Capital Budgeting

  

The process (usually annual) of determining which real assets (i.e., plants...not implants) an entity should invest in via purchase, upgrade, or refurbishment. Think land, machinery and buildings needed to advance the organization's strategy. In large orgs, this may start with ideas from the grunts (line managers, plant foremen, division heads) but is ultimately the responsibility of the controller and/or CFO.

Since it is only a budget, the process tends to be inexact, but generally, the projects invested in should be expected to generate a positive net present value (NPV). In theory, the highest return projects should get the first allocations of capital. Isn't that how our tax dollars get spent as well? Oh. Maybe not.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What is a Hard Asset?12 Views

00:00

Finance allah shmoop What is Ah hard asset Yeah It

00:07

takes a lot of hard work to get an asset

00:08

like that Okay So hard asset is just one that

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you can bang on touch Engage with cell Alright examples

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Oil it's Hard asset gold Hard of vintage nineteen Fifty

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seven Ferrari with beige leather interior hard four thousand head

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of longhorn cattle in texas A commercial building in the

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best part of town All of these arm or less

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commodities Hard assets Well okay Okay The categories Rare cars

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art coins stamps stuff like that that's where they fit

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So what do you care if something is ah hard

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asset or a soft one Well most or all hard

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assets are commodities and they generally do very well in

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periods of very high inflation when you know stocks were

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getting crushed And yeah the feds raising rates appoint a

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quarter now forever Well equities and bonds will get crushed

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Commodities well generally keep up with the spike in prices

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causing the fed raised rates in the first place So

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they're a good hedge for most investment portfolios And not

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all of them are great forever like check out riel

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Inflation adjusted oil prices the last few decades you had

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not a good run Most not all do well though

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an oil will likely have its day in the sun

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again At some point you lan When in doubt remember

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what kim kardashian and warren buffett said A good asset

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is hard to find and a hard asset is good

01:30

to find But we won't tell you who said which

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