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Well places like Personal Capital only make money by getting you to believe in their snake oil financial advisor Only 4-5% to manage all your investments!
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Oct 28, 2014 02:51
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:Holy poo poo Personal Capital is awful. I signed up for it on like Thursday or Friday last week. Since then, I've gotten 8 emails about setting up a personal consultation and they've actually called me twice. This is after I clicked the "No Thanks Seriously I Don't Want to Talk to you on the Phone" button on the huge thing that pops up when you log in for the first time asking if you want someone to call you for a consultation. Why did you give them your phone number?
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Oct 28, 2014 03:55
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I'm looking for some advice on rolling over my 401k from my soon-to-be former employer. I am 30 years old I will be leaving my job on 11/4. My present job is about $93k, new job is $82k (likely $95k with bonus included). I have $100k in my 401K now (and $18k in a Roth IRA). $67k is my contribution to the 401K and is in a Vanguard Target Retirement Fund. $33k is my (former) employer's contribution and is in company stock (it is a 100% employee owned company, where company stock is only given through the retirement funds). The $67k balance will be available to me a couple weeks after leaving. The company stock portion will not be available to me until late March of 2015 (after they do their annual stock evaulation). To further complicate matters, I am in the process of getting divorced. The process may or may not go through before the end of the year, so I may or may not be filing a joint tax return for 2014. We were in the 25% tax bracket for 2013 and I would expect the same for 2014. I don't see any reason to leave my 401k with my former employer (even though they have good Vanguard selections) or to roll it into my new employer (I don't know much about their investment options). My understanding is that I have the option to roll it into a Traditional IRA, a Roth IRA, or a combination of the two. The portion that is rolled into a Roth IRA is a tax event, which I can choose to pay with the 401k funds or with my own cash. Given what I think is a relatively high tax bracket (I am nearing the phase out for Roth IRA's), I'm not sure if it makes much difference if I go with Traditional or Roth IRAs. I would think that the biggest benefit of rolling over to a Roth is to pay the tax with my own cash, effectively putting my on-hand cash into my retirement account. However, while I could afford taxes on the $67k rollover, it is taking more out of my emeregency fund than I would like. Also, I would like to keep my tax situation as simple as possible, given my unknown filing status for 2014. My inclination is to roll my $67k into a Traditional IRA now and then in 2015 roll the $33k into Traditional or Roth (paying the Roth tax in cash). Does this sound reasonable? Am I limiting myself in the future by having a Traditional IRA (maybe not having access to the "backdoor" Roth contribution)? Can I roll my $67k over to a Roth in the future once I have built up more funds? Any help would be appreciated.
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Oct 28, 2014 04:04
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Dessert Rose posted:Are those "high" min-balance (25k+) managed funds worth it, or can I do just as well picking some decent index funds? At what point should I stop posting on an internet comedy forum for financial advice and actually pay a professional to do it? You have a lot of questions, I would recommend you read Four Pillars. I don't know anything about TradeKing, but the name (and your portfolio) makes it sound like a single stock buying service that is probably a rip off. People recommend Vanguard because they have low expense ratios. High expense ratios kill growth in index fund investing by effectively reducing the growth rate by whatever the ratio is. Since you want to reduce the number of companies you have managing your money, of all of the the places you mentioned, Fidelity is by far the best in my opinion. They offer Spartan funds which just track indexes and have expense ratios only slightly worse than Vanguard. But, the target retirement funds at Vanguard have a $1k minimum and they are great, just pick the 5 year period closest to your retirement and keep contributing. quote:I'm putting the max into my 401k that my employer matches, and right now I'm throwing a bit more money at it every year because that seems like the easiest "default" option that everyone recommends. Should I just max out my contributions to that now? I hear Roth is a terrible idea, should I switch over to traditional contributions? You are going to have to do the math on the tax implications. Some people like to do Roth contributions because when their income increases they'll still be able to do the backdoor Roth contributions later. But maybe you don't like paying taxes on it right now? quote:The 401k I discovered in my couch, should I roll that over into my existing Roth IRA or find somewhere else for it? Where? If that 401k isn't a Roth 401k then this sounds like a taxable event because pre-tax money is becoming post tax money. Plenty of people around here know better than I do though. quote:Are those "high" min-balance (25k+) managed funds worth it, or can I do just as well picking some decent index funds? At what point should I stop posting on an internet comedy forum for financial advice and actually pay a professional to do it? The people on this sub-forum (and this thread in particular) take this pretty seriously, it is pretty odd for a website known for starting memes. My thoughts on the high balance funds at Vanguard is that the few 0.01% that can be saved are nice, but I'd rather keep the hands off nature of the Target Retirement funds. Read Four Pillars it is totally worth your time.
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Oct 28, 2014 04:08
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Four Pillars is the bomb, really great introduction to stock investing, common mistakes made by the regular investors and also goes over all the different fallacies that ended in tears over the years. I also give it points for recommending mid-way/conservative investment allocations for new investors instead of promising the reader to get rich by heavily weighting equities. It's basically counter the advice you see in most places that encourages you to go aggressive as possible when you are young. etalian fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Oct 28, 2014 |
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Oct 28, 2014 07:01
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jjack229 posted:I'm looking for some advice on rolling over my 401k from my soon-to-be former employer. Why rush? A Vanguard target retirement fund is great and you can always roll over at a later date when everything is more clear. It sounds like you won't be able to deal with the stock company stock for a while anyway. I'd personally leave your 401k money where it is, see what your new employer's choices are like, then someday roll everything into the new 401k or into your IRA once you have a better idea about a lot of things. If you roll it into an IRA now you either pay a lot of extra taxes at a somewhat high tax rate or you mess up your ability to backdoor roth contributions down the road. It also seems crazy to do this when fallout from the divorce is not yet clear. Sometimes it makes sense to get out of a 401k asap if the choices are awful (for example, 2% ER or higher on everything) but it doesn't sound like that's the case for you at all. Heck, ignoring it for a few years (other than liquidating the company stock) is probably fine too it just means you have an extra account to track.
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Oct 28, 2014 14:20
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I don't really feel like doing all the research and reading to create my own allocation of funds. Am I missing significant gains by just tossing everything in vanguard target retirement 2050 or whatever?
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Oct 28, 2014 14:38
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:I don't really feel like doing all the research and reading to create my own allocation of funds. Am I missing significant gains by just tossing everything in vanguard target retirement 2050 or whatever? Nope, just go ahead and do that. Everyone likes to think that they're a unique snowflake who needs their own special asset allocation, but the truth is that this stuff is all approximations and hypotheses about risk/return/correlation anyway, so throwing it into a Vanguard TR fund is pretty much as good as anything else. The only thing you're missing is, if you had enough money to do Admiral Shares in all the underlying funds, you could get lower expense ratios by doing that instead, but it's not a huge difference so I wouldn't lose any sleep about it.
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Oct 28, 2014 14:46
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Echo 3 posted:Nope, just go ahead and do that. Everyone likes to think that they're a unique snowflake who needs their own special asset allocation, but the truth is that this stuff is all approximations and hypotheses about risk/return/correlation anyway, so throwing it into a Vanguard TR fund is pretty much as good as anything else. The only thing you're missing is, if you had enough money to do Admiral Shares in all the underlying funds, you could get lower expense ratios by doing that instead, but it's not a huge difference so I wouldn't lose any sleep about it. Yeah, I'd say as somebody who's not going to pay a lot of attention to it or want to research a lot, you're likely to lose more money by forgetting to re-balance or picking the wrong funds than you will from the marginally higher expense ratios.
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Oct 28, 2014 15:28
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My company doesn't offer a 401k, and I've already maxed out my Roth IRA for the year. I have a sizeable emergency fund (6 months of expenses,) what else can I do to help set myself up for retirement?
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Oct 28, 2014 19:18
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What are the common fee structures for rebalancing? Is it entirely free? There seems like there has to be a catch.
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Oct 28, 2014 19:22
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Ethanfr0me posted:My company doesn't offer a 401k, and I've already maxed out my Roth IRA for the year. I have a sizeable emergency fund (6 months of expenses,) what else can I do to help set myself up for retirement? You can invest in a regular taxable account. Broad market stock index funds (like Total Stock, Total International) are very tax efficient, due to having usually no cap gain, distributions, lower qualified dividend tax rate, and (for international) ability to claim the foreign tax credit.
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Oct 28, 2014 19:22
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DNK posted:What are the common fee structures for rebalancing? Is it entirely free? There seems like there has to be a catch. When I recently moved my funds within Vanguard from a bunch of funds to one of the Target Retirement funds, it cost me nothing. 
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Oct 28, 2014 19:28
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DNK posted:What are the common fee structures for rebalancing? Is it entirely free? There seems like there has to be a catch. Rebalancing is just buying and selling, aka trading. If your provider charges fees for trading, then you'll have to pay those. Vanguard won't charge you fees for buying and selling Vanguard mutual funds or ETFs (unless you make a ridiculous number of ETF trades or something). I believe they would charge fees for trading non-Vanguard funds.
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Oct 28, 2014 19:44
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Bloody Queef posted:Why did you give them your phone number? It was required when I signed up. They had to send a validation code in a text to my phone for REASONS.
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Oct 28, 2014 21:03
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Henrik Zetterberg posted:It was required when I signed up. They had to send a validation code in a text to my phone for REASONS. Sorry! I didn't think they would do such a hard sell. I still like it for the pretty graphs but I think I will be uncomfortable having my retirement account login information stored somewhere else once it reaches that high. Retirement accounts don't have nearly as much protection from fraud/theft as bank accounts or credit cards do they? I know most banks/credit cards have disclaimers that say they are not responsible for any theft/fraud if you give your account credentials to a 3rd party, but I think I could survive my bank accounts getting hacked, while having a retirement account emptied would be ruinous.
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Oct 28, 2014 21:19
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I just cancelled my account for the same reason, my phone and email blew up daily once I put all my accounts in, no thanks especially for something that just lets me look at pretty graphs of poo poo I already have in mint.
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Oct 28, 2014 22:43
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For as much as it has helped me over the years, I would really like some way to give back to Mint.com without signing up for any of their lovely promotions, and I'm not that keen on using their desktop software like Quicken or TurboTax. Why don't they just have some sort of donation link? :-/
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Oct 28, 2014 23:00
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Illusive gently caress Man posted:I don't really feel like doing all the research and reading to create my own allocation of funds. Am I missing significant gains by just tossing everything in vanguard target retirement 2050 or whatever? The Vanguard retirement funds are pretty decent and also a great way lazy way to do investing if you don't want to be more involved. It's basically just a collection of different asset types that gradually changes over time.
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Oct 28, 2014 23:32
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SpelledBackwards posted:For as much as it has helped me over the years, I would really like some way to give back to Mint.com without signing up for any of their lovely promotions, and I'm not that keen on using their desktop software like Quicken or TurboTax. Why don't they just have some sort of donation link? :-/ I'd imagine that as a company that sells itself on the apperance of being fiscally focused and responsible, having a little button soliciting donations would be a kiss of death.
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Oct 28, 2014 23:32
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SpelledBackwards posted:For as much as it has helped me over the years, I would really like some way to give back to Mint.com without signing up for any of their lovely promotions, and I'm not that keen on using their desktop software like Quicken or TurboTax. Why don't they just have some sort of donation link? :-/ They probably get paid by their advertisers based on subscriber counts, so by using their site you're surely making them money (even if it's not as much as they would if you signed up).
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Oct 28, 2014 23:36
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Nobody from personal capital has called me and their emails seem to come in at a reasonable level. Maybe they just hate me?
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Oct 29, 2014 00:11
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Vilgan posted:Why rush? A Vanguard target retirement fund is great and you can always roll over at a later date when everything is more clear. It sounds like you won't be able to deal with the stock company stock for a while anyway. I'd personally leave your 401k money where it is, see what your new employer's choices are like, then someday roll everything into the new 401k or into your IRA once you have a better idea about a lot of things. Well, for whatever reason I was under the impression that I had to immediately decide how I wanted to rollover the money or have it stuck in the present 401k forever. My company benefits book kept talking about the distribution being within 14 business days of leaving. But I just noticed the paragraph above all that had a line that "for simplicity's sake, this section will focus on distributions taken at the earliest possible date after leaving." In that case, I agree that I'll just let it sit as is, since the 401k is administered by Vanguard, at least until my company stock is transferred. If I do decide to rollover to a Roth, I would probably want to do it in 2015, as my 2015 bonus would be paid in 2016 making my income that year significantly higher, but that still gives me a whole year to figure things out.
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Oct 29, 2014 00:31
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Cicero posted:Nobody from personal capital has called me and their emails seem to come in at a reasonable level. Maybe they just hate me? I talked with Personal Capital, told them that they were basically offering an actively managed mutual fund for a 1% expense ratio. Can't say the call was very enlightening or useful, but neither do I really regret talking to them.
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Oct 29, 2014 05:02
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jjack229 posted:My company benefits book kept talking about the distribution being within 14 business days of leaving. I'm nearly certain there's a statutory requirement that they must give you at least 30 days to make a decision
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Oct 29, 2014 05:45
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Did we ever learn anymore about MyRAs? EDIT: No, we have not. The treasurydirect FAQ does now state that "employers will not be required to offer MyRA access". Got a not-great feeling about this. 
GoGoGadgetChris fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Oct 29, 2014 18:18
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etalian posted:Well places like Personal Capital only make money by getting you to believe in their snake oil financial advisor It's not 4-5%, it's .89% and less. It's not the best, but I thought the TLH was pretty solid value. Weird that they keep bothering Henrik. We told them we weren't interested at all. They were super nice and informative (with numbers and actual discussion of allocation research), and hasn't contacted us since. We're thinking about doing Wealthfront just for the automated TLH. Any thoughts?
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Oct 29, 2014 18:31
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Did we ever learn anymore about MyRAs? They share the annual contribution limit with Roth and traditional IRAs. There's basically no reason for anyone here to care about them. edit: quote:Q: How much can I contribute? Utterly and completely worthless. This does nothing for anyone who doesn't have a 401k or 403b option that an IRA didn't already do better. This is just some kind of baby's first investment account handholding thing that's been a makework project for some committees. Nail Rat fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Oct 29, 2014 |
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Oct 29, 2014 19:43
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Oh yuck. I didn't know that every $1 you put in the MyRA reduced your max IRA contribution by $1.
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Oct 29, 2014 19:46
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MyRA isn't a type of retirement account, its just allowing the general public to invest in the TSP G fund inside of a Roth IRA. The president doesn't actually have the power to add new types of tax advantaged vehicles without the cooperation of Congress.
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Oct 29, 2014 20:02
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Eyes Only posted:MyRA isn't a type of retirement account, its just allowing the general public to invest in the TSP G fund inside of a Roth IRA. Not to mention wall street would scream over not being able to rob customer via high ER funds. Government funds have a expense ratio of ~.02%
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Oct 29, 2014 23:16
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Someone above mentioned mint.com. THANK YOU! That is really slick. Awesome having everything in one place.
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Oct 30, 2014 22:24
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Does the $17,500 contribution limit on 401(k) include employer contributions?
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Oct 31, 2014 17:39
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Nope
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Oct 31, 2014 17:40
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Awesome! Thanks.
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Oct 31, 2014 18:18
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Just looking for a sanity check on a college savings plan. My son is 7 months old, so I'm definitely looking at a long-term strategy. Didn't see a thread on here about college savings and some perusal of the Boglehead wiki and forum seems to endorse saving for an "expected minimum" level of expenses. With that being said, here's what I intend to do: I have an old VUL with a $24k cashout. I plan to cash it out next year when the $8k gains are less likely to push me over some ugly thresholds. Conveniently enough, this appears to be just under the amount that my wife and I can contribute without any gifting limits kicking in. Using the FINRA calculator and using the default earning/inflation rates, it looks like without any future contributions, this would pay for the equivalent of state school tuition for 4 years. Assuming the kid turns out to be smart and gets a scholarship somewhere, this could alternately cover out-of-state books/room&board. Assuming this is a reasonable approach, the Vanguard 529 looks great with 0.2-0.8% ERs as you move from aggressive to stable allocations. Is this a good idea or have I missed something and am just moving money from one overpriced "investment" vehicle into another? PS: My younger self was pretty stupid with money. I contributed 16k to that VUL ~13 years ago. 3% rate of return isn't good, but it's no surprise with a ~1.5% ER.
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Oct 31, 2014 19:01
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Check your state 529 plan first. There may be some tax advantages.
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Oct 31, 2014 19:23
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gvibes posted:Check your state 529 plan first. There may be some tax advantages. I'm in Arizona which appears to provide tax deductions for in and out of state 529 plans.
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Oct 31, 2014 19:29
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Another point I liked from Four Pillars was how most people overestimate their risk tolerance and also how going beyond 80% stock allocation is risky for long term investment.
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Nov 1, 2014 01:18
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etalian posted:Another point I liked from Four Pillars was how most people overestimate their risk tolerance and also how going beyond 80% stock allocation is risky for long term investment. I still think the only way you ever really discover your risk tolerance is by losing a ton of money. I currently keep my 401k 10% cash and 10% bonds because I had to learn the hard way. I thought I was a high risk guy too, until 2009 happened. Four years of investments, poof, 40% gone. Great time to start investing though in the long run. Best time to start investing is right around the start of a crash. Lots of fun painful lessons, followed by years of enormous gains, eventually. I still take some risks investing for sure because my stomach is stronger now, but I'm less unflinchingly optimistic than my younger coworkers, who only know the bull market from like 2011 until now. Whenever the next correction/crash is, I'm sure they'll promptly poo poo themselves.
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Nov 1, 2014 02:10
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