Bogleheads.org

3. Markets go down every single year, not just in years you believe there will be "economic conditions": https://i.postimg.cc/02PrznsK/jp-morgan.jpg Source My first 401K deposit was made on my first post college pay check that I was eligible, in August 2007. Honestly, until seeing those chart, I had no idea how bad my older coworkers close to retirement had it (at the time) in that period. Of course, any who retired in the few years following that period (the plant shut down shortly after I was transferred out a year or two later) probably had a really good run for their Go Go retirement years, but at the time… a 49% decline must have absolutely horrifying! As my BH post history very clearly details, I had read 4 Pillars and Rand...

Thanks all. I think I will treat this as I have every other 2-4 year projected expense for the last several years, and save money in I-Bonds up to the 12 months out point. Of course I have zero idea how closely the vacation with track to CPI. For goodness sake, I have a Flight tracker on google for flight to Aruba this fall, since I made the tracker costs have gone from $1100 to $1900 and CPU isn’t up 80% in the last 7 days. Who knows what Disney will do with their finances in the next 3 years, for all I know they could slash prices to bring back customers or double prices to further get money from the ones they have currently. And I might not get the same condo, etc. I was referring to “real” costs in the sense that it certainly isn’t “nom...

A first step would be to estimate the cost in nominal dollars that you think that trip would cost and then make sure you save enough to meet that requirement however the money is placed between now and then. It could be practical to find some TIPS for that but you don't know if that cost will rise with inflation, at some other rate, or even fall over time. It is also practical for the budget for something like that to be far enough into your financial comfort zone that you can accommodate a higher cost without difficulty. Putting some money in TIPS or not should not be a large factor in making this work. It isn’t. I already know the budget capability and the 2023-dollars expense (it is a repeat of a vacation we took one month ago). I get t...

Hello, In February of 2026 my family and I are taking a vacation which will cost approximately $8000-9000 in 2023 dollars. We will be saving a couple hundred dollars monthly for this with a few once annual lumps as well (bonus money). I am aware from the real yield treasury curve as well as what I am seeing on Fidelity fixed income site at this moment that there are real yields > 1% on TIPS. Additionally I believe what I am seeing in Fido fixed income search that there are TIPS maturing on January 15 2026, 1.5%+ real yields. Given options of a HYSA, I Bonds (current real yield of 0.4%), nominal T Bills, or TIPS, does it make sense to put my vacation fund with a definitive date (Feb 2026) and approximate real dollar budget into anything othe...

12-15 capital one performance savings accounts set up with monthly transfers from primary checking (e.g. one account gets $350/month which is used to pay our life insurance premiums, local property tax on vehicles, and propane tank annual fill).

we don't have any information on how affordable the car is for you either with or without a layoff Without a layoff it's easy. Cash is ~$155k. Taxable stock is ~$107k Retirement is ~$443k Mortgage is $245k @ 3.125% when do you need to decide? Tesla says April-June so I'm not sure but not this second. the safest thing you can do isn't one car versus another it would be to drive less, period. True but sometimes I have to. Soccer, school, store, family, birthdays, etc. I'm not going to have no car. A brand new $55,000+ car is “easy” for someone with a dependents/family, a working car, a company actively going through rounds of layoffs, and NW excluding home equity less than twice their outstanding debts? Or do you mean it’s easy to calculate ...

protagonist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 7:14 am When meeting RMD requirements with TIPS that have not yet matured held in a traditional IRA, is it necessary to sell the TIPS at whatever the market value is at the time prior to moving them into one's taxable account, thus potentially incurring a loss?
Or can they be moved "in kind" into taxable, thus allowing them to be held to maturity?
And if the latter, would they be taxed that year based on whatever the market value is on the date they are moved?

Thanks in advance.

Can you explain to me why you would incur a loss when selling at market value in one account and purchasing at the same market value in another account?

For us, with monthly “less discretionary” expenses approx $6300: Primary checking account (inflow/outflow account for paychecks and credit card bills, check writing, a few direct bills) typically around $4-7K (in reality swings from $5K up to $10-12K depending on where we are in pay cycle) One month, e.g. $6000 in Fidelty money market fund SPRXX. $3K in a taxable account on my Fidelity login and $3K in my wife’s login. Debit cards for each. The above gives me access to the maximum daily ATM Limit x 3, which should be way more cash than I would ever need on a “right now” basis, but that was the primary reason between splitting it into 3 ATM accessible accounts. $26K in I Bonds. What “is” an E Fund anyway? For me, it is the capability that I ...

There is a provision that allows first time home buyers to remove up to $10k of earnings from a Roth IRA to use toward the purchase of a first home tax and penalty-free. I'm hoping the Bogleheads can clarify something I came across in my research: "When you withdraw Roth IRA funds, the IRS will treat the money as contributions until you've withdrawn the full amount you've put into the account over the years. You'll only withdraw up to $10,000 earnings once you've already withdrawn all your contributions." This doesn't make sense to me. You can take out your contributions from a Roth anytime. Why would anyone remove all contributions just to get access to $10k in earnings? What am I missing? www.thebalancemoney.com/roth-ira-first-...

My sons allowance is split into 1/3rds - hobby (anything he wants to buy), giving, and UTMA for whenever state law makes that his (when we talk about it, we call it after-college money, and I mostly use his monthly allowance time to slowly introduce and discuss concepts of what are stocks and index funds and how automated investing works). For what It’s worth, he is 8, and his allowance is 5.25 total a week so UTMA account (1/3rd) has an auto purchase of 22.75 once per quarter. He gets, depending on how many weeks there are that month, $7-$8.25 for spending and the same for giving. Is 8 too young to introduce the concept of a match? My fear is that a) he’ll hand me all of his allowance that he really hasn’t spent much of for the match, and ...

“ That rate applies to the next 6-month period of your bond. Your 6-month periods may start at different times for different bonds. It depends on the issue date of the bond.”

Are you still in the prior 6 month period and will be getting the new rate when you hit your next 6 month interval?

In years where UTMA account has less than $1100 in unearned income (example : account has $3000 of total us stock, no shares have been sold for gain and dividends are in the 10s of dollars), I know the “child does not need to file a tax return” - does this also mean I do not need to download and upload the brokerage statement for this account to my own TurboTax filing?

100% US stocks in ours.

Don’t forget to tax gain harvest annually (sell and immediately repurchase all) so that when child receives control of funds, it does not have a giant tax headache.
Lots of annual gains over the next 20 years will likely fit under their tax deduction threshold .

jeffyscott wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 7:03 am

Doc7 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 10:29 pm Spreadsheet from eyebonds.org

I think you meant eyebonds.info, which is #cruncher's site

http://eyebonds.info/downloads/index.html

thanks, fixed

Spreadsheet from eyebonds.info

Another poster above mentioned a Bogleheads poster’s sheet developed in Nov 22 - it is the same as eyebonds.info (also a bogleheads poster) he allegedly wasn’t aware of.

Surprised no one said DCA yet Did you miss these posts? I bought mine yesterday. If the rate goes up this year, well, I'll be buying more next January. Well, that's not how it works, no? If it (fixed portion of the ibond rate, to be precise) goes up from May to October, you are SOL. That said, is there any rationale on how the fixed rate is set? Can we 'guess' it similar to how we can the variable rate (though it would obviously be far less accurate)? I would be more than happy if, the week before, I can just learn the general direction that the treasury is leaning toward (re: fixed portion of the iBond). It sure is how my portfolio works. I don't try to predict the future. When I have the money, I buy investments in accordance with my inv...

I bought mine yesterday. If the rate goes up this year, well, I'll be buying more next January. Well, that's not how it works, no? If it (fixed portion of the ibond rate, to be precise) goes up from May to October, you are SOL. That said, is there any rationale on how the fixed rate is set? Can we 'guess' it similar to how we can the variable rate (though it would obviously be far less accurate)? I would be more than happy if, the week before, I can just learn the general direction that the treasury is leaning toward (re: fixed portion of the iBond). So what do you propose, buy in May and then hope you’re not “SOL” if rates go up in November? I like the poster who said always buy I bonds in accordance with your investing plan at the earlie...

an_asker wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 9:44 am

quantAndHold wrote: ↑Thu Jan 05, 2023 9:32 am The expert on this stuff is David Enna, the Tipswatch guy. He wrote an article a couple of days ago that said to wait until mid-April to see what happens with both the fixed and variable rates on May 1. He expects the fixed rate to rise and the variable rate to fall. From there, it depends on how long you plan to hold the IBonds. Long term, a high fixed rate is good. Short term, a higher variable rate is good.

Oh wow! That is great to know. I will definitely hold off until May then.

There will be no guidance as to the may 1 fixed rate in mid April.

There’s a really strong chance the best place for your 457b is inside your 457b, as long as there are not onerous fees.

How is this a loophole. $25K is not the value today. It is the price it will be at some point (years?) in the future. the present value of the bond is all that matters. $25K a year from now is not worth $25K today.

At Fidelity you just click Transfer and pick the Trad as the From and the Roth as the To.

The only document I know of is the 8283 form that is optionally created by the DAF each year. As I mention above, Fidelity Charitable does not track the basis of those shares (and l doubt they have insight). The best OP can do is look at the gifting report/page on Fidelity to get the data. It is a manual, self-reported process. That is what I do each year using the Vanguard site since I donate from a VG brokerage account. When I donate my Vanguard shares to my Vanguard Charitable DAF, it is a "non-event" as far as Vanguard's tax statement is concerned. My statement simply says "shares removed" and this does not end up on any 1099 or year end tax statement. Now, of course, I choose the shares to donate and choose those w...

retiringwhen wrote: ↑Wed Jan 04, 2023 11:38 am The only reason I can think of to do otherwise is to clean up messy holdings that may be hard to valuate or track their history.

Just thinking of when I have some funds that may have a lot of dividend reinvested lots. It may make more sense in terms of time to simply donate the whole batch instead of pick and choose lot by lot basis. Though I suppose one could simply sell any lots purchased in the last year and donate the rest, which could only be 4 lots per ticker.

If I donate a pile of shares from a Fidelity brokerage account to Fidelity DAF (giving account) does tax paperwork automatically generate showing long term capital gains shares vs short term where only the basis is a deductible gift? Or do I need to generate this myself, for each tax lot?

Is it a stable value fund? If yes you will not find an equivalent in a brokerage outside a 401k.

Just based on the amount of anxiety I have from trying to think of the best way to track my portfolio regularly, I think I should just stick with exactly what I currently do, which is only track it at rebalance intervals, which are : - my annual lump sum Roth IRA Backdoor contribution Or - US Equities (as measured by ITOT or SP500 price) +/- 22.5% since last rebalance Every day at noon I get a Fidelity email with that second indicator on it, and thinking about my portfolio more than once a year is thus only the amount of time it takes to confirm the SP is still between 3000 and 4700, and click delete. Does it really matter if I know if TIPS or REITS or VXUS is the 2nd or 4th or 1st best performing asset recently in my portfolio? Absolutely ...

Keep a spread sheet. We have a similar number of accounts for similar reasons and I don't even try to keep it all exactly in my head. I do keep a unique fund in each account which makes it easier to keep track and identify accounts. We can consolidate accounts after retirement and spending down some of the accounts but not now. I completely update the spreadsheet more or less quarterly and specifically on New Years weekend. This gives me a snapshot comparison view over time. Our ongoing investments are almost all on auto deposit/withholding which helps. I do watch the daily S&P index for a general view of what is happening in the market but I don't look at my accounts. This is what I do now. Maybe I ought to just keep it the way it is....

Keep a spread sheet. We have a similar number of accounts for similar reasons and I don't even try to keep it all exactly in my head. I do keep a unique fund in each account which makes it easier to keep track and identify accounts. We can consolidate accounts after retirement and spending down some of the accounts but not now. I completely update the spreadsheet more or less quarterly and specifically on New Years weekend. This gives me a snapshot comparison view over time. Our ongoing investments are almost all on auto deposit/withholding which helps. I do watch the daily S&P index for a general view of what is happening in the market but I don't look at my accounts. This is what I do now. Maybe I ought to just keep it the way it is....

You have to monitor you Genie+ app on your mobile device at midnight (12:01am the morning of) to try to buy per-ride "fast passes" to one of those top 3 rides - and its a chaotic rush (think Ticketmaster concert ticket madness) before everyone beats you to it. So, as an example, if you want a Fast Pass to Rise of the Resistence (Star Wars, Hollywood Studios) you need to try to buy those RoTR fast passes at midnight for ~$20 per person, which is above the base ticket price, and is also above the price of Genie+ (old fast pass for everything but the top 3 rides). Please note, you cannot sign up for Individual Lightning Lanes, including for RoTR, until 0700 (On Site Guests) or 0900 (Off Site Guests), not at midnight. Regular lightni...

...Of all the accounts I listed, only a single 401K is capable of being eliminated (my old 401k), which has an excellent low cost total bond market fund as well as a stable value fund, neither of which is offered by my current 401k. There is no way to eliminate any of the other accounts I listed: Current 401k her 401a/403b/401a cash match account/457 (all four of these are actively contributed to each paycheck) His Roth Her Roth His old company cash balance pension His current company cash balance pension Their HSA “His” brokerage account Certainly in the name of simplicity I won’t eliminate 2 Roth IRAs or HSA or brokerage account I said it was "hard to do" and "slow" and I even used an exclamation point. It's a long-te...

. I'm struggling right now not to get an Amazon credit card that would pay 5% back on all Amazon purchases. Amazon helpfully tells me how much I missed out on in 2022 and it's in the low three digits. But, nope, I ain't doin' it. Contrarily, in 2021 we added the Amazon prime card after realizing Amazon accounts for >$10K of our annual spend with much of our grocery staples on auto pilot there, and virtually all discretionary purchases. We linked the card to our Amazon account, linked auto pay to our checking account, and have never touched the card since then except to redeem cash back. Our credit card game is fairly simple: Amazon card linked on Amazon American Express (6%, 3%, and 1% cash back categories which I couldn’t tell you what th...

:happy ...Unfortunately despite the absolute simplicity, ease of management, and my willingness to stick to the plan through highs and lows, my portfolio grows more and more “complex” in the sense that we have 2 401Ks, a 401a, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRA, Brokerage account, cash balance pensions, and an HSA, and the “4 funds” in actuality are probably 15-20 tickers between all of the accounts and options provided within them. Takes about 25 minutes to log in to all of the accounts and fill out my rebalancer sheet. This isn’t a big deal in and of itself... Actually, I think it is at least a medium deal. I'm not criticizing you, it's more of a "been there, done that." Starting around 2006 or 2007 I perceived it as a problem and systematic...

I don't think short term return is useful. In fact personal return, which is affected by cash flows in and out of assets hence the timing of when you are invested by how much, really does not have a meaningful standard for comparison. I do think it is useful to maintain a record of total portfolio value and also of big picture asset allocation for rebalancing decisions. A person might maintain a monthly interval for that. One thing I think is useful is to superimpose a moving average over the chart. You can do this by adding a trend line in Excel. A 36 month moving average is good. It does a marvelous job of removing short term noise. You can also track a rate of withdrawal or of contribution. In this case an annual result might be useful ...

tonyclifton wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 6:02 pm

jebmke wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 5:48 pm
If I initiate a transfer from my settlement fund (VMFXX) the money will be in my bank the next day.

The original poster used the phrase “access cash at any point” which implies go to an ATM or teller and walk away with cash at any time.

This is *precisely* and specifically an option with Fidelity cash management account. Any MMF can be liquidated for cash at ATM machine or spent with debit card / check.
(Fairly certain it’s the same with a brokerage account, although you need to specifically request the debit card and it may not be ATM fee-free like the CMA)

My investment portfolio is a tried and true “4 Fund” portfolio (I added REIT index in 2010 after reading All About Asset Allocation by Rick Ferri). I dutifully rebalance annually on my Roth IRA contribution date or when one of the funds is > 20% of Target off from target. No problem doing this for 15 years now. Unfortunately despite the absolute simplicity, ease of management, and my willingness to stick to the plan through highs and lows, my portfolio grows more and more “complex” in the sense that we have 2 401Ks, a 401a, 403b, 401a “cash match account”, 457, 2 Roth IRA, Brokerage account, 2 cash balance pensions, and an HSA, and the “4 funds” in actuality are probably 15-20 tickers between all of the accounts and options provided within ...

For those reading , using Fidelity here is how to have ZERO Pennies / interest. Ensure you have a Trad IRA and Roth IRA acct at Fido Transfer your amount , say $6500 to brokerage account Wait a few days (depending on age of account, it seems to be several days for brand new brokerage accounts , 2 days for established accounts that have had a few transfers in/out), until the money is listed under the “Available to Withdraw” balance transfer to Trad IRA. It will immediately be listed as Available to withdraw. Transfer to Roth IRA. Takes 10 seconds to do the whole process. Note: usually it errors out if you click “convert entire balance”. But if you select “convert partial balance” and then type $6500 it will immediately send it all from Trad ...

I established a new GEICO policy in June. I got a significant discount for owning a single share of BRK.B. It totaled over 30% discount from my Liberty policy.

It just renewed and went up 76 cents for 6 months on 3 vehicles.

Sounds great. Where is the list of the sectors that will do well next? (As an investment made today)

thethinker wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 8:14 am

dogagility wrote: ↑Sun Jan 01, 2023 7:59 am Wait to buy until the end of the month to make $30 off of the $10,000?

Happy New Year!

I only bought ibonds for the first time last year. Could you explain the reason $30 extra is made in 30 days

Interest on I bonds is always credited as if a purchase is on the 1st of the month. So you can earn 4% in your own money market fund / high yield savings account and try to time your purchase so it goes through on the last day or so of the month in order to “double dip” on interest.

I declare 4612

livesoft wrote: ↑Sat Dec 31, 2022 3:11 pm 1. Relax and chill.
2. Look in your online account and see if your brokerage flagged wash sale.
3. Chill and relax because they didn't.
4.

Where do you think a dividend allegedly came from allegedly 60 days after shares were sold though?

You need to provide the receipts for HSA administrator, not just your spreadsheets. Which HSA administrator is that? I have had several and none have required receipts for direct withdrawals. HSA Bank. They coded a debit card transaction that I paid $64 as a non-qualified distribution, since I was stupid enough to lose the receipt. It was for a copay for pharmacy drugs, it was a qualified expense. If your HSA administrator is making determinations on its own about what is eligible or not I would dump them immediately. What impact does this have though? I don't recall a form where they would report this as such to the IRS. If you take a withdrawal to do a rollover do they also somehow code it as non-qualified? I seem to be paying $4 as addi...

Newieinvestor wrote: ↑Fri Dec 30, 2022 8:14 pm I'm looking at the Lending Club, My Savings Direct, Marcus, UFB, and a few others. Do people here have any favorites or should I just go with the highest interest rate (not sure if the banks that are high now will continue to be or if this is some sort of "promotion" to get people to sign up)? Thanks so much!

This isn’t what you asked but it seems more and more right now, including myself, are utilizing a money market fund in a broker account like SPRXX to get > 4% yields with a modicum more risk (as in, people still post here about that one time in 2008 one MMF went from $1.00 to $0.99 for a couple of days). With a Fidelity CMA account you can even get free check writing bill pay and ATM debit card privileges on it.

For either choice, the components of the fund matter. You likely wouldn’t want the lowest cost equity fund to be your sole holding if that was “Pacific Rim Mid Cap Value Momentum Index”.

With the bond funds, you could have choices from 0-3 month treasuries to total bond market to total TIPS market fund to corporate bond funds. maybe multiple of each with varying average durations.


Edit: your photo just loaded for me. I think the lowest cost fund is a great choice and just moved a substantial amount of my portfolio into it 7 hours ago today between various 401K accounts. Just not because “it’s the lowest cost” option, but the lowest cost option happens to be a fine fund.

I just got some EDV dividends on 12/29 and with Merrill Edge reinvested at $83.00895 while at TD Ameritrade they reinvested at $83.6906. The difference is < 1%, though I'm of course happier with the Merrill Edge price... So here is the problem. We have a single data point. Does this form a pattern where one broker is better then the other? Was it down to the specific circumstances of the day? Often you get a “rock, paper, scissors” situation where there is not a dominant strategy. Or maybe it is just down to luck. So this is a hard problem to solve and I have not seen any good answers out there. It's down to extremely specific circumstances. There could be a market where there was one share for sale at $83.00895 and one share for sale at $...

Is there a chance that you have dividend reinvestment turned off? I have done this purposefully, so that I don't have unexpected purchases of fund I am using for tax loss harvesting, but this results in an amount growing "on its own" in the Roth settlement fund. Regardless, *ALL* of our Vanguard accounts have an obligatory settlement fund sitting there, including those IRAs with zero dollars in settlement. As others have suggested, this may just be standard structure for all accounts in the brokerage platform, and there should be nothing amiss. I agree with Geologist that, if the money in question is in the settlement fund associated with the Roth, that money is already "in" that Roth, and can be invested wherever you w...

Exafchick wrote: ↑Fri Dec 30, 2022 9:08 am It does seem to be within the Roth IRA because when I go to contribute and I am directed to the Roth IRA contribution information, the settlement fund and the Roth is listed.

I'm just confused why it's there at all. It used to just be the roth. Is the settlement fund still invested in the roth?

We can’t tell without looking at your screen, but it’s very likely that you have either a pending transaction of your most recent $500 monthly contribution or you at some point put in a monthly contribution but do not invest it.

Your Roth IRA can hold, among other things : CDs, treasury bills, settlement funds (“core account” at Fidelity , money market funds, stocks, options, ETF, mutual funds, etc etc.

Good morning! I contribute monthly to my Roth IRA and noticed there is $500.00 in a Settlement Fund. I didn't select funds to be deposited in a settlement fund and I haven't settled any issues that would result in $500.00. Can I move this money to my Roth IRA or is it already considered a contribution? I don't want to over contribute. Thank you! Can you please clarify, it sounds to me like you mean this settlement fund is already inside your Roth IRA. Do You have multiple vanguard accounts or is this the case? Do you happen to contribute $500/month for the annual $6K limit? Was your most recent transaction very recent (last 1-3 days)? It may still be settling a contribution and purchase. Or you may have neglected to invest your first contr...

Isn’t what you are describing behind all of the discussion of the “Hedonic Treadmill”?

You are spending more while making more. If you save 25% and spend 75% of your income, you likely will have identical “income / spending” stress levels as someone making $70K a year who is also saving 25% and spending 75%.

I do think you will get a short term burst of happiness from spending more and saving less, but you will likely find that you need another dopamine hit in a year or 2 years, and thus must tread very carefully.

You are not “locked in” to your life style. You can easily move to LCOL, either with or without a pay cut depending on your line of work. Someone in LCOL cannot easily un-lock and move to HCOL.

Interesting exercise. I lost the file that kept my data prior to 2009... 2009: 720K - Age 40 2010: 970K 2011: 1.1M 2012: 1.2M 2013: 1.4M 2014: 1.8M 2015: 2.0M - Age 46 It's crazy how fast we went from $1M to $2M. I attribute it to a really powerful combination of three factors: 1) Increased compensation from work; 2) Flat expenses; and 3) the bull market. It's led to some soul-searching about my career, retirement, and other ways I can potentially contribute to society as well as my own personal enrichment and growth (and yes, leisure too!). 5 years ago or so, I just assumed I'd keep plugging away at my current profession until at least my late 50s/early 60s. Now it feels like I might have some options much sooner than that, where finances...