Bogleheads.org

Look up the property in the tax portal, by PIN or address. http://www.cookcountypropertyinfo.com/Pages/Tax-Rates.aspx Find the tax rate (2011), 7.696 for the address you gave. You can also find the tax rate history back to 2006. Note the tax code for 2012 is 17007. Look here: http://www.cookcountycl...

Last week I sold over 40 small lots of noncovered Total Stock Market Admiral shares. Almost all of the lots were dividend reinvestments. I had not yet learned the trick of directing dividends to a MM fund. Over 30 of those lots were purchased as investor shares, later converted to admiral. I used Ex...

absolvo is first person present tense, so it goes with Ego. Te is accusative so it's the object. peccatis tuis is dative, the indirect object, I disagree. Instead of dative, "a peccatis tuis" is the ablative of separation. You are being loosed or freed from your sins. Relevance? Solvent =...

With my small account at State Farm Bank, TurboTax Basic is a free download. Deluxe download would be $20 and would include a state. Federal efile is included with either Basic or Deluxe. I download fillable pdfs for state, inherited ira 8606's, and 1041's, and I do those by hand. I use TurboTax bec...

Thanks to Duckie for the step-by-step. I just opened a Trad IRA for 2012 at VG. But now I have a question on the conversion to Roth. What's the step-by-step for THAT? Do I click on the Roth IRA and buy , or do I click on the Trad and sell ? Or is there some CONVERT button I haven't seen yet? Or may...

FYI, if you have a bank account with state farm bank you get free/discounted TurboTax (basic and deluxe are free (federal file), deluxe with state is 20, premier federal is 20, premiere federal and state is 30, etc). The minimum balance in a state farm account is $25. Each year this is a treasure h...

I just downloaded my annual free TurboTax basic. We're not Flagship, so I had to go through State Farm Bank. Like the Flagship stories, you have to do detective work. The ads don't seem to be up yet. Log in to your SFB online account. Look around for the TurboTax logo. It will look like you only can...

I have that Motorola phone with TMobile To Go, well really the V195s. Pushing the buttons on the left side in a certain order is what causes mine to go into a different mode. In a pants pocket, this happened accidentally a lot. I now keep it in the shirt pocket. On the left side, the top two buttons...

You could sell 114 shares from the lot in 2001 and 86 shares from the lot in 2007 for a net gain/loss of zero. No taxes and no wash sale to worry about. On your schedule D you show the date of purchase as "Various" and the cost basis as a total of $6000. Since it is a single sale and all ...

Thanks for your input, Ash. I did Option 2. It was very easy to change the reinvestment options and even open the necessary new accounts. The only snag was trying to direct dividends from Fund W into a closed account, so I opened a STAR fund to receive the dividends (this one was within a Roth). I s...

I have a practical question about wash sales, concerning how much trouble would you actually go to, to save a little tax. I doubt anyone will read this whole posting, but thanks in advance to anyone who tries. I own 600 shares of Fund W in a taxable account. #sh price cost date 200 20.00 4000 1996 2...

For paper I and EE bonds, I use Savings Bond Wizard to compute current and historical bond values. For Treasury Direct holdings, I can view the current value, but I can't find how to see what the value was on, say, 3/31/09 (or 4/1/09). Can I do that at Treasury Direct, and if so, where is it? Or do ...

I already have friends and even family invested with him and I'm trying to decide if I need to make some calls and recommendations to them, as a trusted confidant. I wouldn’t recommend your old friend to anyone. At the same time, I would not “un-recommend” him to any friends or family who are using...

any thoughts on the funds i mentioned in the original post I have a taxable acct for daughter (actually in a trust) with small amount and am using STAR until we grow it to 3K, then I plan to change it to TSM, eating any tax bite I have to make. I don't mind Life Strategy Growth as much as other peo...

The policy does not apply to the following: • Transaction requests submitted by mail to Vanguard from shareholders who hold their accounts directly with Vanguard. Within the 60 days, you still can buy by mail, just not the "cotton head" online way. (Wash sale still applies w/in 30, though.)

You could look for CD rates at bankrate.com. We use State Farm Bank, which gives higher rates than the local banks, but not the highest rates available. I just ladder them and forget about them, letting them renew automatically.

Vic, Are you sure you can't rollover your SRA into an IRA if you are separated from service? I would call TIAA-CREF and ask. SRA's are more flexible than RA's. I bet you already checked, but I said it just in case. I looked at my contracts (which of course may be different from yours) and I found at...

If you don't put a valid beneficiary designation on your retirement accounts, then you will get screwed. "Screwed" as in delayed, hung up in probate. Or "screwed" as in pay more in tax. Or both? Both, I guess. And not just estate tax (which may not matter for some people), but o...

Not in writing. Been at 80/20 for about 15 years, since I first read Bogle on Mutual Funds. Plan to be there for about 5 more years, then go 65/35.

Ken, You are not correctly following the origin of the phrase "improper investing" that originated from (in) questions in the above quotes. Landy, OK, good, now your comments make sense. I should have known better... :) And I skipped all the details of OP's plans. I'm still not sure what ...

After all my reading and studying, I thought I had decided on an allocation I could live with of 65% stocks to 35% safe money (CD). ... my AA is now about 50/50. I know I should rebalance back to 65/35, but I can't seem to work up the courage. Instead I haven't touched anything. I don't think this ...

You probably know this, but just in case, I have had good luck asking trust and RMD questions on fairmark.com (suggested to me from here).

I have long thought that 50/50 Wellington/Wellesley would be my model allocation for the early retirement years, until around age 75. I have felt this way since around 1994 when I read a book by a "financial guru" who proposed an allocation for that stage of life, at 25/25/20/20/10 with va...

I rebalanced from 73/27 stock/bond back to our target 80/20 after checking our year end totals. For me it was exciting, being the first time I've rebalanced since April 2003.

I'll look again after March 31.

Have you considered "spending" this money on the child's behalf and then putting the same amount of money into a 529 plan that you own? I ask because this is preferable in many instances. I did consider it. Although I probably won't do it that way, I'll re-check my thinking before going f...

I want to take harvest some losses held in a UTMA (Wellington) by liquidating some (not all) and investing in a UTMA 529 (different funds, but changing the overall asset allocation as little as possible). The UTMA 529 is Illinois. I want to specify shares. My basic question is, what is the procedure...

You are right. When I read more carefully, there is language about education, health, support. Also, C1's best interests. Provisions in case of disability. I am somewhat embarrassed about my imprecision. Thank you for your generosity in terms of time and expertise in responding to my naive questions...

Oh. I'm the one who's not understanding the facts. Glad to hear it is a grantor trust. But I incorrectly assumed that protection from creditors was the reason it was set up. I'm satisfied now from a practical point of view. But from the theoretical viewpoint, I'm still puzzled. Why give the assets t...

These are very helpful and clarifying responses, even if some of the (controversial) examples are different from my concern. Thank you very kindly. But they do raise a new question of my own: Parent P has children C1 and C2. My concern is not P's trust T. P has died already. Pursuant to T, trusts T1...

Thanks for the fairmark tip. Glenn, Thanks for explaining the "regular way." This clarifies the 1041 instructions, and it now looks much more painless than I imagined. I see your advantage in obtaining the EIN in advance. Here is my paraphrase of what a "grantor type trust" is. A...

Does anyone have any experience in using "Optional Method 1" instead of filing Form 1041 for a Grantor Type Trust? (Legal advice has determined that the trust in question is a grantor trust.) As I understand it, with Optional Method 1, you include the trust income on your own 1040 and use ...

AlwaysaQ, OK. Since you refer to the "stretch," I am assuming you have read Ed Slott's books. (Required reading if you haven't.) Doesn't he have some sample beneficiary designations in the back of one of them, and do any of them apply? I would think you would not want the estate to be the ...

grabiner, yes I admit I probably plagiarized the idea of my "investing partner" Uncle Sam from posts you made elsewhere about adjusting AA for expected tax bracket. I have appreciated your (and alvinsch's) analysis on that topic. That's probably what got me thinking about my question in th...

AlwaysaQ,

Are you talking about an IRA you inherited? Or are you talking about your own IRA that you started? (It wasn't clear to me, because you mentioned inheriting from your great uncle.)

"Ken"

Thank you all for your well-reasoned replies. Each is very logical to me, although your conclusions vary. I appreciate both the numerical examples as well as the alternative ways to conceptualize the problem. I will tell you that I had thought, for my own case, that "pay tax to convert to Roth&...

For the general rule of thumb for investing priority, these four make sense to me: 1. 403b up to the match 2. Max out Roth 3. Max out 403b 4. Taxable investing Where in the priority order would this be: "use investment dollars to pay for converting traditional IRA to Roth IRA"? Assumptions...

Anecdote #1 I stopped by the Oak Brook, Illinois, Borders Books and Music Store today, to see if they had "The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing." I told myself that if I saw a sign from heaven, I would buy it. As I was going into the store, out walked a man wearing a sweatshirt that said &qu...

Thank you all for the advice and references. Little by little, I am figuring this out. For my spouse, the situation seems clear-cut. For my children, this must involve look-through trusts. I called Vanguard, and regarding the look-through trust, I got some general information, but not much more beyo...

Laura and livesoft, Thank you very much for your responses. Your suggestions may be enough for me to proceed with more conviction, and more intelligently. Please allow me to add more details. You are correct that "we" did not inherit the IRA. My spouse and children were some of the benefic...

We are inheriting an IRA. The deceased's financial advisor is splitting it up correctly among the beneficiaries. He also will set up our account with the correct titling. I believe a trust was involved so this may be complex. I acknowledge that this is worth financial remuneration. However, he will ...

It never even occurred to me to invest the entire inherited IRA as bonds, but it does make sense, given that it would represent 15% of the entire retirement portfolio, and our target bond allocation would be 20%. Thus, on the same day we invest the inherited IRA in a bond fund, we could reallocate t...

We have an inherited IRA to invest, and I'm having trouble figuring out how to make a sensible allocation for it. Distributions must begin immediately, and we plan on taking the minimum. Turning age 44 this year means withdraw 1/39.8 of it, about 2.5%, this year. The unknown factor is whether or not...