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See if they post annual returns numbers for the mellon fund. If you have those you can compare against the annual returns of vanguard 500 Index fund. Here's a link to a Vanguard table showing returns by calendar year. If the table doesn't show yearly returns, click "yearly" under the perfo...

See altruistfa's DFA vs Vanguard page which shows leading fund options for many asset classes. Click on links in the analysis column to see leading fund options. http://www.altruistfa.com/dfavanguard.htm Here's a link showing leading options for Foreign Emerging Markets Large cap: http://www.altruis...

The deadline for 2012 IRA contributions is April 15, 2013. There is an income limit to take the Traditional IRA tax deduction when folks are covered by an employer plan like 401k. Your mid 6 digit income and coverage by 401k will mean that your Traditional IRA contributions will not be tax deductibl...

If you have space in TSP, what about using the F fund along side the G fund? This would free up your Vanguard IRA space for things that aren't available in TSP.

Any check written against a bond fund would be a taxable event would it not? That to me would be a downside to using a bond fund as a checking account. True, but how is this different at the end of the day from an interest-bearing bank account? I believe bank interest is taxed at ordinary income, w...

donnygulledge wrote:Yes I had an internship last year and earned over $5000. (The money all went into expenses at the time so just now getting around to setting some aside and being out of debt)

OK, you're good to go!

Welcome to the forum. Your plan sounds good. You indicated that you graduated in December. Did you have any earned income in 2012. In order to max out 2012 Roth IRA contribution for $5000, you (and/or your spouse) must have earned at least $5000 in 2012. I think my plan is to just continue this unti...

Where do you have your Solo 401(k)? I didn't think any solo 401k, at least not the pre-packaged ones, offered the option for non-Roth after-tax employee contributions.

Will you received a generous defined benefit pension? A big pension will consume your lowest tax brackets in retirement to cause 401k money to fall in higher tax brackets upon withdrawal. If there will not be much or any pension, your 401k withdrawals will start to be taxed at 0% and slowly creep up...

In 2013: pay real estate taxes for 2013 and 2014 (early). Make charitable donations for 2013 and 2014 (double up). State income taxes are paid as normal. Itemize deductions in 2013. In 2014: Pay no real estate taxes (already paid) Make no charitable donations (already made). State income taxes are p...

You can put your contributions in a Money Market Fund or short term bond fund inside your Roth IRAs. Once in the MMF/bond fund, you can setup an automatic exchange to exchange a $ amount every month from the MMF to your other fund(s). IIRC, you can't set up an auto exchange for 2012. It will only w...

You can put your contributions in a Money Market Fund or short term bond fund inside your Roth IRAs. Once in the MMF/bond fund, you can setup an automatic exchange to exchange a $ amount every month from the MMF to your other fund(s).

FTSE All World ex-US (VFWAX). TLH'd into this fund from Vanguard Total International in 2009. Am happy with either fund as my only INTL holding.

Long term capital gains are not excluded from taxation if you are in the 10% or 15% tax brackets. The long term capital gains (LTCG) are income and they are taxable. The 0% tax rate for the portion of the LTCG that falls in the 10% or 15% tax brackets. The portion of LTCG that falls in the 25% brack...

I would max out Traditional 401(k), then Roth IRA (via backdoor if necessary), then invest in taxable accounts. This would give you some tax diversification and the assets in taxable accounts can be invested tax efficiently while giving lots of flexibility to fund the house purchase and/or other goa...

I believe the fact that there was a non-zero balance in the rollover (traditional) IRA on 12/31/2011 means that there will be a prorated taxable portion of the conversion made in May of 2012. Roth conversions are handled by form 8606 and for conversions done in calendar 2012 , it looks for the IRA ...

Ash, 1) If you made non-deductible contributions to Traditional IRA for 2011, you need to file 2011 8606 form. Assuming there were no withdrawls or conversions from your Traditional IRA for 2011, the 5K basis flows to the next year and your 2012 8606 will start with 5K basis. 2). Your 2012 tax retur...

If he is a sole proprietor filing schedule C, he could use Solo 401(k) (Individual 401k at Vanguard) which would allow up to $56.5K of tax deductible contributions or SEP-IRA would allow 51K of tax deductible contributions. Here's a link to Vanguard's small business page which will show options for ...

There are several income limits for the tax deduction for Traditional IRA contributions. See IRS Pub 590, limit if covered by an employer plan tables 1-2 and 1-3: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p590/ch01.html#en_US_2012_publink1000230467 For a married person who was covered by an employer plan, no ...

If you're concerned about investing all 300K at one time, break it up into smaller chunks. Maybe 50K/month for 6 months. If stocks decline in month 2, you're buying at lower prices. If stocks go up up up, at least you had some money invested from months 0, 1 and 2 that participated in the gain. You ...

I have a Brother HL-5250DN which is black/white, duplex, networkable . We bought it to replace an HP Laserjet III and it has been very reliable. I believe the current model would be the HL-5450DN which is $199. Unit Dimensions (W"xD"xH") 14.6" x 15.1" x 9.6". The printe...

You don't need Vanguard brokerage account to buy and sell Vanguard municipal bond funds . You can buy and sell Vanguard tax exempt bond funds commission free with a Vanguard mutual fund account. Under the current rules, you can select which shares to sell when selling shares. If you want to buy indi...

Wouldn't the 51k be a tax deduction for the business, not the employee? I just don't see how the employee could have more than $17,500 (plus $5,500 for IRA) that could be tax-deferred each year. Self employed folks like S-Corps or sole proprietors have their business income flow through to their pe...

My last post about the tax deduction for 401k contributions applies only for the year when the contributions were made. If all of your contributions to your 401(k)s are pre-tax, then any money you withdraw from the 401(k) will be taxable as ordinary income. Traditional 401k is tax deferred in that y...

Now in theory, if I was able to maximize my contributions to my Employer's 401K and my Individual 401K from my personal business (combined total of $68,500), would this entire amount be tax deductible? Assuming you have sufficient self employment income to max out Individual 401k for 51K, and all c...

Okay, so for 2013, I can contribute $17,500 to my employer's 401K plan. And for my individual 401K, I can contribute up to 51K (combined total of employer and employee contributions). I assume that's $25,500 for employer contribution and $25,500 for employee contribution . Is that correct? Now anot...

When doing the Roth conversion, you will be asked if you want to withhold taxes. Do not withhold taxes.

The money converted to from your Traditional IRA to Roth IRA is taxable and will increase your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). The larger AGI may make make more of your social security benefits taxable but if you're running scenarios with turbotax and see no increase in Fed Tax for 10K conversion, you'...

I ran your scenario with turbotax 2012 last night and saw the same thing. If you don't enter any numbers in the screen for individual and Roth 401k and check the box for "maximize contribution to Individual 401k", Turbotax will calculate the max contribution to qualified plans. You have to...

At retirement with 0 income can't I just convert my whole traditional to a roth at once and be paying 0% tax on this? It seems like there is a catch here but I don't see it. If you were retired today at age 65 with ZERO income and a 1M Traditional IRA, a conversion of the whole $1M to Roth would ad...

If you'd be comfortable with market weight of foreign small cap, consider Total International Stock Market Index VGTSX Investor, VTIAX Admiral, VTSGX Signal. Signal shares may be available to you at Wells Fargo.

I guess my problem right now is that I have a hard time estimating how large my savings portfolio should / needs to be. One starting point may be to look at having 20% down for your first home. If you live in SF Bay Area where starter homes are %500+K, that's 100K which may take some time to accumu...

I also like Google Docs which is free. If you have a gmail account, you have google docs. The GoogleFinance() function in Google Docs makes it really easy to get prices for US stocks, ETFs and mutual funds. Once you have that, you can design the spreadsheet yourself very easily. Here's a page descri...

I wanted to have options and having more assets saved up gave me more options. I maxed out contributions to tax advantaged accounts and invested in taxable accounts too. Having a large emergency fund and assets in taxable account put me in a better position to avoid credit card debt, take vacations,...

Suppose my entire income consists of $25,000 of business profit. Then my 401(k) contribution is $17,000 + 20% of $25,000 = $22,000. Then I make a $5,000 IRA contribution, for a total of $27,000. If the idea is that I am saving a portion of this year's income (rather than converting some of my large...

1) Yes, employer profit share contributions must be Traditional. They are an expense for the business (i.e. deductible for the business). 2) I have maxed out Individual 401(k) and Roth IRA for many years. Do you prepare your own tax returns? Tax software will be able to calculate your max contributi...

say we have some funds both in pretax and after tax account. when the market is right, we can sell the under performing fund in pretax account and buy back in after tax account. Also, we can sell over performing funds in after tax account and buy back in pretax account. of course, overall AA kept t...

Thanks for the tip - I think it's filled in correctly now, plus there was a page 2 of the 8606 form that I initially didn't see which addresses the tax on the 2010 deductible contribution I made. When you convert, the amount of pre-tax contribution is not considered. The important things are 1) bas...

I think Line 1 should be $5000 for the 2012 contributions. You had no IRA basis in your IRA before 2012 so there was no requirement to file form 8606 in the past, so line 2 should be ZERO. Here's a link to instructions for form 8606 and pay attention to line 2 on page 6: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-p...

Are you trying to qualify for 2012 Roth IRA contributions? Traditional 401(k) contributions made in 2012 will reduce 2012 AGI/MAGI. Contributions to Traditional 401 (k) in 2013 will reduce 2013 MAGI. However if you're self employed, contributions to self employed retirement plans like Solo401(k), SE...

Are you currently adding to your taxable accounts? You can reduce your contributions to taxable and fully fund the IRAs instead. If you're withdrawing from the Inherited IRA, you could direct some of that money into your IRAs as well. If you don't need that money to meet expenses, why not fill up yo...

What about collecting dividends received in the taxable accounts and use them for IRA contributions? If you have enough dividends, you wouldn't need to sell any shares and realize capital gains. Backdoor IRA is not a good choice if you have substantial pre-tax IRA assets as IRS will make you prorate...

For the sales that don't have acquisition dates, perhaps the shares sold were acquired on different dates in which case you'd need to use "VARIOUS" when you enter those transactions on schedule D or form 8949. This could be the case if you made periodic purchases or reinvested distribution...

Assuming you purchased your Vanguard fund directly through Vanguard, you did not make a mistake. VTSMX is the investor share class of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index fund. Investor shares have a higher expense ratio and lower dividend than VTI ETF or VTSAX Admiral shares. VTI and VTSAX have th...

IMO, mutual funds are easier to deal with than ETFs. If you wanted to make purchases regularly, you can create an automatic transaction to buy $X every year, quarter, month or every week. You can also use automatic transactions to sell mutual fund shares or exchange from one mutual fund to another m...

CDC's Health Information for Travelers to Mexico:
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/mexico.htm

Here's a digital watch that's gold color: http://www.timex.com/watches/timex-digital-t786779j Google "digital watch gold" came up with this amazon link that shows lots of watches: http://www.amazon.com/s?rh=n%3A377110011%2Cp_n_feature_four_browse-bin%3A2205652011%2Cp_n_feature_three_browse...

Also take a look at Nolo Press:
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/taxes

Nolo Press Personal Tax Deductions and Tax Breaks:
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/ ... tax-breaks

The employee contribution limit for 401k is shared across all 401k plans. So if you contribute $9500 in the company plan, you would be limited to 17500 - 9500 = $8000 for employee salary deferral contribution to your Solo 401(k). However you can still make employer profit share contributions to the ...

The 17.5K employee contribution limit is shared across all 401k plans. If you contribute 17.5K to the employer plan, you have no room left to make employee salary deferral contributions to the Individual 401k. However your self employed business can still make employer profit share contributions to ...