Bogleheads.org

I would never ask for tax return or bank statements. Form 4506-T is an IRS form for getting a tax transcript that's usual when getting a mortgage. Doesn't give you the full return, just a summary of income, etc. for the year(s) requested. Seems like that might be a reasonable middle ground between ...

There's something fishy about being willing to modify the plan for a fee.

In general, no, you can't roll out your own contributions or the match, but you may be able to roll out anything you rolled in. I'm not sure how having been separated from service then coming back later affects that, though.

Re: the lease length, this is similar to duration on a bond. The longer the lease, the longer they're protected from increases in local housing prices, but the longer you have a semi-guaranteed cash flow (provided you have a penalty for leaving early which adequately compensates you). We have a neig...

In general, I'd say that asset allocation comes before how ideal the funds are. You could certainly look at tax-exempt bond funds in your taxable account, but unless your 401k choices are truly rotten, you'll probably ultimately want some bond investments there as the vast majority of new contributi...

Lostinjersey, how does that work? If withdrawals are permitted, don't you risk a lawsuit by prohibiting them for taking advantage of options permitted by the plan? Or does the plan contain language about permitting withdrawals "at our discretion"?

First off, it's reaaaly bad that they insist on pulling the fees from your Roth, but this poses some interesting questions. With a regular Roth, you can withdraw contribution at any time without penalty, but you cannot withdraw earnings. If $500 is taken out as fees it would probably be shown as a ...

Yes to both. Withdrawing $8k from your taxable "investments" (used loosely, for savings accounts) to enable you to contribute $12k to a tax-sheltered account is clearly advantageous, particularly if you're actually paying $33k in taxes. Also, I would always move money from taxable to Roth ...

That's correct -- there are typically restrictions on when you can take a withdrawal and of what funds, and if a withdrawal is permitted, your ability to make new contributions is suspended for a while. Now, that's not to say that you couldn't pull this trick with a company you work for a short peri...

What it comes down to is a trade-off between possibly leaving money on the table or having a higher guaranteed floor if they live "too long." By spending down the portfolio in order to delay SS as long as possible, they reduce the size of their estate if they die earlier, but increase the ...

If the IRA owner dies before they have begun RMDs at age 70.5, there is no option to continue taking RMDs over a number of years. In this case the account becomes subject to a 5-year rule, where there is no specific RMD requirement each year, but the entire account balance need to be distributed wi...

Basically, remember that the IRA is a separate legal entity whose actions are governed strictly by the terms of the trust (and any discretion those terms give the trustee, or rights it gives the beneficiary to make demands of the trustee). What generally happens is that the trust will take (at least...

Indeed. I just realized last week that I had no 2.4GHz-only devices left, but they were all using the 2.4GHz band when it was available. I switched off the 2.4GHz SSID.

Link speed? Yes, 11ac is drastically faster for a number of reasons. If you do a lot of in-home transfers (streaming from your PC to your game console, or network-attached storage to your PC, etc.) then you'll see an amazing difference. (Incidentally, Apple is far from the only source of 11ac device...

tax issues that tend to make it desireable to hold stock for 1 or 2 years. Actually, if you sell immediately, there's no tax penalty -- if you sell for more than fair market value (FMV) at the time you received the shares, the whole thing is ordinary income, both the discount and the capital gain. ...

*OK - I admit it. I don't really find two people arguing on line about math to be "interesting" after the first couple salvos. In slight defense, there were actually four of us. But you're right -- while it was on-topic, we did derail from the specific scenario under discussion, and I'm s...

From my perspective, you haven't explained how the person is better off at age 82, so there's nothing for me to agree with or disagree with yet on that score. But no, you haven't given an explanation of "inverse money from savings" that makes any sense to me (Or anyone else? Anyone?), and ...

Watty - I am going to look into refinancing more. I'm not sure I have 20% equity in the house, but it I think it is pretty close. The PenFed refinance seems like a good option. Thanks for sharing! PenFed requires 90% LTV on houses, not 80%, but there would be PMI if your LTV is under 80%. (Their PM...

Except that the money is already present in the age-62 scenario -- it's that nice little column that says "8000" on every row. You've explained why it gets counted once -- what you haven't explained is why you think it should be counted a second time. Or, to phrase the question differently...

However i say that money NOT REMOVED from savings is in EFFECT double counted from 62-70 and that money if added to the 62-90 total breaks EFFECTIVELY even at 90. ... all the charts you have DO NOT double count the money Yes, this seems to be the difference, so we're closing in on some level of mut...

I honestly can't decide if Gerry is a troll or just firm in his viewpoint without being able to express it clearly enough for us to understand why he believes what he does. Therefore, in an attempt to offer sufficient respect to both possibilities, I'm going to do the following, and invite others to...

yes you got it. the effect is the not removing money from savings-this only happens with the social security scenario of taking 62 or 70. I'm not the one that created this system. SS did.. your saying exactly what i'm saying-except you don't believe it. because you think it's too good to be true it...

The decision to take Social Security or not is effectively an annuity purchase. Social Security comes as a pair of two things: ⋅ An annuity with a certain monthly payout, inflation-adjusted annually for life, and pretty generous survivor benefits ⋅ The option to purchase a simila...

the person selling on secondary market is taking a loss even if they are getting a premium for their cd. I have no idea why somebody would sell a cd for cash unless they needed the cash. as for buying a cd and paying a premium technically that is not true. i bought a cd that has a 5.15 interest rat...

I've seen a reasonable explanation for the premium of CDs over Treasuries -- the prices are driven by institutional investors who are well past the FDIC limit, so the value of the insurance is mostly not priced in. To that extent, it is a free lunch. But why so much higher yield on secondary than pr...

Yes, though you're confusing the term "match." So long as you don't have any employees in either side-job, you can contribute: ⋅ Up to $17k/year as an employee contribution, but this limit is spread across all your jobs, PLUS ⋅ Up to 20% of your net business profits as ...

This is generally a good deal, if you can sell immediately. Some ESPPs have minimum times that you have to hold the stock before you can sell. (Ours only has a time during which you can't transfer the shares away from the broker; you can sell and then transfer cash freely as soon as you get the shar...

I am not sure i follow your logic. If my wife's plan were primary for all parties involved, then our out of pocket maximum would $6000. That is the best case. The second best case would be if she and any kids were on her plan. Their out of pocket max would be $6k. Lets say that my out of pocket max...

Chastised ? That was how it seemed. Perhaps it was not the intent (there's always a chance of misunderstanding someones intent in a forum like this). Newcomers are frequently chided with that, because they're falling into that trap. I know I certainly did when I was starting out with my 401k. I pic...

If we do have kids, and they are double covered, then the primary insurer would be my plan (the worse of the two) because my birthday falls before my wife's birthday in the calendar year (both SPDs agree on that). That basically kills the idea entirely. Why? Looks like COB can vary by plan and by s...

Yeah, not seeing any low-expense International funds there, so I'd start with the second one where everything outside the 401k is in Total International, and the 401k is entirely in your low-expense options. Once you've gotten up to your target percentage for International, start putting new funds o...

In most 401ks, the company provides a list of funds, and you have freedom to pick among them in any way you want. In many, there's also a "self-directed brokerage" option (possibly with an annual fee, always with per-trade commissions). The fees on those are generally horrible for buying s...

VINIX tracks the S&P 500, the 500 largest stocks that make up the bulk (~80%) of the market. It's a good starting point. If you want, you can look for the "Extended Market" fund, which is a Total Stock Market fund minus those 500. It's appealing because Institutional shares get super-...

When you're talking about mutual funds, more funds doesn't mean more diversity. Total stock market owns essentially every stock in the US stock market; in at least one sense, you can't get more diversified, because any other fund necessarily owns more than market weight of some things and less than ...

I'll disagree with Watty. You should check your plan's terms on rolling out money that has been rolled in, but most allow you to do that at any time, so if they change their fund selection you can get the money out then. Plus, if you're only in Investor shares at Vanguard, we're not really talking a...

Frankly, I also seem to be the only one who thinks that taking notes is not much of a hardship. I actually consider it a mark of respect to be assigned this task. I didn't get around to saying that because there seems to be other stuff going on, and I'm not sure how he intends it. If you check out ...

...let's say that the husband is taxed at 20% and the wife at 25%. How, in this hypothetical scenario, does this happen? There are a few situations in which this could occur, but not many. If they're married, but filing separately, then you'd obviously prefer to contribute everything to the 401k of...

Basically, if you hold the fund directly, you're eligible to take a credit for the taxes paid, but you're taxed on the full amount (including the taxes). If you hold it via a fund-of-funds, the fund distributes and you're taxed on the after-foreign-tax amount. By holding a fund-of-funds, you get a d...

Haven't looked them all up, but Schwab is a more recent comer to the field of low-cost index providers, so I checked a couple of theirs. SWEGX (Schwab All-Equity) is ~70% domestic, 30% international with an ER of 0.64%. Coupled with SWLBX (Schwab Total Bond) at 0.29%, that would make a pretty good b...

1. Would it be a good idea to put the IRAs in Target Retirement funds until we sell the land and I'm able to begin 403b contributions? I know we'd need to rebalance once I set up 403b contributions so we have more bonds in the tax-advantaged accounts. 2. We're still thinking about whether to conver...

If any of those taxable short-term funds have losses, go ahead and move them now; the capital loss can offset the gain on the long-term sales. Even looking at the whole thing, you say the short-termers are $14k of which $1k is gain. She saves 10% tax on the gain (15% vs. 25%), and so will pay $100 i...

if you have your own plan can you make yours secondary for you? is that possible. when you had your own single plan was yours primary for you. From what I've read, the person who is the primary insured (i.e. the employee for whichever plan) gets that plan used as primary for them, and the spouse's ...

Transfer the account to Vanguard; you can then sell the fund shares as needed, minimizing the time you'll be out of the market. If she's sitting right at the top of the 15% bracket, I don't think you'll make much difference this year versus next, though regardless it's to your benefit to minimize sh...

if you look at the "fine print" of most funds i would surmise they all have weasely print I vaguely recall seeing something in one of Vanguard's fund documents that, if you make a large, sudden withdrawal from one of their mutual funds, they reserve the right to deliver you the underlying...

See Principles of Tax-Efficient Fund Placement. All else being equal, I'd put it in the Traditional or the SEP, since you prefer to keep the highest expected return in the Roth. However, they're all tax-advantaged, so none of them would be a bad choice.

Tax-wise, there's really no reason at all. In fact, no need to have a separate fund -- just transfer shares of whatever you have in taxable, then buy more shares with the money you would have given. Hassle-wise, though, you've already encountered the big one: whether the recipient is already set up ...

Fair enough -- a more appropriate term might be "catch-all pseudo-insurance." The payments are tiny past the high-deductible portion, at least. :happy Our HDHP pays nothing for the first couple thousand, 90% thereafter up to the OOP max. Once we meet our deductible, day-to-day things get t...

I see CareCredit, which looks like it's just a credit card you can use to pay medical bills. Other than not being one of the major card companies, and offering no-interest promotional periods, it doesn't seem like it actually reduces the billing friction for most things. Interesting concept, though ...

As I was picking up a prescription with a forty-two-cent coinsurance today, and thinking about my parents' typical $3-4 coinsurance per doctor's office visit, I had an idea for a business niche and wondered if it already existed. Dealing with these scattered tiny payments is a hassle -- not so bad a...

No way. Pretty soon, tipping will be expected for everything, that is just ridiculous. Do you tip your supermarket deli counter clerk? Do you tip your supermarket cashier as well? How about the baggers? :oops: I certainly don't, but I've seen some of these "how much should I tip ______?" ...

You need to be saving a lot more for retirement each year. You are single with no debt and own your own home (a great accomplisment btw). On a $90k salary, you should be maxing out your 401k at $17.5k per year, contributing $5.5k to an IRA, and adding like another $20-25k per year in after-tax mone...