Investing

Ha-ha! A month ago, I also decided to slowly invest, instead of spending money on all sorts of unnecessary things.
To begin with, I decided to buy currency, since our ruble has a habit of falling sharply. I bought a N-amount dollars and after the new year the ruble weakened a little and I got a profit. I think to buy some more bucks
In the future, I may start buying shares of enterprises.

By the way, do you also need to pay profit tax on the winnings on the stock exchange? In our country, they did it quite recently.

Yes, in the USA we normally do need to pay taxes on the winnings. They call it 'capital gains taxes' here. It can be very complicated. Basically we pay a high tax rate if we sell a stock less than a year after we bought it. There is a lower tax rate if you hold a stock longer than a year. Either way the tax rate is based on your annual income, the more money you make the higher the rate gets. If you don't make much money the rate can actually be zero, which is nice for people who are retired and living a modest life.

To make it more complicated, there are retirement investment accounts that defer the taxes. These accounts allow us to buy stocks while we are working without paying taxes, but we can't sell them until we are retired. Then we will have to pay taxes on them. It seems silly but it can actually allow someone to get more money from their investments in the long term.

That is just the basics. Our tax system is super complicated. There are lots of different rules - too many for most people to know on their own, so there are professionals that can be hired to help people with taxes. There are even ways for people to pay very little taxes if they know the rules well enough - even very rich people. It is a very controversial matter here that is discussed frequently in the news.

Ha-ha! A month ago, I also decided to slowly invest, instead of spending money on all sorts of unnecessary things.
To begin with, I decided to buy currency, since our ruble has a habit of falling sharply. I bought a N-amount dollars and after the new year the ruble weakened a little and I got a profit. I think to buy some more bucks
In the future, I may start buying shares of enterprises.

By the way, do you also need to pay profit tax on the winnings on the stock exchange? In our country, they did it quite recently.

Yes, in the USA we normally do need to pay taxes on the winnings. They call it 'capital gains taxes' here. It can be very complicated. Basically we pay a high tax rate if we sell a stock less than a year after we bought it. There is a lower tax rate if you hold a stock longer than a year. Either way the tax rate is based on your annual income, the more money you make the higher the rate gets. If you don't make much money the rate can actually be zero, which is nice for people who are retired and living a modest life.

To make it more complicated, there are retirement investment accounts that defer the taxes. These accounts allow us to buy stocks while we are working without paying taxes, but we can't sell them until we are retired. Then we will have to pay taxes on them. It seems silly but it can actually allow someone to get more money from their investments in the long term.

That is just the basics. Our tax system is super complicated. There are lots of different rules - too many for most people to know on their own, so there are professionals that can be hired to help people with taxes. There are even ways for people to pay very little taxes if they know the rules well enough - even very rich people. It is a very controversial matter here that is discussed frequently in the news.