An account happens when you deposit money (legally) into a registered investment account at a known financial institution. An account comes in many flavors, the most sweetly vanilla of which are your basic and checking and savings accounts at a bank like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Bank of Uzbekistan. A spicier flavor of an account type is a margin account, usually held in the form of stocks deposited into a stock broker's margin account.

Why is margin good? (And it has nothing to do with butter.) It's good because you can borrow in most systems up to 50% of the value of the securities you have in that account. Since the various terrorist acts of modern times, the level of inspection, disclosure, and legal strictures has increased dramatically, so if you have an actual registered-for-realz account, expect that you are sending loving letters to the NSA every time you trade.

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Finance: What is a Coverdell Education S...11 Views

00:00

Finance a la shmoop what is a Coverdell education savings account? Coverdell...[Man using a red umbrella]

00:09

nope not an umbrella for the farmer in the well what is a Dell anyway? uh no

00:14

different Dell remember farmer in the Dell? all right moving on

00:18

Coverdell was the senator who named this type of tax deferred savings account and

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note it's tax deferred not tax free maybe that is you might put two grand a

00:29

year in this account and you don't pay tax on it this year it just gets

00:33

invested and it grows just like a 401k account and an IRA and a Roth more or

00:39

less but then when you withdraw the money you don't pay tax on it if you use [Cash withdrawn from ATM]

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the dough for school that is for like private school fifth grade books and

00:49

uniforms or that no athletic scholarship in the Ivy League tuition at Princeton [Man walking towards college building and football hits his head]

00:54

Or the iPad app suite from shmoop yeah

00:59

you could spend it on us we'd appreciate it thank you if you don't spend the

01:02

money on education well then you get taxed in the normal way as if it's

01:06

ordinary income there are all kinds of restrictions in this plan like there's a [Restrictions appear]

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max of two grand contributed per kid who benefits from it the dough has to be

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distributed fully by the time the kid is thirty or go to others in the family for

01:20

education and if your family makes too much money like you work too hard you're

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too successful well you might have to cover your own Dell yeah so yeah it's a [Man walking along with a Dell laptop]

01:30

great option for some and an excellent way to attend the school of your dreams

01:34

while temporarily staving off the taxes of your nightmares if you're really lost

01:39

or something to spend it on you know think of your friends here at shmoop...

01:41

we're happy to take your dough

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