Bogleheads.org

MrJedi wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2023 11:03 pm You can't Roth convert an inherited IRA.

You can perform Roth conversions on inherited IRAs if you take it as your own, from a spouse.
There may be more than one step, and is usually not the most important thing to do if you recently lost a spouse
and bumped up into filing as a single.

This article was updated Mar 24, with over 2100 responses, and maybe visible to you. It is titled

Here’s What Retirement With Less Than $1 Million Looks Like in America
Five retirees open up about their financial lives and how they spend their time and money

https://www.wsj.com/articles/retirement ... _permalink

Appeared in the March 27, 2023, print edition as 'Retiring on Less Than $1 Million: Stretching a Smaller Nest Egg'.

whodidntante wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 6:27 pm And this, my friends, is why banks are failing.

Banks are succeeding when they can get 4% on their investments, and pay nothing on interest-free checking accounts.
Even if they pay 0.04% on high yield accounts, they are winning.
If they lose too many people who are moving their money to better accounts, they lose.
You should keep around a month's expenses in cash. Unfortunately when you buy a house, your expenses for that month jump up

About the only thing I know for certain is that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than income ( as in bond interest payments ). ... Bracket 24% In the 24% Federal marginal income tax bracket, your capital gains could be taxed at 23.8% if Net Investment Income Tax is included. If you were in the 10% or 12% income tax bracket, your capital gains could be taxed at 0%, 15%, 20%, or even 23.8% if the Net Investment Income Tax is included. But in general, ETFs are more tax efficient than Mutual Funds, and passive index funds are more tax efficient than active mutual funds. Your capital gains tax rate can never be higher than your ordinary income rate. The last line of the qualified dividends and capital gains worksheet has you check what y...

Chase is discontinuing the Freedom. They are product changing you to the Freedom Unlimited. The only benefit of accepting the change to Unlimited is keeping the average age of your account, if that is important to you. ... I like keeping my average and oldest credit card age and available credit and credit score up. My aged chase freedom card expires soon, and they did not send me a new one. [ update: my other banks will send me a new card 3 months before the old card expires ] This is very odd, but may be part of their Freedom discontinuation program. Now I will have to check all my other cards, to see when they expire, as I can not depend on the bank sending me new ones every few years. Sorry to revive a thread from 2021, but this seems ...

About the only thing I know for certain is that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than income ( as in bond interest payments ). ... Bracket 24% In the 24% Federal marginal income tax bracket, your capital gains could be taxed at 23.8% if Net Investment Income Tax is included. If you were in the 10% or 12% income tax bracket, your capital gains could be taxed at 0%, 15%, 20%, or even 23.8% if the Net Investment Income Tax is included. But in general, ETFs are more tax efficient than Mutual Funds, and passive index funds are more tax efficient than active mutual funds. Your capital gains tax rate can never be higher than your ordinary income rate. The last line of the qualified dividends and capital gains worksheet has you check what y...

Mel Lindauer wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 4:17 pm A reporter at a national newspaper would like to hear from investors who strategize to qualify for the 0% tax rate on capital gains and most dividends. Deadline: Monday March 27 EOD. email: Laura.Saunders@wsj.com.

Do these kind of media requests have to go through global moderators, or could any rag start quoting posts and replies on Bogleheads,
subject to the No Solicitation and Copyright policies?

increment wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 10:54 am

beyou wrote: ↑Sat Jan 21, 2023 10:42 am SPAXX holds mostly repos, which are not tax free in some states, and not quite as safe as a tsy-only fund. Safe enough, but more comparable to VMFXX (not VUSXX). See FZFXX for a comparable fund like VUSXX.

Fidelity has too many money-market funds to keep straight. FDLXX is the one comparable to VUSXX; FZFXX is the one that holds a lot of repos; SPAXX is a "government" fund that holds many non-Treasury government-related bonds.

That is one of the many problems when you have to invest over $1M in a money market fund.
But there may be other problems keeping $1M in a bank savings account.

hotajax wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 12:09 pm About the only thing I know for certain is that capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than income ( as in bond interest payments ).
... Bracket 24%

In the 24% Federal marginal income tax bracket, your capital gains could be taxed at 23.8% if Net Investment Income Tax is included.
If you were in the 10% or 12% income tax bracket, your capital gains could be taxed at 0%, 15%, 20%, or even 23.8% if the Net Investment Income Tax is included. But in general, ETFs are more tax efficient than Mutual Funds, and passive index funds are more tax efficient than active mutual funds.

SC Anteater wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 4:56 pm Most of the guidebooks don't have much to say about the middle-northern part of Honshu. We will be traveling there next month and are looking for places to go - any suggestions? Our daughter lives near Fukushima so that area and around Sendai would be closest to her place. We won't have a car so wherever we go needs to be accessible by transit.

I don't know what you are interested in, but if you like Japanese Gardens, then the Kanazawa Kenroku-en garden was different, and 福浦島 near Sendai was a great place for Jet Lag and spider webs.

broncocountry25 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 4:26 pm

broncocountry25 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 4:22 pm

broncocountry25 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 3:53 pm Wrote a check to myself and my wife that we would hit $600,000 at 30.

Haha, yes. To motivate myself for a goal I put in writing.

It worked!

I took an actual check and wrote it out to myself and my wife for $600,000 and stashed it (For Fun).

Something to keep us motivated, we wrote 30th birthdays in the memo line.

You wrote a check that you couldn't cash,
but better to have put it in writting.
Most of my TTD lists are more modest, and get done much sooner

A better or worse different question might be, when did you attain the top 10%, top 5%, top 1% ...
as 10% today may be millionaires.

is there any reason this should worry me if I hold money market funds like FDLXX, SNSXX, or VUSXX? I'm very interested in this question as well. I just moved some of our short-term liquid cash into FDLXX earlier this week before I even knew what was going on with SVB. FDLXX holdings are about two dozen short-term treasury bills and that's about it. My thought (hope?) is that FDLXX fund is about as safe as it gets w/out FDIC insurance. But I also realize there's a chance I could be mistaken with that thought. FDLXX is a money market fund, and with high yield, there is zero risk of losing principal on such an investment. Do you hold it at SVB? I’m not sure what the scenarios would be but maybe there’s some hyperbolic scenario where the whole...

I know the standard advice is to withdraw from taxable accounts first in retirement. But if one wants to leave their taxable account for heirs (for the stepped-up basis), how damaging is it to withdraw from tax-deferred first and leave taxable alone as long as possible? Is there a way to calculate this? It is not always worst to save tax-deferred and tax-free for last. Some beneficiaries would benefit more from receiving tax-free Roth assets, and taxable accounts with step-up in basis, as you mentioned. If you have much higher deductions, such as medical or charitable, then using tax-deferred assets could be better. Especially if this happens early, before ACA PTC or Medicare IRMAA surtaxes, or much greater delayed pension or social securi...

The typical asset location recommendation is to hold tax-inefficient bonds in tax-deferred space and tax efficient equities in a taxable account. But, does a high tax state like Oregon (with no muni bond options, but considering the state tax-free nature of treasuries) change this or at least render it moot? Assume one is in the 24% federal bracket and the 9.9% Oregon state bracket. Assume investments are in Treasury bonds/ETF and Total Stock Index (VTI). With Treasuries, I’d lose 24% to taxes. With VTI, I’d lose 15% QDI rate + 9.9% state = 24.9% to taxes. I would compare the different investments in regular vs tax-deferred space. Investment ... Regular Tax Deferred Treasury ....... 24% .... 33.9% VTI ............. 24.9 .... 33.9% Regular ...

gavinsiu wrote: ↑Wed Mar 08, 2023 11:24 am I think the question is more of a push pull scenario. You can setup pull from your bank account, but that exposes your routing information from your pulling vendor. An alternative is to use a push where you use bill pay to do it, but since the bill is variable, it makes automation difficult. The idea is for ebill is that it will figure out the amount to schedule, at least this is to my understanding.

My bank has a billpay process, where the vendor sends an ebill, and the bank pays it.
You have some time to check or verify the bill, and the money is pushed from the bank, so more secure.

Beensabu wrote: ↑Sat Mar 04, 2023 3:15 pm I've found myself to have somewhat surprisingly gone from size 8 to size 4 jeans in two months, and the only thing I've been doing differently over that time is go for "a walk" at a sedate and wandering pace for 15-30 minutes twice a day, almost every day.

Walking is great, but Can you convert "size 8 to size 4 jeans" to pounds or inches?
My jeans last many years, even if they are much worse for the wear, and fashionably ripped
If I lost 50 pounds or 4 inches in two months, I would be concerned.

I talked with an online Medicare supplement broker today to obtain recommendations about Plan N and Plan G* (high deductible). The agent readily gave me Plan N options but tried to discourage me from further consideration of Plan G*. Said I could go almost bankrupt; Plan G* not a good idea since Plan N premiums were only about twice as high as Plan G*'s premiums in my state. This is odd to me, as in my state, in general Medicare Gap N plans are not more expensive than Plan G or G*, and high deductible Plan G* is cheaper than Plan G. Plan G may offer more coverage of Part B excess charge, but plans in your state may be different. I am looking at the 2022 CMS " Choosing a Medigap Policy: A Guide to Health Insurance for People with Medic...

A lot of those nag screens are designed in a way that pop-up blockers wouldn't impact. Probably true, but she can't remember clicking on it and I can't duplicate the problem. I will see if this works. You could try to check their paperless settings each time before you logout, but that seems like a lot of work. You might get duplicate statements sent directly to you, and then check monthly to verify that she got the snail mail statement. There may be other steps you can do for her, short of a full Power Of Attorney, to help pay her bills on time, but you may have to ensure that the rest of the family is onboard. Calling the bank customer service to prevent future paperless switching, or for additional return envelopes might help, but I am ...

TinyHouse wrote: ↑Sun Mar 05, 2023 5:38 pm If we do end up getting a windfall, we have a plan for it, but we aren’t planning on getting it.
...

Be honest, for those with parents that have money, have you factored any of that into your plans? Even generally?

It never was a factor, except that I may have to update my plans in a few years.
With Social Security, you may have an official estimate, but not perfect certainty,
so my plans do not rely entirely on that either. Guess that I am not a 'trust baby'

whodidntante wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 6:46 pm I'd be super interested in reading about anyone who meets all of the criteria below:
Not eligible or likely to be eligible for social security or disability anytime soon.
Not entitled to any sort of pension.
Not an heir apparent to a small fortune.
Does not have a huge amount of home equity they can liquidate.
Does not have any sort of passive income stream like royalties.

I.e., the lean FIRE crowd living #vanlife or living in Columbia or whatever they do.

The WSJ already did articles on $2M, $1M, and Vanlife, though I do not think that the lean FIRE group is their target audience.
Turns out that vanlife is not as glamours as people thought or projected.
Look for "#Vanlife Collides With Costly Fuel"

exodusNH wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:50 pm

CharlesDickens wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:21 pm Hello. I bought a whole life policy approximately 30 years ago from MetLife, with a policy amount of $100k.

...

Total assets including those retirement accounts: $9 million

Based on your wealth, $20k is a trivial amount of money, with a tax cost of $8k. It seems like you could afford that you easily.

It is a fraction of a percent, but a few months living expenses, and that kind of thinking helps most people not have millions of dollars in net worth.
If you do many small things, each saving a fraction of a percent, for many years, you can get a big amount.

retiredjg wrote: ↑Mon Jan 17, 2022 3:48 pm Was the 2020 Form 8606 done by TurboTax or by hand?

...

I suppose an alternate fix is to force the $5k number onto line 2 and see if it works.

How do you force a number into the Turbotax Form 8606 line 2?
I have a Form 5498 with a nondeductible rollover, but have not yet figured out how to get that basis into Turbotax.

JonoJono1 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 24, 2023 12:20 am I need an IOLTA account to go along with this. I just checked and Fidelity offers IOLTA accounts. Now I must determine whether I can link the Fidelity IOLTA to the brokerage account and skip the bank account/auto sweep entirely.

FMI, IOLTA is Interest on Lawyer Trust Account (IOLTA)

burritoLover wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 7:15 am Since TLH lowers your cost basis, there has to be some scenario where a higher tax rate at retirement would result in you being worse off than had you not TLH'ed. Are there real-world examples of this?

If your capital gains rate is higher in later years, such if you move out of the 0% LTCG rate after Social Security or RMDs,
or if you are later in the 20% LTCG rate, which is currently around $500K, you could be worse off.
If you converted current LTCL into a Short Term capital gain by selling too soon, that would also be a net loss.
But I do not know if anyone actually has done this.

anon_investor wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 5:37 pm

HomeStretch wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 7:06 am

anon_investor wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 6:07 am … looks like this year VUSXX will only be 75-80% exempt. …

What is the source for this 2023 estimate of VUSXX’s % of income from USGO of 75-80%? For 2022, VUSXX was 100% so I am surprised to see a 2023 estimate of 75-80%. Thanks.

VUSXX now is ~23% repurchase agreements. Last year it was 100% treasuries:

https://investor.vanguard.com/investmen ... omposition

I agree: as of 01/31/2023

Issuer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . % of fund
Repurchase Agreements . . . . 23.20%
U.S. Govt. Obligations .. . . . . 4.30%
U.S. Treasury Bills . . . . . . . . 72.40%

rockstar wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 4:05 pm Moving.

The quickest way would be to hire a professional.
If you are cheap, that might motivate you to start cleaning up yourself.

What ever you do, do not rent short term storage space.
You will touch everything more than once,or keep paying for it, long after you remember what you put in it.

placeholder wrote: ↑Thu Feb 23, 2023 1:59 am

VanGar+Goyle wrote: ↑Mon Feb 20, 2023 11:12 pm Someone once wrote that ETFs make day trading too easy.

People always bring this up like it's somehow significant but where is the evidence that this is a problem for bogleheads?

You should ask the author of "Common sense on mutual funds : new imperatives for the intelligent investor",
FYI written by John C. Bogle. He seemed to think it was worth writing about for his followers
You may also like Silk McCue's replies to this thread.

TXAGBH wrote: ↑Wed Feb 22, 2023 1:24 pm Guess I’m late to the party, did Schwab buy TDA? I have an old HSA with TDA, but haven’t seen anything about it moving.

It is a multi year process, and will not be completed for several more quarters and national holidays.
I have not yet been informed officially, but have been promised a 3 month advance notice.
Also some of your order history may not be ported over, so you are advised to save it.

Hi, I am starting to help my parents (75 and 73) with their finances. Both parents are starting to have memory problems and I am concerned they may need care in the next few years. ... Accounts: CDs in local bank - $500K IRA - Edward Jones $1.4 million (in about 15 different American Funds.) IRA - T Rowe Price $900K (in about 10 different T Rowe Price Funds) Across those three accounts, the asset allocation is: 44% US equity 13% International Equity 43% Bonds/CDs Given their age and the good chance they may need future care, how does this asset allocation look? Any suggestions on anything else I should be looking at? thank you The asset allocation look reasonable, but the sheer number of funds seems inefficient. I doubt that your parents r...

Are you going to find anyone here who retired on 500k? The overwhelming chorus here would be that someone with 500k should keep working, has no chance, etc. Yet somehow most people retire on that or less? There are people here in that situation, but they probably don't post their asset levels very often. Anyways the request has a big pension escape clause. They'll get people with $150K+ in inflation-indexed pension income who have a paid off home (or two) and $400k in investments. There's more than a handful of those among military, LEO, and federal CSRS retirees (especially if married so pensions times two). I'm not sure they are going to get the SS beneficiary living in a 20 year old single wide in Navarre but could easily get the pensio...

Banks are required to send the FBI the following information on any $10k ACH or Wire transfer (international wt is worse): 1.) Name 2.) Acct# 3.) routing/acct# destination 4.) reason when the transfer is coded. That may or may not create issues on the banks end to send the money. I'd say that's usually not an issue but if the FBI reaches out it's not a good day for the operations employee's. That does not apply to brokerages they can send that data in batches after the fact due to volume. This is not accurate. +1, not accurate. Next time the two of you should try adding to a conversation instead of just adding to your post count. It's as accurate as the OP needed it to be. Stop trying to over complicate the process just to frighten people....

Someone once wrote that ETFs make day trading too easy.
Better to buy and hold an index fund.
Also easier to buy a mutual fund out of hours.

MisterBill wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 2:17 pm

kryptonic wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 2:09 pm I continue to have the issue with TurboTax charging. Previously shows $0 when I first clicked through the link, but now showing fees for Federal and State.

Have you tried going back in through the $0 link at Fidelity, or don't you have that anymore?

My fidelity offer page says that

Discount offer valid only when you access TurboTax products and services using the link on Fidelity.com.

so you may have to not login directly to TurboTax.
I just hope that this does not lock me in paying for Premier in the future.

I wonder why you feel the need to reply with sarcasm when someone else chooses to be more security conscious than you. When in doubt, I do not share login for entity1 with entity2. Any entity can be breatched, and tax software is likely a juicy target. Better safe than sorry, and all that. The userid and password are not stored in the tax software, they are merely used when you're importing. It's not like Quicken where there is a password vault that stores passwords. I consider it a close to zero risk, and haven't seen anyone warning about it possibly being one. So yes, I think it's ridiculous not to use the feature that I'd say almost everyone considers to be extremely useful. You do you, as you say. I have found that even using uploaded ...

GoRoth123 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 1:10 pm Assuming I am in the lowest tax bracket during my retirement years, in general, would it be best to withdraw from my taxable brokerage account or my Traditional IRA from a tax perspective? Thank you.

If by lowest tax bracket, you mean 0% Long Term Capital Gains, 0% ordinary income, and 0% state income tax, 0% irmaa,
then it would not make any difference unless you know what any beneficiaries' tax brackets will be.
Some beneficiaries would prefer to inherit a taxable brokerage account instead of a Traditional IRA.

twh wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 11:24 am

tibbitts wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 11:17 am

hulburt1 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 11:10 am I'm 70 in April. Will get SS then. Single.
right now, 1.1m Ira
...
I can pay 0 tax for the next 3 years, but when RMD starts it will be 41,000.
Would you be happy with no tax for 3year?

Then go to 22%

Nobody would be happy with zero tax for three years when they could be doing Roth conversions.

THIS

Some people would be happy to pay no taxes, and to reduce their Medicare IRMAA and ACA payments before age 65.
But I am happy to tell everyone else what makes them happy

Given the terrible quake in Turkey and Syria, I'm suddenly getting many spam phone calls on my cell phone. I use the google call screener automatically for numbers not in my contact list. I've then looked at some of the calling numbers (many 888 or similar 800 numbers). Many have listings with TR (turkey) domains for emails. I'll mention that if you want to help that you might do it through something like the Red Cross or similar organization rather than an unknown caller. The Actual Red Cross is usually respectable, but the Red Crescent would be a more direct way. The Turkish Red Crescent is the responsible authority for feeding coordination in the disaster area and has deployed catering vehicles, mobile kitchens, food and snacks, water a...

The current Marcus FAQs include these limits: What are my online ACH transfer limits?

There is an outgoing ACH transfer limit of $125,000 per transfer when the transfer is initiated online. If you need to withdraw more than $125,000, please give us a call or chat with us, 24 hours a day / 7 days a week.

Note: We may change our transfer limit policies at any time without prior notice, unless required by law.

This first sounded like one of the good old LTC policies: inflation adjustments, unlimited lifetime benefit,
but then takes a dark turn with increasing the premium at least every 3 years.
I suggest checking out what a new comparable LTC policy would cost you - probably much more.
Take your kids at their words, expect prices to jump up several more times, and make sure that your current policy will cover what you need.
Note that I did not tell you if you should accept the inflation offer, or what you need to be covered in a better place.

There seems to be some disagreement about when you can close the account(s) after signing up without losing the bonus. 90 days or 6months? Yeah, I'm a bit confused about that. DoctorOfCredit's https://www.doctorofcredit.com/targeted-chase-900-checking-savings-bonus/ offer page seems to indicate there's an early termination fee of the bonus amount if you close the account before 6 months, but that's not in the official T&Cs -- just that you have to keep the accounts open for when you receive the credit, which is ~90 days. Curious as well what the requirement is here.... Whatever the terms say for the offer you completed. There are terms and conditions in your specific offer, and terms and conditions and fees for the generic account, and...

Hi all, I am ready to submit my taxes after receiving my Vanguard 1099-R Consolidated form. The issue I believe every year is that I have the “foreign tax paid” (line 7 of 1099-R) but believe I need more foreign tax info which comes in later Feb/early March? Is this indeed true? Is there any other info I need to submit taxes on TurboTax other than the 1099-R Consolidated for VTIAX (Total International Stock Index)? My wife has VTWAX (Total World Stock Index), no “foreign tax paid” is listed on her 1099-R Consolidated form, please inform. Thank you Line 7 of Form 1099-R is "Distribution code(s)" Did you receive a Form 1099-DIV? You may have to submit all your income forms, like W-2, 1099-B, 1099-DIV, 1099-G ... Foreign tax credit ...

TinyHouse wrote: ↑Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:50 pm So much of my allocation is in equities (90%+) that there really isn’t any rebalancing and I don’t really pay attention to allocation, I just make sure as many of my dollars are in the market as I reasonably can. If I have money to invest, I put it in equities (vtsax). If I need money, I earn it or just sell equities. Simple and effective. I’ll be doing this for the next 60+ years, Lord willing.

You might say I kinda have a bucket strategy, and it’s just one bucket and it’s mostly equities in a well diversified portfolio of total market funds.

I don't think TH really said this, but if I had only one bucket, and could never really retire, as I might need money, it is not a good bucket strategy for me.

If you have a few minutes to spare...watch this 60 Minutes Australia show on the Nigerian Scammers ......they interview one person who lost his life savings and his property because he thought that he was actually going to receive $33 million from these scammers..... I can't believe that anyone could be this stupid ... When people fall victim to con artists, it's not necessarily out of stupidity, but because they (and apparently we humans are all prone to this) have a strong need to believe the con, which of course the con knows. A good book on this is The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova. It shows how the con identifies and works the mark (us) and can help us avoid becoming a victim. Not a scam, but I wonder if Maria Konnikova is relate...

xerxes101 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 03, 2023 8:58 pm Las Vegas!
What a rip off...and I am not even talking about gambling!
Food and coffee prices are absolute rip off IMO.

Las Vegas was a great place for cheap food, specially casino buffets, but that has changed over the last 20 years.
Some of the smaller border casinos may still offer inexpensive 24 hour food as loss leaders.

carolinaman wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 9:42 amI believe I have read in the past that most people do not require a lot of LTC.

Long-term care involves a variety of services designed to meet a person's health or personal care needs during a short or long period of time. https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-long-term-care

A lot of long term care insurance policies have a 90 consecutive day elimination period, which is never exceeded, so the LTC insurance policy provides no benefit. If you are one of the above average people who need more than 2 years, a LTC insurance policy would help.

FeeFighter wrote: ↑Fri Jan 20, 2023 4:26 pm
So looking at the 2021 document, I see that one of my funds, VSGX, paid 7.92% foreign tax. I assume that this is 7.92% of the total investment? I also assume that they give you the dollar amount of the foreign taxes in the 1099 and that I don't need to compute it myself?

The 7.92% is the percentage of the 2021 income distribution that is foreign taxes, not the percentage of the value of the total investment.
VIGI had over 66% FTC. But don't worry. As someone posted here, everyone already does this, you are someone, therefore you already do this

MadHungarian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 2:19 am No one's going to waste their time looking through your trash for cash receipts that have no useful information on them anyway.

It is a good habit to always shred. That way when they are looking for the guy who always microwaves fish in the common microwave,
or who killed his wife, or is Whitey Bolger, you are not as suspicious. And if someone gives you trash bags, that are a certain color,
different from everyone one else's, then be sure to shred your incriminating receipts for Strychnine, arsenic, and old lace, before burning them.

I'm finally getting around to enter some old pre-Boglehead cost basis info from a couple of DRIPS from the 1990s. I just moved my brokerage account to Fidelity and most of the shares are covered. I have all the information for uncovered shares and if for example I enter 1/1/95 5 shares $100 1/1/96 5 shares $100 4/1/96 then the stock splits. I now have 20 shares at a cost of $200 But on the website if I enter 4/1/96 10 shares $0 it wants me to enter the cost? But there is no cost. I guess I could enter .01 to bypass the requirment but I'd rather do it correctly. I'll call tomorrow but maybe someone here had the same problem. Thanks! You just enter all 20 shares which originated from the 1/1/95 and 1/1/96 lots as $10/share. That accounts for...

If you don't have Venmo, how did they get your work email? It's sounding more like you should ignore it. If your company has an IT department, contact them and tell them you think you got a scam email - but aren't sure and ask them how to proceed. Unfortunately spammers will send out many millions of emails, so some fraction or thousands will go to work emails. Your company IT department might help, but the spammiest looking emails often are legit from upper management. No misspellings or typos, but generic buzz words, and suspicious attachments and links that were totally unnecessary. On the other hand, one of the most successful phishing campaigns used a photo of the President's family and dog for Holiday greetings - just login using you...

Here is one thing I do wish for though. I wish the forum had some sort of “reputation system”. There are many great posters here. But some of them are far more qualified than others. The quality of the advice given here isn’t universally good. It would be nice for new members to have a way to “know” which opinions are more trustworthy than others. I have mentally established a credibility ranking of posters by reading their posting history. Yep. Me too. Natural reflex here or in person. That may work for you old guys, who have been around for 10 years. I am more impressed by someone who already judges names by what they said only in this year. Still, I try to not waste time reading names or old quotes, but try to see the new original or at...