At some point children should be given responsibility for some of their own finances. This is one of the best ways to get them to understand money and eventually financial planning. When children graduate grade school is a great time to start this. You can incorporate this into the big life change of transitioning to Middle School. During this transition many kids will feel a loss of control of their life. So giving them control of some of their own money can balance this fact. Here are some things you can do to give them control of their own money.

Open them a checking account with an atm card (Age 12 and under)
Open them a Savings account and make them an autorized user on an American Express card (13 and older)
Give them a way to make money that they control so they can put their own money into their checking and savings. I like to call these Income tasks.

Here is an example list
- doing a load of towels
- folding and putting away clean Towels
- Washing the car
- Vacuuming the carpet

I feel these need to be very different from their chores. Chores are something they have been told to do and can build responsibility. Income tasks are something they are allowed to do and that they get paid for but are never expected to do. They do them because they want to generate income to buy things, not because they were told to do them.

Now they need a way to access their money. For ages 12 and under this will be an atm card, I have not found a credit card for a child below age 13. A guardian must also be on the account and is liable for all activities on the account. I like credit unions like BECU and USAA bank for this option. For ages 13 to 18 they can be added as an authorized user on a parents credit card. American Express is the only card I know of that will allow you to put spending limits on authorized users. So if it is not an Amex maybe have it have a credit limit of under $1000.

Other ideas for teaching finances.

- 3 day rule when they ask you to buy them something. Or when they ask to borrow money to buy something - 3 month rule for high schoolers. - give them control of their own spending in a certain area. I was given a clothing budget each year. I was not given more money than that for clothing throughout the year. That was it. Increase this amount each year.

The $1000 finance meeting (maybe $50 per year of age). A time for them to ask questions not a time to preach at them. List of suggestions for them - download their 3 credit reports - ask what plans do they have for money over the next year and decade. You can keep this information in mind for future conversations but do not give input at this point. We do not want them to feel judged at all about finances. The important thing is for them to be thinking about finances not for them to get their finances right the first time. If you want to communicate something about finances maybe implementing your opinions on your own finances is better than preaching something you don't practice yourself. - When they decide the meeting is done give them the money in the way that works best for them. - If they put it into a retirement account I double the amount.

Once you have a good amount of assets you will have to start thinking about the tax implications when accessing those assets. If they are in an IRA you will pay income tax when you withdraw it. If it is in a brokerage account you will pay capital gains, but just on the growth not on everything you withdraw. If it is in a Roth IRA you pay no taxes when withdrawing. The thing to think about with an ira is the tax brackets.
22% for incomes over $48,475 ($96,950 for married couples filing jointly).
12% for incomes over $11,925 ($23,850 for married couples filing jointly).

The taxable income a married couple can have is $96,950 before they start getting charged that extra 10%. Your Actual income will also include your standard deduction. Which in 2025 was $33,200. So you want your total income below $130,150 then the most you will pay in taxes is 12%. Remember if you work or if your SS is taxable that is part of that $130,150.

What are your expenses. A lot of people talk about making a budget and trying to stick to that. I have never gotten that to work for me. I track what I actually spend and when I start spending more money than I am making I look through my actual spending and make a goal to reduce my spending in a certain area. Then update that goal monthly to see how I am doing and change the goal if needed. To know what I am spending I use an app like Monarch or Nerd Wallet. Monarch costs $100 and has no adds. This is what I use, I like the way they allow you to categorize, find reoccurring changes, and how their reporting works. Nerd Wallet is free so you have to put up with adds. This is what my sister uses and she likes it a lot.

>> Income - The goal here is to live within your means. If you are spending more than your income every year then it's impossible to build assets. >> >> Savings - savings is where you store your income for future purchases. The goal here is to build enough savings so that when something unexpected happens you are never tempted to spend your assets. >> >> Assets - Once something is named an asset it should never be spent. Assets to get transferred from one asset to another, stock assets being used to buy a house. There are some odd assets like education. But you have to judge odd assets correctly. Cashing out stocks to become a doctor, proper movement of assets. Cashing out stocks to learn basket weaving. Just lost you those assets. >> >> You have become independently wealthy when your assets create enough income to both: reinvest to keep up with inflation, and you have enough income leftover that you no longer need to work. >> >> Also individual things do not automatically fit into a specific category. You can have some Microsoft stock in your savings and some Microsoft stock in your assets. It is not one or the other because it is stock. But once you call it an asset it needs to stay an asset. >>

What happens between age 20 to 30. Age 30 to 50. And age 50 and above 20-30 you are deciding where your income is going to come from 30-50 you are making that income and doing what you can to build your assets.

The proper way to deal with finances Cash only the money you make is all the money you have and any money you have gets spent. Bank account but no cash savings that last very long Living paycheck to paycheck but you put money into your savings and your assets before you spend what's left. If you get a raise you will start spending more money. Living on a budget. You are putting money into assets and you know almost exactly how much your lifestyle costs. And you are happy with that lifestyle. Any money you make that is more than that budget ends up in savings. If you get a raise your savings just grows faster. It does not affect how much you spend.

What are assets. How do they compare to savings and income Income from investments should be reinvested until it is large enough to live off of.

Savings is a little harder to understand because it is not obvious when you should spend your savings. After you get $2000 in savings and then you see those $1000 boots the thought can go through your mind. 'What am I holding this savings for anyway'. Well here is that answer. Saving is there so that you are never tempted to cash out an investment, you have less reliance on credit. It is best to never pay interest on short term credit. So pay your credit cards to zero once or twice a month. When you have a purchase that is more than 3 times your monthly salary, like medical bills, house repairs, buying a car, and that big trip once a decade, it is really hard to afford that without using credit. So make a plan on how that credit will be paid off. Get the lowest interest rate you can. And have as much savings as possible before that event happens. If you have enough savings to cover all that then you are comparing spending $1000 on boots or adding that $1000 to your assets.

I have purchased a stack of finance books I plan to give to friends and family. I am going to include my opinion on assets as a final page to the book. This is my first shot at that. Completely unedited. If you have any specific critiques or general critiques they would be very welcome. stock investing
one of the best things to learn and practice is putting a value on a company without looking at the stock price at all. just look at the earnings reports for the last 2-3 years. is it a million, billion, or trillion dollar company. can you narrow it down even more than that. if you have a friend that is willing have them remove all the identifying things from a report and just give you the financial numbers

One reason that I just turned 50 years old and feel comfortable in my retirement is because I built assets throughout my life. I think about money in 3 major categories: assets, savings, and income. Once I decide sometime is an asset I will never spend it. I will only let it grow or transfer it to another asset. My hope is that everything allocated as an asset will be given to the next generation to build generational wealth. I plan to retire on the income generated by my assets but never spend the asset itself.

The best way to make sure you never spend your assets is to have enough savings that if a big expensive event happens in your life your savings can cover that. This means early in your life it is just as important to build your savings as it is to build your assets. So if you are given a big chunk of money it is appropriate to put a larger amount in savings and a smaller amount into your retirement assets. If you are given $10,000 in your 30's and put that all into your retirement but your savings is only $1000 it might be tempting to cash out some assets when your car breaks down or your credit card balance gets to big.

The first big transfer of assets I did was when I purchased my house. My wife and I had been building our assets ever since leaving school by putting 10% of our income into retirement and into Microsoft stock. When we wanted to purchase a house we needed a small down payment so we used our assets. This is where things can gets muddled. Transferring money from retirement assets to a house only builds on that retirement asset if you treat your house as an asset after you buy it. If you hope to flip that house in 2 years and move. That's probably not an asset because there is to much chance the house has not improved in value after all the real estate fees. But if you are settling down in an area and you plan on staying there for a couple decades then your house can be a great asset. Just don't use the equity to buy a boat, go on a vacation, or pay off your credit cards. Treat the increase in value of your house as part of your retirement and don't spend it. Maybe it is ok to spend it if you are adding square footage to the house. Improving its value. But a kitchen upgrade should probably come from savings.

Savings is money you expect to spend in the future. The best thing you can do for your finances is live within your means. You can tell you are doing that by looking at how much savings and short term debt you have at the end of each year. Have you paid off your car loan at the same speed that the car has reduced in value? Do you hold your credit card balances for less than a month?One thing I did when I was younger was creat available low interest credit to supplement my savings. I got a personal line of credit at 12% when I was in my 20's. I was lucky enough to never need to use that. After owning my house I opened a home equity line of credit that I would pay off within 2 months each time I used it. Paying 4% for short term credit is way better than leaving it on a high interest credit card. That home equity line of credit was $100,000 of available money when I became sick. Without that I would have lost my house.

It is great to have a couple months of income in savings incase you get laid off. But both my wife and I became sick and our income reduced 70%. This lasted until I could prove my disability in court after 3 years. I literally paid my mortgage and car payment from the HELOC those first couple years. Without that I would have been very tempted to cash out our 401k to keep our quality of life the way it had been. But we were able to stay on track and not do that. Which is the number 1 reason we are comfortable in our retirement today.

When you are in your 30's the money that is in your 401k and IRA looks insignificant. But that money has 30+ years to grow before you will need it for retirement. Putting $200 into your retirement at age 30 and not touching it is way more important than putting $1000 into your retirement when your 50 or 60. So seeing that $15,000 in your 401k seems insignificant in your 30's but it is not.

This book talks a lot about how to set your self up to protect your assets and talks a little about how to grow them. Let me talk a bit about what I have learned about growing my assets in the stock market. I have learned to invest my assets and I allow my self to do stock trading with my savings. I consider investing in stocks as buying a stock with the plan to not sell it for more than 2 years and hopefully even keep it for a couple of decades. If I don't have faith in the long term future of a company I don't invest. If I do have faith in the long term growth but in the short term the stock goes down that is one of the best investments you can have because you can buy some more now at a lower price. I personally know a couple dozen people that have done better than the S&P500 by holding things like Microsoft, google, McDonald's, McCormick spices, and other good companies for more than a decade. Trading in the other hand, I do not know a singe person, including my self, that has made any real money over a 20 years period trading stocks. I consider trading stock the act of buying and selling stocks in the short term on the idea you know what the stock will do over the next couple weeks or months. 15 years ago I was doing really well trading stocks over a 2 year period until I got over confident and lost $50,000 in one trade. That was not a small amount of my net worth at the time.

I now invest my assets, which has made me a couple hundred thousand dollars in comparison to holding index funds. I also trade my savings. The losses I have with trading stocks in my savings are made up for with my income, not by transferring money from my assets. I only trade a couple thousand dollars at a time so that any losses are small. If I have a good trade I transfer some of those winnings into my assets. I have almost made up for that $50,000 loss after 15 years of learning what works and what doesn't. But I am not quite there yet. So I have fun with a small percentage of my savings and am grateful that this helps me continue to be involved with my money at a personal level.

Here are some more complicated concepts of assets, savings, and income. A house: a house is an assets you control. You do not own that asset until there is no loan on the property. One thing a house does is give you another asset called credit. Credit: having available credit is an asset. Your credit score is an asset. So don't build your credit score up to 780 and destroy it by missing a house payment or a car payment. If you have a car payment at 6% you can leverage the asset of the credit your house has given you to reduce that interest rate. Get a 5 year heloc at 4% and pay off the car loan. But you must keep it straight in your head that that loan is connected to your car. You should not trade in your car without paying off that heloc 100%. Freeing up the heloc for reducing the interest rate on other things. A car: a car is not an asset unless you have purchased a rare vehicle you won't drive and you expect it to be higher in value in 10 years. A car is probably the highest value thing you have that is not an asset. Which is why people sometimes confuse it with an asset. But a car is expected to go down in value and you should expect your assets to either be stable in their value or to be increasing in their value. College and other education: it is perfectly reasonable to cash out some assets to get an education if that education will be worth more that the asset was. Don't cash out $50,000 of assets to learn how to paint unless you have a business plan to mass produce your paintings and make real money. On the other hand spending your cash assets and your credit assets to become a lawyer specialized in healthcare or technology will probably be a great investment. A final thought. In the United States you primary residence, your retirement accounts (specifically 401k and IRA, not just what you have in your head as retirement), your primary vehicle if needed to get to work, are protected assets in a bankruptcy. Interestingly enough borrowing from your 401k can be a great way to leverage your assets for a lower interest rate but that loan is not a debt that would be removed in a bankruptcy because you don't own that money to someone else, you owe it to your self.

So live within your means. Create savings for large purchases so that you can reduce your reliance on credit. Put $100 into an account when you are in high school and consider that an asset and never spend it. That will build an attitude of assets that will make you and your children wealthy people. >> One of the biggest concepts overlooked in financial education is the difference between Assets and Saving. Once you add this into your financial understanding you should think of resources in 3 ways. Income, savings, and Assets. >> >> Income is what you live on. Rent, utilities, food, entertainment, vacations. >> >> Savings is for bigger things like a car, unexpected medical, big trips, and fixing the roof. Your goal is to have enough savings so that you never spend your assets. If your consumer credit becomes greater than your savings you are starting to risk your assets because you will be tempted to sell assets to pay off your consumer debt. >> >> Assets should never be spent. You can make income from an asset and spend that, but the underlying asset should never be spent. Assets should be structured to grow when possible. The only reason to liquidate an asset is when you are acquiring another asset. This is heavily used when diversifying. All of this help me finalize more of my thoughts about finances. I was explaining how I have changed some of my spreadsheets to Jessica today. If I put everything into 3 categories: income, savings, assets. I need to make sure any money I am doing stock trading with shows in the savings column. Assets should only be invested in a way that most people would consider reasonably possible returns. And since probably less than 1 in 1000 people ever make money stock trading over a long period. That is not something you do with an asset. So the money I am using for options trading I lump in with my savings. Individual stocks can be a good idea with your assets. But buy them with the expectation you will not touch them for a decade. have the equation to show how much money someone will have for retirement depending on when they started saving. I need to make that into a spreadsheet. Once I have that number they I can talk about what it takes to retire. My thoughts are based on the following things. - you base retirement off of your current living style. If you are currently spending $75000 a year to live then to keep the same living style you will need $75000 in your first year of retirement. And that number will have to grow with inflation. - it is reasonable to say in a retirement environment you can make 6% on your assets. - if you spend all of that 6% each year your assets will stop growing. - if you spend 4% and reinvest 2% your assets will grow for forever and you will get a small raise each year. - if you spend more than 6% you are spending your assets and your money will eventually run out. - so do you plan to only have money for a specific amount of time or do you want to plan on your retirement lasting for forever. Assets of $1,500,000 6%= $90,000 a year assets are stable 4%= $60,000 a year assets are growing 8%= $120,000 a year assets are reducing I am going to compare my first year of retirement with my last year of work. That is the income I hope to have. Now for a spreadsheet and try to make this make sense.

Investing in the stock market

In the year 2000 Yahoo was way over valued Microsoft was not. When looking at a hot stock today how can you tell if it is a Yahoo or a Microsoft?

From CNN Money January 12, 1999: 4:35 p.m. ET NEW YORK (CNNfn) -

Web portal leader Yahoo! Inc. Tuesday reported fourth-quarter 1998 earnings well ahead of Wall Street estimates as revenues nearly tripled

from year-ago levels. The company, whose shares have soared in recent weeks, also set a 2-for-1 stock split.
Yahoo! (YHOO) logged proforma earnings of $25 million, or 21 cents a share, on

$76.4 Million in revenue.

Analysts expected the company to post earnings of 16 cents a share. Those profits far exceeded the company's year-ago levels, when Yahoo! reported earnings of $1.9 million, or 2 cents a share, on $26.6 million in revenue.
Yahoo!'s earnings exclude a one-time, $2.1-million charge related to the acquisition of Yoyodyne Entertainment Inc., as well as other charges and amortizations. Including those charges, Yahoo! posted net income of $18.5 million, or 16 cents a share.
"1998 was another landmark year for Yahoo!," said Tim Koogle, chairman and chief executive. "We consistently and carefully managed the business, executed our original plan and invested in growing the company while increasing profits each quarter." Yahoo!'s traffic continues to surge. The company said page views on its global network jumped 16 percent to 167 million per day, compared with 144 million in the third quarter.
Though analysts consider Yahoo! the clear leader among Web portals - the first site users see when they log onto the Internet - the company face will face tough competition in light of recent industry consolidation, particularly America Online Inc. 's (AOL) proposed $4.2-billion acquisition of Netscape Communications Corp. (NSCP).
Also, GO Network, a joint portal venture between Infoseek Corp. (SEEK) and Walt Disney Co. (DIS), officially launched Tuesday.
For the fiscal year 1998, Yahoo! reported earnings of $49.9 million, or 45 cents a share, on $203.3 million in revenue, compared with a 1997 net loss of $425,000, or zero cents a share, on $70.5 million in revenues. Separately, Yahoo! set a 2-for-1 stock split for shareholders of record by Jan. 22. The split will be reflected in Yahoo!'s trading price on Feb. 8.
In Monday trade, Yahoo!'s shares soared above the $400-a-share mark. Also, the company expanded the roles of two key executives. President and Chief Executive Tim Koogle will become chairman and CEO, while Jeff Mallett has been named president in addition to his duties as chief operating officer. Both changes are effective immediately.

From https://news.microsoft.com/1999/07/19/

Microsoft Announces Record Fiscal Year Revenue and Income
July 19, 1999

REDMOND, Wash., July 19, 1999 — Microsoft Corp. today announced

revenue of $19.75 Billion

for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1999, a 29 percent increase over the $15.26 billion reported last year. Net income totaled $7.79 billion. Diluted earnings per share were $1.42, a 69 percent increase compared to $0.84 in fiscal 1998.
Revenue for the quarter ended June 30, 1999 was $5.76 billion, a 39 percent increase over the comparable quarter in fiscal 1998. For the quarter, net income was $2.20 billion, and diluted earnings per share were $0.40, an increase of 60 percent compared to the $0.25 earned during the same quarter last year.
“Continuing consumer demand for Microsoft Windows and Office drove another year of fine financial performance,” said Greg Maffei, chief financial officer. “Customer enthusiasm also accelerated for our server products, with Windows NT Server, SQL Server and Exchange Server all reporting strong growth. However, in fiscal 2000 our revenue growth rates will decline due to slowing PC demand, uncertainty surrounding Y2K, and uncertain global economic conditions, and we will not see further margin expansion.”
“Microsoft Office 2000 has resonated with large and small customers alike, and is off to a very strong start,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Business Productivity Division. Office 2000 Premium, the new high-end version of Office, has been especially popular at retail. Microsoft Office 2000 became available to resellers in the US on June 10, with most other geographies expecting full availability in the September quarter.
Microsoft® SQL Server TM 7.0 continued to do well in its second quarter of availability. Independent software vendors (ISVs) worldwide are now shipping more than 1,000 applications for SQL Server 7.0, and many top ISVs have licensed it as part of their enterprise application offerings. Currently, Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Enterprise Edition owns the top 30 TPC-C price/performance benchmark results.
Windows NT® Workstation continued to gain strong acceptance, with the worldwide installed base more than doubling since June 1998 to more than 37 million licensed users. Windows NT Workstation is currently being pre-installed on nearly 30 percent of all business PCs shipped.
On July 1, the first Release Candidate for the Windows® 2000 family of operating systems was made available to beta customers, developers and partners worldwide. The Windows 2000 family includes: Windows 2000 Professional, the mainstream business client for organizations of all sizes; Windows 2000 Server, for workgroup and department servers; and Windows 2000 Advanced Server, for more robust departmental servers requiring clustering or load balancing support. Windows 2000 DataCenter Server, which is scheduled to ship 90-120 days after the other Windows 2000 products, is targeted at organizations' most mission-critical servers.
Microsoft launched MSN TM Personal Home Pages, which let consumers create their own Web page; MSN Mobile, the first major portal to provide wireless information services; and MSN Health, a comprehensive source of health-care information and services on the MSN network of Internet services. Microsoft invested $250 million in the new entity of Healtheon-WebMD and signed a five-year distribution agreement for the new company to become the premier health-care content provider for MSN, the Microsoft WebTV Network TM service and MSNBC.
During the quarter, Microsoft announced the Microsoft Television Platform Adaptation Kit (TVPAK), which is client and server software that merges Internet and technologies to enable new devices, services and content to enhance the television experience for consumers. More than 30 industry-leading companies are actively working with the technology. AT & T committed to license 7.5 to 10 million units of Microsoft's client software for advanced set top boxes (ASTB) and agreed to work with Microsoft to feature TVPAK client and server technology in three pilot cities. Subsequent to the quarter, Rogers Communications and Microsoft announced a relationship to develop and deploy advanced broadband television services in Canada. As part of the commitment, Rogers licensed TVPAK client and server software to support at least 1 million ASTBs.
Demonstrating Microsoft's continuing commitment to accelerating the deployment of broadband Internet connectivity, communications services and wireless opportunities, the Company made or has agreed to make a series of investments including AT & T – $5 billion, Nextel Communications – $600 million, Rogers Communications – $400 million, Sendit AB – $128 million, Concentric Networks – $50 million, Northpoint Communications – $30 million, Wink Communications – $30 million, and others.

Yahoo 2003 Valued at $28 Billion

y Paul R. La Monica, CNN/Money Senior Writer NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Yahoo! Wednesday reported higher first-quarter earnings that topped Wall Street forecasts and raised its forecasts for sales and pretax earnings for 2003.
The Internet media company said it earned $46.7 million, or 8 cents a share, on sales of $283 million for the quarter. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 6 cents a share and revenue of $274 million, according to First Call. The company reported a profit of $10.5 million, or 2 cents a share, excluding a charge from an accounting change, on sales of $193 million a year earlier.
Yahoo!, along with many other Internet stocks, has performed extremely well this year due to expectations of strong earnings and sales growth. Shares of Yahoo! (YHOO: Research, Estimates) are up nearly 40 percent year-to-date. The stock sank 3.9 percent ahead of the earnings report Wednesday but gained more than 3.5 percent in after-hours trading, according to Island ECN.

Strong gains across the board

The company demonstrated strong results throughout its businesses. Advertising revenue jumped 38 percent from a year earlier on strength in sponsored searches (i.e., advertisers paying for higher placement in search results) and other forms of Internet advertising such as banners and pop-ups. To that end, Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel said during a conference call Wednesday that traditional ad sales, those not from sponsored searches, also rose more than 10 percent from a year earlier.
Ad revenue accounted for more than two-thirds of Yahoo!'s revenue in the first quarter and the company has been renewing its focus on ad-dependent business, such as its searching capabilities, as the ad market continues to recover. Yahoo! unveiled improvements to its search engine on Monday. Fees from services such as a DSL partnership with SBC Communications and premium e-mail products rose 61 percent, and revenue from listings, mainly through Yahoo!'s HotJobs.com site, soared 89 percent.
But Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with US Bancorp Piper Jaffray, said that fee-based revenues, which only increased 3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2002, were a bit weaker than he expected.
Looking ahead, Yahoo! said sales for the second quarter should $295 million to $315 million, above analysts' average forecast of $292 million. For the full year, Yahoo! gave revenue guidance of $1.22 billion to $1.28 billion, ahead of the consensus forecast of $1.21 billion.
The company did not provide earnings-per-share targets but said earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization -- watched by many investors -- would be about $85 million to $95 million for the second quarter and between $350 million and $380 million for the full year. The company's previous full-year EBITDA estimate was $295 million to $330 million.
During the conference call, Yahoo! Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said that barring a big slump in the global economy, the company should be able to hit the higher end of its sales and EBITDA targets. What about valuation?
But is this solid performance already priced into Yahoo!'s stock? Rashtchy thinks that the shares have more upside because analysts will likely raise their earnings estimates for the year due to the company's upbeat outlook. The current consensus is 30 cents a share. Rashtchy does not own the stock and his firm has no investment banking relationship with it.
Still, Yahoo! trades at 76 times 2003 earnings estimates. Derek Brown, an analyst with Pacific Growth Equities, thinks this is a bit rich, even though the company is doing extremely well.
"The new guidance makes the valuation a bit more palatable, but it is still a bit stretched right now," he said. Brown does not own the stock and Pacific Growth Equities does no investment banking for Yahoo!

yahoo value over time

Verizon on Monday announced the acquisition of beleaguered web company Yahoo Inc for $4.8 billion. The fate of the company was finally sealed after months of speculation and struggle to find a buyer with mounting pressure from investors including Starboard Value LP.

Yahoo! was valued at over $125 billion at its peak in January 2000

Making it the most valuable company in the world at the time. It was all down hill from 2000 for Yahoo as one wrong decision after another continued to haunt the company.
Yahoo! had the opportunity to buy Google for a paltry $1 million in 1998. But it had not yet created adwords
Today, Google's parent company Alphabet is valued at over $500 billion. this was mainly do to adwords and youtube
The opportunity came back in 2002 but Google's $5 billion price was too high for Yahoo!.
Instead, Yahoo! acquired Broadcast.com in 1999 for $5.7 billion.
This was pitted as the worst acquisition deals at the time, according to Econsultancy.com.
Yahoo!, in 2003, bought pay-per-click company called Overture for $1.4 billion. It lost that race to Google AdWords.
Even acquisition of Flickr and Delicious failed to save the company's plummeting trajectory.
Reports suggest that in 2006, the company came very close to buying Facebook for $1 billion. The deal didn't go through.
The company's value dropped to approximately $45 billion in February 2008 when Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo's outstanding shares and thereby getting a hold of 61% stake in the company. However, it refused to take the offer.
By 2012 Yahoo!'s market cap dropped to below $19 billion.
This was when Yahoo! brought on Marissa Mayer as the CEO from Google, to save the ship from sinking.
While Mayer's appointment initially seemed to have worked as Yahoo's value in 2014 increased to $39 billion, however on taking a closer look it was the gains from its stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan that resulted in the hike.
She, too, turned to acquisitions and bought Tumblr for over $1 billion in 2013. The company, earlier this year, wrote-down most of this money.
What's left of Yahoo!?
Yahoo! owns 24% in Alibaba. The value of Alibaba in 2014 had sky-rocketed to $153 billion.
The company also owns 25% stake in Yahoo Japan which was valued at $32.3 billion in 2014.
In fact, by 2013 Yahoo started to receive more revenues from its investments in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan than its core business. The stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan had brought the company around $900 million during 2013 in comparison to just over $450 million from the rest of Yahoo.
Following the sale, Yahoo will be left with about $41 billion it invested in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba as well as Yahoo Japan.