Bogleheads.org

Car seats and strollers can be checked for free. I would recommend a cheapo stroller that you might even leave at the destination. Alternatively we have one that folds down to fit in the overhead which is great to use all the way through the terminals. Don’t forget where are they going to sleep. Other tips: pack light. Start with a short trip like 1 or 2 nights driving distance just to get a feel for what you need and don’t. Learn to accept that things won’t go to plan, probably not even well, but a disaster in a fun location can be good enough:)

If simply seeing others doing it gives you anxiety then maybe it’s not for you.

Did you go through the entire interview process? The part where you tell it you made a non deductible contribution comes later than the part where you enter the 1099.

Did you go through the entire process? There are questions relevant to 8606 in both income and deduction sections.

My plan would be to first decide what duration is appropriate for me, then invest in whatever gives me the highest after tax yield, staying within fdic.

Seeeeeems… nooorrrmmmaalllll… to meeeeeee.

I use chase, honestly for not a bunch of compelling reasons but I guess they add up.
Same accounts for like 20 years, i know the account and routing numbers by heart.
Close easy branch for cash deposits.
Already linked to all my other accounts, brokerages, TD, direct deposit, autopays.
Wife has no interest in changing her multiple direct deposits, apps, passwords, checkbook, etc.

If I was starting from scratch I would have decision paralysis because there just isn’t whole lot of deference in my life based on my primary bank.

Just this morning I bought some delta gift cards at Target since I know I'll be buying a delta flight soon. You may be able to prepay your gym membership if you have one.

You could always buy the things you usually get at Costco at a regular grocery store instead. I recently learned that some products I assumed were cheaper at Costco are actually not. Dino chicken nuggets for example.

Does this make any sense?
1% AUM - no
15 different funds - no. Classic example of a worthless person trying to justify their cost.

Find a fee-only adviser who will charge you less than 8k for a first-time consultation and then much less than 8k annually to look at your Roth or whatever. You can pay a second person specifically for taxes and a third person to be your butler or something for less than you're paying now.

Tom_T wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 1:15 pm

Kaymaza wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 11:51 am Hey everyone just wanted to resurrect this threat as Vanguard now has 3 month brokered CDs yielding 5.05%. I wanted to tie up some of my emergency funds into this. Any concerns about that?

https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/cds

For $10,000, the difference between that three-month CD and a MM fund like VUSXX is $12, and your money won't be tied up at all.

Yup. If it's truly for emergencies you don't want to worry about unloading a brokered CD when you need the money. Many other more liquid options that will pay an insignificantly lower amount of interest.

Got mine today. Filed 2/17.
The refund was $100 more than expected so I presume there was an error somewhere along the way that slowed it down. Looking forward to the notice or letter explaining it. Nothing available on my online account yet.

States with no income tax need to get revenue somehow, if those affect you the savings may not be as much as you think. Property, sales, gasoline taxes are common. If you’re renting and not commuting maybe it doesn’t impact you much.

I actually find TLH at Vanguard to be slightly easier with mutual funds. It's one transaction ("exchange") that can be entered any time vs two ("sell" followed by "buy") which must be done during trading hours and there will likely be some straggling cents/dollars which bothers some people.

I did both yesterday actually. "Exchanged" VTSAX for VLCAX, sold VGSH and bought SCHO.

CletusCaddy wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 10:54 am For someone in their 30s like me and a small but growing bond allocation I am thinking about the following:

1. 50% I bonds (and TIPS if I bond space runs out)
2. 50% long term treasuries

Triple punch of inflation protection, principal protection, and negative correlation during crises (like today!)

Thoughts?

I think most people consider their earning power and stocks to be their inflation protection when they are young. But I suppose there are many worse bond strategies than this one. You're not going to chicken out and sell your LTT when they tank for a long stretch right?

exodusNH wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 11:42 am

CletusCaddy wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 10:54 am For someone in their 30s like me and a small but growing bond allocation I am thinking about the following:

1. 50% I bonds (and TIPS if I bond space runs out)
2. 50% long term treasuries

Triple punch of inflation protection, principal protection, and negative correlation during crises (like today!)

Thoughts?

Please don't confuse "no correlation" and "negative correlation." US Treasuries have low or no correlation with stocks, not negative correlation, as we've all learned over the past year.

+++ i came to say this. Although I suppose OP didn't define crises

jebmke wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 12:29 pm

GPT-4 significantly reduces hallucinations relative to previous models (which have themselves been improving with each iteration).

There is going to come a dangerous point when it's so good most people will accept everything it says even though there will still be a small number of hallucinations.

The ETFs mentioned in this thread are exactly the same as a rolling bill ladder except for the expense ratio. For the situation where you want short-term cash but without a defined date the money is needed, I strongly prefer ETFs just for simplicity. (There is also very little difference between a treasury fund of duration 1 month and a treasury money market fund.) If you have a need for a specific dollar amount on a specific date then individual bills obviously make more sense. There is no difference between the NAV of a treasury ETF going down and the value of a portfolio of individual bills going down. Except with the bills it's easier to close your eyes and say "lalalala" and ignore it. I don't think I know of any other ETFs t...

You'll have to define "safe" more specifically because every single option has some type of risk. The only other option for inflation protection is TIPS. For capital preservation (not having a smaller nominal number when you're ready to use the money): savings accounts, checking accounts, money market accounts, money market mutual funds, savings bonds, treasury bills/notes/bonds, CDs, mattress.

Buy what I want now

Normchad wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 8:38 pm
Where I live, my engine air filter basically never gets dirty.

Where is that!?

One risk is if you take your car in for service with a really dirty filter they will change it and charge you 10 times what it would cost to do it yourself. This is especially a risk with a spouse who doesn’t know better and OKs the charge.

climber2020 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 2:03 pm From a purely financial point of view, with this option you're worth more dead than you are alive.

As long as you trust your spouse, it should be fine.

This is completely nonsensical. Someone with any insurance at all is worth more dead than alive to someone who wants to kill them.... Please don't factor this into your calculations of how to best take care of your family.

Another factor to consider is Treasuries are much more liquid that brokered CDs. In case you need some or all of the money sooner than expected.

I disagree with the posters who want the spouse to continue to earn the same as they do now, or "develop an income stream of their own." If I die we are losing my income PLUS all the non-job things I do. If I'm gone our child care expenses go way up, plus she'll have double parenting and homemaking duties which will be that much more tiring. It's not at all irrational for you to buy enough insurance so your spouse does not have to work.

Chardo wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 11:38 am Term insurance is dirt cheap.

This is the key point.

Looks good to me.
What is the question?

the responses are actually mostly 'not' garbage and make a typical 'google' search seem kind of old school and you're still hunting or clicking on sites for more information (which is still useful and until AI is matured, going to be quite relevant) but you can readily see how in the future your interaction on asking questions into a google search bar will be replaced by this and will be orders of magnitude more relevant, accurate and indispensable for many... But as we’ve seen multiple times in this thread the answers very often are garbage. I will even grant you “mostly” but what fraction of responses need to be good to meet that? 90%? well if I’m doing 10 searches that’s not good enough. A big advantage of an “old school” search is the ...

Not sure I followed your whole post, but to the question at the end--no. The expenses count for the day incurred.

Dolcetto wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 4:09 pm If all balance tiers are the same for the maturity time that you want, then yes, you are correct, it doesn’t matter. I would actually open multiple smaller CDs such as four $10,000 CDs instead of one big one. That way if an emergency comes up and you need the money, you can pay the early redemption penalty on $10,000 increments instead of all $40,000. I did something similar with Ally recently.

Yep. Also if the emergency comes when rates are lower you can leave most of your money at the higher rate.

You seem to be all mixed up with different goals and expectations.

1. How much are you putting down for the house, and when?

2.

dangermouse wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 3:54 pm I need to use this cash as both a income source

Why?

3.

dangermouse wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 3:54 pm as well as protect against inflation.

Why? That's not how cash works.

4. Do you have any money anywhere besides 8.5 times (!) your income in cash?

Presumably the older 2 kids are in public school.

I think you’re ok as some other posters have suggested. 529 needs to be redirected. It’s likely more expensive in transaction costs and lifestyle than it’s worth to make a housing change.

stoptothink wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 10:03 am You spent $3600 on a washer and dryer?

Yeah that was probably overstated. Maybe half that. My point still stands, that is nothing to clothe a family of 5, buy things and activities for the kids, and maintain a house.

Valuethinker wrote: ↑Mon Mar 13, 2023 6:03 am This has been dubbed "Social Media risk". A new form of risk for financial institutions.

I’m curious why this is new. Slack has been around for almost 10 years. Twitter and Facebook widely adopted by about 15 years ago. Group text messages longer than that. And before that friends and colleagues talked on the phone easily enough. My high school of 4000 all found out about snow days by phone tree in a few minutes.

Yeti is way overkill for this. Dry ice is fine in the car if you’re not in it, but that’s overkill too.

Another thing—you’re maxing Roths, right? Even if you leave it in cash, that’s where your emergency fund should be if you wouldn’t otherwise fill the space.

Clothes/kids/household seems incredibly small. That is unsustainable. If you need a new like washer and dryer that’s the whole year—no other home maintenance, no clothes, toys, school supplies, after school activities? Where is car maintenance and registration. Your animal has no expenses other than vet?
are you really going to owe 44k taxes?

If you owe you still need to pay on time.

Planning to TLH my short-term treasury fund (lol) tomorrow VGSH-->SCHO or XTWO.

nrocboc wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 9:42 am I’m still unsure exactly on any short term goals that might pop up.

Hard to give any advice, or make any decisions, without this piece.

From the Bogleheads startup kit https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Financial_planning

The initial and most important step is identifying objectives

While you're working on that piece, I think it makes equal sense to pile up cash in taxable or mega backdoor or anything else. Just depends on your personality. Hopefully you should be able to get a better handle on short term goals fairly quickly.

Agree good plan. Even ignoring all your details--lots with losses, margin rates, blah blah blah--the point of having/saving/investing money is so you can spend it when you want to buy things in the future. In this case the future is now. Enjoy your new house.

You have 2 independent decisions to make. Munis or treasuries, and duration. TLH is a third unrelated issue. So does your investment plan call for a change in types of bonds or duration?

If you have $1 million cash, obviously it is easier and more liquid to just put everything into a 4.55% online savings account. That is simple, quick, and liquid. But I heard short-term treasuries are paying over 5.00% right now. How much more work is it to ladder treasuries? Questions: 1. On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the most), how much work and time does it take? 2. Also, which website is the best for laddering treasuries? 3. Any other tips or advice? Just trying to see if it is worth the extra trouble just to make an extra $300 per month. why not invest in a short duration treasury fund? I use XHLF +100. If you’re planning to ladder indefinitely and don’t really have a horizon, this is the same thing but easier. You can basicall...

My hydro flasks still have solid ice after a full day in a hot car.
If you’re talking coolers, any crappy cooler will stay cold for 1 day. The nice ones could go several days.

whyme wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 3:06 pm does it matter when during the year the estimated payment is made?

Yes. You have to "pay as you go" as they say.

It depends more on your 2023 income than your 2022 tax due.

If you have regular income it's easy to estimate what you'll owe and adjust your withholding. If not, it's easy to find a safe harbor. Turbotax sounds like they're getting ahead of their skis a little on this one, no?

ActiveIndexer wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 2:42 pm the rate is a little under 7% and likely to go down in the future (not interested in opposing perspectives of that assumption)?

Ok not interested in opposing perspectives, but are you interested in exploring this further? Rates will go down how far and how quickly? That will make your decision for you. Or at least the math behind the decision. That's what you're asking, right?

The next 4-week won't show up until 3/14.
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/ ... hedule.pdf

You can always buy any bill maturing whenever you want on secondary. 912796YN3 was originally a 6-month but is maturing in 27 days.

Less stressful--have a moving company do everything including pack for you.

If you might need the money in as little as 1 month then just leave it in a savings account or some other way it can be sent directly to your checking account quickly and in 1 step. If you're putting 500k down on a house then the difference in interest you might earn from trying to optimize this is a rounding error and likely not worth the effort.

You're mixing up some concepts.

PNWpilot wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 10:54 am Treasury yields are on the rise, and likely to stay elevated for the foreseeable future. BND/VBTLX have gotten hammered.

This part can become more detailed this way:
Treasury AND BND yields are on the rise, [future prediction redacted]. BND/VBTLX and similar duration treasuries have gotten hammered.

Compare a BND chart to one of a treasury fund of similar duration the last few years. There is nothing magical about treasuries that eliminate all risk.

Ultimately you have to decide how much risk you want to take with your portfolio. That is largely determined by the stock/bond ratio. Within the bonds you can certainly increase or decrease risk but it has much less effect.

whodidntante wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:03 am Someone should tell SVB that bonds are for safety. Also, they should be glad for their losses because it means they now get higher yields.

We need to figure out which bh.org account is their burner which posted about holding individual bonds to maturity reduces risk compared to bond mutual funds.

idoc2020 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 1:55 pm When you feel things are more stable and perhaps rates are stabilizing or decreasing, you can buy into an intermediate bond fund like BND.

Sorry this is bad advice. How is the OP supposed to know more than everyone else about the future of interest rates? Asked a different way, why should the OP's "feelings" dictate their investment strategy?