Bogleheads.org

Hmm. I am a non-eligible designated beneficiary of a traditional IRA whose original owner died in 2020 at the age of 85. I decided not to take a distribution in 2022 when the IRS said that penalties would be waived for that year. If I'm reading the underlined section above correctly, it now appears that there is no penalty to waive ... for 2022. Of course it is now 2023.

Does this document have any effect for 2023 and following years? Has the IRS made a final decision on its proposed regulations, or are we still waiting?

mhalley wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 7:40 pm Make a bad getaway car.
https://www.autoblog.com/2023/03/08/sus ... -charging/

Two people accused of stealing $8,000 of merchandise used a Tesla as their getaway vehicle.
But they stopped to charge it 15 minutes down the road, where police located them.
An image shared by police on social media shows the Tesla packed full of gaming systems.

Until the police start using them too

To the original poster: is the IRA traditional (tax-deferred) or Roth? The advice quoted by mariazzz is specifically for Roth and may not apply to traditional.

Taking annual RMDs anyway is probably the safest course, if you can figure out what age to use for the calculation.

I try to owe a small amount, but it isn't precise and sometimes I end up with a refund. For 2022 it's a little under $300.

I do most of the work as early as possible, during the first week of January. I don't have all the documents then, but I can still estimate the numbers by going over my statements. This lets me tweak my final estimated tax payment before the mid-January deadline. Then I check and perhaps make updates as the documents arrive. Following that, I usually wait a few weeks more just in case something comes up I hadn't known about, and then do the actual filing in early to mid March. If I owe money I schedule a payment in the first week of April.

For old stove parts I've had good luck with

https://www.appliancepartspros.com/

I have a fifty year old GE electric stove, and they still stock stove top burners and oven bake elements for it.

I started brewing my own green tea at work, using an infuser that fits into the cup, then transferred the habit to home after I retired. I buy loose leaf tea at the local Asian market and re-use the leaves. One $10 bag of Bi Lo Chun lasts me six to eight weeks, so the yearly cost is somewhere under $100, not counting the electricity to heat the water. I also brew my own coffee, but only a few times a week. I don't add sweeteners to either one: it took a while to train my palate but now I don't miss them.

tc101 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 03, 2023 8:51 am I can't do a regular pushup any more. I'm 73 and have lost lots of muscle and strength. I do a modified pushup with my hands on a chair. I haven't figured out how to do a modified pull up. Any ideas?

I'm currently recovering from a shoulder injury, but I have a suspension trainer, an earlier version of this one, that I use for assisted pullups and muscle-ups.

I'd like to keep under $30k, would be happy paying half that. In the past I've bought used and CPO, because the deals were better. That may not be the case now. I replaced one car when a brake line rusted, three when they were totaled in accidents (yes, my insurance company hates me). I've had the current car for eighteen years now and it's showing signs of rust, so a replacement is probably in my future. I can't make the numbers work. I can't charge at home, and trying to install a charger would involve getting permission from the HOA, tearing up the parking lot, and spending more than I care to contemplate. Also, other than occasional road trips I do very little driving, so the fuel savings and environmental benefits would be minimal. On...

It's a self-reinforcing process that is not going to stop until the entire market is passive.

It's true: every time Vanguard cuts its fees in half, their assets under management double. And Fidelity, with its Zero funds, has infinite market share. It's just an unstoppable snowball, in a magical world without diminishing returns.

I expect the incidence of regret on this forum to be quite low. First, by the time they reach 62, most of the people here will understand themselves, their goals, their appetite for risk, and their personal financial situation well enough to make a decision they will not regret later. Of the remainder, most will either rationalize their decision or sensibly decide that regrets are pointless. And second, for most the decision is close enough to neutral that it's unlikely to make a material difference in their retirement.

I will suggest that a fear of leaving money on the table is not a useful way to think about it.

How do non-magnetic stud finders work? I was assuming they were all using magnets... I'm wondering the same thing. Presumably they react to a change in something that reflects what's behind the surface, but I can't begin to imagine what that might be. Actionably, if I understand how they are supposed to work I could also understand what their limits are. https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0hFID_Fs1NY/T8VnqJXXQrI/AAAAAAAABSg/vEjuVBqRgQ4/s1600/professor-cuthbert-calculus.jpg Answering the question myself, they use capacitive sensors, something like the ones in modern touch screens. The original patent was assigned to Zircon and expired in 1998. Currently, Franklin Sensors owns a patent on combining multiple sensors that seems to give them a definite...

How old is your house, and do you know what the walls are made of? Most stud finders fail dismally on my plaster walls. About forty years. The wall is wallpapered, so no idea what is underneath, It's the wall in the bathroom that's next to the outside, which I think rules out electrical stuff, no sockets, lights, etc. How do non-magnetic stud finders work? I was assuming they were all using magnets... I'm wondering the same thing. Presumably they react to a change in something that reflects what's behind the surface, but I can't begin to imagine what that might be. Actionably, if I understand how they are supposed to work I could also understand what their limits are. https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0hFID_Fs1NY/T8VnqJXXQrI/AAAAAAAABSg/vEjuVBqRg...

The general principle is that eventually you will have to pay the taxes on your tax deferred accounts, and it's better to do this when your tax bracket is relatively low. Everything else follows from this, although the details get complicated and depend on your specific situation. The taxes become due when you withdraw from a traditional IRA or 401K, or when you convert part of one to Roth. Unless you need the money immediately, converting to Roth is usually better; you avoid further taxes on dividends and capital gains, and are free to rebalance or change allocations as you like inside the Roth account. With that in mind, what I have been doing in retirement is to use my taxable account for living expenses while doing yearly partial Roth c...

artking99 wrote: ↑Wed Feb 08, 2023 8:01 pm In order to convert Vanguard MF to ETF, do I need to convert my MF account to brokerage account first? I still have the Vanguard MF account since I don't buy individual stocks or ETFs.

Yes. Converting to ETF requires a brokerage account.

Can I transfer VHCAX(Vanguard Capital Opportunity Fund) to Fidelity in-kind? It is held in a taxable account so I don't want to generate big cap gain by liquidating it.

I would guess probably yes but can't be certain. You could call Fidelity or start an online transfer to see if it will allow that. There are plenty of opportunities to hit cancel before completing the process.

You can find a lot of mask reviews at

https://breathesafeair.com/

Of the various masks I've tried, I found the Meo mask and the Halo mask to be the easiest to breathe through and to exercise in. The Cambridge mask is also good and has an exhalation valve. Although I can't use any mask for exercise this time of year without my glasses fogging up.

Note that a pollution mask doesn't have to be perfect to still be useful.

That's ... a lot cleaner than much of the code I had to look at when I was still working and doing code reviews. Very interesting indeed.

The only glitch was that I had some Vanguard mutual funds in the retirement accounts and I mistakenly assumed that they would be liquidated and then transferred as cash. Instead they were transferred as the mutual fund so I had some Vanguard mutual funds(not ETFs) in my Fidelity accounts and I did not even realize that you could do that. There is something like a $50 to $75 dollar fee to trade Vanguard mutual funds in the Fidelity account. I call up Fidelity and they agreed to waive the fee to sell the Vanguard mutual funds so I sold those and reinvested the money in Fidelity mutual funds. My experience was a little different. I transferred Vanguard mutual funds in kind to my existing Roth at Fidelity and then was able to sell them with no...

There's a story that when John Churchill, or possibly Randall Churchill, was asked "whose descendant are you", he replied "I am an ancestor". I am unable to verify this, but if either one of him didn't say it, he should have.

Palimpsest, an album of arrangements for clarinet, marimba, and bandoneon. I can't decide if this is a naturally good if somewhat neglected combination or if it just means that the right people can make anything work. Either way, it works very well.

I'm streaming it on Napster (Nhapsody? Rhapster?), but I see it on Amazon Music as well.

QNAP issued a new patch on Monday, for what is described as a severe vulnerability. See

https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... erability/

for additional details.

CITs don't distribute dividends, probably because in a 401K or similar plan there is nowhere to distribute them to, other than reinvesting in the fund. So they just get rolled into the NAV. This is not a disadvantage but it can be surprising if you're not used to it.

If you have one available that tracks an index you want and has a good expense ratio, I see no reason not to use it. I'm still using two in an old 401K.

My experience using Windows in a corporate setting (software engineer) was that the company Had People For That, who would show up periodically saying "here's your new PC" and would get very cranky if you started fiddling with things yourself or installing software without prior approval. So at least someone with experience thought this was more than mere programmers should be trusted with. And I know a retired schoolteacher who buys a new PC every few years, for email and web browsing, and always ends up complaining that it doesn't work any more. So I'm not entirely sold on the concept of Windows being easier for the hoi polloi. A possibly amusing story: around 2012 I decided to try Linux at home and ordered a Mintbox which was s...

Metsfan91 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:43 pm

dogagility wrote: ↑Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:20 am Just calculated our 2022 federal income tax... getting a $107 refund. Closest I've come to a bullseye ($0 refund) in at least 20 years!

Is it a good thing?

I get refund - thanks to child tax credit - usually in 4 digits. I like it this way...Extra money to do whatever.

Getting a large refund means letting the IRS hang on to money that is already yours, for a year, without paying interest. But some people like the forced savings, or don't like skating too close to the edge.

It looks like I will have a $257 refund. It would have been closer, but I didn't account for qualified dividends when I made my last estimate.

If you just want to avoid the penalty, you can take your tax for 2022, divide it by four, and make quarterly estimated payments in that amount. This meets safe harbor criterion #3 as described in the wiki. Since your 2022 income was very low, that may leave you owing tax when you file: I don't know if that bothers you. You can make payments without creating an account at https://www.irs.gov/payments.

The above method is almost what I do, except that I usually adjust the final payment, in early January, to more closely match what I estimate I will owe.

telemark wrote: ↑Wed Nov 23, 2022 11:07 pm I plan to buy in January. I have the money, the value of inflation protection is more evident than it used to be, and I have no ability to predict the next fixed component, so see no point in waiting.

I went to the TD web site last night and scheduled a purchase for today, January 27. Got a notification of an ACH pull from my bank this morning, so apparently it went through. It took me a while to remember how to make a purchase (there's a button near the top of the screen that takes you to that page), but otherwise no difficulties.

Would anyone know how does Freetaxusa manage to keep the software free? I realize they do have premium services and I think they charge a small fee for state filing. But would it be sufficient to cover the cost? I am mainly worried about selling data to others. I did read their privacy statement and did not see anything alarming other than the use of social media widgets in their website. The question is not why FreeTaxUSA is so cheap, but why TurboTax is so expensive. It does not cost that much to produce reliable tax software. Especially when you realize how big the market is (many millions of people). They are taking a bigger cut. FreeTaxUSA is running a leaner ship. I plan to use them this year as well. TurboTax has to maintain three d...

Now that I look, I see that my HL-2270DW is wireless (it says so, right on the top), but I've always found it simpler just to use ethernet. If you want to print from your iPhone or iPad, then you need wireless. Not necessarily. Your iPad doesn't connect to your printer, it connects to your wireless router; how the data gets from there to the printer is another story. But you do need a printer that supports Apple's newer AirPrint protocol, as my 2270DW does not, so that's something else to check for. (Anything you can buy now is probably fine). And having a wireless printer is convenient if you want to put it somewhere not easily reachable with a cable. Edit to add: sorry, I went to make a small edit and mangled things. It should be fixed n...

jebmke wrote: ↑Sun Jan 22, 2023 9:21 am My color printer is an inkjet and destined for the recycle center in April.

That's what happened to all of my ink jet printers, but they were hand-me-downs from my parents anyway.

Now that I look, I see that my HL-2270DW is wireless (it says so, right on the top), but I've always found it simpler just to use ethernet. Not all models support that, if it matters to the O.P.

I haven't used Turbotax in years, but I believe it can pull dividend and capital gains distributions directly from Vanguard, whereas with FreeTaxUSA I have to enter all that manually.

You are allowed but I think not required to open an HSA, though it makes little sense to choose an HSA-eligible plan if you don't intend to do that. HSA contributions are a great way to lower your AGI, if you have a reason to want that. Or keep your AGI the same and do bigger Roth conversions, which is what I've been doing.

Tracker968 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 9:58 pm At my Fortune 500 company we were told to never plug an extension cord into a power strip or surge suppressor strip. The safety team would come around once in a while and disconnect any that they found.

There are cases where doing this is fine, and cases where it is not fine. Rather than attempt to distinguish between the two, and presuppose actual knowledge or judgement on the part of their employees, they've found it easier to simply ban it completely. Which is something I might do also, if I had a large company to run and lawyers to worry about.

Ivygirl wrote: ↑Mon Jan 16, 2023 9:15 am I buy roasted unsalted peanuts in the shell from the Winco bulk bins, both for blue jay food (entertainment value) and to snack on. It's a little work to crack and eat them so I have time to get full and eat less. (Peanuts can be cracked with one's fingers of course, so no tool necessary.)

Yeah, peanuts are fun. Even walnuts aren't too bad: you can crack two of them against each other in the palms of your hands, at least until you get down to the last uncrackable one

Blue jays like peanuts? I would not have expected that.

tunafish wrote: ↑Sun Jan 15, 2023 5:06 pm

stoptothink wrote: ↑Sun Jan 15, 2023 12:24 pm
Also electric stoves are 2.6x more likely to start a fire than gas.

Why is that?

I did start a fire once on my coil-type electric stove. I put some water on to boil, absent-mindedly pushed the button for the wrong burner, and went out of the room. When I came back the wrong burner was glowing and there was a plastic spatula, not touching the burner but an inch or two away from it, that was just starting to burn. That wouldn't have happened with an induction stove top.

Returning to the subject of tax preparation, is there anyone who prefers to prepare their tax return using the on-line, rather than the downloaded version, of any tax prep software? If so, why do you prefer to use the on-line version? With the on-line version are you able to import previous years' data including all carryforwards, import data from forms W2, 1099-B, etc.?, able to save a local copy of your return? and e-file? As noted above, on-line Tax Act failed to import the pdf of my 2021 return. I used TaxAct online for a few years, then switched to FreeTaxUSA when TaxAct raised their prices. The obvious reason for using online tax software is that it works under Linux, but it's also nice not to have to install a program, have to keep ...

For a room that size, rather than one big unit I would consider using two or more smaller purifiers, perhaps in different corners, on the theory that you would get better coverage with less air movement. And speaking as the owner of an older IQAir model, if your only problem is dust it's definitely overkill. But they are capable, well made units -- mine is over 15 years old now and still going strong. It also doubles as a white noise generator, but the newer models are quieter. Traditional HEPA filters use purely mechanical filtration: you force air through tiny holes and the particles get stuck in the holes, until the holes all fill up and the filter needs replacing. Some manufacturers, including BlueAir, use a newer technique that puts a ...

chris319 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:09 pm I started an on-line TaxAct return but it failed to import my 2021 return which was created with Tax Act (!)

Having already purchased the download version of Tax Act, I am reluctant to spend another $100+ to test drive the on-line versions of these programs.

It looks like more Windows lock-in for tax preparation.

If you have a PDF of your last return stored locally, either TaxAct online or FreeTaxUSA should be able to scan that. At least, they have both worked for me in previous years.

dratkinson wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 3:04 pm Also needed a Bissell sweeper to clean up the under-foot aftermath.

It turns out the trick is to put the nut in the pliers and then wrap the whole thing in a tissue before applying pressure. But I will probably be finding bits of shell in unexpected places for some time now.

Herekittykitty wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 6:30 pm Great story! Funny - unless you are the one it happened too and maybe even then!

I definitely got at least $0.99 worth of entertainment value out of it

I finished off everything but the filberts, which are too difficult, and the almonds, which aren't very good. The squirrels will get those, assuming they want them.

You might consider this one, which uses alpaca wool for its filler. The manufacturer claims it has half the volume of down and will still keep you warm when wet, surely an important consideration if you fall into a river on the way to the office.

People like Linux because it is both "free-as-in-freedom" and "free-as-in-beer." Linux is likable for that reason, but fans constantly exaggerate the quality of free software as experienced by ordinary end-users. If you are not planning to modify or recompile software from source, it is just... software. And the quality is mediocre. It is "surprisingly good," but it is meh. Linux enthusiasts either don't see it, because they are not visually oriented and don't really care about the quality of the GUI, or forgive it as being outweighed by other virtues. Good user interface design is hard, and also expensive. It's hard because you can't just do what you like, or what seems obvious to you, because when you try yo...

I have two desktops at home, an older Mac and a Linux box. The Linux box is my daily driver: I'm typing this on it now, using Emacs. At this stage in my life it's all about control. It's my computer, dammit, and I'll decide what to run on it. Without having to worry that tomorrow someone at GoopleSoft will decide that my favorite feature is no longer cool and must be replaced with something that does half as much in pointlessly different ways, or that my perfectly usable hardware is now officially Too Old and must be scrapped in favor of something newer. If I don't like one Linux distro, there are plenty of others to choose from. And yes, I'm the kind of person who happily drives an older car and gets annoyed when I walk into the grocery st...

This is perhaps more of an antifrugal thing, but Sprouts had bags of mixed nuts, still in the shell, marked down from $3.99 to 99 cents so I thought "why not", without considering that people own nutcrackers for a reason. Nature's child-proof packaging... I now have much more respect for squirrels, and a whole new appreciation for phrases like "tough nut to crack."

I tried using a hammer, but so far the ChannelLocks have been the most nearly successful approach. The almonds are soaking in a bowl of water, because someone on the web thought that would work, but as of this morning they remain as obdurate as ever. I may end up just letting the neighborhood tree rats have the lot.

starboi wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:09 pm

boglehat wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 8:52 pm

Charles Joseph wrote: ↑Fri Jan 06, 2023 8:01 pm If treasuries go kaput what will FDIC insurance be worth? Not much I imagine.

I'm good with VUSXX.

How would treasuries go kaput? Cant the treasury print more money to pay them?

If they hit the debt ceiling and can't pay interest or roll debt.

That's the thing. Historically, the debt ceiling (and hence Treasuries) has occasionally been subject to acts of political gamesmanship in an otherwise unstressed financial system. Chances of a specific bank failing during one of those hopefully brief periods should be fairly low, and the FDIC should already have funds on hand to deal with it. A general systemic failure would of course be another matter.

I took my skateboard bearings apart, cleaned them, slathered them liberally with Archoil AR8300 Severe Duty nanoceramic grease, and put them back together again. Why, you are probably about to ask, would I bother when new Zealous bearings are $16.00 a set? The answer is simple: I enjoy the process, and that's priceless.

And yes, it has been raining a lot recently, why do you ask?

Over the years I've accumulated something of a collection of large, expensive air purifiers but my favorite, and the one I use in my bedroom, is the Blueair 211+ auto: it seems to work at least as well as the others, as measured by my particle counter, and it's smaller, lighter, quieter, and generally more civilized. The others all have wheels on the bottom to make them easier to move: the Blueair doesn't, because you can easily pick it up and carry it. On the lowest setting it's so quiet that I have to put my hand over the top to see if it's even running. The highest setting is loud, but I hardly ever need to run it there (I use a separate particle counter, across the room, to measure AQI). On the down side, the filters cost $70. They're s...

nisiprius wrote: ↑Sat Dec 31, 2022 6:59 am ...

telemark wrote: ↑Sat Dec 31, 2022 12:47 am...Spoofing needs to be made more difficult or more expensive, but no one in the industry seems very interested in doing this...

But isn't that exactly the problem that STIR/SHAKEN was supposed to solve?

What I'm asking is: is it other peoples' experience that implementation of STIR/SHAKEN is apparently so thin and spotty that it isn't really doing any perceptible good?

I shouldn't have said "no one", but we need near-universal adoption before those will work. As long as there's a way to make an end run around them, the spammers will find it.

Alas. In the race between the spammers and the spam blockers, the spammers are not only winning but seem to be pulling even farther ahead. Nomorobo is presumably effective at blocking known numbers but this doesn't help when the spammers can just spoof a different number for every call. Spoofing needs to be made more difficult or more expensive, but no one in the industry seems very interested in doing this. My land line is currently a Google Voice number. I would like to send everything to voice mail except the numbers that I white list, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do this in GV, so I just have it permanently set on Do Not Disturb, which is at least peaceful. Thinking of switching to Obi but haven't gotten around to actually do...

If you've always liked a good Godzilla movie but find the more recent remakes a bit disappointing, then Troll on Netflix just might be the movie for you. True, the big guy comes from the mountains instead of out of the sea, and it's Oslo he's stomping rather than Tokyo, but otherwise everything is exactly the same. Lots of gorgeous scenery; I regret not being able to see this in a theater.

Smallnetbuilder's list of top-ranked mesh systems includes a number under $200. In fact their top system, the Netgear Orbi RBK50, is currently listed on Amazon for $137.99. I have no experience with any of those systems, and smallnetbuilder's rankings are based mainly on tested performance rather than security or convenience. But security is kind of hard to measure.

A quibble: calling this a double blind strategy is inaccurate. I may not remember the generated part of the password, and the advantage is that I don't need to, but I can easily see it any time I want: it isn't being hidden from me, as a true double blind would do. But I see no point in a true double blind strategy.

The best password strategy, like the best exercise regime, is the one you will actually use, so if this makes anyone more likely to use a password manager then it's a good thing.