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Sanguinia posted:Here's a fairly straightforward beginner question I've been chewing on, please forgive if I come across as an idiot: As others have said, if it's for retirement then IRA is the right way to go. Perhaps it's obvious, but it bears repeating that the tax advantaged nature of an IRA (either kind) is an enormous benefit. You need a really good reason to not fill all your tax advantaged investing space before anything else.
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Jul 4, 2021 17:42
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I got a significant raise at work in the last few months and went from doing only 5% of my paycheck towards our 401k (due to the match limit), up to 13%. So going forward I will be hitting my yearly contribution limit, which I’ve never even come close to in my life. So outside of that, I have my HSA contrib maxed now, but with two kids we normally blow through that every year. I also have an Roth IRA. Aside from those, are there any other tax-advantaged investments I can take advantage of? Or is that it?
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Jul 4, 2021 19:59
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Spring Heeled Jack posted:I got a significant raise at work in the last few months and went from doing only 5% of my paycheck towards our 401k (due to the match limit), up to 13%. So going forward I will be hitting my yearly contribution limit, which I’ve never even come close to in my life. If you are married and your spouse is unemployed or a stay at home parent, you guys can open an additional Spousal IRA and contribute to that too. If there's still money left over after that, you can maybe save for your kids college on a 529 if that makes sense in your state of residence.
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Jul 4, 2021 20:25
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The Big Jesus posted:So I got a job offer this week and need some help here. I can join as either w2 or 1099. With the w2, I'd have to do a Simple IRA. This means I can only sock away 13.5 in that. Do I also lose the ability to do regular IRA contribution of 6k with this? Since no one answered last page: yes, you can contribute to a SIMPLE and an individual IRA (traditional or Roth) both at their maximum limits (13.5k and 6k, respectively). There are limits to the tax deductions you can take via a traditional IRA if you are higher income, though (see: https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plan...nt-plan-at-work).
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Jul 5, 2021 07:22
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fsif posted:What do these x times your salary measurements mean practically? The present day salary you would guess would suit you in retirement? they don't mean much for the reasons you posted, they're just a vaguely useful "am i on track" rule of thumb. it's based on your current earnings which they very much assume to be higher than your future expenses based on the math. steady state multiples are generally better although people have a hard time actually estimating what they will spend in retirement. it's very difficult to do as there are a lot of unknowns especially around health care and elder care/housing expenses.
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Jul 5, 2021 19:08
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I'm leaving my job for 18-24 months and will need to roll my retirement fund over to an IRA. OP is quite a few years old, is Vanguard still considered one of the better options there?
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Jul 7, 2021 01:48
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Yes, Vanguard is good because their funds have some of the lowest costs in the industry, and the company is owned by its funds (so, you, as an investor, own the company, not some external shareholders who'd be incentivized to squeeze you for every penny and % they could get away with). Its also boring, which is a good thing for an investment company.
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Jul 7, 2021 03:06
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Counterpoint: you can buy their ETFs for no fee at basically any broker, and low ER index mutual fund equivalents exist elsewhere, too. Vanguard's UI is terrible, phone support is not 24/7, and email support is essentially nonexistent (go try and find a contact email... I'll wait). I agree they are boring. They are also reliable at what they do.
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Jul 7, 2021 03:43
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Yeah, you can do perfectly fine with Fidelity or Schwab funds or whatever, they just mix in good low fee options, with less good, higher fee options. Here's a guide for creating a three-fund portfolio at numerous brokerages: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio#Choosing_three_funds
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Jul 7, 2021 03:55
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Enos Cabell posted:I'm leaving my job for 18-24 months and will need to roll my retirement fund over to an IRA. OP is quite a few years old, is Vanguard still considered one of the better options there? Fidelity/Schwab/Vanguard all fine. Two other considerations: 1) Just leaving the 401k as-is. 2) Depending on your income level during the time without this job, Roth conversions.
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Jul 7, 2021 05:35
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This is less that I think Fidelity is outright lying to me, and more I don't understand how they're getting to this number, but how is Fidelity calculating it's "rate of return"? Are they going by Total Return or Personal Return, really? I just opened this 401k account, so I'm scrutinizing everything trying to figure out how they display things (for one, I hate how they don't tell me the share price they buy funds at, or that they don't seem to count dividends anywhere but inside their "Change in Market Value" number?). How does this equate to a 2.19% rate of return? My total contributions (ignoring the dividend because they seem to also ignore the dividend): $1,484.16 My gain/loss YTD (It's only been 3 weeks): $10.98 Using Morningstar to track this as well, this gives me a Total Return of 2.21% (rounding, fine) but a Personal Return of 1.17%? But straight math that gain is only a 0.7%? Since I'm doing biweekly inflows into the 401K shouldn't I care more about Personal Return than Total Return? Edit: Looking at Morningstar again, my Vanguard accounts give me my Personal Rate of Return, not Total. For my Roth IRA, Personal pretty much equals Total since I only do one cash infusion at the beginning of the year, but my taxable accounts / 401K are basically DCA, so I'd expect my Personal to not equal Total. Fhqwhgads fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Jul 7, 2021 |
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Jul 7, 2021 12:45
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So work recently started offering a 401k as a benefit.  I've already got a roth IRA through Vanguard and I max out my contributions to their VFIFX (target date 2050) fund. That particular fund isn't on offer with the company 401k, but it looks like the TIAA-CREF equivalent (TFTIX) is. The distribution of funds and overall performance seem similar to the VFIFX but the expense ratio seems a lot higher at 0.45%. I did notice that the individual Vanguard funds that would comprise a VFIFX are available (VTSAX, VTIAX, etc), so my thinking is that I could set the same allocations manually and get similar performance to an actual VFIFX. Generally speaking, is this a good plan, or is there something I'm overlooking?
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Jul 7, 2021 20:02
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what are the threads thoughts on vanguards robo-advisor? i'm pretty sure it's not for me, but i'd like a second opinion before i write it off i'm single, in my early 30's making ~40k in gross annual income and with about 65k in assets invested in vanguard ira roth and ira rollover accounts. my only long term investing goal at the moment is saving for a traditional retirement at 67. i've done some work to calculate what size nest egg i'll need to safely retire, and done some monte carlo analysis to determine what kind of path i'm on to meet that number. right now using a three fund portfolio with an aggressive 95/5 equities/bond split, and i plan on rebalancing only if my asset allocation drifts more than 5% off target. i have a rough glide path charted out to increase my bond allocation roughly every 5 years, based mainly on uniformed gut decisions about what seemed reasonable. i put in a few hours a month managing my investments and i find it enjoyable to do so. altogether i don't benefit from potential tax loss harvesting or the general set it and forget it nature of the advisor. i would appreciate a bit more peace of mind when it comes to things like having a more solid foundation underpinning my retirement goal, my progress tracking, and my future glide path, but i'm not sure that's worth an extra 0.2% in annual fees.
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Jul 7, 2021 20:03
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GFBeach posted:So work recently started offering a 401k as a benefit. good plan. also keep in mind that if some components are cheap and others are expensive compared to your Roth IRA you don't have to be balanced in individual investment vehicles, just across the portfolio. for instance, we hold almost all of our international equities in my wife's IRA because there is a very cheap schwab international index fund, and we hold all of our domestic equities in my 401(k) because that's where they're cheap.
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Jul 7, 2021 20:08
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:what are the threads thoughts on vanguards robo-advisor? i'm pretty sure it's not for me, but i'd like a second opinion before i write it off You are fine, you don't need a robo-advisor.
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Jul 7, 2021 21:08
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:what are the threads thoughts on vanguards robo-advisor? i'm pretty sure it's not for me, but i'd like a second opinion before i write it off Your job will be replace you with a robot at some point, don’t voluntarily replace yourself with a robot with your retirement planning ! (Also, good job planning).
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Jul 7, 2021 22:04
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A credit union I bank with is offering me a $5k personal loan at 2% for 12 months. The 2% is attractive, but the 12 month timeframe isn't enough to reliably invest the money in. I guess I Bonds could be slightly profitable, but probably hardly worth the effort. I could pay back the loan either way, but I'm wondering if there's a good way to make use of it.
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Jul 8, 2021 02:40
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:i'm single, in my early 30's making ~40k in gross annual income and with about 65k in assets invested in vanguard ira roth and ira rollover accounts. my only long term investing goal at the moment is saving for a traditional retirement at 67. i've done some work to calculate what size nest egg i'll need to safely retire, and done some monte carlo analysis to determine what kind of path i'm on to meet that number. right now using a three fund portfolio with an aggressive 95/5 equities/bond split, and i plan on rebalancing only if my asset allocation drifts more than 5% off target. i have a rough glide path charted out to increase my bond allocation roughly every 5 years, based mainly on uniformed gut decisions about what seemed reasonable. i put in a few hours a month managing my investments and i find it enjoyable to do so.
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Jul 8, 2021 03:39
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I just started a new job with a government pension, after moving cities. My husband lateraled into his job, which has a 403b. We otherwise max out our Roth IRAs, contribute comfortably to a taxable mutual fund account, and overpay our mortgage every month. In short we are doing well and habitually save. Both employers permit us to contribute to social security. My previous employer had very generous 401k, so I just contributed to that on autopilot for the last ten years, and did not contribute to social security. My husband has maxed his 403b (up to matching) and social security for the last 10 years, and likely will continue to do so in his lateral job as well. My new employer, in addition to the pension, wants to know if I want to contribute to social security. I have some inkling that social security could get offset later when the recipient or his husband also received a government pension. Googling the matter results in several for profit financial advisors offering consultations. Does anyone have any insight on the interplay between social security and pensions? If we're comfortably saving this much already, wouldn't it make more mathematical sense to decline contributions and instead use the money more advantageously?
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Jul 8, 2021 04:17
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Okay I know I already asked but the discussion kinda wandered off what I wanted to talk about so I want to reask this question after doing some research. I had a 401K plan at my old company, I left and they converted my 401K into an IRA. It's currently sitting in my Fidelity account as "Rollover IRA". At first I wanted to take this rollover into my 401K, which is in T Rowe Price. They're directions say I have to ask Fidelity for a check, then I have to send T. Rowe Price info about the rollover account (I'm uncertain where this money came from. It was either from my previous company (ended employment in 2015) or from a way older company (ended employment in 2012) as well as a cover letter??? That seems like a hassle. So I think my other option is to just dump that money into the current traditional IRA account I have with Fidelity right now. That way there will be less paperwork to deal with. Is there any issue with doing the latter? Looking at Fidelity's FAQ for Rollovers I just have to call them up and ask them to merge it. I think what's holding me up is that I may have already converted this thing into an IRA back when I quit in 2015 and I ended up just not putting the money into any stocks/bonds. So assuming that's true I'd just like to combine it with my account that holds my traditional IRA so its all one account. The only downside Fidelity says is that I can't roll these funds back into an employer-sponsored retirement plan. I don't think that should be an issue if I want to keep this money separate from my current employer's 401k anyways, right? To summarize, I have two accounts that look like they're traditional IRA accounts. One of them is just from a previous company's 401K that I think I just ended up not doing anything with it... so for simplicity's sake I'd like to just combine the two. I don't really care if I can't put this money into my _current_ company's 401K. This should be easy without any weird tax issues right?
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Jul 8, 2021 09:32
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BigHead posted:. Under what circumstances is someone allowed to choose whether they pay into social security or not? If you're a W2 employee, you have a 7.something percent payroll deduction that covers SS and Medicare. If you're a 1099 employee, I assume you pay both the employee and employer side of that tax. And you're obviously not talking about getting paid under the table. If social security was optional, no one would pay into it and it would crash and burn within 2 generations.
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Jul 8, 2021 14:09
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It's that time again and I'm wondering, is there any reason not to roll over a 401k if the target date funds are more or less the same? The only difference I saw was a higher turnover rate and slightly lower expense ratio in NewFund as opposed to OldFund.
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Jul 8, 2021 14:48
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Many government and some religious employees are not required to pay into SS. That means they also aren't eligible for any payouts from the programs that depend on work history. As a retirement savings vehicle, SS is an epically terrible deal for current workers. People who are genuinely disciplined savers are way better off on their own. Sounds like Big Head would be, too.
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Jul 8, 2021 14:56
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Happiness Commando posted:Under what circumstances is someone allowed to choose whether they pay into social security or not? Some government pensions allow/require it: https://investor.vanguard.com/retirement/social-security/government-pensions The federal government doesn't (or no longer does?), so I assume they're talking about a state or local government.
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Jul 8, 2021 14:57
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BigHead posted:I just started a new job with a government pension, after moving cities. My husband lateraled into his job, which has a 403b. We otherwise max out our Roth IRAs, contribute comfortably to a taxable mutual fund account, and overpay our mortgage every month. In short we are doing well and habitually save. Social security offsets are really complicated. I believe local SSA offices themselves will have people you can set appointments with and ask questions about how the offsets work. Some key terms to google to prepare: Social Security Windfall Elimination Provision (this is the big one) Social Security Government Pension Offset
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Jul 8, 2021 14:58
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:good plan. also keep in mind that if some components are cheap and others are expensive compared to your Roth IRA you don't have to be balanced in individual investment vehicles, just across the portfolio. for instance, we hold almost all of our international equities in my wife's IRA because there is a very cheap schwab international index fund, and we hold all of our domestic equities in my 401(k) because that's where they're cheap. I'm sure there's some better optimization that I can do, I just wanted to establish a decent allocation to start off with until I had time to look at things in more detail. Thanks for your input!
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Jul 8, 2021 15:24
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incogneato posted:Some government pensions allow/require it: https://investor.vanguard.com/retirement/social-security/government-pensions Learned something new!
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Jul 8, 2021 15:33
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GFBeach posted:I'm sure there's some better optimization that I can do, I just wanted to establish a decent allocation to start off with until I had time to look at things in more detail. Thanks for your input! assuming you are young (like 30s or younger) just putting it in to straight S&P 500 for a few months til you figure out an overall strategy will be just fine, too.
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Jul 8, 2021 17:33
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Strong Sauce posted:To summarize, I have two accounts that look like they're traditional IRA accounts. One of them is just from a previous company's 401K that I think I just ended up not doing anything with it... so for simplicity's sake I'd like to just combine the two. I don't really care if I can't put this money into my _current_ company's 401K. This should be easy without any weird tax issues right? Yes, it is easy and there are no tax issues. The reason you might rather keep it separate is just as Fidelity says, to be able to roll it back into a 401k. And the reason you might want to roll it back into a 401k is to help drop your traditional IRA balance to 0 to be able to backdoor Roth. If you don't care about that and just want to trim down the number of accounts you have, feel free to merge it in.
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Jul 8, 2021 20:24
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Strong Sauce posted:At first I wanted to take this rollover into my 401K, which is in T Rowe Price. They're directions say I have to ask Fidelity for a check, then I have to send T. Rowe Price info about the rollover account (I'm uncertain where this money came from. It was either from my previous company (ended employment in 2015) or from a way older company (ended employment in 2012) as well as a cover letter??? It's really not that big of a deal. I rolled over from Vanguard to Fidelity. I had to ask Vanguard for a check, and a statement regarding the funds (pre tax/post tax), and was able to deposit the check and upload the document using Fidelity's phone application. Mobile depositing a check that large was kinda nerve wracking, but it worked out just fine
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Jul 8, 2021 21:15
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drk posted:Yes, Vanguard is good because their funds have some of the lowest costs in the industry, and the company is owned by its funds (so, you, as an investor, own the company, not some external shareholders who'd be incentivized to squeeze you for every penny and % they could get away with). And if you think you need more than what their very loving basic stripped down web site provides you are probably not a long term investor and should look into something app based like Robinhood.
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Jul 9, 2021 03:20
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drk posted:Yeah, you can do perfectly fine with Fidelity or Schwab funds or whatever, they just mix in good low fee options, with less good, higher fee options. yeah, and at that at that very link, the fidelity and schwab mutual funds suggested are ALL lower expense ratio than their vanguard counterparts and have essentially the same performance. and if you're using ETFs you can use the vanguard ETFs with no fee at any of those three brokers there's just no reason to use vanguard cost-wise anymore in a tax-advantaged account, the market has competed away that efficiency (one can quibble about small LTCG in mutual funds in a taxable account).
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Jul 9, 2021 03:36
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Why does everything take so long in my Fidelity account? Exercise options... "the $ will be available in your account in 4 to 7 business days". RSUs vest, take a week to be distributed, sell the stock, more days, transfer the money to somewhere I can use it, more days. Where the gently caress's my money, assholes.
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Jul 9, 2021 06:51
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US regulations require a 3 day settlement period for stock transactions. They can't begin to move the money until day 4.
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Jul 9, 2021 14:27
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SlapActionJackson posted:US regulations require a 3 day settlement period for stock transactions. They can't begin to move the money until day 4. It's been a two-day settlement period since September 2017, at least for most transactions. Move that timetable up a day. Fidelity's stuck by that time for me, though I admit I keep my transactions very simple.
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Jul 9, 2021 16:21
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knox_harrington posted:Why does everything take so long in my Fidelity account? Exercise options... "the $ will be available in your account in 4 to 7 business days". RSUs vest, take a week to be distributed, sell the stock, more days, transfer the money to somewhere I can use it, more days. Where the gently caress's my money, assholes. Some of this is also them waiting on shares to be delivered to Fidelity from your company, those settle, then they transact them to you, that settles, etc. A cashless exercise I pushed the button on at the opening bell Monday tends to settle out by the following Monday after the closing bell. This is at BAML and e-trade. Haven't used a Fidelity stock plan. RSU's settle faster because there isn't the whole option tango with the employer.
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Jul 9, 2021 16:59
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skipdogg posted:It's really not that big of a deal. I rolled over from Vanguard to Fidelity. I had to ask Vanguard for a check, and a statement regarding the funds (pre tax/post tax), and was able to deposit the check and upload the document using Fidelity's phone application. Mobile depositing a check that large was kinda nerve wracking, but it worked out just fine I rolled over an old 401k into vanguard, but I couldn't get the mobile deposit on the app to work so I had to send the check through the mail, sending a check that large through the mail is even more nerve wracking, but it also worked out.
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Jul 9, 2021 23:00
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dxt posted:I rolled over an old 401k into vanguard, but I couldn't get the mobile deposit on the app to work so I had to send the check through the mail, sending a check that large through the mail is even more nerve wracking, but it also worked out. Not sure if I mentioned here but I just had to do this from my old company's 401(k) (Fidelity) to Vanguard. Fidelity would not even mail the check to Vanguard. They had to mail it to me, and then I had to mail it to Vanguard. What. The. Hell. Such a stupid system.
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Jul 9, 2021 23:09
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Motronic posted:Not sure if I mentioned here but I just had to do this from my old company's 401(k) (Fidelity) to Vanguard. Fidelity would not even mail the check to Vanguard. They had to mail it to me, and then I had to mail it to Vanguard. What. The. Hell. Such a stupid system. Hewitt did the same thing to me when I rolled mine out of Lilly. Check had to come to me and then get forwarded. loving dumb as hell.
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Jul 9, 2021 23:19
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Motronic posted:Not sure if I mentioned here but I just had to do this from my old company's 401(k) (Fidelity) to Vanguard. Fidelity would not even mail the check to Vanguard. They had to mail it to me, and then I had to mail it to Vanguard. What. The. Hell. Such a stupid system. Sundae posted:Hewitt did the same thing to me when I rolled mine out of Lilly. Check had to come to me and then get forwarded. loving dumb as hell. For anyone who might be dealing with this same thing in the future: be very sure you send it along to your new 401k or IRA provider ASAP. There is a time limit (60 days). If you're outside that it'll be treated as a taxable distribution, not a rollover. There are possible exceptions, but I wouldn't bank on them. Which makes it doubly lovely when financial institutions do it that way. It adds the possiblity of a huge costly mistake, when they could just do a direct transfer and avoid that problem entirely.
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Jul 9, 2021 23:38
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