Bogleheads.org

anonenigma wrote: ↑Mon Oct 11, 2021 8:50 pm It’s governmental. Call the number on the statement for the old 403(b) to determine whether it’s the district or a third party administrator needs to sign off.

Thank you. The teacher has initiated contact with Vanguard to understand who needs to sign off...

Hello, I am helping a teacher friend with a 403b rollover. Here is the situation: (a) The teacher has an old 403b plan with an old employer (a california public school district). This 403b is at Vanguard. (b) The teacher also has a newly established 403b plan at a new job (this is also a california public school district). This 403b is at Fidelity. (c) The teacher wants to rollover the money in the old 403b plan into the new 403b plan. (d) Vanguard sent the teacher a 403b Exchange/Transfer out form that requires a signature from a the receiving Plan Administrator/TPA. (e) This form also requires a Plan Administrator / TPA signature if the the old plan is a "governmental plan, church plan or a plan subject to ERISA". Alternatively ...

Hi All, Over the last 15 months I have been taking MIT/EdX online classes on Statistics and Data Science. This is a micromaster's program ( http://news.mit.edu/2018/mitx-micromasters-program-statistics-and-data-science-opens-enrollment-0611 ), about 50% of a formal master's degree. At this point I feel well versed in intermediate graduate level probability, statistics, data analysis and machine learning. I can use python for data science at an intermediate level (although for general usage of python, I am still a beginner). Question: does anybody here have first hand experience with more advanced statistics or machine learning classes online? Would you recommend the class that you took? I am finding that while there are plenty of machine le...

Indeed. The author had a tough childhood on account of her father and a mother who seemed fiscally irresponsible and mentally unstable at times (if the book is to be believed). Obviously, it is hard to tell how much of this is nature vs (lack of) nurture. Regardless, I took away from the book that kids can absorb or remember a lot from their parents, even at a young age. And that has some major implications for parenting (at least for me). Just finished reading Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. It's a fascinating book even if you're not slightly interested in Steve Jobs as a person. I don't have strong opinions on any of the principal characters in the book, but after reading it made me realize that our future self is the best judge of our ow...

crystalbank wrote: ↑Tue Mar 05, 2019 12:47 pm Just finished reading Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. It's a fascinating book even if you're not slightly interested in Steve Jobs as a person. I don't have strong opinions on any of the principal characters in the book, but after reading it made me realize that our future self is the best judge of our own character. You can fool everyone else, but you cannot fool yourself.

I read “small fry” a couple months ago. It reminds me (now) of what not to do as a parent. Jobs (the dad) comes across as a terrible person - the opposite of what one should aspire to as a parent.

jjunk wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2017 11:56 pm Disrupted: Dan Lyons, 50yr old re-enters the workforce via startup, hilarity and sabotage ensues

I read this recently (in 2019). Good read. Stark reminder of toxic workplaces, ageism and the consequences of not saving enough early in one's career.

Lyons is too cynical for my taste, but I am glad that he got out in one piece. I shudder at the thought of somebody like Trotsky (Joe Chernov) as a manager and am thankful that I haven't had to deal with anything close (although one manager displayed shades of Trotsky-like behavior in the past).

I don't have a reference for this but this seems like a situation similar to RSU sales where the basis is not reported. If I were in this situation, I would manually calculate the basis (which is something that I have done for RSUs in the past) and report the correct dates.

You may also want to lookup the documentation for the stock split from the company - it may have some verbiage that is helpful in calculating basis.

Others on the forum may have more specific advice with references.

Good podcast.

The "DIY" vs "Delegate" discussion was interesting. Many of us know though that this is not all about time. It is also about building self-reliance (amongst other things).

Further, "DIY" and the complications of dealing with "cute tricks" at tax time may lead one to simplicity - which is desirable. Delegation in investing may lead to complications (due to optimizations or interference with the part of the portfolio that the platform doesn't see) which will lead to further delegation at tax-time (to an EA or CPA) and likely to a more complex portfolio than one wants.

LadyGeek wrote: ↑Sun Feb 24, 2019 11:41 am Welcome! I can't answer your question regarding 1099 forms, but the wiki has some background info: Accounts for children

OP - See the "Cautions" section of the above mentioned article.

I would love to get Mike's summary on how to think about "one spouse will have social security" and the other spouse will have "a pension (no social security)". He covers the topic in his books, but having no direct experience with pensions I find it hard to retain a mental model of how the two interact.

Hello All,

LadyGeek suggested that I post an update to this thread:

A new wiki page title "Accounts for children" has been created at https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Accounts_for_children. This page covers considerations for Children's savings accounts and Custodial Roth IRAs.

dratkinson, LadyGeek, Peculiar_Investor and Barry Barnitz were kind enough to review earlier drafts of this page. That said, if any of you have additional feedback, do please let me know!

Thank you Rick.

I haven't read “Enough, True Measures of Money, Business, and Life” but I will now.

With tears in my eyes... what a sad day

:'(

A sad day.

RIP Mr. Bogle.

dratkinson wrote: ↑Mon Jan 14, 2019 11:38 am +1. Thanks.

FiveK wrote: ↑Mon Jan 14, 2019 7:30 am Have at it - thanks!

Ok. I am working on a draft page. Will be a few days before I have something for review.

dratkinson wrote: ↑Wed Jan 09, 2019 5:49 pm I looked but did not find a Wiki page on this topic.

Would it be a good idea to include a "Roth IRA for Kids" page in the Wiki?

FiveK wrote: ↑Wed Jan 09, 2019 6:31 pm If you do, another link could be Where to start a child's Roth IRA with very low income?

dratkinson, FiveK - any action on creating a "Roth IRA for Kids" page? If not (and I don't see one), I am willing to put one together from the links and threads linked to above. Let me know!

Looking to update/reevaluate our time donations (volunteering) and charitable giving. In effect a rebalancing for "CA" (charity allocation). Don't need any suggestions on the non-secular side since this is already allocated. Wondering what specific secular charities & volunteering you have found to be efficient and personally rewarding. By "efficient" I mean that most of the $$$ or hours end up doing the most good. One can donate time to "The John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy" by volunteering to maintain the Bogleheads wiki. See (if you haven't already): https://boglecenter.net https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=18149 https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=...

Heard it today. Nicely done, again.
Enjoyed the history lesson!

Wondering if this particular suggestion was acted upon - i.e. if anybody has started the effort of creating such a wiki page. If the effort has not yet started, I may be able to help.

shaolin007 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 01, 2019 8:59 pm May I join the Wiki? Just have a couple of edits here and there re: Vanguard fund changes. Thanks!

Hi Shaolin - have you been able to become a wiki editor yet? If not, contact "Barry Barnitz" or "LadyGeek". You can see their posts earlier in this thread.

Well done Rick. This time as the interviewee... You are on a roll. Keep it up.

Shallowpockets wrote: ↑Thu Jan 03, 2019 8:57 am Take her to Nigeria. See how she likes it. Make sure it is to the less developed parts of Lagos so that what she sees is less than what she possibly could have imagined. Perhaps she has no idea where or what Nigeria is.

This is a better suggestion than the one I made earlier (about getting off the grid). It will be tough to pull off such a trip and it will require courage. But it has the potential for knocking the participants straight.

Hi Entropy,

Sorry to hear about this tough situation.

I have a high-functioning child with an autism diagnosis but the child is not an adult. As such I do not have direct experience to offer you.

I will say that if I were faced with such a situation, I would consider relocating and living (close-to) off the grid, perhaps in a rural (or at least a less amenity-rich) setting. Doing so would reduce the virtual "attack vectors" available to the low-lifes. Is that an option that your parents will consider?

I would love to know his take on the % of equity portfolio in international equity for a median income household approaching retirement. Does he think of international as a static % of total equity irrespective of life/work stage or does he recommend moving the international equity % around based on world market capitalization (or some other factor)?

Keep up the good work on the Bogleheads podcasts Rick!

2205.68

I clocked in at #14. Not bad

Thank you (organizers) for running the contest.

Thank you Rick. Nice reminders on the 2018 tax changes.

As of 11/17/2018, it doesn't look like Turbo tax deluxe 2018: Fed + State download for MAC is available on Amazon.com. Just something to note.

I wanted to use the above for some end of year tax planning. Had to head over to Intuit.com to order the above combination.

I look forward to episode #4. Thank you for doing this.

Here is a paper from Vanguard that goes into money market vs stable value funds inside a defined contribution plan: https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGSVMM.pdf

It is too late for the OP, but hopefully the paper will help others understand the nature (including) risk of stable value funds vs money market funds.

Thank you for reporting back. It is helpful to know the sequence of steps that work. Follow-up: Just wanted to confirm that the IRS also closed my case based on the information that I provided. I received the letter a couple months back but just thought to provide this community an update. FOLLOW UP: I received a letter today from the IRS saying the information i provided was sufficient and they have closed the case. So, a little over 2 months from when i sent them the response. Seems not too bad given it occurred during tax season. To OP: I have the exact same fact pattern as you and received a similar CP2501 today. I plan to send letter to IRS with a copy of my 1099-R coded G along with 401(k) statement showing rollover funds were receive...

Well done Rick. I have listened/read Jonathan a few times before. You explored the back stories of his experiences nicely.

Have a look at Monterey Bay Aquarium: https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/con ... nd-science
While it is an aquarium, it also does rescues and research. I happen to know a post PhD researcher that does some work for them.

I donate to Monterey Bay Aquarium, but otherwise do not have an affiliation with them.

Thank you for considering.

Try to get a gig part time teaching *before* you make this a key aspect of your retirement plan. Teaching is not always as much fun as one would hope. Higher education institutions in particular often underpay and abuse their adjunct teaching faculty, in my opinion. The sort of student *you* were, doubtless at a top university or college, is not reflective of what all students are like. And you'll find people who have been crippled by the way in which society warehouses the children of the less well off, and you cannot catch them up. Doing some kind of professional training work might be more rewarding. Or even tutoring. OP - Some serious food for thought in Valuethinker's post. I teach at a local university in a certificate program. Incom...

Bump.

Trying one more time to attract relevant comments on the topic.

Rudy - thanks for taking an interest in the topic. Survey monkey is an option but email (apparently) is not. I quizzed my non-profit contacts and they said that they have tried email based surveys before. With the clients that they serve, response rates are perceived to be too low: 2.5% on a base of ~3000 people served. The service that clients receive from this non-profit lasts anywhere from 1 to 4 hours and pairs a skilled subject matter expert with the client. The non-profit thinks that it can get a significantly better response if it uses the right tools. Text charging is potentially a concern. It will have to be mitigated by either keeping the back and forth of text messages to a very low number or require the clients served to opt-in ...

Looks like the topic was covered previously at viewtopic.php?t=260078

Hi All, I was wondering if anybody had recent experience with or a recommendation for an SMS/Text based survey tool that could be used by lay people (both users and administrators of the tool). Background • I am doing pro bono work for a US based non-profit that serves people of modest means. Some of the clients are elderly, others may have not finished high-school or even middle school • The non-profit doesn’t have a good feel for how satisfied its clients are. The want to survey their clients to find out • The non-profit believes that its clients will have patience for at most one question in the survey • Since the non-profit is primarily staffed by volunteers, it believes that it needs a digital survey to avoid the work of transcribing r...

Ughh. Even by the ultra low standards of the three credit bureaus, this is just absurd. What a disgrace.

Nice job Rick. I enjoyed both the episodes. The Blitzer interview provided good insights into the sausage making of indices.

Keep up the good work!

(I left a rating ofcourse).

Thank you for this experience report. Good to know - as I occasionally help an IB user with investing.

Interesting thread. I am in a similar situation for 2018 and getting ready to go up to the $55K limit for after-tax 401K on the 2nd employer. I have tested in-service conversions from after-tax 401K to Roth 401K and it seems to be straightforward at my employer's 401K plan (that is with Vanguard).

"Money Wise"

Index Fan wrote: ↑Sat Jul 07, 2018 8:15 am For those with Kindle readers who haven't picked it up yet, Taylor's The Bogleheads' Guide to the Three-Fund Portfolio is now $9.99 at Amazon- what are you waiting for?

https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide ... 8&qid=&sr=

Thank you. Just bought it to share with a spouse and an acquaintance that I help with investments.

VictoriaF wrote: ↑Sun Jul 01, 2018 3:34 pm And so instead of composing a long list of the things I have been studying in the past few years, I'll mention just one:
I am learning to appreciate every day as if it were the last one. This is one of the most difficult things to learn.

Victoria

Indeed very difficult.

I am still slugging it out in the corporate world. It is easy to get lost in the laundry list of work and home TODOs.

I hope that you recover fully.

Machine learning/deep learning: doing a 3 week course at my old university in July. Readings, podcasts, on-line courses, python programming. I've been chipping away at a book called "Introduction to Machine Learning using Scikit and Tensorflow" for a while now. I have 2 CS degrees but only ever took 1 ML course in school, and it seems interesting to me so I started studying it on the side. I'm a software dev by day, so I usually reserve my ML studies for weekends to avoid code burnout. I'm open to any other great ML books/sites too if anybody knows any! Machine Learning: Me too! I did the Coursera course on Machine Learning (Andrew Ng). I found the course to be difficult given that I am not an engineer. I will likely do a couple ...

sophiainvests wrote: ↑Fri Jun 01, 2018 8:06 pm Vanguard pooled account for self-directed solo 401 k

Sophia - thanks for posting. If you learn more on the topic, please do post on this thread.

I don't currently have a solo 401k but will need to get one in the near future (depending on the the timing of my transition to a 1-person 1099 consulting shop from a W2 worker). I have bookmarked your notes and will be returning to them when its time.

CollegePrudens, Since your two 529 Plans funds (probably) have a shorter time horizon than the rest of your portfolio, didn't it make more sense for such moneys to target their own AAs and AA-Glidepaths as their respective 1st Year College approache? Can you please give an example showing what your 529s' AAs used to be versus what portfolio's asset class is now held in your 529? Thanks. L.C. Here is the before and after for my older son - Before: Vanguard Aggressive Age-based portfolio. It had an AA of 90% stock / 10% bond. {I did not include this 529 in my overall AA} After: Vanguard Moderate-growth portfolio 50% stock / 50% bond. {I now include this 529 in my overall AA which is 66% stock / 33% bond} I decided to change to a single AA on...

I don't know Jack Bogle personally (would love to meet him some day). However I have read and heard many of his interviews. He comes across as Genuinely caring for rank-and-file vanguard employees and as an advocate for small investors (like many of us on this forum) Competitive against other investment and finance thought leaders and researchers Aggressive against the (non-boglehead) machinery of investing I can see how he may appear to be not-so-humble to some. But I can't imagine him come across that way in person when he knows that one is a regular person (aka small investor). Bogleheads: I agree with Mlebuf, the co-author of my first book. I have known Jack Bogle personally for many years. I never once heard him talk about the fantasti...

Ron - thanks for maintaining such a civil tone in replying to a note that may have come across as unnecessarily aggressive. Whoever bumped this thread (A440?) thank you. Lots of good information here that I intend to come back to. Triyoda, I had to reread this thread as I made the comment you’re referring to a year ago. I need to clarify something as I think you’re missing my main point. My comment was in response to Donaldfair71’s rule 1 (“ Don't buy a house that costs more than twice your household income.”). You said I got lucky. It looks like I said as much in my post from a year ago. However, you’re leaving out the part about what happened before the appreciation and then interest rates dropping: I was paying $800/month extra on a mort...

4stars wrote: ↑Sun May 20, 2018 11:49 pm Thank you all again for the advice.

4stars - I am sorry for your loss.

A couple of people upthread mentioned putting your money in Vanguard's prime money market fund while you recenter yourself to make decisions. I just wanted to highlight that they are referring to VMMXX (https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/ ... irect=true).

I concur with the recommendations others have made. As soon as you can, move your money to the above money market account so that you are earning a competitive interest rate (higher than most other money market, checking and savings accounts) while you reestablish your life.