Bogleheads.org

I prefer local news, which is filled with enough 'world news' anyway, and can be had with an antennae.
There are lots of free streaming news channels though, pluto.tv has a whole category of "News + Opinion" channels.
There are free options for sometimes different perspectives on 'world news', in english, as well,
https://www.aljazeera.com/live/
https://www.rt.com/on-air/
https://www.ntd.com/live

The farther you get from away from local Notable Events, Weather, and Sports the more clearly it's all propaganda though.

beyou wrote: ↑Wed Mar 29, 2023 7:40 am...having too much tax free (vs Roth) is not necessarily a good thing in the long run.
One wants a balance of tax-deferred, Roth and taxable....

It's a pretty odd scenario where paying taxes on income to save in a "taxable account" is better than putting it in a tax deferred account then paying the same tax rate to convert it to a Roth account.
Aside from those who've saved so much their income is higher in retirement than while working, or have large pensions making up their income when they stop working, most people are likely to have lower tax burden by taking the tax deferral and not withdrawing or converting until they're retired and in a lower bracket.

notjackjack wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2023 10:37 pm Alliant Credit Union Cashback Visa Signature credit card.

https://www.alliantcreditunion.org/bank ... ature-card

Just adding that this is a 2.5% cash-back card (with no FTF) if you jump through a few hoops to maintain a checking account.

I would, but I wouldn't own the sports car to begin with.
Given there is other debt (on another car) I would pay that off first then move on to getting the mortgage paid off.
... but again, that's me... I don't value cars for much more than their utility and necessity to get around.

hkcj wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:14 am... Will they auto-liquidate purchased MM funds in the CMA account for debits (or ATM withdrawals)? I can't find any documentation of that - is it just an undocumented feature? ...

Yes.
Just make sure your account shows cash as "available to withdraw". If the 'core' bank sweep is at or goes to $0 it will automatically draw from the money market funds for ATM, debit card, billpay, ACH pulls, etc... your "available to withdraw" amounts shown under balances will include the money market funds.

Maverick3320 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 8:19 am

frugalor wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 5:50 pm If you stay single and don't spend too much, I don't see any issues retiring.

You can use ACA for insurance. And the government will provide all kinds of help for "low income" folks.

Just focus on health and do the things you enjoy.

Why did you put low income in quotes?

The way I read it, it's a wink to the idea that someone can technically be "low income" receiving government assistance, and a multi-millionaire early retiree at the same time.

... So we can now put the question to rest -- This was a bailout. The depositors didn't buy private insurance but got FDIC insurance after the fact. Wouldn't it be nice if we could leave our house uninsured, have it burn down, then get paid anyway? :oops: That's happened after some disasters, "FEMA Individual Assistance". Sometimes there is insurance, but it doesn't cover the specific situation or the amount of damage caused... ... The FDIC just set a dangerous precendent. They will have to do the same for future bank failures, otherwise it would be unfair. They've clarified that they would not, and it is unfair, and it does seem like an instance of 'unequal protection under the law', and a bunch of unelected bureaucrats making d...

... But what abt. stocks, shares and bonds and other securities held in a brokerage account if that broker or financial institution goes belly up? Using stocks/shares as an example: If I own shares of a company "X", I am directly invested in "X". Wont my shares simply move across to another financial institution after a failure? (or would the Fed "backstop" kick in). How does myself being a share holder have anything to do with a brokerage failing? btw: What does SIPC do to help when brokers fail? ... The securities you hold at a brokerage are required to be held segregated from the brokers assets, and in the event of a brokerage failure are not available to the brokerages creditors, and would be returned to y...

It is strange the different ideas and framing people have around concepts like "being retired" vs "being unemployed" despite it essentially being the same thing. Having lots of money won't make you happy, but if you find yourself in the situation of being "retired" or "unemployed", it can make the situation a whole lot more comfortable than not having money. The first part of FI-re, the "Financial Independence", and not needing to be reliant on a paycheck, I think is a good place to be, or a good aspiration.

Most modern ideas around "retirement", are relatively "modern" and it was around the 1950's that the idea of propagandizing pensions with this end of life as a happy leisure period became a marketed idea...

From book: " Prime Time : How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement And Transform America , By Marc Freedman


...

My answer is: stocks are risky and you should not feel any assurances that any flavor of them will move any particular way, and need to be willing to accept the consequences that they might lose value over any particular time period including "the long run." If you want to reduce risk, the uncertainty about returns over some specific time period, you need bonds. Some people believe value stocks will have higher returns, and if that works out to be the case (although there are plenty of long time periods where that can be shown as false in the past) then one could theoretically make a portfolio holding more bonds (with more assurances on their returns) and get the same portfolio return as a less-value tilted stock portfolio that ha...

^ both Schwab and Fidelity will do principal transactions as well (taking the other side of your trade/selling you securities from their own portfolio), as with payment for "order flow" there are regulations about doing that, but if one looks at less-reputable brokers (like Robin Hood) you can see some seem to take it as a business model to just pay the fines and continue to rip off their clients (at least that's the appearance given how frequently they continue to do the same thing after receiving fines for violations.) My vague understanding, was that in the past if you were trading less than a 'round lot' (100 shares) you were most likely not going to get best execution on the primary exchange. I'm not sure if that's still the ...

dknightd wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 9:27 am...
Is a riding mower much different than a golf cart? ...

Yes, very... you're not going to have passengers on a riding mower, and you're not going to go as fast. But there are lots of useful attachments for other chores. If you live in snow there's attachments to help with that, if you need to maintain a lawn, garden, hall junk around in a trailer, potentially ride on rougher turf (although UTV has edge there), have a zero-turning radius to corner around a lawn, and other functions then a riding mower could have more utility.

How fast do you need to go, do you need to haul passengers or just junk?
A lawn tractor / riding mower + trailer might have more utility for some stuff.

Patzer wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 8:57 am

beezlebub wrote: ↑Sat Mar 25, 2023 10:13 am - Schwab's customer service is arguably better. Fidelity was just ok when I tried them, Schwab went above and beyond.

I have both and in my experience they are both good, but Fidelity is actually better when it comes to more complex actions.
...

I've found Fidelity's customer service pretty good, I haven't had very complex issues to call about, but they answered quickly and got me answers for what I was calling about. I did find out that regardless of which customer service number I called, after I authenticated they route me to their 'Private Client Group', so I'm not sure if that impacts my experience vs if I called customer service without that.

... Someone on this forum mentioned that the interest that Schwab gets on the your low-interest settlement accounts is a main source of revenue in Schwab's business model. I think they get reinvested dividends for a day for outside ETFs and MFs. So, slow movement of funds through the settlement account is your price for Schwab's service now that no transaction fees are charged. I don't what Fidelity's business model is. Fidelity makes interest on cash held with them, how much they're making isn't as clear as with Schwab because Fidelity isn't a public traded company, so it doesn't have the same financial disclosures with it's books. It is clear that Fidelity's bank sweep pays less than Vanguard's, money market funds have higher ERs, and th...

Patzer wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:04 pm... but I don't really need to worry past 80, because at 70 I can take social security...

I worry about the Social Security retirement insurance benefits I paid for being as promised when I retire. I don't necessarily want to worry about it, but the people running it say I should be.

Is this impacting your "Personal Finances" in some way relevant to the "Personal Finance (Not Investing)" sub-forum you posted it in ?
viewtopic.php?t=407

You'll likely earn a higher interest rate in the MM fund, which will reduce the impact of inflation, but I'm not sure if that's a risk you're considering.... "Safe" from what ? They're both fine.

Third "safer" option: If you spend your money, you won't have to worry about losing it.

... - Fidelity does charge 1% fee on ATM international withdrawals despite many claiming to the contrary. I asked a Fidelity employee directly and was told this, and Fidelity employee's themselves have reported the 1% charge for international ATM withdrawals is true: https://www.reddit.com/r/fidelityinvestments/comments/1201kvc/for_atm_transactions_i_understand_that_any_atm/ ... Being among those that have used Fidelity's ATM card (at foreign Australian ATM for cash, not POS) and had no explicit line-item FTF charge nor noticeable exchange rate spread difference from other cards saying no FTF, it makes me curious if there's something built into the exchange rate spread that Fidelity is adamant about disclosing that other cards are less tra...

The article you linked doesn't say it bypassed 2FA, it speculates that "today’s breaches could be from a combination of passwords and two-factor authentication being compromised"

It’s not immediately clear how the channels have been breached ... he said that the company is working on it with Google, and is “getting to the bottom of the attack vector with the (hopeful) goal of hardening their security around YouTube accounts and preventing this sort of thing from happening to anyone in the future.”

Anecdotally, the few people I've known who were on SSDI after first getting rejected eventually got a lawyer who helped. Perhaps there are non-lawyer advocates that can assist just as well, but it does seem to be a complicated system to navigate successfully, and that people who're experienced with the process and the system are a tremendous benefit.

I think the $1M figure isn't by itself relevant without considering expenses, current age and other streams like Social Security. Having $500K being 75 with 90% of your expenses covered by SS is very different than $1M retiring at 60 and spending $100K/yr.... :thumbsup I've known people that owned their home (valued at a fraction of a current $1M) and lived entirely on social security, and didn't seem like they felt they were missing out on anything. There's a wide-range of what people have earned as their social security benefit. Not exactly a paradox or ironic, but there does seem to be a conflict between the results of someone with a high income (that pays for a larger SS benefit) but has high spending habits (resulting in low retiremen...

I am looking for a way to lock in high long term interest rates. iShares IBonds and Invesco Bulletshares only go out to 2032 right now. But VCLT has a duration of 13 years and is paying 5.5% How do I lock in this rate for 13 years? Do I hold VCLT with cash and just do a glide path (selling VCLT into cash) over 13 years? "High" is a relative term, interest rates are higher than they've been for most of the past 15 years, but not really in a longer historical context (especially 'real' interest rates.) Based on what you said, it's not clear to me if you're desiring to have the investment compound at current available rates for some time period (zero coupon bond), collect income at current rates while retaining principal (non-callab...

grandnexus wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:44 pm

JoMoney wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 9:30 pm If you want to buy VUSXX, I would think doing so directly at Vanguard would be the place to do it.

Right, I was wondering where I can open a brokerage account under an LLC specifically.

Well, I did provide a link to Vanguard page indicating you can open an organizational account "including Limited liability companies"

Your AA has too many funds, slopped into weird amounts, doesn't have a catchy name, and smells funny.

If you want to buy VUSXX, I would think doing so directly at Vanguard would be the place to do it.
https://investor.vanguard.com/accounts- ... n-accounts

If you're looking for some other specific service/feature, or to avoid something that Wells is doing that makes them "seem to suck in general" you'll need to be more specific about what you're looking for.

The benchmark index the fund tracks is an after (estimated) withholding taxes index. Usually the after-withholding tax indexes estimate higher than what funds actually wind up paying. You would need to compare the fund to it's gross-return index (before tax withholding) to get a more accurate view of the all-in difference including taxes. Morningstar doesn't make it as easy to bring up different index returns anymore, but by example here's a $10k growth chart for the (US) iShares MSCI ACWI (All-Country World Index) ETF compared to the benchmark MSCI ACWI GR (Gross Return) index and the MSCI ACWI NR (Net Return - after withholding) https://i.postimg.cc/fWXt920X/ACWI.png https://i.postimg.cc/RVLWPWdZ/GR.png https://i.postimg.cc/MpZvgz3b/NR.png

Canada recently stopped issuing inflation-linked bonds. If the US were to stop, it might be seen as a sign that we don't expect to get it under control. So, what might happen to a TIPS fund (LTPZ, for example) if the US were to stop issuing TIPS? Liquidation of the fund? I don't know the mechanics of it (alex_686 probably does), but you'd probably get the fund's NAV winding down to $0, paying out the matured bonds as dividends. I would expect more likely the fund would change it's objective to follow some other securities, or they'd merge it into a different fund that the operators thought likely to retain and gain new investors. Funds close all the time when assets start to fall below a level that's worthwhile to keep operating at. Invest...

I know the the Total Stock market is a wider assortment of companies - but can there a case be made for the SP having more stable, reliable companies? What things do you consider when evaluating both these indexes? Comparing TSM & S&P 500 is probably the most trifling of all Bogleheads reoccurring threads. They are by far closer to being the same thing than most any other "assets" Bogleheads look at. It's part of the S&P 500's objective to be a proxy for the broad U.S. market and it is managed for its sector weightings and other aspects to do that. All that said, I preferred the S&P 500 index funds for a variety of reasons I've mentioned in past posts. If you're going to try and track a broad U.S. market index, yo...

technovelist wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:26 pm... The only thing that might be a tiny bit safer would be owning Treasurys rather than that fund, but the difference is miniscule.

And even then, it depends on what risk you're looking at when determining "safer", if you owned Tbills directly they will fluctuate in market value, it is possible to buy a Tbill one day and if you sell it on the next day you might lose money... probably not much, but it could lose something. That doesn't happen with a money market fund. Most money market funds will let you withdraw cash in a money market that same day, some brokerages will even give you an ATM/debit card to access it. Tbills held in a brokerage might require a settlement period after selling before you could get to the proceeds.

... I know that they are not covered by FDIC and that there is some coverage of mutual funds but it is strictly covering errors or thefts in the mechanics of holding a mutual fund and does not cover fund investment losses... At the risk of adding confusion, I think there might be something that needs to be sorted out here, there isn't coverage on a "mutual fund" there is SIPC coverage on a brokerage account. But those are separate things, it's possible to own a mutual fund directly not holding it in a brokerage account, that used to be the standard way mutual funds at Vanguard were held (before they pushed people into their brokerage.) If you own your mutual fund directly (or other securities), titled in your name, there's no nee...

VMRXX is a legacy "Prime" money market fund that was converted to a government fund because Vanguard decided to get out of the consumer "Prime" money market business (they still have institutional 'prime' MM funds.) It might be the oldest of Vanguard's money market funds, and so keeping it around with it's history (despite the funds objective changing) probably has some value to them.
I believe the same is true of Fidelity's FDRXX fund.

I'm always surprised when I hear about people buying a timeshare. It baffles me. Clearly there's a large market of people buying them, but in my mind it's something (that should be) widely known as a rip-off that's to be avoided. I see more advertisements for firms trying to help people get out of the mistake that is a timeshare than I ever do about timeshares themselves. Even weirder (to me) is people that own them and believe they represent valuable equity (rather than expensive liability you can't shake off) they'll leave to a family member... but it is a thing

Transaction records can be important, so that would be the opposite of instilling confidence in a broker.
If it was just a confirmation message wrong, and the actual transaction history on the account looks correct, that's a little better. But not the kind of sloppiness I want to hear coming from a "systemically important" financial institution (that's fought off being regulated as one.)

hunoraut wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 2:51 am Alignments usually cost a bit more, so they probably have to make up for that teaser price

If it's for a front-end alignment only, that's probably within the range of normal, and somewhere up to double that for all four wheels.

For Vanguard's 'Developed Markets' index fund, they changed which index the fund tracks in 2015. The new index increased exposure to small-cap stocks, which made that fund riskier to it's past self...

The companies that are my Vanguard mutual funds, seem to use an institutional money market fund, in particular the "Vanguard Market Liquidity Fund"
https://institutional.vanguard.com/inve ... /fund/1142

... So it took 2 days for money to be moved, available for withdrawal on the 3rd day. ... I'm having trouble understanding how you're counting days. ... And Fidelity says the money will be available for withdrawal on 3/22 which is two days, not three days.... I'm having trouble understanding what you're misunderstanding. You said the transfer was initiated 3/20 and available for withdrawal 3/22. That's the second day to me but you said that's the 3rd day. The way I count days is if I start something today and it completes today, that's "same-day"; if it completes tomorrow, that's "next-day"; if it completes the day after tomorrow, that's "2nd day" (which is what UPS and FedEx mean for their "2nd Day Air&q...

lstone19 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:33 am

JoMoney wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 8:12 am ...
So it took 2 days for money to be moved, available for withdrawal on the 3rd day.

... I'm having trouble understanding how you're counting days.
... And Fidelity says the money will be available for withdrawal on 3/22 which is two days, not three days....

I'm having trouble understanding what you're misunderstanding.

If you invest money for 20+ years and neither add nor withdraw from it, you're most likely better off in equities. So why own bonds? If, during a downturn when your balance plunges, you become anxious, then you should use short term Treasuries. This is Bill Bernstein's point. If you want a liability matching portfolio, you should use a TIPS ladder. This is also Bill Bernstein's point. If you'll be withdrawing during retirement and want to minimize the chance of running out of money, as in the Trinity study, the most appropriate is total bond market (in tax sheltered) or some tax efficient approximation in taxable, like intermediate Treasuries plus TIPS plus municipal. There are certainly a long tail of other uses for bonds, but do people t...

... An ACH pull is just like depositing a check; they don't know if it's good or not until it's not returned. And since they don't know it's not going to be returned, Fidelity is very conservative in how long they wait. I'm not sure how long being "very conservative" is, but it may be specific to the individual, the bank pulling from, or the amount being deposited. I've heard people on here complain that it takes a week before the money becomes available to withdraw, but that's not been the case for me. I've had both ACH 'pulls' and checks (deposited via mobile deposit) available for withdrawal in 2 days. I'm expecting to pull a couple thousand dollars from a Wells Fargo account this week, if I remember I'll update on the actual ...

I'm headed towards using Fidelity as my one-stop shop... but a couple of things make me hesitant. 1. I recently made my backdoor Roth contribution by transferring the money in from Ally. It took a full week to process completely. I initiated the transfer on a Saturday, and it was finally available to push to my IRA on the following Saturday. I've seen comments about Fidelity being faster than this for transfers, but this seems slow. Obviously, less of an issue if we move our primary account there, but still something that's not ideal if I need to move money around. 2. What's the best setup for a savings account? I have the CMA account, and the brokerage account. For savings, should I create another CMA and just put it in one of the standar...

When I was looking into a JP Morgan account (for a transfer bonus) what I read implied they don't offer easy online Roth conversions for securities. They only offer transfers of cash between accounts, and they only offer online brokerage transfers between like accounts (Roth to Roth, Traditional IRA to Traditional IRA, or taxable brokerage to taxable brokerage.) One can do a Roth conversion, but it requires a paper form, and a liquidation of the securities to cash. :annoyed That coupled with JP Morgan not offering additional 'above SIPC' coverage through a third-party insurer (as many other large brokerages do), and not have any stated 'Customer Protection Guarantee' that I could find, gave me a better feeling about just sticking with Fidel...

WillRetire wrote: ↑Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:55 pm...
If we are to believe in the simple indexing approach using only 2-4 funds instead of a dozen or so funds, a single fund's exposure to a major default is high impact to an individual investor.

The number of funds one holds doesn't say anything about how much exposure, or how diversified their portfolio is. Some funds have quite a bit of overlap with each other, some funds are heavily concentrated, some individual funds are very widely diversified.

... It is wise to rollover to an IRA, if that is even possible since I left those jobs quite a while back but left the 401K accounts as-is. Appreciate any advise. I guess I need to talk to Fidelity. There are pros and cons to rolling a 401k over to an IRA. 401ks can have fees that an IRA wouldn't, but sometimes there are special institutional funds in a 401k that aren't available outside of it, and a 401k may offer better judgement protections if that's a concern. Personally, I rolled over my old employer 401k to an IRA. One of the justifications I told myself was that it was likely to be forced into a rollover sooner or later if something happens to the company anyway. Shortly after I did, my old employer had a merger with a different com...

... It is wise to rollover to an IRA, if that is even possible since I left those jobs quite a while back but left the 401K accounts as-is. Appreciate any advise. I guess I need to talk to Fidelity. There are pros and cons to rolling a 401k over to an IRA. 401ks can have fees that an IRA wouldn't, but sometimes there are special institutional funds in a 401k that aren't available outside of it, and a 401k may offer better judgement protections if that's a concern. Personally, I rolled over my old employer 401k to an IRA. One of the justifications I told myself was that it was likely to be forced into a rollover sooner or later if something happens to the company anyway. Shortly after I did, my old employer had a merger with a different com...

what is actually in Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund. Vanguard website has the following: Repurchase Agreements 57.20% U.S. Govt. Obligations 39.80% U.S. Treasury Bills 3.00% Not sure what the top two are, my understanding is they are government backed and as safe as Treasury Bills. A repurchase agreement, is effectively a very short term loan to some other financial firm where the fund holds a treasury as collateral. Imagine some financial firm that owns a treasury but needs cash for a few days, but then intends to buy the treasury back. So they sell a repurchase agreement where the fund buys the treasury for say $100 and the seller agrees it will buy it back a few days later for $101 , the extra $1 is effectively the interest rate bein...

... I actually think two things: 1) if you have over 250k total assets, the regular brokerage gets free ATM withdrawals too. It works for me 2) I actually think you no longer need 250k. I asked about this for my partner, who I think did not have 250k at the time, and they said there would be no fees I think it’s worth calling to confirm this for your case FWIW, I have "Private Client" status (but no assigned rep) when I called and asked I was told that "Yes" I would qualify for ATM reimbursements on the regular brokerage account... so I opened one, and after using it, did not get the fees reimbursed. When I called to find out why not, after a bit of a run-around and them having to check with others (because they thought...

The convention here at BH - if you have time to look through the entire thread, is to have both a CMA and separate brokerage account. CMA for cash management and brokerage for taxable long term funds like total stock. From a cash flow standpoint, the CMA or multiple CMA (below) accounts take care of the day to day income/expenses. I use a separate second CMA as an ATM cash only account and keep only a couple hundred at most in there and NOT linked to the other CMA or brokerage account. That isolates my debit card I use only for ATM withdrawal, from my main CMA that is attached to bill pay, and the brokerage. Others on this thread advocate for ability to link CMA/brokerage accounts . . . I'm in the keep; them separate in case one gets hacke...