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Just gotta find the right argument to use with the IRS that all my income is just a series of $0.49 stacks, and all taxation on it should round down to zero. I'll start with the gold fringe on the flag.
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Feb 19, 2022 07:20
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Is freetaxusa still the go to for online tax services for people with uncomplicated returns?
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Feb 19, 2022 16:13
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The IRS Free File Fillable Forms (haha try saying that 5x fast) is free and works pretty well, but you have to learn how the 1040 form works.
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Feb 19, 2022 17:23
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drainpipe posted:Is freetaxusa still the go to for online tax services for people with uncomplicated returns? Yes.
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Feb 19, 2022 17:32
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drainpipe posted:Is freetaxusa still the go to for online tax services for people with uncomplicated returns? Speaking as someone who filed a couple hundred taxable trades for the first time ever, the go to sure as poo poo ain't Tax Act. (This is an unpaid endorsement of FreeTaxUSA and insult to Tax Act.)
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Feb 19, 2022 17:47
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My new job incorrectly had me in the wrong state for a while so I got to file two different state returns to try to claw back that money, and freetaxusa was still fine.
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Feb 20, 2022 03:46
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drainpipe posted:Is freetaxusa still the go to for online tax services for people with uncomplicated returns? Let freedom ring with free tax usa
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Feb 20, 2022 13:46
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I make enough money now that I’m above {exist + continuity to emergency fund}. What do I do with like the couple hundred I can *invest* per month? I’d like to buy a home but, well, that poo poo ain’t happening. I recognize there’s an OP with good information but it’s 2022 and the economy is weirder than ever.
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Feb 20, 2022 13:50
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Ornery and Hornery posted:I make enough money now that I’m above {exist + continuity to emergency fund}. Pathway is still the same. While stuff is weird, the key for long term investing is basically keeping everything diversified , tax savings investments first, and staying the course. So if you have an emergency fund of whatever you feel you need (at least 6 months is the recommendation), next would be: -does your employer do a 401k match? If so do this to the max they match first -fund $6k to Roth IRA. If you can manage it, you have until I think April 14th that you can fund or all of $6k for 2021, and you have all year to funnel savings for 2022. So looking at it, I would check to make sure you are getting a match, and then after adjusting for that , start on a Roth with Vanguard or Fidelity. Make sure all funds are index funds with low expense ratios. You can either self balance , or just buy a target date fund if you want Vanguard to do it for you.
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Feb 20, 2022 14:08
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Ornery and Hornery posted:I make enough money now that I’m above {exist + continuity to emergency fund}. An IRA is probably the optimal place for your money, if you're going to be investing a couple of hundred a month that would presumably total 2000-3000 in a year, which is within the IRA contribution limits. I would recommend Roth contributions, but traditional contributions are also an option. I would set up your IRA through Vanguard, in the absence of a particular reason to go elsewhere. In terms of what to invest in, there's really no better advice than the standard "Target date fund or roll your own mix of index funds if you disagree with the target date allocations." The economy is indeed weirder than ever, but none of us have actionable information about what's going to happen next, so...follow the standard advice 
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Feb 20, 2022 14:13
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Neat-o thank you friends. Certainly a different strategy than I initially planned: gold, precious gems, firearms, baked beans, nuka cola, etc.
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Feb 20, 2022 18:16
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Not to say you're wrong about general weirdness in 2022, but it seems like anytime there's a concrete suggestion for what's weird about the economy today, someone finds a historical period that was weirder. One was someone worried about how concentrated the biggest public companies are in the USA, but if you go back to the early 20th century or something it was way more concentrated. Meme stocks have always been a thing. Interest rates jump around, or don't, for what feels like ages. It's probably less weird than you think, and the usual advice takes it into account.
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Feb 20, 2022 18:30
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pokeyman posted:but if you go back to the early 20th century or something it was way more concentrated. Not to undercut your point but the great depression happened immediately after that.
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Feb 20, 2022 18:34
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Ornery and Hornery posted:Neat-o thank you friends. Beans should be part of your emergency fund, though the allocation is up to you. Me? I'm 20% beans / 80% USD.
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Feb 22, 2022 15:08
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still thinkin bout thos beans
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Feb 22, 2022 15:36
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Chad Sexington posted:Beans should be part of your emergency fund, though the allocation is up to you. Worse case scenario you can generate your own gas. Clever plan.
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Feb 22, 2022 15:58
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHlEkaXfgMw
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Feb 22, 2022 17:51
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It does seem intuitive that passive investing is going to lead to less market churn, poor price discovery and create false growth driven by the index herd. The question is what is a reasonable alternative for the average investor? This situation seems like an almost inevitable product of capitalism in the Information Age
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Feb 22, 2022 19:37
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KillHour posted:Not to undercut your point but the great depression happened immediately after that. And not to undercut your point, but someone who bought in just before the 1929 crash and held for 30 years did just fine. In fact, since 1879, any investor who bought (the equivalent of, before 1950s) the S&P500, reinvested dividends and held for at least 15 years, there has only been one time that they lost money. That's going month by month, by the way. https://seekingalpha.com/article/4380863-149-years-of-higher-returns-for-lower-risk quote:Since 1871, investors with a 15-year investment horizon earned a much tighter range of annual returns that fall somewhere between 17.34% and 1.07%. This leads to an interesting question: how many times in history have investors bought the S&P 500, held for fifteen years, reinvested all dividends each month and *lost* money? Of course, historical returns are not a guarantee. But if you're in the market for 10+ years your odds are incredibly good, and if they're 15+ years, you're drat near guaranteed to at least not lose money, and on average you'll make like 10% annual return or so. To get back to the original point, then: despite the market being way more concentrated, going through actual world wars, the great depression, and many other very serious bad events and poo poo, the long-term investor in the American stock market has always done well. Maybe global climate change and ecological collapse will be the final end to that century+ of success within the next 30 or 40 years, I can't prove it won't be, but recent history suggests that it won't be.
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Feb 22, 2022 19:41
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hobbez posted:It does seem intuitive that passive investing is going to lead to less market churn, poor price discovery and create false growth driven by the index herd. Yeah that's the kicker. There's really not anything for the average investor that would make any difference. Structurally we seem to have painted ourselves into a corner.
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Feb 22, 2022 20:04
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Leperflesh posted:And not to undercut your point, but someone who bought in just before the 1929 crash and held for 30 years did just fine. since you're talking about multi-decade timeframes and people also have access to TIPS funds and inflation-protected bonds today, it helps to also consider real returns instead of just nominal returns. for example, from its January 1966 peak, it took 29 years for the DJIA to breakeven in real price return: https://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart that 1929 crash? "just fine" meant zero real price return after 30 years. markets can go a long time without particularly benefitting investors. but zero real return is better than negative real return!
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Feb 22, 2022 20:18
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Leperflesh posted:And not to undercut your point, but someone who bought in just before the 1929 crash and held for 30 years did just fine. Except it was impossible to invest in an sp index fund (or any other index fund) until 1975. And a lot of our backward looking returns data suffers heavily from survivorship bias when calculating returns. So in the 1929 example you likely would have been invested in individual stocks which do have the potential to go to zero.
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Feb 22, 2022 21:37
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Ornery and Hornery posted:I make enough money now that I’m above {exist + continuity to emergency fund}. Echoing the advice that a Roth is a good idea for this though you may also have the option to make pre-tax contributions to your retirement plan 403B through payroll if you decide that retirement savings is what you want to do with this money. You mention wanting to buy a home and the other thing to note about a Roth IRA is that five years after your first contribution you can withdraw your contributions without penalty if you put that money to a first-time home purchase within 120 days of withdrawal, even if you're younger than the normal 59.5 year age requirement on withdrawals. So if another 2008 happens in a few years and you suddenly find yourself able to buy a house, that money is still accessible to you.
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Feb 22, 2022 21:58
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Yup, those are good points! Also a lot of financial regulation has changed, the markets do not behave today the same as they behaved in 1900, and neither does the US or global economy. I feel like it's still worth pointing out, though. In the long run, stocks always seem to go up, if you buy them all.
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Feb 22, 2022 22:32
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Joementum posted:Echoing the advice that a Roth is a good idea for this though you may also have the option to make pre-tax contributions to your retirement plan 403B through payroll if you decide that retirement savings is what you want to do with this money. That’s tight. I did not know that about home purchases. Thank you!
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Feb 22, 2022 23:07
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Don't Roth IRAs allow you to withdraw contributions without penalty regardless?
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Feb 22, 2022 23:12
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Joementum posted:You mention wanting to buy a home and the other thing to note about a Roth IRA is that five years after your first contribution you can withdraw your contributions without penalty if you put that money to a first-time home purchase within 120 days of withdrawal, even if you're younger than the normal 59.5 year age requirement on withdrawals. So if another 2008 happens in a few years and you suddenly find yourself able to buy a house, that money is still accessible to you.
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Feb 22, 2022 23:15
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Dang learn something everyday
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Feb 22, 2022 23:19
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hobbez posted:It does seem intuitive that passive investing is going to lead to less market churn, poor price discovery and create false growth driven by the index herd. The question that goes unanswered is: What % of active investors do you need to have to ensure price discovery persists? How high could you crank the ratio of passive investors before there gets to be serious structural problems? Remember, passive investors are price-takers. They don't particularly affect the prince on a daily basis because price discovery happens at the margins. At the same time that you have a massive passive investment base, you have these algorithmic traders riding the edge of instants to scrape fractions of a penny of profit. If the herd really dies drive detectable 'false' growth then there is a massive, massive arbitrage opportunity. And then you have to ask: Which index? There is a galaxy of index investment products being sold. The S&P 500 is only one of many. All these 'passive indexes' that people are being persuaded to buy into (and swap between) is active investing by another name. For the mass of know-nothings to sit their money in the market and do nothing to be a problem, that seems to imply that the only way price discovery works if if you have a bunch of idiots actively trading. Which, if they are actually idiots, would mean they can't introduce much but noise. That's not really how price discovery is meant to function.
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Feb 22, 2022 23:38
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doingitwrong posted:For the mass of know-nothings to sit their money in the market and do nothing to be a problem, that seems to imply that the only way price discovery works if if you have a bunch of idiots actively trading. Which, if they are actually idiots, would mean they can't introduce much but noise. That's not really how price discovery is meant to function. Sounds like the whole system falls apart if you effectively remove insider trading.
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Feb 23, 2022 01:51
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nelson posted:Sounds like the whole system falls apart if you effectively remove insider trading. That's the part you're not supposed to say out loud. But basically I don't see how it's not that 99.9% of the time now that we have the ability to communicate information instantaneously to the entire planet all at the same time.
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Feb 23, 2022 02:34
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doingitwrong posted:The question that goes unanswered is: What % of active investors do you need to have to ensure price discovery persists? How high could you crank the ratio of passive investors before there gets to be serious structural problems? Remember, passive investors are price-takers. They don't particularly affect the prince on a daily basis because price discovery happens at the margins. At the same time that you have a massive passive investment base, you have these algorithmic traders riding the edge of instants to scrape fractions of a penny of profit. Within a given index, I don't think it matters how many investors participate in price discovery. It could be 50%, 1%, 0.01%, they will always have 100% control over relative pricing of securities that make up the index. No amount of buying or selling of S&P500 index funds will ever cause, say, Apple's market cap to move relative to IBM's. Indexers can only impact the entire index's overall price level. If this was an issue then you'd see massive price issues with stocks where the majority of shares sit idle - tons of stocks with founder majority control meet this criteria and yet the world still turns. Across different indices pricing has always been dictated by the risk tolerances of large institutions (pensions, insurance companies, hedge funds). They're still going to be making their decisions based on the relative risk vs expected return of the various indices.
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Feb 23, 2022 08:34
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mark blyth's point seemed to be less about price discovery and more about the potential for further entrenching systemic inequality and creating new moral hazards when a few players can exercise so much corporate voting power. that topic is more in his wheelhouse. and fair enough, i can't say that i would trust the good intentions of blackrock, but it doesn't seem like something that would blow up the stock market or the global economy. at least not directly
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Feb 23, 2022 09:12
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I just started a job at an American unversity which gives me access to a 457 and a 403(b). My salary (60k) is not nearly enough to put away 40,000 every year, but I do have some spending money in savings and a non-retirement brokerage account. In this situation, is it correct to live off my savings and reduce my paycheck to a small amount for as long as I can? The 457 and 403 are through Fidelity, so I have access to good funds with low ERs
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Feb 23, 2022 22:53
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A couple questions: - I figure this has probably been asked at some point, but: I snagged the HMBradley account that was all the craze awhile back and got their 3% HYS. However, since it's so popular they knocked it down to 1% unless I get a credit card of theirs and spend $100 a month minimum. I was thinking of doing that and then just putting my cable bill or something on there monthly. Is this a good idea / bad idea? - I get RSUs from my company, and well... I've been very lazy about reinvesting them. They're market sensitive, and probably realized it's time to sell / reinvest / diversify. Is there a good spot on doing this? I can only do these in my trading windows, which isn't too big of a deal. Also, with the economic downturn, my RSU value has lost a lot of money, so I'm not sure if I should wait for recovery or just say gently caress it and start diversifying.
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Feb 23, 2022 22:56
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feelix posted:I just started a job at an American unversity which gives me access to a 457 and a 403(b). My salary (60k) is not nearly enough to put away 40,000 every year, but I do have some spending money in savings and a non-retirement brokerage account. In this situation, is it correct to live off my savings and reduce my paycheck to a small amount for as long as I can? The 457 and 403 are through Fidelity, so I have access to good funds with low ERs I don’t quite follow. an emergency fund is more important than retirement. Are you saying you have an excess savings the you basically want to transfer to your new retirement savings options ? If so, I would just say make sure you don’t go over board, keeping an emergency savings fund is extremely important , but if you are way over your savings fund, then sure that would be a way to balance it. Reminder to still do a Roth 401k and factor that in. If you have an excess, you could instantly put away either up to $6k for 2021, or $12k for both 2020 and 2021, which I think would be a better first step than doing the transfer I think you are proposing.
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Feb 23, 2022 23:01
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doingitwrong posted:The question that goes unanswered is: What % of active investors do you need to have to ensure price discovery persists? How high could you crank the ratio of passive investors before there gets to be serious structural problems? Remember, passive investors are price-takers. They don't particularly affect the prince on a daily basis because price discovery happens at the margins. At the same time that you have a massive passive investment base, you have these algorithmic traders riding the edge of instants to scrape fractions of a penny of profit. I don’t know what most of these terms are and I look forward to googling them one day, maybe. nelson posted:Sounds like the whole system falls apart if you effectively remove insider trading. Can you explain (in super easy language) how you came to that conclusion from the quotes text? I mean I believe you and assume finance is all corruption, just curious about the specifics.
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Feb 23, 2022 23:07
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Duckman2008 posted:Reminder to still do a Roth
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Feb 23, 2022 23:34
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Ornery and Hornery posted:I don’t know what most of these terms are and I look forward to googling them one day, maybe. To simplify this, if everyone just invests in one stock, then that stock will go to the moon regardless of whether the company is actually good or not, just because everyone is pumping money into it. Some people have said this is what is happening to the stock market currently with indexes. Except there are so many indexes and also there are so much money still active that its not really a problem. If it becomes a problem then not investing in indexes will make more money, people will shift to that and then back and forth. As for the whole insider trading thing who knows.
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Feb 23, 2022 23:48
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Duckman2008 posted:I don’t quite follow. I am not planning to spend my emergency fund. I have more than my emergency fund in savings (just haven't put it anywhere yet), and some short-term and long-term investments in a brokerage account. I believe I cannot deposit money directly into my 457 and 403, I can only do payroll deduction. I don't get a 401k, and my IRA is already maxed out for this year. I am proposing to raise my payroll deduction to a level where my paycheck is unlivable and spend my savings until I start to get to emergency fund levels, at which point I would reduce my deduction.
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Feb 23, 2022 23:52
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