Bogleheads.org

wickywack

Do you expect your annual living expenses to change dramatically in Minnesota? The conventional wisdom is that you need 25x annual expenses saved to retire. You're in excellent shape given your current savings. Shifting to a lower paying job seems very reasonable if that is going to improve your qua...

wickywack

For useful foreign travel cards, I use: Capital One Quicksilver. This is a Chip-and-Signature, no forex card with 1.5% cash back. It's my go-to card. First Tech Platinum Rewards. This is Chip-and-Pin, Pin-Preferred, no forex card. For kiosks or when you don't want to deal with signature (a lot of ve...

wickywack

When I was "grading" my financial advisor, I had a record of all my deposits over the years as well my current balance. I used that to compute an XIRR in a spreadsheet. You might try that to sanity check your actual returns against your PortfolioVisualizer numbers.

wickywack

This is Schwab's list of recommended bond ETFs. Note that a number are commission free: http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/investing/investment_help/investment_research/etf_research/etfs.html?&path=/Prospect/Research/etfs/overview/selectList.asp?symbol=undefined The treasury ETFs look excellent...

wickywack

I asked Schwab what the difference was. I already have a brokerage account with cash management enabled. I was wondering if it's worth opening an extra checking account. Schwab's answer: The advantage of having a linked High Yield Investor Checking Account attached to the Brokerage Account is to kee...

wickywack

If you're only investing in tax-advantaged accounts (e.g., Roth), Betterment doesn't buy you much. If you want simple, just open an account at Vanguard and put everything in a Target Retirement fund. Given your age, you might start with the 2055 one: https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target...

wickywack

That isn't a lie. Betterment can purchase any ETF/investment in their portfolios. They are not required to purchase ETFs from any firm (Vanguard, iShares, etc.); they have complete flexibility on that. Does Vanguard or Schwab's platform have that option? I would call that fairly unique in represent...

wickywack

NY Times is at it again. This time by Ron Leiber. :D The Times is on a roll to break up the annuity monopoly with public k-12 school districts. If they keep publicizing this mess, perhaps more or my colleagues, our public school teachers will finally discover that their annuity agent might not be l...

wickywack

Municipal bonds would likely make sense for you given that your marginal tax rate is north of 45%. There have been several threads here - if I recall ~28% or so is the break even point on where you come out ahead as far as after tax return. Keep in mind that munis have a somewhat different risk prof...

wickywack

I have the impression that they would open new accounts for you on the same platform your existing accounts are on. If you have Agent Authorization (as the parent who can transact on the minor's account), they should keep all your accounts on the same platform. I suggest you tell them you want to m...

wickywack

I thought the old style mutual fund accounts at VG are going permanently away anyways? Why would you want to open something or downgrade to an account that you will have to upgrade to later? Won't this just cause you more grief by having to go thru the upgrade process? I assume they'll go away once...

wickywack

Sorry - should add that this is for Vanguard.

wickywack

Has anyone been able to "downgrade" a new brokerage account to an old-style mutual fund account? Or just open a new old-style account in the first place? I have an UTMA for kid #1, and I've been able to do mobile check deposits into it. I just opened one for kid #2, but it's a new style ac...

wickywack

I have a 15 year 2.5% fixed interest rate mortgage. I have the cash, and I am tempted to pay it off given that I cannot see any safe investment at a higher after tax interest rate. Is there anything I am missing? There is another thread right now on a 3.01% 7 year CD from Andrews Federal Credit Uni...

wickywack

If you have at least 100K, you might look at Wealthfront's direct indexing service: https://www.wealthfront.com/tax-optimized-direct-indexing They mimic the S&P 500 by directly purchasing the underlying stocks. You can set up an exclusion list to avoid stocks you don't want - Apple in this case....

wickywack

What are the options in the current 401k? Are there good, low cost index fund choices? If so and if it is allowed, they may want to consider rolling the old 401k over into the current 401k instead of an IRA. That would allow ongoing backdoor Roth contributions in future years - if they have the cash...

wickywack

I would start with Vanguard Concierge: https://investor.vanguard.com/what-we-offer/personal-services/concierge-services My parents where in a similar situation last year and ended up moving to Vanguard, liquidating, and using PAS. They've been mostly happy with it. Vanguard did most of the heavy lif...

wickywack

Yes - for the first time. I finally decided to diversify out of my company stock early in 2015 to VTSAX and VTIAX, but I incurred a lot of capital gains doing so. In September, I TLH'ed VTSAX to VTLCX and VTIAX to VFWAX, and in December, I went back. I cut my gains for the year in half doing so! I h...

wickywack

The math on their page seems a bit dodgy: 7.5% (expected annual dividend) + 2% (expected annual gain) + sleight-of-hand = 12% projected annual return They have a facebook post that shows how they come up with this: https://www.facebook.com/richuncles/photos/a.235035393338448.1073741828.2329133202173...

wickywack

I have similar circumstances and TLH'ed to VTCLX a couple weeks ago. If you'll be in the top bracket for ~25 years and you're stuck with VTCLX, there's a pretty good chance you'll come out ahead after taxes anyway (even compared to VTSAX). I don't think you can go that wrong either way - I wouldn't ...

wickywack

Alan S. wrote: Other pre tax IRAs are not a factor when the rollover is done directly from the 401k to the Roth IRA. This does not involve Form 8606.

Thanks for the correction - I did not know that.

wickywack

Should be $7 per trade or less depending on how much you have. I don't think so since the OP has transaction-fee mutual funds. See how Vanguard carefully hid the $35 commission? Ahh, missed that. Fees are under FundAccess here: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/whatweoffer/stocksbondscds/feescommiss...

wickywack

Transferring in kind is not as easy according to Vanguard but not too difficult to get the needed information from RJ, I too would like to know commissions on the sale of the old funds? I transferred my Roth in kind to Vanguard a few weeks ago. They (Vanguard Concierge) can tell you if it's possibl...

wickywack

Do you have an existing traditional (non-Roth) IRA as well? If so, be aware of the pro rata rule:

http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Backdoor ... RA#Caution

wickywack

Thanks for the replies! A number of Bogleheads (including me) donate highly appreciated securities to a "Donor Advised Fund" whereby you get the tax deduction this year, but you direct the DAF to pay out money to specific charities....most commonly over a period of years. Good food for tho...

wickywack

I had a good experience transferring assets into Vanguard recently via their concierge. They really did most of the work. You might consider starting with them: https://investor.vanguard.com/what-we-offer/personal-services/concierge-services It's not clear you need PAS given your experience. If you ...

wickywack

Hi All, I’ve been following this site for several months now (thanks!). I’m in the process of consolidating our funds to Vanguard. We left an advisor about a month ago. Based on what I’ve read, I am leaning toward a much simpler portfolio starting with the core three funds plus tilts to REIT, Small-...

wickywack

Thanks for all the replies!

I did contact Vanguard - they confirmed that I can't exchange in one step from a non-Vanguard fund to a Vanguard one. I have to sell, wait for settlement, and then buy.

So, instead, I'm just selling in stages and not sweating the details.

wickywack

I recently transferred my IRA to Vanguard, funds in-kind. They've landed in a Vanguard IRA brokerage account. I'd like to just exchange them directly to Vanguard Total Market and Vanguard Total International mutual funds. The Vanguard interface only seems to let me directly exchange, e.g., a T Rowe ...

wickywack

Ugh. My former financial advisor had us in this since Nov - "Bill Gross has something to prove". I'm currently transferring it in kind over to Vanguard but it hasn't landed yet.

On the plus side, I don't have any pesky capital gains if I want to liquidate it.

wickywack

I'm occasionally on the recruiting / hiring end of this - my 2 cents: a 5th year masters in CS rarely adds much if you've already got a 4 year BS in Computer Science from the same institution. Some cases where it can help: - If that 5th year is at what is considered a better CS school - If your unde...

wickywack

indexonlyplease wrote:
rca1824 wrote:The best roboadvisor is a Vanguard Target Date or LifeStrategy fund.

For a tax-advantaged account, this seems like a no-brainer.

For a taxable account, I'm under the impression that Betterment/Wealthfront/... are a good deal more tax-efficient (rebalancing on deposit, TLH).

wickywack

To the original question, here's a maybe from someone who isn't using a robo, but is tempted for the following reasons. First, a 3 fund portfolio is often more than 3 funds when you implement it. At least, that is the case for me. My wife and I have between us, a 401k, a 403b, and a 457b. None of th...

wickywack

But, if I'm buy-and-hold in taxable (as I suspect many 3 funders are), what do those TLH benefits actually get me besides the $3k per year income deduction? Any other TLH benefits are deferring taxes in a situation where I'm already deferring taxes (by holding), right? Also, based on the above, if ...

wickywack

If you are willing to put in some time and go with a 6 fund portfolio , you can get a lot of the TLH benefits on your own. If that puts you back in the black or not is hard to say. But, if I'm buy-and-hold in taxable (as I suspect many 3 funders are), what do those TLH benefits actually get me besi...

wickywack

You speak for me also, with a portfolio in the same vicinity. I can rebalance myself,but do it mostly with new money. The question is whether auto-TLH will be worth $8k per year for my very simple portfolio. I don't see it. Better in my pocket than theirs. If you're buy and hold in your taxable acc...

wickywack

The brokerage account has no maintenance fee and no commissions on Vanguard funds (it managed by Vanguard). It looks like $2 per trade for non-Vanguard ETFs. If I wanted a Russell 2000 Value fund (to match the 457b), I could go with IWN - more volume, but the small commission - instead of VTWV. Woul...

wickywack

Thanks! One general question: should I worry about rebalancing with multiple small value funds if I don't expect to keep the same ratio of each individually? Like I said, the 457b doesn't have great options for us, so I'm thinking of putting all of it into the Russell 2000 Value fund. So, we'd have ...

wickywack

My wife and I have decided to allocate 10% of our portfolio into small cap value. We're trying to decide which funds to use. We'd like to do this in our tax-advantaged accounts, which consist of her (government) 457b, her 403b, and my 401k. Her 457b is particularly lacking in great choices, but it d...

wickywack

I've been reading Bill Bernstein's "Skating Where the Puck Was: The Correlation Game in a Flat World". His main theme is that financial history shows over and over again that risky assets that haven't correlated with the market at the beginning usually start to correlate strongly once they...

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