Bogleheads.org

Option 4 - Ally 4.75% no penalty CD.

Agree - Schwab. The only drawback there is the lack of an autoliquidation feature and the fact that I can't buy fractional shares of ETFs.

They state it in the FAQs.

YoungSisyphus wrote: ↑Tue Mar 14, 2023 6:00 pm Well today I finally became eligible to purchase FZDXX in my CMA, woohoo!

Question for those that have FZDXX as their core position, I understand you can hold the fund if I see $100k, but can you buy more of it when you have less than $100k?

I plan to spend $30k of the $100k on ibonds in May, and am wondering if I can continue to purchase FZDXX with paychecks if I only have $70k in the fund at the time. Thanks

Yes. I have way less than $100k in FZDXX and I regularly purchase more in small increments.

Tg1228 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 7:29 pm .....
Thanks for reply.
How did they handle transfer out fee?
Deducted/withheld from your cash balance?

So far they haven't charged me one. I feel like I should buy a scratch ticket!

Bah - no scratchers for me - I just saw that they got rid of their partial transfer fee.

Tg1228 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 4:33 am

TwstdSista wrote: ↑Sat Mar 04, 2023 3:32 am I opened an account at Schwab last year and it slowly drove me nuts - they don't autoliquidate their MMFs and I couldn't buy fractional shares. I dislike inefficiency. I transferred it over to Fidelity last month.

Is your Schwab account closed automatically after the transfer?
Thanks!

I doubt it will be. I only did a partial transfer of just my ETFs, so there's still some cash left. I'm still in the process of transferring that out and closing the account.

I opened an account at Schwab last year and it slowly drove me nuts - they don't autoliquidate their MMFs and I couldn't buy fractional shares. I dislike inefficiency. I transferred it over to Fidelity last month.

I was in around 7:00 EST this morning.

We gave up on our lawn years ago. And then came the bunnies. We love them! So now we purposely do not fix our lawn. They have a smorgasbord of options our there. (we once saw 5 bunnies in the yard at the same time - FIVE!)

15 days, definitely longer than last year's 9 days.

End of February - Total Net Worth up 3.64% (but down from last month)

Local credit union (Bellwether). No fees, brick and mortar building, and they know me when I walk in.

I was at DCU, but the way they handled the lockdown was atrocious. They also had some system updates that were not for the better. This is not the first time they've made me angry, but it will be the last. Now they hold just enough to get the primary savings bonus interest rate.

Freeadvice wrote: ↑Sun Feb 26, 2023 1:52 pm Thanks MP. This thread has terrified me. I could see me dying and spouse forgetting to file a form and getting clipped by the new IRS force. Instead, maybe I do a joint venture with spouse and open my own SEP account. Not sure what the downside is to that.

I remind my husband and both of our sisters about Form 5500ez at least yearly. It's also listed in our "if we die" paperwork. And anecdotal evidence seems to say that the penalty can be waived by the IRS. As a result, I personally think the benefits to a solo 401k are worth it.

I love this and I'm super impressed with the attempt. I wish you luck!

I'm on a no-spend of sorts myself - needs only, no wants. However, my needs include spending time with friends and family and paying my own way. We don't do it often, and we're careful which locations we choose. But we can't hole up in our house and hide for the next year. We've already proven that that isn't healthy for us.

Bah - that moment when you realize you made a mistake on your taxes! Thanks for this "heads up" - I'll amend after my refund comes through.

Vanguard Money Market Brokerage Account is like 0.4% to 0.5% higher than Fidelity. So it was easy for me to choose Vanguard. Their web site is just fine; I can do my ACH transfers in/out of the money market account. I can buy VTI if want to from it. Ooh - please share! I couldn't find a Vanguard MMF yielding 5%.... It's yielding 4.51% (7 day). I just checked the other day with a Fidelity rep and the brokerage settlement account only yields just over 3.9%. (I think it was called SPAXX?) The expense ratio for Fidelity MM is around 0.35% if I recall, about three times higher than Vanguard. Ahh, it slightly higher, but not .5% - Fidelity has SPAXX at 4.22%, while SPRXX is 4.35%, FDRXX is 4.21% and FZDXX is 4.47 (all 7 day yields, net of ER)

JenniferW wrote: ↑Wed Feb 22, 2023 4:07 am Vanguard Money Market Brokerage Account is like 0.4% to 0.5% higher than Fidelity. So it was easy for me to choose Vanguard. Their web site is just fine; I can do my ACH transfers in/out of the money market account. I can buy VTI if want to from it.

Ooh - please share! I couldn't find a Vanguard MMF yielding 5%....

Fidelity. I did open a Schwab account last year so I could set aside a small amount every month for my kids and future grandkids, but the sweep account and lack of an ability to buy fractional shares drove me nuts. I just transferred it to an individual account at Fidelity.

re: JoeRetire - I saw him on Reddit maybe a week ago or so (or at least someone using his George avatar)

I work out at home, or at a friend's house - no gym membership costs for me!

Ivygirl wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 6:54 am ....
Wow, you are fortunate in your family and friends, never ever dining out to meet with them for two years. Mine would take that personally and not understand. It caused some real damage when I stopped with the Christmas gifts years ago.

I'm not the OP, but I personally don't call this "discretionary". I need to socialize, I need to spend time with my friends, and I need to pay my fair way. But I don't need to do this at expensive restaurants. Thankfully, my friends are all on board with this. And we've never done Christmas presents. Presents are for children, and we're all adults who can buy our own presents.

I used to wait until President's Day, but this year made the switch to Super Bowl Monday (a self-proclaimed holiday in our house). I want it over with, and I don't want the husband to have to deal with it later in the year if something happens to me. Keepin' it simple.

I loved the Contrafund when I had it! But I let it go when I joined this forum. Every now and then I consider putting 1% of our portfolio back into it, but then I never seem to pull the trigger.

The husband took me to see A Man Called Otto yesterday - I laughed and I cried, it was great. I'm still chuckling over that one scene at the hospital....

Tom Hanks is a gem.

That's what I do! Presumably, the 12% tax brackets expires in a few years. Take advantage while you can. (although I'll do the same for the 15% tax bracket, too)

I got the husband some new pajama pants and he's taking me to a movie this afternoon. And we've decided to take one day off each month to just spend together.

ETA: he loved the pants!

I'm self-employed, so I created my own 1040 spreadsheet to help me track what my estimated taxes should be. 2021 was an unusual tax year for me, and I made a change to the spreadsheet as a result. Unfortunately (or fortunately??) that change will not be needed this year, or in the future, and the changed spreadsheet caused a pretty large error in my estimates - I was off by $15k. And not in my favor. Thankfully, I still overpaid based on 2020 and prior years. The spreadsheet has been fixed, but ouch.

Raycpact wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 3:44 pm My wife and I have annual tradition. We take day off of work, no major agenda or plan, go to breakfast, find places to walk and talk maybe at mall or nearby beach or park, maybe window shop, , go to lunch, possibly catch a movie or two, go to earlier dinner to beat crowds.

This is lovely! I think we might need to do something similar (although not necessarily for VDay, just day dates in general).

I have one vendor who does not accept electronic payments, so Bill Pay mails them a check. My Bill Pay system usually requires about 7 days (I receive the bill on the 1st and set up the bill pay that same day for delivery on the 7th). It usually clears my account by day 10.

I used to stress so much about this - and it turns out, the vast majority of the time lump summing works out better for me. And ultimately, you are still DCAing year to year. Time in the market.

Ditto - just set up the transfer for the entire amount!

The Watcher on Netflix. I almost gave up during the first episode due to all the F bombs. My family and I swear regularly, but this was over the top. And took away from F bombs later in the story which would have had more impact (and been a bit funny, in my opinion).

Then I almost quit over all the back-stabbing. WTFrog is wrong with those people??! I made it to the end, basically because I had nothing else to do yesterday. And I heart Jennifer Coolidge - her final scenes were so fun (and freaky)! Meh, overall it was okay.

Fidelity does the same. I called once to ask, and they said they don't actually report the contributions at all. It's entirely up to me. I usually make a few same-year payments (employer and employee) and then one final following-year payment (employer) after I've done my taxes.

Bennie wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 9:38 pm ....
Question: 10K at let's say 9% would add 900.- / year....

FYI - you will only receive 6 months of interest at the October 2022 rate. (9.62% for 6 months is $480), after that it will switch over to today's variable rate of 6.48%.

JD101 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 8:33 am So current I-bonds rate is 6.89%, the new rate will come out in May 2023. It would have been better to invest at the start of the year so at least you would get 6.89% till May 2023....

FYI - An I Bond purchased between now and April will get a full six months worth of interest at the 6.89% rate. (for example, an April purchase will get 6.89% through September)

I agree with what everyone's been saying - you are not alone, and you are doing fantastic! We was in about the same place at my husband's age. 8 years later, we're doing even better! Slow and steady wins the race. And make sure to have some fun along the way!

We don't really have a plan. We could retire now and get ourselves to social security, but then we wouldn't have anything left. And it wouldn't be a lot of fun.

The husband will retire when his job is done with him (he works part-time). I need something to do with myself, so probably the same for me as I'm self-employed and also only work part-time.

Da5id wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 6:05 am ....
If you have a fixed size I-bond allocation upgrading them to higher fixed rates makes total sense.

Exactly! That's the plan, assuming the penalty is low enough. We also might, at a later date, decide to purchase more. I'm self-employed, so our income can vary a lot. If we are meeting our other financial goals, then buying more I Bonds would be on the table.

.... But given that it takes 6 years to replace 6 sets of bonds (assuming each set is a years purchase quota) this seems like a very slow process? I'm personally just accumulating I-bonds at whatever rate. They aren't currently looking better than TIPs to me. But they do expand my tax deferred space for bonds, which is very handy, and selling them to replace with ones at better rates doesn't achieve that. Slow and steady! We'll buy gifts for each other and deliver them in a later year if the fixed rate is attractive enough. We currently have one set of gifts waiting for next January, and the plan is to buy another set of gifts this April. We have a target to hold $100k worth of I Bonds long term. They're considered as the final tier of our...

We have 5 years of living expenses in cash. The husband works part-time, and I'm self-employed working in in real estate which is very cyclical. We sleep well at night, and that five years would take us to the year the husband turns 59. (we also try to max our retirement and HSA vehicles).

acegolfer wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 5:34 am If your i-bond is 12mo+ old and the next variable rate is less than 1% (could even be 0% based on the latest CPI), what's your plan? Will you redeem because of low penalty?

We have six sets of I Bonds with a 0% fixed rate that we intend to cash in under those circumstances (after 3 months of the low variable rate). Our intention is use those funds to repurchase I Bonds at a higher fixed rate, and then to just let them grow.

WillieJo wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 7:01 am

TwstdSista wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 6:05 am Fyi, NH's dividend + income tax is being phased out. It's 4% this year (2023) and drops by 1% per year until it is eliminated entirely in 2027.

Hi TwistdSista -
Right - for now anyway...but there's a bill in the Senate - SB261 - to reverse the phase out. The threshold for taxing I&D in SB262 would go up to $50k. Trying to plan around tax policy is fun.
Thanks

Bah - good to know. Thanks for the heads up!

Does NH tax dividend income? I know there is no general income tax (making NH a retirement destination candidate for us!) but I think there is a weird carve-out for a tax on some kind of "income". Interest? Or dividends? You should see if having taxable bond funds is materially worse tax-wise (for state taxes) than just a MM fund or CD ladders. "Bonds" (for the purpose of ballast in an AA) might include MM funds or high yield savings accounts, especially if there is a tax penalty on one but not on the other. Hi Harry - Thanks for your thoughts. I tried responding earlier but it got lost in the ether. NH has a 5% Int and Div tax - with a $4,800 exemption for MFJ and another $1,200 for over 65 (I think that's per filer bu...

How about 50/50 and just rebalance in a tax advantaged account.

6 figures was exciting! 7 figures was almost a non-event (we didn't even realize it for a few months....)

TwstdSista wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 6:57 am Inspired by this thread to keep less in checking. I just set up and automatic transfer to HYS for our property tax payments. I get paid on the first of the month so towards the end of the month I'll sweep of all but $500 to HYS as well. (I used to let my checking account balance build up until the property taxes were actually due).

I'm amending this to $1500 - that's the amount I have automatically transferred out every month. If I'm on vacation, or something happens to me, then the transfers can still happen smoothly. If a second month is needed, then I have bigger problems.

I create an annual budget, and then we track our spending relative to the budget on a monthly basis. It's all so ingrained in us at this point that we barely compare the numbers. We use last year's totals to help create the budget for this year - wash, rinse, repeat. It's mostly an exercise to remind me not to spend too much (I can be a problem).

I amended our 2019 return and it took 18 months for the refund to get to us (and we just got the 1099 from the IRS for the interest last week).

End of January - Total Net Worth up 4.42%