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ROJO posted:I too would be interested in any broad estate planning advice others have - something we have been delaying for far too long. Establish durable power of attorney so when an accident takes you out of commission but doesn't kill you, your designee can work with your various accounts. Your coma/ICU status will not enable them to watch over your money.
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# ? Dec 31, 2021 21:17 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 06:25 |
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Thanks to this thread I was reminded to open a Treasury Direct account and get a couple thousand in I-bonds funded before EOY. Not sure how much I'll put in next year since my emergency fund doesn't have to be super huge anymore, but I'm glad I got this in before considering next year's limits. Unrelated, what's the latest on backdoor and mega backdoor Roth? Haven't seen anything go through and I imagine it won't be retroactive if it does, so I've shared my after-tax + auto-rollover to where I want it for next year and I figure I'll get money returned if anything changes...
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# ? Dec 31, 2021 21:27 |
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Ersatz posted:Roth 401k contributions can be rolled over to a Roth IRA, however. And I've been under the impression that if the Roth IRA was opened more than five years prior to the date of withdrawal, that those rolled over contributions can be withdrawn from the IRA. Is that wrong? That's my understanding as well. If you convert a traditional 401k to a Roth IRA though, then you have to wait 5 years from when the money actually gets into your Roth IRA even if the IRA had already been opened more than 5 years ago. The Roth conversion ladder strategy for early retirement revolves around that rule.
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# ? Dec 31, 2021 22:33 |
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Here's a draft for a thread, maybe it's ready to post? You could give feedback, or just make it better and post it yourself. Maybe most critically, come up with a better thread title Estate Planning; To Wesley, I leave all my figurines (Disclaimer: I am making this thread because I want to learn, not because I have any knowledge of this subject.) We getting older goons. We have jobs, houses, kids. Time to start thinking about dying, like in a mature adult way. People might start fighting over your carcass, who gets the scraps? Uncle Sam, lawyers, heirs, creditors, all kinds of birds show up to feast on your gooney mass. May as well give them your thoughts on the matter, maybe you can even prevent them squabbling too much. Or, the opposite, if that's your thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stork_Derby Some basics: Power of attorney If you get incapacitated this lets people make legal decisions for you. PoA ends when you die Advanced medical directive Tell them docs to pull the dang plug, don't spend all the money keeping you as a vegetable. Estate All the poo poo you have when you die. Probate The court chaperoned process of divvying up your estate. Can take a while. Intestate You died without making a will. Your state will have statutes that determine who gets what in the probate process. Will Legal document you make that determines who gets what in the probate process. Trust A legal entity you create that owns your poo poo for you. Now when you die, the trust still owns the poo poo, so the poo poo doesn't need to go through probate before heirs or whoever can play with it. Transfer on Death etc. There's also things like life insurance, which pays to the beneficiary when you die, and isn't part of the estate/probate process. You can also make accounts ToD/PoD which maybe means they bypass probate? I dunno, go talk to a lawyer
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# ? Dec 31, 2021 23:55 |
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Epitope posted:Maybe most critically, come up with a better thread title Send Lawyers , Guns and Money.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 01:50 |
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As someone who recently went through an estate plan with all sort of ridiculous provisions, I'd suggest: Estate Planning: Sorry, the mineral rights to my condo are per stirpes
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 02:18 |
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An estate thread would be helpful. I've been dealing with my grandmother's estate this year and also my wife and I have been dragging our feet getting our stuff in order.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 04:47 |
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New year, new contributions. Last year, two weeks ago, I put all 6,000 in VTSAX. We're up $40! Now I'm thinking about how best to expose myself to the international and bond markets. As a new investor I was attracted to the idea of broadly following Berstein's recommendations in "If You Can" and dumping 3,000 (the minimum investment) in Vanguard's total bond and international market funds. Thing is, I'm already 10k into I-bonds, and since I'd get another 4 months of the 7.12% at a minimum I was thinking of buying up more of that instead. That doesn't put me in the bond market as much as in I-bonds but that feels okay with that kind of guaranteed return. I can always pull out after a year and invest elsewhere if the rate drops substantially and only at the cost of 3 month's interest at the lower rate. Then the question becomes what to do with that additional 3,000 of space in my IRA. The pull against balance is very hard to resist.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 20:58 |
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The Puppy Bowl posted:New year, new contributions. Last year, two weeks ago, I put all 6,000 in VTSAX. We're up $40! Now I'm thinking about how best to expose myself to the international and bond markets. As a new investor I was attracted to the idea of broadly following Berstein's recommendations in "If You Can" and dumping 3,000 (the minimum investment) in Vanguard's total bond and international market funds. Thing is, I'm already 10k into I-bonds, and since I'd get another 4 months of the 7.12% at a minimum I was thinking of buying up more of that instead. That doesn't put me in the bond market as much as in I-bonds but that feels okay with that kind of guaranteed return. I can always pull out after a year and invest elsewhere if the rate drops substantially and only at the cost of 3 month's interest at the lower rate. Then the question becomes what to do with that additional 3,000 of space in my IRA. The pull against balance is very hard to resist. You can buy ETFs in an IRA if the $3000 minimum on the mutual funds is a problem. At least, I can in mine.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 21:57 |
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Does anyone know where on Vanguard you'd go to find the total amount of contributions you made to your Roth IRA? I can find it for 2021 and 2022, but not for the years before.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 22:28 |
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drk posted:You can buy ETFs in an IRA if the $3000 minimum on the mutual funds is a problem. At least, I can in mine. The minimum is no problem. Just wondering if I want to invest in a bond fund and carry so much in I-bonds.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 22:33 |
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How old are you? I don't plan to have any bonds in my IRA until I'm over 50. If you can psychologically handle recessions and dips without selling then you'll be fine without them. Plus you have the I Bonds any way.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 22:53 |
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Epitope posted:Here's a draft for a thread, maybe it's ready to post? You could give feedback, or just make it better and post it yourself. Maybe most critically, come up with a better thread title This looks great! The only thing I would think to add based on this framework is a tl;dr in big capital letters something along the lines of 'INHERITED PROPERTY ASSUMES THE COST BASIS OF FMV AT THE TIME OF INHERITING', as if nothing else, that's the thing people really, really should know, and not a lot seem to.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 23:02 |
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Mu Zeta posted:How old are you? I don't plan to have any bonds in my IRA until I'm over 50. If you can psychologically handle recessions and dips without selling then you'll be fine without them. Plus you have the I Bonds any way. 33. So yeah, I know the typical retirement date fund would have me fully out of the bonds market. I've got time to make up as well since my retirement investment has been sporadic thus far. Only amounts to like 30 k at the moment, minus my newly created IRA. I'm just so drat risk averse. Were we could revive the good old days of defined benefit.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 23:07 |
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The Puppy Bowl posted:33. So yeah, I know the typical retirement date fund would have me fully out of the bonds market. I've got time to make up as well since my retirement investment has been sporadic thus far. Only amounts to like 30 k at the moment, minus my newly created IRA. I'm just so drat risk averse. Were we could revive the good old days of defined benefit. If you've got a ton of bonds already, I wouldn't personally put more in an IRA. I think at 33, somewhere between 10-30% bonds is appropriate. If you are really risk averse 40 or 50% bonds might be more appropriate, but keep in mind bond funds right now dont yield much. That being said, you're relatively young - a major drop in the market is virtually guaranteed in your investing lifetime, probably many times. It could be next week or it could be 10 years from now. Over the long term, having a diversified equity allocation is a good idea. My opinion is something like 70-90% equity for someone your age, with 10-50% of the equity being international. Asset allocation is personal though - find something that works for you and stick to it.
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# ? Jan 1, 2022 23:43 |
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Time to plunk down another $6k on my Roth IRA. My Roth is currently entirely invested in a target date fund, but I won't be putting any more into those. In fact I'm considering selling it for more index funds. But as for the 6k in cash I'm adding to my Roth - all of my current index funds in retirement savings are large cap domestic and international funds. Should I bother with diversifying them with small/mid cap funds?
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 04:44 |
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Sardonik posted:This looks great! The only thing I would think to add based on this framework is a tl;dr in big capital letters something along the lines of 'INHERITED PROPERTY ASSUMES THE COST BASIS OF FMV AT THE TIME OF INHERITING', as if nothing else, that's the thing people really, really should know, and not a lot seem to. I think a huge number of people also don't understand that there's a $12.06M inheritance tax exemption (that's 2022's number). As in, inheritors pay no inheritance taxes unless you're really quite rich. I'd also throw in that no, a will you downloaded off the internet is pretty much useless, you really do have to pay a lawyer a small fee to arrange a proper will.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 05:19 |
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Sheeeeit, forgot that the 401k employee referral limit went up to 20.5k this year, up from 19.5k last year (IRA limits are unchanged). Updated my contribution deferral amount on my 401k provider's site just now.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 06:56 |
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Ramrod Hotshot posted:Time to plunk down another $6k on my Roth IRA. My Roth is currently entirely invested in a target date fund, but I won't be putting any more into those. In fact I'm considering selling it for more index funds. But as for the 6k in cash I'm adding to my Roth - all of my current index funds in retirement savings are large cap domestic and international funds. Should I bother with diversifying them with small/mid cap funds? Small and midcap is 10 and 20% of the overall market, respectively. Unless you are intentionally tilting to large, it makes sense to hold them at market weight. If you are currently holding an SP500 fund, there are "extended market" funds that pair well as they are essentially everything but SP500. Probably easier to just buy a total market fund though if you want to hold everything at market weight.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 07:08 |
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ESG funds are a scam, yeah? Looking at the top ten holdings of Vanguard's social index fund and it's nearly identical to the holdings of VTSAX.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 18:22 |
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In principle, ESG should be catnip for socially/environmentally conscious investors, but in practice, yes, it's a scam. Companies invent their own ESG metrics or fudge the numbers to look good by someone else's metric. Just wait 'til direct indexing takes off, I predict someone will popularize an actual ESG mixture of holdings that takes off with people who care.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 18:33 |
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I've posted about it before, but if you want to invest in esg, the bond side is the way to do it. That way you're actually putting money into projects that wouldn't otherwise be funded. Calvert Income is one of the better ones I've seen. They have very low returns but you are actually funding things like affordable housing projects, sustainable farming and water projects, etc.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 18:46 |
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The Puppy Bowl posted:ESG funds are a scam, yeah? Looking at the top ten holdings of Vanguard's social index fund and it's nearly identical to the holdings of VTSAX. It's not a scam per se but most of them are not "invest in good companies" but rather "do not invest in bad companies." And there are very few bad companies. Also personally I'm not sure that ESG + index go well together. Feels like you start to need a lot of human judgement once you start rating companies on non-financial factors.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 18:50 |
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moana posted:I've posted about it before, but if you want to invest in esg, the bond side is the way to do it. That way you're actually putting money into projects that wouldn't otherwise be funded. Calvert Income is one of the better ones I've seen. They have very low returns but you are actually funding things like affordable housing projects, sustainable farming and water projects, etc. Interesting. That might be a win win since I was sort of looking for more bond exposure. Thanks for the tip.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 18:53 |
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smackfu posted:It's not a scam per se but most of them are not "invest in good companies" but rather "do not invest in bad companies." And there are very few bad companies. In the past socially reponsible investing was, like you said, more about screening out bad companies. But ESG is more about using environmental, social, and governance for portfolio weighting. That's why you see the same names when comparing to the broad index... they are just weighted differently. It's not a scam, in that, at this point, the most popular ESG funds from Vanguard or iShares are cheap and diversified. I wouldn't invest in them, but if someone feels better investing in them, I wouldn't spend any effort steering them away from them, as I would with real scammy stuff.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 18:56 |
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ESG funds only feel scammy when people come up with handwavy explanations for why they will outperform the market.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 19:03 |
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Matt Levine had a good bit recently about ESG:quote:You could have a model of environmental, social and governance investing in which:
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 21:55 |
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smackfu posted:It's not a scam per se but most of them are not "invest in good companies" but rather "do not invest in bad companies." And there are very few bad companies. Yeah, I think a lot of ESG funds are "total market index minus tobacco, firearms, gambling and nuclear power", or some variation on that theme. Its not exactly a scam, but it is misleading.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 22:27 |
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smackfu posted:Matt Levine had a good bit recently about ESG: This seems like it misses the point when most people own mutual funds or ETFs. The fund gets the shareholder votes and they almost always side with the company and board.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 22:27 |
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drk posted:Yeah, I think a lot of ESG funds are "total market index minus tobacco, firearms, gambling and nuclear power", or some variation on that theme. Its not exactly a scam, but it is misleading. Here in lies the problem. I'm totally fine with nuclear and gambling. Amazon and Home Depot's repugnant treatment of their employees, not so much. Ethical bonds are probably the way to go.
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# ? Jan 2, 2022 23:20 |
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SpelledBackwards posted:Unrelated, what's the latest on backdoor and mega backdoor Roth? Haven't seen anything go through and I imagine it won't be retroactive if it does, so I've shared my after-tax + auto-rollover to where I want it for next year and I figure I'll get money returned if anything changes... Nothing has gone through yet, but retroactive tax changes can and have happened before. I'm taking a wait-and-see approach - shut off my mega backdoor 401k and will hold off on the backdoor IRA for now.
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 05:55 |
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drk posted:Yeah, I think a lot of ESG funds are "total market index minus tobacco, firearms, gambling and nuclear power", or some variation on that theme. Its not exactly a scam, but it is misleading. I realized this recently in my 401k. I don't have a standard SP500 fund available, but there is an ESG fund that is SP500 minus those.
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 15:09 |
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SlapActionJackson posted:Nothing has gone through yet, but retroactive tax changes can and have happened before. I'm taking a wait-and-see approach - shut off my mega backdoor 401k and will hold off on the backdoor IRA for now. I am still waffling on this one. I think I am just going to do my backdoor roth. It is not that hard to reverse.
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 17:24 |
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Does anyone know what's involved in undoing mega backdoor contributions? If it's unreasonably burdensome, maybe I want to wait and see too.
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 17:26 |
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Regarding account creation issues at Vanguard,Happiness Commando posted:The account creation error happened to me recently. I called them up and they said that it was a thing they knew about, the rep just created the account for me. Good luck! your post I'm quoting here is from Dec 12. Yesterday (Jan 2) a friend tried to open an account and ran into seemingly the same issue. She tried to call today to get it resolved and after the automated system went through her choices, she got transferred to a line that was just silence for 5+ minutes until she hung up. I don't blame them at this point if they wanted to just go with Fidelity or Schwab. I found a Bogleheads post showing account creation problems from at least August: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=356996 Edit: oh fun, and apparently the wait time can be 2+ hours to get a phone rep on the line? Yeah, gently caress that https://www.inquirer.com/news/vanguard-website-down-outage-five-days-20211229.html SpelledBackwards fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Jan 5, 2022 |
# ? Jan 3, 2022 20:35 |
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Vanguard has some goofy poo poo going on for sure. When I opened my account in 2013, I didn't finish one of the final steps and the website timed out and lost portions of my submission I couldn't resume the account creation, because I didn't make it far enough to create access credentials, but I couldn't start over either because they had my SSN associated with that botched account
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 20:37 |
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It was a 2 week process for me to get my Vanguard IRA opened and to transfer over from my old lovely actively managed one but it was worth it in the end. By my math in fees for the funds I saved like $200k easy over 30 years. Just give them a call, super helpful over the phone.
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 20:44 |
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Just give them a call, super helpful over the phone. This, in spades. I've had to call Vanguard a couple times over the years and it's incredible to have the phone ring twice and then a human answers? And asks what I need? It's a company of, by and for old people so of course they are bad at computer and great on the phone
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 20:48 |
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:bad at computer Of course this doesn't stop them from (poorly) redesigning their website three times a year like tech companies love to do.
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 20:54 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 06:25 |
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BaseballPCHiker posted:It was a 2 week process for me to get my Vanguard IRA opened and to transfer over from my old lovely actively managed one but it was worth it in the end. By my math in fees for the funds I saved like $200k easy over 30 years. the problem in both SpelledBackwards' post and the bogleheads link (s)he provided was that they couldn't get a vanguard person on the phone in the first place. regardless, other companies also have good phone support (e.g. schwab has more phone hours than vanguard). and these days you can also buy equal or lower-fee funds at other major brokers, including actual vanguard index ETFs for no transaction fee.
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# ? Jan 3, 2022 20:55 |