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option A seems to go too far the other direction: 3.5% is only a quarter point higher than the 3.25% option in C yet the difference in points/closing costs is substantial. Not worth it. What's wrong with option A? It seems to have the bank cover $6369 for 0.25% higher interest rate, which can be re...

consider the HTC One instead of the Samsung Galaxy series. I like a lot of the Samsung components, but they wrap them all up in a cheap plastic case and put that awful TouchWiz interface on top of it all. I recently picked up the HTC One and the build quality is great with its solid aluminum casing...

Does anyone know the specifics of the 5 year exemption? See page 6 under Schedule A Line B: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i709.pdf It's basically taking up to 5-years-worth of gift exemptions and spreading it over this year's tax return and the next 4 tax returns. If you gift $50k (less than the 5...

You could maybe make it less Rube Goldbergesque by just opening two 529s now... We were thinking about that as well. Two 529s each with a beneficiary of each spouse, and then you most likely don't even need to do the split-gift election. Even if only one account is needed, it would be straightforwa...

⋅ Open a 529 plan designating either spouse as beneficiary and investing in total stock market index ⋅ Fund with roughly ~4 years worth of 2x gift-tax exemption ⋅ Have first child a few years later and change beneficiary to the child using both split-gift and five-year...

Today I closed my house sale, went the the Fidelity office and deposited the cashiers check in my cash management account. An advisor came out.. Interesting. I just deposited the check from my house sale at Citibank. The teller seemed quite concerned that I only had a 0.01% interest rate checking a...

tomd37 wrote:Excel is out for me. Got to be by hand.

You can do by hand what Excel would have done:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_rate_of_return

it may be better to take a smaller short-term gain rather than a larger long-term gain Right. When considering multiple lots of a single position, "simple" policies of sell-the-highest-basis first might not always be ideal nor a policy of sell-long-term-gains-before-short. The former poli...

Depends on your carryover loss situation Assuming all you have are gains, is the main difference that if you have carryover short-term losses, you should sell short-term gains (of the smallest gains) to offset that amount? Otherwise prefer positions that have the least long-term gains? Or more that...

How should one prioritize which positions to sell in a taxable account to cash out? It seems straightforward that if there's any losses, sell those positions first (and rebalance elsewhere as necessary). But what if none of the positions have losses? - sell positions that don't fit in the asset allo...

You may be stuck with that higher rate if rates stop going down. I guess to be really explicit, after talking to 20 lenders for home purchase loans, many don't have prepayment penalties. Several told me without prompting that I could refinance right away, and this is after I asked for more lender c...

There's a pretty extensive wiki article on applying an asset allocation across multiple accounts: Asset Allocation in Multiple Accounts In particular, you might be interested in the section "Advantages of whole portfolio allocation." There is a [1] note for the first sentence of that page:...

the risk to the lender is the same either way The thing I'm not clear about is where the lender credits come from. Are these effectively through FNMA/FHLMC? The original lender makes money through origination and underwriting fees initially then recover the loan amount when selling the loan, e.g., ...

How do you know you will be able to refinance at a lower rate in the future? The amount of rate buy-up for the initial purchase loan will be greater because there are more costs. AmeriSave estimated costs for a $200k purchase loan: $2,336.00 Closing Attorney/Agent, Appraiser, Title Insurance, &...

why doesn't this happen more with refinances as well? For those also wondering, I think I found the answer on the Freddie Mac website: No Cash-out Refinance Mortgage http://www.freddiemac.com/sell/factsheets/pdf/no_cashout_refinance_mortgage_388.pdf Cash Back to Borrower ⋅ $2,000 or two p...

After thinking about this a bit more, why doesn't this happen more with refinances as well? Assuming you can get the extra lender credits to use towards principal curtailment, why not refinance often to get the lenders to pay down the balance in addition to doing a no-cost refinance?

The premise is that home purchase loans are going to have higher interest rates than refinance rates anyway, so why not increase your initial home purchase loan's interest rate to get as much lender credits as possible knowing that you'll be able to refinance to a lower interest rate within a few ye...

Are you allowed to pay the homeowner/hazard insurance separate from the escrow account even if it's set up to pay from the escrow account? Does the excess money get refunded (with interest)?

bertilak wrote:at the closing was hit with an "escrow waiver fee" of $443.75!

Curious, was your loan amount for $177,500? It seems like lenders give a 0.25 point credit for using an escrow account.

Do people tend to not waive the escrow/impound account to get the extra lender credit? Yes. Waiving escrow gives you more control but it's not worth the $$ for that privilege. Curious, is this something per state or mostly for home purchases or something recent? I've refinanced 3 times in Californi...

I have refi'd four times with Bank of Kansas City and they've picked up ALL costs The thing is you hear people talk a lot more about no-cost refinances because this is something you can do once a year if you wanted. But it's not that common for people to buy a house every year. Curious, were these ...

Many plans allow non-deductible (i.e. after-tax) contributions beyond the limit of $17,500. Good to know, I'll have my wife check with edtec to see if that's a possibility. Although with making after-tax contributions, wouldn't one need to do something like a solo 401k that doesn't accept after-tax...

My wife's school uses edtech to handle payroll, and she has run into problems setting up a 403b with them in the past ("choose whatever institution you want," "sorry, Vanguard doesn't work," "nope, Fidelity didn't work either," "try American Funds.") But now i...

You assume wrong. I have taken out 1 original and done 3 refis at no costs and have never had a prepayment penalty or something that prevents me from refinancing. Did you mean to say that your original loan was also no-cost (in addition to 3 no-cost refinances)? I have done no-cost refinances but n...

Think I found them through Zillow. Roundpoint Mortgage was the name. I was basically in the same situation as you. Sounds right -- they highlight that they're the most reviewed lender on Zillow. I also found Roundpoint used on other real estate sites like Movoto. Their current rate is 3.500% with $...

One thing I forgot to highlight in the original post was that if the target is a no-cost home purchase/refinance, then it should be better to go with the lender that gives the most negative points for an 1/8 interest rate increase. This means you get more lender credit for each increment of monthly ...

After shopping around for rates on a home purchase today at 10 local branches, I noticed a pattern that places will let you bump up the interest rate by 1/8 of a percent for reducing points by 0.5 to 0.9 depending on the bank for a 20%-down 30-year fixed mortgage. Related, including the escrow/impou...

Do people have experiences making a home purchase using an internet/national lender, e.g., AmeriSave, National Mortgage Alliance, PenFed, etc? Did you use that to shop for GFEs to negotiate with the local lender? Did you also shop around locally for rates as well? I just received the GFE and initial...

We're in a similar situation with a 0.9% Subaru loan with about 3 years and $20k remaining. We originally got the loan because we figured we would invest according to our asset allocation the cash that would have been used to pay for the vehicle, and we're still doing that. We'll keep making the req...

Just to update, both the seller and buyers have accepted the offer. The contract seems to have ended up being relatively straight forward. We provided some extra time by setting the close of escrow to be the middle of July with the inspections scheduled to happen before the end of June to allow for ...

It sounds like people are suggesting that there wouldn't need to be any out-of-the-ordinary contingencies. It seems like the inspection contingency is pretty normal. I'm not sure if repairs are part of that inspection contingency or considered a separate repairs contingency, but those also seems pre...

Depends on the mindset of the Seller. And the market. Several people here have made comments along the lines of contingencies make an offer less attractive, and that makes sense because a simpler transaction is easier to complete if the goal is to sell the house faster. I think that's generally goo...

As a buyer, is it generally a bad idea to put in contingencies that rely on the sellers doing something? Because wouldn't it allow for the sellers just to not do the requested task while soliciting better offers? Or is it possible to structure that if this particular contingency is not met, the offe...

Do you have any capital losses? Will you be in the 10% or 15% federal income tax bracket at any point in the near future? Those have 0% long-term capital gains taxes. Do you already donate cash to non-profits. If so, you can donate those appreciated assets to not need to pay capital gains while also...

Be careful when comparing quotes, as usually if the lender promises no closing costs, they are bundled in the loan or you have a higher interest rate. To be clear, this usually shows up as negative points with a higher interest rate. But even if you are paying a higher interest rate, by not paying ...

I've also noticed the connection to Seattle Interesting that you bring that up. My wife and I just made a trip up to Seattle and went on Bill Speidel's Underground Tour. The tour takes you under Seattle where the original city was built, burned down, rebuit, then with the new city built on top. Bil...

let's not be rash with all this "charitable donation" talk so quickly There was nothing rash about the question if your parents are charitably inclined. If your parents were otherwise already donating part of their income to some non-profits and taking the deduction, it would be better do...

Even if we assume Bitcoin to be a legitimate currency, wouldn't holding it will be the equivalent of holding cash? One problem with comparing it to cash in US Dollars is that you need to hold something like TIPS to maintain value because the Federal Reserve has a target positive rate of inflation. ...

There was an interest post a few weeks ago asking about people's ratios of home equity to net worth: http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=112832 As you pay more principal towards your mortgage or pay it off, you increase the amount of home equity. So if you consider the house as p...

wageoghe wrote:10. Texting. If you text (and if you don't you should)

Why should anyone text without any context?

Actually Clark Howard touts CK as fairly close to the real thing. I trust him. As a data point, I updated with Credit Karma on March 17th. I got pre-approved for a mortgage 4 days later and asked for a copy of my credit report. On the copy of the credit report, my TransUnion score was 3 points lowe...

So it's better to take a loan when these two ratios, Favorable to Income ratio and Loan to Growth ratio, add up to less than One: Favorable / Income + Loan / Growth < 1 Taking a closer look at this inequality.. For people expecting to withdraw at 15% and have favorable long-term capital gains rate ...

Start with $100 in your 401k earning 4%. At the end of one year you have $104 and withdraw it all, after taxes you have $78. Basically, you had $75 and earned 4% (or $3) for a total of $78. Instead, you borrow the $100 and put it in the same investment yielding 4%. At the end of one year, you would...

Roth IRA (~52,100) 9,700 Vanguard Inflation Protected Securities (VIPSX) 42,400 Vanguard Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap (VSS) Brokerage (~75,600) 7,400 Series I Savings Bond 42,000 Vanguard Total International Stock (VXUS) 25,800 Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTI) Why not put all your inter...

You take on more risk when you borrow to invest. Is that not leverage? Some 401k loans may require immediate repayment of the loan upon separation. I think what's confusing is that there's at least 2 types of risks when borrowing to invest. One of them doesn't apply to 401k loans. One type of risk ...

You've now turned your tax free portion into taxable. What do you mean exactly by "turned into taxable?" The money shifted from your 401k account to a taxable account is the same amount of money, and you don't pay taxes on that amount of money. You could take a 401k loan and pay it back i...

When you borrow from the tax deductible account, you are essentially taking out your portion of the account and the govs portion of the account. I've never thought about tax deductible accounts like that before, so let me check if I understand what you said. Basically you can look at your 401k as 7...

I don't have a good sense of what's the scale of dividends vs foreign tax credits for a Total International Stock fund, e.g., VXUS. Seems like this question was recently asked on this forum: Which is more tax efficient VTI or VXUS? And from the Principles of Tax-Efficient Fund Placement wiki page: ...

Some benefits from having pre-tax money outside of your 401k: ⋅ long term gains and qualified dividends taxed at favorable rates instead of ordinary income ⋅ foreign tax credits if international positions would have been in 401k or other tax-advantaged accounts The first bullet ...

TravelforFun wrote:Borrowed $50K from my 401K in the early 90s and invested it in equity and five years later I paid off the loan while the investment had doubled.

Would you have otherwise invested in equities in the 401k? What benefit did you get for taking the money out instead of leaving it in the 401k?