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jomiel posted:I'm slowly wading my way through this thread... Why is ETrade lovely? My dad is proposing that I move all my 403a stuff from Fidelity to ETrade, should I be aware of something before the move? options are limited, fees for everything, fees, fees, fees, fees, fees, fees, and fees. Also their support is awful and their systems are awful. Oh, did I mention they have a fee for closing an account with them or transferring money out of them. Also https://us.etrade.com/e/t/prospectestation/pricing?id=1206010000 Besides, if you are putting your money into Fidelity Spartan funds, why move your account from fidelity to ETrade just to invest in the same Spartan funds with low expense ratios?
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Dec 12, 2013 04:09
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three posted:How do people feel about TIAA-CREF? They're OK, I had them years ago. Switched to Vanguard and never looked back because why pay more for indexes?
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Dec 12, 2013 04:32
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Thanks for the info! I believe it has something to do with a promotion for new accounts and my balance would qualify to receive $300. Also my dad converted his own Fidelity accounts to ETrade last year, I'll ask him why he prefers ETrade more. I've put off taking more care of my own finances and now my dad is sick so I really need to take charge. I'll be sure to do my reading list homework and then come back to ask more questions! jomiel fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Dec 12, 2013 |
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Dec 12, 2013 18:07
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So apparently spending a few months sending out harrasing emails and being a general thorn in the side of our Deferred Compensation Planning Board has paid off. All County employees got an email today about some end of year payroll stuff, and in small text at the end, I read these glorious words: NEW IN 2014: Beginning 1/1/2014, you can begin signing up for the new Roth 457 contribution option. Go directly to the Great-West Financial Retirement Services website for more information and enrollment. Granted, I can't afford to stash away 17.5k into it, but at least they did one right thing. They still haven't replaced our .78% TRP target date funds with Vanguard ones, but I'm not stopping now damnit.
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Dec 13, 2013 23:15
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What do people here think about the Vanguard Target Date funds? I'm a college student looking to open a Roth IRA sometime soon, and I'm currently debating between putting the full $5500 into the Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX), or doing a three-fund portfolio with an allocation of Vanguard Total Stock ETF (VTI): 70% Vanguard Total International Stock ETF (VXUS) 20% Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF (BND) 10% The expense ratios for the ETFs are much better than for the Target fund. Is there any major reason why I should choose it over the ETFs?
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Dec 15, 2013 21:31
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ChipNDip posted:What do people here think about the Vanguard Target Date funds? I'm a college student looking to open a Roth IRA sometime soon, and I'm currently debating between putting the full $5500 into the Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX), or doing a three-fund portfolio with an allocation of ETFs are slightly more of a pain because they are traded through a broker the same way stocks are. You'll have to place an order to buy or sell an integral number of shares (no fractional shares), and the price they trade at may not exactly equal the NAV. You'll likely end up with a small amount of cash reserves not doing anything, and rebalancing can be a little tricky because you'll have to manually sell shares and then buy others. Mutual funds are easier because you can just say you want to put X dollars in each fund, and you get an exact fraction of shares at the end-of-day NAV. Rebalancing is also painless. That's not to say that the reduced hassle is worth the higher expenses. It's just something to be aware of.
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Dec 15, 2013 22:16
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IIRC Vanguard lets you trade their ETFs commission-free in brokerage accounts you hold with them, but they don't let you hold them in an IRA account. VVVVVVVV Huh, didn't know that. Shear Modulus fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Dec 15, 2013 |
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Dec 15, 2013 23:00
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Shear Modulus posted:IIRC Vanguard lets you trade their ETFs commission-free in brokerage accounts you hold with them, but they don't let you hold them in an IRA account. You can have a brokerage account within an IRA.
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Dec 15, 2013 23:11
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Kilty Monroe posted:ETFs are slightly more of a pain because they are traded through a broker the same way stocks are. You'll have to place an order to buy or sell an integral number of shares (no fractional shares), and the price they trade at may not exactly equal the NAV. You'll likely end up with a small amount of cash reserves not doing anything, and rebalancing can be a little tricky because you'll have to manually sell shares and then buy others. Mutual funds tend to have 5-10% of their fund left in cash. The cash drag is way higher in a mutual fund, you just don't see it personally. The difference of price vs NAV for an ETF is usually 1 cent or so, and can go both ways (in your favor and against), making it neutral over time. That said, ETFs DO have bid-ask spread costs (which are orders of magnitude more significant than the above factors) in addition to their other complexities.
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Dec 15, 2013 23:40
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rhazes posted:Mutual funds tend to have 5-10% of their fund left in cash. The cash drag is way higher in a mutual fund, you just don't see it personally. The difference of price vs NAV for an ETF is usually 1 cent or so, and can go both ways (in your favor and against), making it neutral over time. The Vanguard index funds and ETF's are different share classes of the same assets so there will be no difference in cash drag. The Vanguard index funds have never had 5-10% cash. That would be normal for active funds which sometimes have upwards of 20% in cash. The ER difference goes away once you qualify for admiral share classes which require 10k balance. This will require mixing your own index funds instead of using Target Retirement. For simplicity, I would think the best course of action is to stick with target retirement funds, and transition to index funds once you qualify for admiral shares. The slightly higher expense leading up to the transition period should not be worth fretting about.
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Dec 16, 2013 00:39
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I am currently "officially" saving 28% of my income (estimated based on pre-tax amounts). I don't spend all that's left over, it accumulates in my checking until I dump a bit into savings or stocks here and there to clear it out. 13% goes into 401K, I max out my Roth IRA, plus I have about 14 individual stocks that I invested in in 2008 when the DOW was in the 6-7k range. I then have a savings account that 8% of my income goes into for future stuff (house down payment, cars, emergencies, etc). I own a house and plan on upgrading in 2-3 years. When I do that I want to keep my current house and rent it out! I am always looking to get into other things. For example I am trying my luck with an e-commerce site that I just launched that may or may not do anything for me. (probably not  )I can't think of anything else obvious to do right now. I live in the midwest, and I am really interested in investing in land as something long term. I didn't see a real estate / land thread. Does anyone have any advice or experience with land? Tips on how to get started etc? I don't really know much about it yet. Or, if anyone has any other advice on what I should be doing financially, I am all ears! Future goals: To retire early with a couple of decent income streams (houses, e-commerce etc) and get out of the corporate world. Also to pay off my future house by the time I'm 40 (currently 28). Side goal: Live on 50 forested acres away from everyone and be a total hermit. Oh yeah, debts. No car payment, paid off my 25K in students lines in less than 4 years out of school. Only debt I have right now is my mortgage. Stryguy fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Dec 16, 2013 |
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Dec 16, 2013 01:25
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When I started working at my current job, I contributed a small percentage to the company 401k just to have the option of using it, but I never increased the amount. There's no match, and the funds all seem to have high expense ratios--the 2050 target retirement fund the money is in now is 1.54%. I've started a Roth IRA through Vanguard, and plan on putting in 5500 every year from now on. But what should I do about the 401k? Is there some way I can move it over to the Roth IRA account? Also I have like $45k in my bank account, what the hell should I do with it?
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Dec 16, 2013 09:33
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This is my first year out of college with a good-paying job, although most of the pay comes in the form of bonuses and is highly variable. As of right now, I'm set to max out my 401k ($17,500) before April 2014 (with a 6% employer match). I decided months ago that I was gonna start putting $5,500 per year into a Roth IRA with Vanguard, but I just read that I can't: I'm gonna be over the maximum income contribution limit. Then I did some more reading, and realized that also put me over the tax-deductible limit for a traditional IRA. I'm young and willing to accept a relatively high level of risk. I basically want a decent fund I can toss excess bonus money into where it'll get a high rate of return. I want to be covered in case my industry hits a downturn and those bonus paychecks dry up, and I don't want to leave a big pile of money in my savings account accruing <1% interest. I've read good things about Vanguard in this thread. Would their Stock or Index funds be a good long-term investment?
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Dec 16, 2013 11:30
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Fly Molo posted:This is my first year out of college with a good-paying job, although most of the pay comes in the form of bonuses and is highly variable. As of right now, I'm set to max out my 401k ($17,500) before April 2014 (with a 6% employer match). You can always contribute up to the limit to a traditional IRA regardless of income, you just can't claim the tax deduction. But what you can do is immediately roll it over to a Roth the next day, even though you're over the Roth income limit, because rollovers aren't contributions. This is a pretty common strategy known as the "backdoor" Roth. Caveat: This doesn't work as well if you already have any pre-tax money in any IRA on account of the pro-rata rule. Vanguard is known for their index funds and we really only recommend index funds here for long-term investing. If you're not sure how to pick mutual funds, just go with a Target Retirement date or LifeStrategy fund for now and read The Four Pillars of Investing as suggested by the OP. Or, post the holdings in your 401k so we can suggest what you should pick up in your IRA.
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Dec 16, 2013 12:59
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Does anyone have any thoughts about doing future contributions to a portfolio in a way to sort of rebalance it? So theoretically say my ideal portfolio was 60% domestic and 40% international and at the end of the year the actual portfolio was 70% and 30%. Would it be better to just continue to do contributions at a 60/40 split and then rebalance or does it make sense to contribute a bit more heavily to international in order to get it back to a 60/40? Also does anyone do a thorough breakdown of funds into categories? For instance, I take the Vanguard Total Intl Stock Index (VTIAX) and further split it into developed vs. emerging markets (85.37% vs. 14.63% according to morningstar ratings) so I know how much more of the Vanguard emerging markets index (VEIEX) to buy to get my ideal emerging markets percentage. I do this for all of the other funds I contribute to also. I'm wondering if this is normal or if I'm being stupidly anal.
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Dec 18, 2013 03:58
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Dazzo posted:Does anyone have any thoughts about doing future contributions to a portfolio in a way to sort of rebalance it? So theoretically say my ideal portfolio was 60% domestic and 40% international and at the end of the year the actual portfolio was 70% and 30%. Would it be better to just continue to do contributions at a 60/40 split and then rebalance or does it make sense to contribute a bit more heavily to international in order to get it back to a 60/40? Some fund companies actually offer the automation of this as a feature. I'm sure someone here who knows more will have better insight, but it seems to intuitively make sense as long as you do it fairly often: you keep the split you want, buying the underperformers and preventing the overperformers from getting out of hand, and you don't eat the transaction fees associated with selling your high-performing assets.
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Dec 18, 2013 17:05
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Dazzo posted:Does anyone have any thoughts about doing future contributions to a portfolio in a way to sort of rebalance it? So theoretically say my ideal portfolio was 60% domestic and 40% international and at the end of the year the actual portfolio was 70% and 30%. Would it be better to just continue to do contributions at a 60/40 split and then rebalance or does it make sense to contribute a bit more heavily to international in order to get it back to a 60/40? Rebalancing via weighted contributions is perfectly valid. Personal Capital does a thorough breakdown of funds you're actually invested in, you have to give them your info a la Mint.com though.
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Dec 18, 2013 22:42
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Just had my very old Roth IRA transferred from Mainstay to Vanguard as an in-kind transfer. Is the new destination subject to a 60 day holding period before I would be wise to rebalance / repurchase, or does it maintain the old Mainstay holding history (which is like 9 years)?
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Dec 19, 2013 01:33
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SpelledBackwards posted:Just had my very old Roth IRA transferred from Mainstay to Vanguard as an in-kind transfer. Is the new destination subject to a 60 day holding period before I would be wise to rebalance / repurchase, or does it maintain the old Mainstay holding history (which is like 9 years)? "Rollover. You can receive a distribution from a traditional IRA and roll it over (contribute it) to a Roth IRA within 60 days after the distribution." http://www.irs.gov/publications/p590/ch02.html SiGmA_X fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 04:24
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Thanks for clearing up my confusion about waiting periods not applying here since it's Roth IRA to Roth IRA. I didn't see anything on the linked page about that situation, but whatever. You're right, it's in my Roth Brokerage for the transfer (Roth IRA to Roth IRA) and is not in my main brokerage. Oddly, the mailing I received today said the funds were transferred (and I see them in the Roth brokerage), but the online transfer status' tracker says it's all still in process and not quite complete. I guess I'll just wait until it's all confirmed as settled before I do any buying or selling on those items.
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Dec 19, 2013 06:49
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So, I'm in a pretty happy situation here, but I really don't know what direction to take with my finances. I recently took on a new job in my hometown, so for a few months I'll be living with my parents free of rent and the bulk of living expenses. This is a prime opportunity for me to sock away money and get a jump start on retirement savings (I'm 23). I have: Redacted for privacy. After normal expenses (car, gas, phone, insurance, taxes, food, dates), I should be bringing in about $2.5k a month while I'm sticking with my parents. Normally I would aggressively invest in my 401k, but I am not eligible until my third month on the job (March). Should I just dump it into the Vanguard retirement fund? Would I be better off diversifying further or investing more aggressively with my savings? I know my car interest rate is relatively low, but would it be wise to pay that down ahead of time? Not a Children fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Jan 9, 2014 |
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Dec 19, 2013 13:39
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My personal vote would be to pay down the car. After you move out, you won't want to be paying a $300 car payment on a salary that pays you $2500 a month, which will probably be somewhat lower after you begin paying into your 401k.
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Dec 19, 2013 14:53
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Nail Rat posted:My personal vote would be to pay down the car. After you move out, you won't want to be paying a $300 car payment on a salary that pays you $2500 a month, which will probably be somewhat lower after you begin paying into your 401k. Just to be clear, the $2500 figure is after the car payment, and is a moderately conservative estimate of what I can currently afford to invest every month. My actual take-home salary is around $3300 for a 4-week period.
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Dec 19, 2013 17:44
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Not a Children posted:Just to be clear, the $2500 figure is after the car payment, and is a moderately conservative estimate of what I can currently afford to invest every month. My actual take-home salary is around $3300 for a 4-week period. Fair enough, but I do think you're going to want that payment gone. How long are you going to be staying with your parents? If it's for just a few more months, you'll want that emergency fund to be a lot closer to where it is right now than 4-5k. If it's for five more years, obviously you can invest a lot more. Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 18:01 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 17:57
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Not a Children posted:I recently took on a new job in my hometown, so for a few months I'll be living with my parents free of rent and the bulk of living expenses. This is a prime opportunity for me to sock away money and get a jump start on retirement savings (I'm 23). What is your projected monthly cost of living once you move out on your own? Factor in all of your necessities: rent, utilities, car payment, insurance, food, phone/internet, things like that. Whatever that number is, multiply it by about 6 and that is roughly how large your emergency fund should be. Unless you live in an insanely cheap area, I'm willing to wager that number weighs in at about 10k give or take a couple grand. Don't forget that when you sign for a new apartment you're probably going to have to write a pretty big check with the lease, as a worst case perhaps as much as 3 month's rent (first, last, security deposit). Also consider that once you move out you might find you need to purchase a collection of household items that are worth paying a bit for quality. Cookware, dishware, bed/mattress/bedding, furniture, etc. I'm not saying to go on a shopping spree, but some pots and pans and something like a couch might be nice to have and even a "cheap" Ikea couch is several hundred dollars for example. I wouldn't be in a rush to invest all your money right away since you're in such a transitionary period. Yeah it sucks to have over 20k cash sitting around not doing much, but the flexibility and security that it affords you over the next few months while you go through some big life changes is substantial. Move most of that money in your checking account to your Capital One savings account to at least pick up the 0.7% APR (why haven't you done this already?). All that said, if you haven't already maxed out your IRA contribution for 2013 ($5500) I would do that between now and when you file your taxes since you can never make up for that missed contribution. It wouldn't be a bad move to pay down some or even all of your car loan, but at only 2.4% it's not costing you that much in the long run. Beyond that I would advocate playing the wait-and-see game for the next couple months until things shake out a little bit more. You're in a pretty comfortable position for 23 and it's great that you're thinking this far ahead. Guinness fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 18:50
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Guinness posted:What is your projected monthly cost of living once you move out on your own? Factor in all of your necessities: rent, utilities, car payment, insurance, food, phone/internet, things like that. Whatever that number is, multiply it by about 6 and that is roughly how large your emergency fund should be. Unless you live in an insanely cheap area, I'm willing to wager that number weighs in at about 10k give or take a couple grand. Thanks for this, I didn't really consider how flexible I may have to be once I move out, especially in terms of the emergency fund. I'll try to keep closer to $9k available, in that case. The deposit situation is also something I should keep in mind, so I'll set aside an additional $2-3k for that. I did live on my own earlier this year for my old job, so I already have most of the stuff I would need to round out a bedroom/kitchen/living room. You make an excellent point about me under-utilizing the Capital One account. That is pretty much 100% the result of me doing the "should I, shouldn't I" thing with regards to investing in the stock market or further in my Vanguard. For months. It's really dumb, I know, and I just paused while making this post to make a $7.5k transfer from my checking to that account. I have not yet maxed out my Roth, and it's probably a drat good idea that I do it before the end of the year. I'll look into either opening a new one or maxing out my old one after work. After that, I'll crunch some numbers to see if it makes sense for me to put effort toward paying off my car early and/or playing in the market in the next few months before I'm eligible for the new one. Thank you and Nail Rat for your replies!
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Dec 19, 2013 19:36
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Not a Children posted:Thanks for this, I didn't really consider how flexible I may have to be once I move out, especially in terms of the emergency fund. I'll try to keep closer to $9k available, in that case. The deposit situation is also something I should keep in mind, so I'll set aside an additional $2-3k for that. I did live on my own earlier this year for my old job, so I already have most of the stuff I would need to round out a bedroom/kitchen/living room.
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Dec 19, 2013 19:41
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No Wave posted:What do you mean by playing in the market? If you mean what I think you mean I don't think it's a very good idea. Sorry, I shouldn't have put it like that. What I meant was "diversifying in some of the other Vanguard funds" and not "dump money into Apple/Google/Facebook."
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Dec 19, 2013 19:51
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I was recently hired at UVa as a post-doc (research associate) and I am now confronted with selecting a tax deferred savings plan. I have to make the following choices: how much to contribute to a 403(b) plan, how much to contribute to a Roth 403(b), and whether to use Fidelity or TIAA-CREF for the contributions. I already have a Roth IRA with Charles Schwab, and I am struggling to determine if the Roth 403(b) and the Roth IRA I already have are different. I also don't know how to choose between the two vendors. Any thoughts? I can try to provide any information you may need.
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Dec 19, 2013 20:14
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Jose Cuervo posted:I was recently hired at UVa as a post-doc (research associate) and I am now confronted with selecting a tax deferred savings plan. I have to make the following choices: how much to contribute to a 403(b) plan, how much to contribute to a Roth 403(b), and whether to use Fidelity or TIAA-CREF for the contributions. On a basic level, a 403(b) is like a 401(k) in that it has a separate contribution limit bucket from an IRA. It has the same 17,500 limit(unless you're pretty old) as a 401(k) does. So the advantage is that you can put more in if you've already maxed your Roth IRA. Whether to do traditional or Roth will depend on what your current AGI is and what you plan to spend in retirement.
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Dec 19, 2013 20:54
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Jose Cuervo posted:I was recently hired at UVa as a post-doc (research associate) and I am now confronted with selecting a tax deferred savings plan. I have to make the following choices: how much to contribute to a 403(b) plan, how much to contribute to a Roth 403(b), and whether to use Fidelity or TIAA-CREF for the contributions. I don't know anything about TIAA-CREF, but if the Fidelity account lets you select the Spartan funds, choose Fidelity.
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Dec 19, 2013 20:58
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Nail Rat posted:On a basic level, a 403(b) is like a 401(k) in that it has a separate contribution limit bucket from an IRA. It has the same 17,500 limit(unless you're pretty old) as a 401(k) does. So the advantage is that you can put more in if you've already maxed your Roth IRA. I am not sure how to answer the question regarding what I plan to spend in retirement. Do you mean a dollar/year amount I think I will need after I retire? Also, is there a website that explains more fully how to use these two factors to determine what I should do? And will the answer change if I plan on getting married in the next year?
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Dec 19, 2013 21:48
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Jose Cuervo posted:I am not sure how to answer the question regarding what I plan to spend in retirement. Do you mean a dollar/year amount I think I will need after I retire? The comparison is simple, in principle. In 'traditional' accounts you pay tax when you withdraw the money in retirement. In 'Roth' accounts you pay tax on your earnings and then pay no tax when you withdraw it. If you think you will be in a higher tax bracket when you retire (because of pension, withdrawals from Roth-type accounts, lottery winnings, whatever) than you are better off paying the tax now rather than when you retire. There are complicating issues like you may be able to save more before tax (traditional) rather than after tax (Roth), and that will depend on which tax bracket you are in right now. As a post doc, I would guess you aren't going to be in a very high tax bracket, so it may not matter. As for getting married, anything that effects your tax status will effect the decision to go traditional or Roth for the reasons stated above. On the subject of calculators, I'm not sure min-maxing the contributions is a useful endeavor since you are only giving a rough guess as to your future retirement tax bracket anyway. More important than any of this is the expense ratios of the funds you have access to, you want low ratio index funds (well sub-1%), if only one of your options has these types of funds, then the decision has effectively been made for you.
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Dec 20, 2013 00:49
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I have a question about exchange traded funds. I've been buying up Vanguard's index ETFs on the Australian Stock Exchange, but I'm a bit concerned about the low volumes and depth of the market. Here's how they are currently trading:code:code:code:
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Dec 20, 2013 02:59
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If all goes well, I'll be starting grad school in August/September (and probably quitting work to travel starting in June), so I'm wondering what, if anything, I should change about my contributions/withdrawals to my 401K, Roth IRA, and Roth 401K, since my income and tax situation is going to start to look way different. Right now, I save about $17000 per year between maxing out my Roth IRA, and shoving as much additional money into my 401k as I can tolerate. Each month I set a direct deposit to put 1/24th of the annual Roth IRA contribution into a savings account where it waits, earmarked for contribution in the New Year. Because I anticipate that my income will be way lower, and therefore my tax rate lower (plus being eligible for all sorts of fun education related credits/deductions?) what's the best way to the turn the dial here? Full-tilt on the Roth 401K since my taxable income will end up lower annually, even though this will be hell on my budget because my withholding is still going to be off? Stop retirement savings alltogether and throw as much as I can into a 529 to begin withdrawals across the next two years? What would you do?
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Dec 24, 2013 00:04
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You can only contribute "earned income" and often the stipends grad students get don't count as that. So make sure you have actual earned income you can contribute. Assuming you have earned income, if your income is much lower than normal your tax rate is low so it makes sense to use after-tax dollars to contribute to a tax-free-withdrawals type of account, so Roth (401k/IRA). The difference between your Roth 401k and your Roth IRA is mostly going to be the contribution limits (which you know about), any matching you get, and the funds available in your 401k. If you have matching, obviously get that first. Then, unless you have excellent funds available in your 401k, you should be aiming all your dollars at the Roth IRA, and then if you have more money to save after that, go back to the Roth 401(k). To answer your real question, though: how much you can save depends on how much you need to live on, obviously, and that's not something anyone here can guess at. You should not go into debt just to make retirement fund contributions. You should have an appropriate emergency savings level. You should anticipate potentially being unemployed after graduating and plan financially for that. I don't think a 529 makes sense for like 8 months of savings. Your savings for 2014 tuition do not belong invested in anything but a savings account, the term is just too short. The advantage of a 529 (as I understand it) is tax-free earnings on your investments; saving taxes on the fraction of a percent you'll earn in a savings account isn't worth the hassle. I don't know that much about 529s though so I could be missing something. e. I just realized I may have misunderstood. Are you asking what you should be doing during your grad school, or what you should be doing from now until August? The answer to the latter is obviously "save up enough money to afford to go to school," and that could be anything from a couple grand to a couple hundred grand, depending on where you're going to school, what you'll be making while you're in school, and what you've already saved. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 24, 2013 |
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Dec 24, 2013 00:12
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My understanding is that retirement accounts can be good vehicles for saving up for your own education expenses, though. Paying for education is a qualified distribution from an IRA, so if you save up for school with traditional 401k contributions now and then roll them over to a traditional IRA when you quit your job, you can avoid taxes on it now and wipe most or all of the taxes later as you cash it out as a poor college student. Meanwhile, it all gets 100% excluded from your assets as far as financial aid is concerned. Not that I'm quite endorsing that course of action, though, in case I'm overlooking something here. I've been thinking about doing this myself lately, so I'd like to hear other opinions on the idea.
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Dec 24, 2013 22:55
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Kilty Monroe posted:My understanding is that retirement accounts can be good vehicles for saving up for your own education expenses, though. Paying for education is a qualified distribution from an IRA, so if you save up for school with traditional 401k contributions now and then roll them over to a traditional IRA when you quit your job, you can avoid taxes on it now and wipe most or all of the taxes later as you cash it out as a poor college student. Meanwhile, it all gets 100% excluded from your assets as far as financial aid is concerned. I'm a US citizen and EU permanent resident. Would tuition for an MBA in the UK count as a qualified distribution?
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Dec 24, 2013 23:31
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IAMKOREA posted:I'm a US citizen and EU permanent resident. Would tuition for an MBA in the UK count as a qualified distribution? I haven't a clue. I only know as much as I do because I'm in a situation similar to bam thwok's, and I'd been looking into it. My instinct is to doubt it, since U.S. taxes habitually gently caress over expats, but you'd probably have a better shot finding someone that knows for sure in the tax megathread.
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Dec 25, 2013 07:33
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| # ? May 26, 2024 14:52 |
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I'm about to start my first "serious income" job (nothing outrageous, but solid middle-class money), and one of my goals is to build a robust emergency fund. What are my options for low-risk savings outside of just a high-yield savings account? I don't expect to make a ton of money, but I would like to keep pace with inflation. I wouldn't be opposed to losing a bit of liquidity - something like a CD ladder would be fine, if CDs just offered a significantly better return than savings. IAMKOREA posted:I'm a US citizen and EU permanent resident. Would tuition for an MBA in the UK count as a qualified distribution? Possibly. To qualify, you have to go to school somewhere that's eligible to participate in the US Department of Education's student aid program. This doesn't exclude foreign institutions, but it does bring additional recordkeeping and reporting requirements, so schools generally don't participate unless they expect or hope to attract at least some US students. You can find a list of international schools who participate here. If you're going to one of those schools, be sure to fill out your FAFSA and claim any federal aid that you can get, too. Grad students typically don't get all that much, but there's no sense in leaving even the possibility of US government aid on the table.
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Dec 25, 2013 21:16
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