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No idea about the transfers but we opened the ones for our kids as soon as we had their SSN's. We put in $200/month each into age-based index funds, expense ratios about 0.11 comparable to the vanguard 529 index funds available with Illinois Bright Start.
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Dec 12, 2019 16:30
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Is it just me, or does California's 529 program majorly suck? Now that we have a kid on the way, I'm looking at it and there appears to be no taxable benefit at all. Contributions aren't deductible, tax on gains is "deferred," and no prepaid plans. Why would I even bother?
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Dec 12, 2019 20:29
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Sundae posted:Is it just me, or does California's 529 program majorly suck? Now that we have a kid on the way, I'm looking at it and there appears to be no taxable benefit at all. Contributions aren't deductible, tax on gains is "deferred," and no prepaid plans. Why would I even bother? The tax is deferred until you withdraw. If it is for a qualified education expense then there are no taxes. If it isn't then you pay taxes plus a 10% penalty fee. For what it's worth, only a handful of states let you deduct 529 contributions.
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Dec 13, 2019 01:15
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Sundae posted:Is it just me, or does California's 529 program majorly suck? Now that we have a kid on the way, I'm looking at it and there appears to be no taxable benefit at all. Contributions aren't deductible, tax on gains is "deferred," and no prepaid plans. Why would I even bother? It's why I am in New Hampshire's plan via Fidelity.
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Dec 13, 2019 01:55
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Anyone doing the New York 529? Gonna have a baby here next month and have been eyeing it for a while now. I wanna make sure there are no idiosyncrasies. AFAIK you can save up to $10,000 state tax deductible a year, which is gonna go a long way towards making it bearable when I finally become a resident here.
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Dec 13, 2019 02:48
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Residency Evil posted:On the topic of 529s, when did you guys open them for your kids? Theoretically you can front load 2 (two parents) * 5 years * 15k/year = a total of 150k, correct? My wife and I are thinking of having kids in the next year or two, but we're not sure how many we'll have. It looks like it's not possible to split funds between two beneficiaries with a single 529, but you can move funds between two 529s? Theoretically, would it be possible to open a single 529, then open a second 529 for a second child, then transfer funds over to the second child? Presumably transfers are still subject to the same limits? I opened ours when the kids got SSNs at a few months old. If you really want to get a head start, you can open the 529, name yourself as the beneficiary and start contributing before the kids are born. Then when they're born you switch the beneficiary to Jr. You can't have more than one beneficiary at a time with a 529, so you'll need one account per kid if their withdrawal timeframes will overlap. You can do rollovers and transfers between 529 accounts, but are generally limited to once per year. The IRS considers a change in beneficiary to be a taxable gift from the old beneficairy to the new one. So if you're gonna put $doctor in it right away and re-designate/transfer it around later, you may find yourself filling out several 709s for you an even maybe your kids. I think it's simpler to just open one account per kid and fund them all annually. If there's money leftover in one kid's account, you can transfer it to younger siblings or someone else later.
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Dec 13, 2019 03:51
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Sundae posted:Is it just me, or does California's 529 program majorly suck? Now that we have a kid on the way, I'm looking at it and there appears to be no taxable benefit at all. Contributions aren't deductible, tax on gains is "deferred," and no prepaid plans. Why would I even bother?
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Dec 13, 2019 05:04
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moana posted:California does a decent job of rolling back regressive tax loopholes imo. And yet Prop 13 lives on.  But yeah, agreed re: what 529 plans actually act as. Gotta play the game, though. 
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Dec 13, 2019 08:15
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Animal posted:Anyone doing the New York 529? Gonna have a baby here next month and have been eyeing it for a while now. I wanna make sure there are no idiosyncrasies. AFAIK you can save up to $10,000 state tax deductible a year, which is gonna go a long way towards making it bearable when I finally I have a NY 529 for my son but we don’t live there. 5 years ago NY was highly regarded because of low ERs but I don’t know how it compares these days. No complaints. Can’t speak to the 10k deduction.
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Dec 14, 2019 01:21
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MisterJed posted:I have a NY 529 for my son but we don’t live there. 5 years ago NY was highly regarded because of low ERs but I don’t know how it compares these days. No complaints. Can’t speak to the 10k deduction. Still good ERs based on my research about a year ago. It was a toss-up for me with CA, but an annoying website form bug during NY signup ended up breaking the tie in favor of CA.
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Dec 14, 2019 03:55
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We did NY for the ER too. If I remember right there are several more or less the same options if you don't have state taxes to consider.
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Dec 15, 2019 01:42
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So considering the low ER’s and the fact that it’s tax deductible it’s a no brainer that I should put money in it, after having maxed out my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA. State and City taxes in NYC are so high that i’m trying to minimize the hurt. I’ll set it up once the baby has a SSN.
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Dec 15, 2019 03:38
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Animal posted:So considering the low ER’s and the fact that it’s tax deductible it’s a no brainer that I should put money in it, after having maxed out my 401k, Roth IRA, and HSA. State and City taxes in NYC are so high that i’m trying to minimize the hurt. I’ll set it up once the baby has a SSN. Just FYI, you don’t have to wait for that. You can get one with yourself as beneficiary and change that once your baby is here. I’ve had one for a while now, but my daughter isn’t born yet.
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Dec 15, 2019 04:40
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I kind of got a bit of a surprise this last week, my MIL just sold her old veterinary clinic, and told my wife that the offer covers the mortgage and back taxes (which were surprise #1), and that she and my father in law had sort of been relying on the sale of the clinic to help fund their retirement (surprise #2) because while my MIL has an IRA, my FIL apparently doesn't (surprise #3). They're 56 and 55, respectively. I have no idea how dire the situation is, and given the general relationships between members of our family I'm unlikely to get hard numbers. But long story short, my wife and I had a discussion about it and decided that we're in a position where we can help them out, at least a little. They're opening an IRA for my FIL, and he's figuring out what the details of his 401k are, so they're at least moving in the right direction. My wife and I think we're going to be able to at least help them max out their IRA contributions and hopefully get them on some kind of footing for a decent retirement. I have no idea how bad the situation is, but my MIL ran a business and has an MBA so I'm hopeful that they at least won't be destitute and this is more of a "we need to play catch up to be able to have fun in retirement" and not a "we currently won't be able to afford food" kind of situation. All that said, any advice, specific or broad? This isn't a situation I was expecting in my own financial planning. My wife and I are on the same page (which amounts to, we're making sure that we won't hurt our own future in the process, but will help them out to the best of our ability) but the specifics are a little nebulous as we figure everything out. I'm mostly curious if there are any tax implications I should think about regarding giving them funds for their IRA. I assume it would amount to a gift, and all of the reporting requirements for gifts would probably apply, but does anyone know otherwise?
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Dec 16, 2019 19:17
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counterpoint: your MIL ran a business that was worthless and owed substantial back taxes
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Dec 16, 2019 19:22
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MockingQuantum posted:I kind of got a bit of a surprise this last week, my MIL just sold her old veterinary clinic, and told my wife that the offer covers the mortgage and back taxes (which were surprise #1), and that she and my father in law had sort of been relying on the sale of the clinic to help fund their retirement (surprise #2) because while my MIL has an IRA, my FIL apparently doesn't (surprise #3). They're 56 and 55, respectively. I have no idea how dire the situation is, and given the general relationships between members of our family I'm unlikely to get hard numbers. But long story short, my wife and I had a discussion about it and decided that we're in a position where we can help them out, at least a little. They're opening an IRA for my FIL, and he's figuring out what the details of his 401k are, so they're at least moving in the right direction.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:24
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MockingQuantum posted:I kind of got a bit of a surprise this last week, my MIL just sold her old veterinary clinic, and told my wife that the offer covers the mortgage and back taxes (which were surprise #1), and that she and my father in law had sort of been relying on the sale of the clinic to help fund their retirement (surprise #2) because while my MIL has an IRA, my FIL apparently doesn't (surprise #3). They're 56 and 55, respectively. I have no idea how dire the situation is, and given the general relationships between members of our family I'm unlikely to get hard numbers. But long story short, my wife and I had a discussion about it and decided that we're in a position where we can help them out, at least a little. They're opening an IRA for my FIL, and he's figuring out what the details of his 401k are, so they're at least moving in the right direction. Don't help them without meaningful numbers, you should be sure they aren't about to blow any proceeds from the sale on Disney themed car leases first. They should show they are invested in fixing this. Was your MIL a vet or just someone who ran the practice? How do you owe back taxes on something that prints money like that? (I know, I know.) You can always earmark some money, or help the IRA get topped up before April 15, but I would stop there until you have a real come to jesus talk with them.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:28
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H110Hawk posted:Don't help them without meaningful numbers, you should be sure they aren't about to blow any proceeds from the sale on Disney themed car leases first. They should show they are invested in fixing this. Was your MIL a vet or just someone who ran the practice? How do you owe back taxes on something that prints money like that? (I know, I know.) She was a vet and owned the practice, she closed the practice a few years back after she tried to merge it with another practice and the other practice pulled out of the deal before it could happen. I have no idea why she didn't just sell the practice rather than closing it down, it's possible she tried and never got any takers. She's still working as a vet. The issue, I think, is that the building sat vacant for a couple of years and she wasn't able to sell it, so I think it was just losing money during that time. I don't know all the details, I'm pretty disappointed and frustrated that it even got to this point, and that they thought they were being helpful/compassionate/whatever by not telling us sooner. I think the veterinary practice consistently only broke even, probably because my MIL is kind of a pushover and/or didn't charge as much as she probably should have been, or sometimes didn't charge people at all in situations where they couldn't afford it. I don't know that for certain, that's more of a guess. I've told my wife that I need to have an understanding of their current situation before I'll feel comfortable doing much of anything, but the reality is I'd rather help them fund their IRAs for the foreseeable future than not, and have to completely support them financially ten years from now. I definitely don't think any money we give them would get blown on anything frivolous, I think they're more the types that just don't think that hard about what they're spending their money on, and could cut the fat in a lot of places without it really impacting their quality of life. Honestly I think my help would be contingent on me being able to put money directly in their IRAs, so at the very least I know whatever money I give them doesn't go anywhere else. I know that could mean they just blow money elsewhere that they otherwise would have put in the accounts themselves, but that's something we'll have to figure out, I guess. I don't know how it got to this point, but it's genuinely sending me into depression thinking about it.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:42
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MockingQuantum posted:She was a vet and owned the practice, she closed the practice a few years back after she tried to merge it with another practice and the other practice pulled out of the deal before it could happen. I have no idea why she didn't just sell the practice rather than closing it down, it's possible she tried and never got any takers. She's still working as a vet. The issue, I think, is that the building sat vacant for a couple of years and she wasn't able to sell it, so I think it was just losing money during that time. I don't know all the details, I'm pretty disappointed and frustrated that it even got to this point, and that they thought they were being helpful/compassionate/whatever by not telling us sooner. I think the veterinary practice consistently only broke even, probably because my MIL is kind of a pushover and/or didn't charge as much as she probably should have been, or sometimes didn't charge people at all in situations where they couldn't afford it. I don't know that for certain, that's more of a guess. Hope isn't lost here. If she's a vet working for a practice she can't tank (as other people manage it) she should be at least cash flow positive. Hopefully a real come to jesus talk right now will help them get on the straight and narrow. To reiterate, I'm not saying don't help them, just don't make commitments until all parties are on board and working with the books open. You don't need to see every time they buy a latte, but you should have a grasp on the total balance of the various accounts, and if interest is being paid somewhere. If you start paying them $14k/year to max their IRA's out of your post-tax dollars, you should be seeing them making honest real efforts to curtail frivolous spending. It's way easier over here on this computer screen to type those things out, but they are the ones who have been living far beyond their means for decades, not you. And yes, failure to save for retirement as a licensed animal doctor qualifies. It sucks that fluffy is going to go to little kitty heaven, but your parents need to save for retirement. This isn't them skipping this years BMW lease so fluffy's owners can afford to prolong its life for another year or two with little kitty surgery. Having charity cases is fine, when it's budgeted, and isn't causing the practice to tank. What does FIL do? You said 401k - that's promising. What is his income?
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Dec 16, 2019 20:07
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H110Hawk posted:Hope isn't lost here. If she's a vet working for a practice she can't tank (as other people manage it) she should be at least cash flow positive. Hopefully a real come to jesus talk right now will help them get on the straight and narrow. To reiterate, I'm not saying don't help them, just don't make commitments until all parties are on board and working with the books open. You don't need to see every time they buy a latte, but you should have a grasp on the total balance of the various accounts, and if interest is being paid somewhere. If you start paying them $14k/year to max their IRA's out of your post-tax dollars, you should be seeing them making honest real efforts to curtail frivolous spending. He's a delivery driver (former long-haul trucker). I have no idea what his income is but I'm sure it's not great, and probably hasn't ever been great. I'm hoping to get all that info from them, including any other possible debts we may not know about. I'm hoping that this is just a temporary help-them-catch-up situation but I'm emotionally preparing myself for anything.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:10
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quote:I kind of got a bit of a surprise this last week, my MIL just sold her old veterinary clinic, and told my wife that the offer covers the mortgage and back taxes (which were surprise #1), and that she and my father in law had sort of been relying on the sale of the clinic to help fund their retirement (surprise #2) because while my MIL has an IRA, my FIL apparently doesn't (surprise #3). They're 56 and 55, respectively. I have no idea how dire the situation is, and given the general relationships between members of our family I'm unlikely to get hard numbers. But long story short, my wife and I had a discussion about it and decided that we're in a position where we can help them out, at least a little. Did they directly say they needed help? Like someone else said, if they can work until full retirement age and collect SS, that will help. In the mean time, you said they could trim fat from their budget. Saving for the next 11-12 years in addition to whatever they currently have may be enough. This goes back to numbers though, which is the only way you're going to find out the whole story.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:26
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Inept posted:Did they directly say they needed help? Like someone else said, if they can work until full retirement age and collect SS, that will help. In the mean time, you said they could trim fat from their budget. Saving for the next 11-12 years in addition to whatever they currently have may be enough. This goes back to numbers though, which is the only way you're going to find out the whole story. They didn't, my FIL let something slip that they might be in bad financial shape, and when my wife asked her mom about it, her mom said it wasn't as bad as her dad said, but that they're not in as good of shape as they could be. I don't really know what that means in real terms, but I'm hoping that means they're in a better situation than I'm dreading. Honestly knowing that might be the case, it's clear they have cut back on spending, so I think they're at least not blissfully unaware of their situation. I couldn't see either of them trying to retire before 67, honestly, and I can't really see my FIL retire, period. I think he's the type that will want to work until he just can't anymore. I really hope the situation isn't very dire, I just expect the worst because I'm the sort of person to always expect the worst when it comes to money. Money stresses me the gently caress out, all the time. The reality is there's going to be a hard upper limit to what my wife and I can to do help regardless, it's just a matter of making sure I'm comfortable in the knowledge that whatever help we do offer is going to actually help and not just offset bad spending elsewhere.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:42
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I put together some financial planning documents in August or September 2016 (when I started posting in BFC) for the next 6 years and I just checked and I was off by exactly $3,000 in my guess of what our net worth would be as of December 1, 2019
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Dec 16, 2019 23:55
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:I put together some financial planning documents in August or September 2016 (when I started posting in BFC) for the next 6 years and I just checked and I was off by exactly $3,000 in my guess of what our net worth would be as of December 1, 2019
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Dec 16, 2019 23:57
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EAT FASTER!!!!!! posted:I put together some financial planning documents in August or September 2016 (when I started posting in BFC) for the next 6 years and I just checked and I was off by exactly $3,000 in my guess of what our net worth would be as of December 1, 2019 Hopefully that’s $3k above your estimates, good job. I don’t have the patience or know-how to make accurate estimates so I just use a brute force approach of saving as much as I possibly can and hoping the green net worth number on Mint keeps getting bigger and bigger.
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Dec 17, 2019 00:18
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Animal posted:Hopefully that’s $3k above your estimates, good job. I don’t have the patience or know-how to make accurate estimates so I just use a brute force approach of saving as much as I possibly can and hoping the green net worth number on Mint keeps getting bigger and bigger. My green number goes up despite my net income chart going horribly red month to month, mint must be double spending my credit card payments or something. Too lazy to fix though
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Dec 17, 2019 16:14
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FateFree posted:My green number goes up despite my net income chart going horribly red month to month, mint must be double spending my credit card payments or something. Too lazy to fix though
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Dec 17, 2019 16:24
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Hoodwinker posted:I stopped using mint and just made a google sheet that uses the =GOOGLEFINANCE formula to pull current share prices down so for most of my accounts I don't need to update anything except my bank account numbers and my current 401k every two weeks, and everything else on dividend days. Unless you explicitly need to track your budget month over month, using mint as a net worth calculator suuucks. Are there any good alternatives? The issue with google finance is that we have various accounts across multiple providers.
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Dec 17, 2019 16:41
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I dumped everything into Fidelity full view which works pretty well I have a separate cash flow tracking/estimating sheet that goes out to 2021
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Dec 17, 2019 16:44
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Personal capital is my tool. Includes basic budgeting as well. Shows networth, cash flow. Pretty good retirement simulator.
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Dec 17, 2019 16:52
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Y'all need a budget
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Dec 17, 2019 16:56
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Moneyball posted:Y'all need a budget There's a certain irony to a monthly subscription service for budgeting software.
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Dec 17, 2019 16:59
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Residency Evil posted:Are there any good alternatives? The issue with google finance is that we have various accounts across multiple providers. Me too, which is why I started with something like this: https://www.doughroller.net/investing/an-awesome-and-free-investment-tracking-spreadsheet/ and modified it they way I want. On the second tab you assign an asset class to each "thing" you own and use GOOGLEFINANCE to pull the price. It's all consolidated on the first tab.
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Dec 17, 2019 17:00
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Residency Evil posted:Are there any good alternatives? The issue with google finance is that we have various accounts across multiple providers. code:Motronic posted:Me too, which is why I started with something like this: https://www.doughroller.net/investing/an-awesome-and-free-investment-tracking-spreadsheet/ and modified it they way I want. I've been tacking poo poo onto my spreadsheet for the past few years, so it also lets me calculate my savings rate, calculates my tax liability for a year so I can adjust my withholding properly, gives me 30 year projections based on my current career rate of return, and is hooked up to a google form I can cleanly fill out to update my values without poking around random cells in the spreadsheet. I really need to get around to giving it the capability of making an orange julius while I'm at it. Hoodwinker fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Dec 17, 2019 |
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Dec 17, 2019 17:03
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Residency Evil posted:Are there any good alternatives? The issue with google finance is that we have various accounts across multiple providers. If you are drinking the thread kool-aid you probably have fewer than 10 actual tickers you need to track. Sum the shares and add a line per ticker. I may have 8? Accounts with Fidelity across my wife and I but it's 4 total tickers, including the 529. Add 1 for my espp and I'm done. I use full view, which let me tell you has some hilarious ideas about my cash flow. (double and triple counting things for like internal transfers.)
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Dec 17, 2019 17:03
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Hoodwinker posted:I'm not sure why google finance is a problem for this? All google finance does is tell you the share price for a given symbol. So you say like H110Hawk posted:If you are drinking the thread kool-aid you probably have fewer than 10 actual tickers you need to track. Sum the shares and add a line per ticker. I may have 8? Accounts with Fidelity across my wife and I but it's 4 total tickers, including the 529. Add 1 for my espp and I'm done. Sure, but those 10 tickers are across 4-5 different accounts and get added to on a monthly basis. Then there are cash/savings accounts, a mortgage, etc. It'd be nice to see that on one page when needed without manually updating it. YNAB is probably great, but I just have a weird hangup about paying for another monthly service. We do have a fidelity account, so I may take a look at that fullview thing.
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Dec 17, 2019 17:14
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Residency Evil posted:Sure, but those 10 tickers are across 4-5 different accounts and get added to on a monthly basis. Then there are cash/savings accounts, a mortgage, etc. It'd be nice to see that on one page when needed without manually updating it. YNAB is probably great, but I just have a weird hangup about paying for another monthly service.  This gets pulled into an excel sheet as a new row:  Which you can push up to the top of the sheet using this formula (so you can reference a fixed cell from another spreadsheet using =IMPORTRANGE):  I realize that, yes, this is not automatic. You have to log into each account whose value changed due to a change in the underlying share count (abstractly this includes your cash/savings/mortgage/credit cards). Once your form is set up and your sheet is configured it takes less than 10 minutes to use. I never have to worry about my sheet breaking or having it double pull something or any of the other annoying and weird bugs that come with the online services, and I've been able to customize it to my liking. I'm also a weirdo who likes doing this and I respect that you may not be, but hopefully the steps I laid out are helpful to somebody else who wants to do something like this themselves.
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Dec 17, 2019 17:24
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Wow all this spreadsheet talk and I came here to post my spreadsheet question! Until now, I've kept a 4-fund allocation across each of my accounts and that's made it easy to rebalance. If I have $1000 to put into my Brokerage account, I just use a spreadsheet to tell me what to buy in that account. But now, I'd like to get a little more tax-advantageous and not hold bonds in my Brokerage and not hold international in my taxable accounts. But now my spreadsheet doesn't work and I can't just buy to rebalance as easily. I'm using the spreadsheet above that pulls in google finance and that's great for telling me how I'm doing against my targets HOWEVER, I would love to have a box where I can enter a deposit amount and tell it which funds I have available in that account and it tells me how to buy to rebalance. But I'm struggling with the formula. Am I over thinking this?
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Dec 17, 2019 18:22
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dexter6 posted:Wow all this spreadsheet talk and I came here to post my spreadsheet question! code:code:Trying to come up with a massive set of changes to each formula so I could generically plug that in seems unnecessary.
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Dec 17, 2019 18:30
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dexter6 posted:Until now, I've kept a 4-fund allocation across each of my accounts and that's made it easy to rebalance. If I have $1000 to put into my Brokerage account, I just use a spreadsheet to tell me what to buy in that account. Yes. Just never buy the wrong thing in the taxable accounts. Plug in the number, look at the new targets, then when you go to execute think "OK I am short on bonds according to the sheet. But the money is taxable. My Roth IRA has 10k in VTSAX so I will exchange $1k of it for bonds, then buy $1k of VTSAX in my taxable account." Just manually hunt for the fund you need to exchange in tax advantaged accounts if you need to make a trade in a taxable account and leave it at that. It's OK to skew off the targets, the market is going to do that tomorrow anyway. If you are making deposits large enough to be multiple % of your whole portfolio regularly enough for it to matter that's a good problem.
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Dec 17, 2019 19:06
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