historical and a convinient practise that has no advantage / reason to change. Many Countries like US/Japan the Financial year can be choosen by companies and needs to be same every year. This need not be same as the Financial year followed by Government. Typically Banks would follow the Financial year followed by Government as this would have more direct impact on the business per say in terms of policy changes which are typically from the begining of new financial year for Government. If the Banks follow a different calander, there would be additional overhead of segregating transactions for reporting. Large corporates on other hand would tend to follow a Calander year as it is more convinient when operating in different geographies.  There is a very good article on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_year
"The standard interpretation of ""can I afford to retire"" is ""can I live on just the income from my savings, never touching the principal."" To estimate that, you need to make reasonable guesses about the return you expect, the rate of inflation, your real costs -- remember to allow for medical emergencies, major house repairs, and the like when determining you average needs, not to mention taxes if this isn't all tax-sheltered! -- and then build in a safety factor. You said liquid assets, and that's correct; you don't want to be forced into a reverse mortgage by anything short of a disaster. An old rule of thumb was that -- properly invested -- you could expect about 4% real return after subtracting inflation. That may or may not still be correct, but it makes an easy starting point. If we take your number of $50k/year (today's dollars) and assume you've included all the tax and contingency amounts, that means your nest egg needs to be 50k/.04, or $1,250,000. (I'm figuring I need at least $1.8M liquid assets to retire.) The $1.5M you gave would, under this set of assumptions, allow drawing up to $60k/year, which gives you some hope that your holdings would mot just maintain themselves but grow, giving you additional buffer against emergencies later. Having said that: some folks have suggested that, given what the market is currently doing, it might be wiser to assume smaller average returns. Or you may make different assumptions about inflation, or want a larger emergency buffer. That's all judgement calls, based on your best guesses about the economy in general and your investments in particular.  A good financial advisor (not a broker) will have access to better tools for exploring this, using techniques like monte-carlo simulation to try to estimate both best and worst cases, and can thus give you a somewhat more reliable answer than this rule-of-thumb approach. But that's still probabilities, not promises. Another way to test it: Find out how much an insurance company would want as the price of an open-ended inflation-adjusted $50k-a-year annuity. Making these estimates is their business; if they can't make a good guess, nobody can. Admittedly they're also factoring the odds of your dying early into the mix, but on the other hand they're also planning on making a profit from the deal, so their number might be a reasonable one for ""self-insuring"" too. Or might not. Or you might decide that it's worth buying an annuity for part or all of this, paying them to absorb the risk. In the end, ""ya pays yer money and takes yer cherce.""" "They say that banks earn 4 - 5% on deposits, so with lower costs they can give away 2-4%. They cite [this article](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-banking-industry-annual-profit-hit-record-in-2016-1488295836) which says that ""return on equity [for banks] up at 9.32%, the highest level since 2013"". But [net interest margin](https://www.fdic.gov/bank/analytical/qbp/2017mar/chart4.html) is lower (2.5%-4.5%). And that's in a good year.  They elaborate in a blog post:  ""Fed Funds rates are supposed to affect deposit rates that banks pay to their customers, as, after all, deposit is a form of short term loan from depositor to the bank (see the explanation in our recent blog). However, as WalletHub notes in their recent report, it has not actually happened recently. As the report notes, for traditional branch-based banks, savings and checking account rates are virtually unchanged. You are probably getting the same 0.01% in your checking or savings account? Meanwhile, rates on your credit card went up by 0.53% since December 2015.""  ""So why aren’t deposit rates increasing? One reason often cited, is actually the relative decrease in the levels of competition in the U.S. market (as we described in our earlier blog). While there are still thousands of banks in the U.S., 4 control ~40% of the assets and close to half of the assets (loans). The other reason could be, perhaps, that after almost 10 years of getting close to zero in your bank account, you will forget that it could be any different. In fact, bank executives are puzzled why consumers are not “demanding” more on their deposits. You can walk to the branch and “demand” more money from your bank, but you may end up in county jail. The only other viable option is to take your deposits elsewhere, or vote with your feet."" (https://blog.meetbeam.com/draft-why-are-lending-rates-going-up-but-deposit-rates-are-not-76e050b382af)  ""Beam makes money by providing value-added services to our partnering bank and other financial service partners in the banking ecoysystem."" That sounds like they might be selling your data?" "Sorry, i always use my phone when using reddit and i'm also not a native speaker. Basically what i tried to say is;  The reason the whole world using this economic system is because when people divide their work force and everyone specializes on one thing they are much better at it, gain more experience, become more efficient and basically it is just more productive.   Thats why everyone has a job.  But jobs has few downsides, most prominent one being making all these repetitive tasks, one can lose their purpose. This is the situation for the poor community. People who do not earn a lot of money and doesn't have a good statue can be depressed by going to same place everyday, doing the same thing for 40-50 years,  for....???The reason is, everyone is doing repetitive tasks, even if it is something you love (personally i would hate my hobbies if i had to do them everyday not for enjoyment but for money) but some are being rewarded much more.   My goal of telling all these is, this is not a perfect economic system but it is the most efficient one today. People need motivation if they are going to do the same thing all the time. The motivation could be different than money and statue but it is much easier to convince the masses these are important so the machine could work.  Only a fool with no regard to history would tell this is the best economic system and it will never change since world is always changing, 5 years ago top10 companies were banks and investment companies now they are tech/internet. My belief is that for now the system is structured and will stay the same until; •War ,which changes the economy. War economy needs other stuff compared to what we are producing normally. Motivation also changes in these times, it's not money anymore but for ""your countries sake"" and ""pride"". •Different political system which is unusual to most since it is the economic change in classes which makes the political system to change." The first thing is to look at the monthly cost of the loan. The one from the company is interest free. While it is unlikely that a bank will have a zero percent loan, you will also have to look at what the seller will offer.  The next thing to look at is the term of the loan. When comparing two loans with the same interest rate the shorter term loan will cost more per month. Many times when an auto dealer offers a zero percent loan they also  have a very short term: 12-24 months; Many people can't afford the monthly payments with that short a term.  You said you could afford to save the other $2000 in about six months. That means you could set aside $333 a month to do it in six months. If the loan from the employer has a term longer than 6 months you should be able to afford the loan. Keep in mind that the employer will probably be taking the money right out of your paychecks.  You do have to look at the conditions attached to the loan. What does accepting the loan do to your employment situation? If you leave early do they want you to pay it back in 30 days, or will they take the rest from the final paycheck, or do you have longer?  You do have to look at the term of the loan, and see if you can pay it off early. If they require a 12 month term can you end it earlier, or change the monthly payment to end it early? The reason why you care about the term is that if the term is 24 months then after a year you still owe them $1000; which if you have to pay back immediately if you quit, it may make it hard for you to leave the company. A minor note: They probably are not reporting it to the credit reporting agencies therefore it wont help your credit score. This is probably not a big issue since you are considering going without a loan. "The short answer is: banks are less concerned about the interest earned on any single mortgage than they are for the interest earned over time from a collection of mortgages. Let's look at a repayment schedule for a 30-year mortgage at 4% for $100,000. (source: http://web5.vlending.com/loancenter-calculators-amort.aspx. Any mortgage calculator should produce a similar schedule, however.) A few things to note: The interest due in the last 6 years is less than the interest due in the first year alone. Banks are getting a disproportionate amount of the expected interest up front. Banks can make multiple loans; the money collected from existing borrowers can be aggregated to make new loans before the old ones are paid off, and those new loans start, of course, at the interest-heavy end of the repayment schedule. Suppose the bank lends out $1,000,000 to 10 borrowers. In the first two years, they will collect a total of $114588.90 from the 10 borrowers in principal and interest. That's enough to make an additional loan to an 11th borrower while keeping $14,588.90 as ""profit"". The new borrower is making payments at the year-one rate. A bank may lose a little interest on a single loan that gets repaid early, but that is generally made up by the fact that a new loan can be issued that much sooner as a result." "I can see two possibilities. Either a deal is struck that someone (the company itself, or a large owner) buys out the remaining shares. This is the scenario @mbhunter is talking about, so I won't go too deeply into it, but it simply means that you get money in your bank account for the shares in question the same as if you were to sell them for that price (in turn possibly triggering tax effects, etc.). I imagine that this is by far the most common approach. The other possibility is that the stock is simply de-listed from a public stock exchange, and not re-listed elsewhere. In this case, you will still have the stock, and it will represent the same thing (a portion of the company), but you will lose out on most of the ""market"" part of ""stock market"". That is, the shares will still represent a monetary value, you will have the same right to a portion of the company's profits as you do now, etc., but you will not have the benefit of the market setting a price per share so current valuation will be harder. Should you wish to buy or sell stock, you will have to find someone yourself who is interested in striking a deal with you at a price point that you feel comfortable with." The simple answer is that brokerages have to close the books at the end of the year before they can send out the tax forms (what this entails is off topic for this site). I doubt that printing and mailing the forms takes very long. It is simply the process of reconciling the books so they don't have to send out corrected forms if errors are corrected during that reconciliation process. That's pretty typical for introductory problems.  It's leading you into an NPV question.  They're keeping the cash flows the same to illustrate the time value of money to show you that even though the free cash flow is the same in year 1 and year 4 or whatever when you discount it to present value today's stream is worth more than tomorrow's