The Vanguard sheet has been expanded to include a tab for analyzing Fidelity funds as well. That sheet is called the Vanguard/Fidelity Edition.
I have also released a sheet that follows the model of the original one, but allows analysis of all the funds supported by https://moneymarket.fun. This sheet has since been expanded to also include analysis of several money market-like ETFS including BIL, BOXX, SGOV, and USFR. This sheet is the called the All Funds Edition.
See below for current releases of both sheets.
I was asked to start a thread to track the maturation of this sheet, accept ideas, bug fixes, etc. This is that thread.
This thread would be best served to focus on the tool and not the findings / personal situations. Feel free to start threads about your situation using the tool. I would like to keep this thread focused on the tool itself.
The tool is published as a Google Sheet shared with view/commenting only. You will need to make personal copies for local updates/customizations.
Caveat: The Optimizer tool is native to Google Sheets, it is very unlikely you will get anything useful out of it after converting the spreadsheet to Excel or any other spreadsheet platform. This was a conscious decision as Google Sheets "live" features are a very productive platform for this type of solution.
All releases are announced in this thread. The current release of tool can be found here:
- Current Release of Vanguard/Fidelity Edition: MM Optimizer Vanguard/Fidelity Edition v19 - release notes here
- Current Release of All Funds Edition: MM Optimizer All Funds Edition v11 - release notes here
If I find minor bugs, I may update the sheet and add a minor release number such as 5.01 without releasing a new file.
How do I use this tool?
TLDR; go to the My Summary tab, and enter your personal tax state of residence, Federal marginal tax rate, and State marginal tax rate, then browse over the Vg BestNow tab and see what funds yield best for you.
The Instructions tab provides detailed information about how to fully use the features of the tool.
Harry Sit at the Finance Buff has a nice article about how to choose a Vanguard Money Market Fund and he demonstrates the key use of this spreadsheet - Which Vanguard Money Market Fund Is the Best at Your Tax Rates
The major features of the sheet are as follows, listed by tab in the worksheet:
My Summary - a single location for all normal user configurable parameters to be adjusted. Please make a personal copy of the sheet to adjust to your needs. It also provides and Executive Summary of the findings of the worksheet as well.
SwapCalce - (All Funds only) A place to configure daily emails for the swapping notifications.
Vg Best Now - A tab that attempts to summarize a current date snapshot of the best Vanguard funds for your particular situation as well as a quick table for a broad range of Federal and State tax rates.
Fidelity Best Now - A tab that attempts to summarize a current date snapshot of the best Fidelity funds for your particular situation as well as a quick table for a broad range of Federal and State tax rates.
Optimize Study - this page does a back-test of a swapping regime among the 4 funds across a range of tax rates and calculations the value such a scheme would have returned if executed over the previous time period. The study attempts to create a return per swap action over the time period in the column $ per swap. Note all key calculations are done on an After-Tax basis. This is the chart that answers the question: is it worth it to swap between Treasury and Muni MM funds? The answer is two-fold: what is your time worth, and how high are your marginal state tax rates?
Tbill Returns - This tab attempts to simulate a set of Money Market replacement T-bill ladders/roll schemes and compare them against the MM funds. The methodology is documented at the bottom of the page.
Funds Watch - A one page watch list of whatever money market funds included https://moneymarket.fun dataset. Simply put the ticker name in one of the yellow cells. I have pre-populated with a popular list of funds, but you can add/delete as you see fit. Just like the My BestNow tab, the fund's After-tax yield and Tax-equivalent yield values are provided for fair comparisons.
Funds Filter Sort - Allows you to filter and analyze over 700 MM funds by categories: Prime, Government, Muni, In-State Muni, and Treasury and further filter on the various data elements such as $ Assets, Expense Ratio, Fund Name, etc.
There are many additional charts in the sheet, feel free to investigate. I believe they are self-documenting, but questions are welcome.