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We're still getting 2.25% on balances up to $25,000 (and 1.0% from $25K to $50K) at Legacy Bank (in Oklahoma). That's down from 3.0% a year ago and I wouldn't be shocked by another cut.

Not sure how you narrowed it down to those two. If you want a minivan then choose between an Odyssey or Sienna If you want a car-like SUV then choose between a Highlander and a Pilot The minivans should be plenty adequate to navigate any roads you might find in the Bay Area. Where the SUVs might ha...

Two ETFs based on the same index - I get a bit nervous. But active managed funds are never substantially identical (in my mind), nor are simlarly named ETFs based on different indexes. I don't think (not tax advice) you'll have any problem with replacing an emerging market fund and a developed marke...

If your child is short of being a NMS, keep regional publics in mind, depending on the field they want to go into. They are often far cheaper than even the flagship state U, can be far easier to get an athletic scholarship to (NCAA division II schools have to offset those football scholarships someh...

VictoriaF wrote:Why to use banks? Credit unions are much better.

Victoria

PLenty of small towns don't have credit union. The closest brick and mortar credit union to me, for example, is a 60 minute drive away.

Edited: Pennsylvania appears to be unique in offering state income tax deductions for contributions to out-of-state 529s, and exempting qualified withdrawals from out-of-state plans from income taxes. So the only tax benefits are inheritance tax treatment. Since the fees for PA plans are higher tha...

Since we assume that you'll be sending the kids to college... That's a common thought, but it just isn't a question of whether you'll be sending kids to college. It is a question of whether your child will have qualified higher education expenses that are of a greater amount that is in the 529 plan...

I do a full check of all accounts once a year before my wife and I discuss our financial moves for the next year. I will also update the spreadsheet anytime I check a specific account when we make a move, but it is understood that the net worth isn't all that exact anytime other than that one time a...

I like the idea. I will be following this thread. My wife and I (with 2 young kids and jobs where we are are officially off for 3 months) are considering doing something similar for 2 months out the year. Edit - I don't want to suggest a city, but I do want to point out that for an individual or a c...

Use your cover letter to sell yourself. Explicitly deal with issues that might otherwise torpedo your application (lack of PHP, in this example). Sell your experience in web development and ability to learn new languages. The lack of PHP shouldn't be a barrier in your case, so let them know that. An...

Speculating here, but it could be because the volume of data is so large that allowing all customers to view more than 5 years of history would slow down the web site for other customers. Enabling the site to remain fast enough for customer satisfaction could be costly, particularly as the company ...

I'd say within +- 10%... we purchased 2.7 years ago in a growing (due to oil/gas) rural community with plenty of new construction. The Zillow price has never gone below our purchase price, has gone up as much as 7%, but mostly fluctuates between purchase price and +7% of purchase price. That doesn't...

Consider taxes. I Bonds certainly aren't going to yield 10% after tax in a 10% inflation scenario (absent tax-free education benefit). Same with 0% TIPS held in a taxable account. In a Roth IRA, a 0% TIP would yield exactly the rate of inflation (absent default).

DualIncomeNoDebt wrote:I-bonds. $10k per year per Social Security Number, plus the additional $5k via tax refund. Search forums on this. Not enough time for EE bonds.

Assuming you aren't likely to be over income limits for the education benefits at time of redemption.

Without a state tax benefit and with a very short time frame, which limits the tax-free gains aspect, I would say "no".

We needed to a signature medallion guarantee to simply transfer some shares from a UGMA account for my wife to my wife outside of the UGMA. The ridiculous part was my wife is 40. All we wanted to do was get her mom's name off the account, which should have been pretty darned easy given that 21+ year...

I am strongly opposed to you quitting your job to get the second degree in the way you describe. You're already in the IT industry with a bachelors (admittedly, not in IT). Experience will benefit you far more than a second bachelors in software engineering. You will likely be making twice your curr...

Certain very physical activities are highly rewarding - hike up half dome in Yosemite or hike the Inca Trail. There are certainly doable by many in their 40s, but you definitely decline at a certain point.

I had a similar question recently. Here is the thread. Hope it helps. http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=112053 Thanks. As a summary for those not clicking the link, the suggestions were 529 vs. UTMA. UTMA has the advantage of control of the money before 18 in Oklahoma (UGMA is...

Our 1-year-old and 3-year-old each have modest (low thousands of dollars) that they have received as gifts. This was clearly gifts to them and not gifts to us (the parents) to use for them. Obviously we have to manage the money right now. Up until now, the 2% they received in their bank kiddie accou...

Even worse than only having 30 stocks is that the Dow is price-weighted, which in my opinion, is not as good as market-weighted. Each has its flaws and biases. Why do you prefer the flaws and biases of a cap-weighted index to those of a price-weighted index? Because, for example, if a company like ...

His advice is contradictory. If he believes that that the S&P returns 12% on average, why recommend active investing? There's not any active funds with a long term record like that. No advisor is going to recommend 100% stocks, either. So if he thinks investors need to be managed by advisors th...

Dad's investing was... erratic. He traded a lot of "stocks," and didn't know that several of them were actually shares in publicly-traded partnerships. While I could go back and get the list of everything he traded in 2012, I'm not sure how to quickly determine which of those are PTPs eit...

Dividends should be no real issue (outside of the occasional special dividend like a few stocks did this past year). I suspect what you really want is an estimate on capital gains distributions on ETFs and mutual funds. That is harder to do (go with last year's number seems reasonable unless your in...

Too many books. OK, 10-year-old travel books really should go. Much of the fictions could go. Non-fiction we won't possibly read again... should go. Surely, I can get public domain (and therefore digital) books to replace my math books. Gardening books will stay. Cookbooks will stay (despite using t...

Thanks RabbMD and happymob, I will definitely look into a rollover (after the tax season) to a lower cost VG plan. I liked the link you gave RabbMD, the link indeed says, that Maryland does not recapture rollover tax breaks - has anyone actually done this? Is the 12 month rule to avoid recapture ef...

How much space do you really need? Do you need a "full-sized" minivan (as oxymoronic as that sounds), or would a Mazda5 maybe work? The Mazda5 is much smaller (closer to the original Chrysler min-van), but is also $10,000 cheaper than Siennas or Odysseys. When we went through this decision...

Maryland limits tax deductions to $2500 per donor per beneficiary, and per my non expert interpretation of the law, allows one to rollover tax desuction loss free to other states plans. So I figure every 5 years or so ill do a partial rollover to new york, nevada or utah vanguard plans with the old...

This question comes up a lot and common themes I've observed are: ⋅  High-Interest Savings and/or CDs (high liquidity for Savings, even if interest is low) ⋅  I-Bonds (stuck for one year, then inflation-protected) ⋅  Roth IRAs (since contributions can be withdrawn tax-...

Rising interest rates are definitely not good for equities, either.

I vote Roth as well. Ease of pulling out the contributions combined with limited space each year... fund it for 2012 if you can.

I would go with 75% of 4 years over paying for the first 3. Backloading "scholarships" is also not a terrible idea (you get more as you demonstrate responsibility). The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley. I vote for not attaching strings to tuition payments. For a number of...

Kids are very young now, and our thinking has been to pay for 4 years of tuition/fees/room/board, undergraduate only. That's the deal my wife and I received. However, I am toying with an idea to share the cost a little, since we don't know how responsible (academically and fiscally) our children wi...

We have 120+ individual lots in a DRIP plan my wife owns (given to her as a UTMA long ago). I strongly suspect we will donate the stock to charity someday and take the deduction. At least this seems like the obvious first choice when we start feeling charitable. We have switched the dividend paymen...

All the risk of stocks, but a lot less tax efficient. What's not to like? :happy All the risk of a single stock, rather than "stocks" (in the index sense). Which makes it doubly ridiculous. But please, sign me up for any products tied to Apple. Or Exxon. Or General Electric. Or Enron. Or ...

We have 120+ individual lots in a DRIP plan my wife owns (given to her as a UTMA long ago). I strongly suspect we will donate the stock to charity someday and take the deduction. At least this seems like the obvious first choice when we start feeling charitable. We have switched the dividend payment...

Please don't dismiss the issue so quickly. The IRS publication is (seemingly deliberately) vague, as pointed out here: "For example, in the case of index funds, don't switch out of one family's fund and into another that tracks the same index. You might argue that you're dealing with two diffe...

Yes, it is good (n)etiquette to acknowledge the good (or bad) advice or information you received. Nothing wrong with stroking the ego of the givers of good advice or information (and it's not just stroking their ego - it helps them tune their message for future, similar posts). And no, I have not al...

No, because I've never had the need. My local branch 2 blocks away and pays really good rates on rewards checking. They will also reimburse other banks ATM charges, so no great problem there (though being 2 blocks away, we almost always use their ATM). I did use ING Direct when they had much more co...

Closed end funds are usually terrible investments. Anything that you cannot readily get out of is awful. Aren't EFTs a type of closed-end fund? With mechanism to create and destroy shares. So they aren't really closed as arbitragers can buy in or sell out outside of simply trading existing shares.

The one we use pays 2.25% for the first $25,000, so we keep, slightly more or less, $25,000 in it.

We will soon have two (quick edit - for each kid) because we get a 5.5% deduction on Oklahoma 529 plan contributions (up to $20,000 for a couple), but Oklahoma's clawback provisions are a remarkably generous 1-year. So we are forced into Oklahoma's not terrible, but not great plan (managed by TIAA-C...

Will buy the 30-year TIPS at auction in an IRA in mid-February. It will be a very small positive real yield for 30 years. Other than 30-year TIPS purchased at auction, I don't hold any other current TIPS (actual bonds or ETFs or mutual funds) . Something about buying a negative real yield (before t...

Will buy the 30-year TIPS at auction in an IRA in mid-February. It will be a very small positive real yield for 30 years. Other than 30-year TIPS purchased at auction, I don't hold any other current TIPS (actual bonds or ETFs or mutual funds) . Something about buying a negative real yield (before ta...

Freedom lawns rule. Assuming you don't have HOA covenants to deal with. I'd consider someone to mow my lawn. I refuse to pay someone to service my lawn. And yeah, some of my neighbors probably hate me.

Why not just put $10k (how much money are we dealing with here?) into I-Bonds and then your money is protected against inflation. It's only "protected" against inflation if you are in 0% tax bracket upon withdrawal. Otherwise, say if you are in 25% bracket, you'd lose ~25% of purchasing p...

Is this for real? The process for adding a bank at Treasury Direct? Yep, very real. We just did it ourselves. Small pains seem to be par for the course at TD. Now you want a real pain - getting DRIP shares of a stock held in a UGMA switched over to solely my wife's name. She's 40. The custodian sho...

He has stated many times on his radio show not to worry about the FDIC limit and keeping more then $250K in the bank is not a big deal. He also stated that only 2 or 3 banks will fail. Since he has made that stated on Fox Business News, 344 banks have failed. But how many people lost out on FDIC in...

In our case, the paperwork nightmare came from having to submit paperwork multiple times. In one case, we submitted it, it was rejected (due to a technical fault on our end). We resubmitted with correct stuff, it was rejected. We resubmitted with the exact same stuff and an explanatory letter, it wa...

I guess I didn't mean to discuss how i-bonds compare to pricing of goods. i was just looking for advice on how to stay the course with maxing my i-bonds each year when i see a return that doesn't seem much better than just staying in cash. How much is cash getting you? 2% or so (whatever the inflat...