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CubicalSucrose posted:Info we'd need: Here are all the ones available to me:
There's also the target growth funds (20XX) that don't have tickers, all with a expense and gross expense ratio of 0.38. I don't really know what to look for. 10 year rate of returns?
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Aug 29, 2023 00:13
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Boris Galerkin posted:Here are all the ones available to me: The usual recommendation is something like VTI, but you don't have a total US market fund. Instead you have: FXAIX - S&P 500 - Large Cap FSMDX - Mid Cap FSSNX - Small Cap So you can combine those to reassemble something like VTI for your account. Or if you want to take on extra risk but with potentially higher returns, you can just use the S&P500 index, which was Buffet's recommendation (not that his views matter much in this context).
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Aug 29, 2023 00:19
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S&P500 performance is so close to a US total stock index that there's barely a reason to prefer the latter: Assuming Boris Galerkin is under 50 and not pushing more into bonds than usual, I'd do like 70% FXAIX (S&P500 index), 20% FTIHX ( fidelity total international index), 10% FXNAX (Fidelity total bond index) and call it a day. You can adjust the ratio of domestic to international if you like, it's kind of handwavey IMO.
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Aug 29, 2023 00:30
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Boris Galerkin posted:Here are all the ones available to me:
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Aug 29, 2023 00:35
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movax posted:The game I would like to play / automate is keep the least amount of money in my Checking account possible and in a timely fashion ID the credit card bills due that month (unpredictable because I expense tons of stuff for work), sell the appropriate amount of SGOV, transfer to Checking, pay bill. I’m losing out on like 44 dollars a month by not keeping a month of float in my checking account. Hardly worth it to me.
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Aug 29, 2023 01:03
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The Instagram targeted ad algorithm has started showing me ads to invest in “rare whiskey casks” to fund my retirement. I think I know what to do.
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Aug 29, 2023 04:37
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Boris Galerkin posted:The Instagram targeted ad algorithm has started showing me ads to invest in “rare whiskey casks” to fund my retirement. I think I know what to do. Drink the whiskey and safely store the casks?
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Aug 29, 2023 11:09
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Invest in whiskey is a new and exciting one. I wind up seeing a bunch of old people tv (Me TV) and some gold company has hired Chuck Woolery for an ad promoting the old "give us money and we'll give you a piece of paper that says you own a part of the gold in our vaults" I bring it up because they start by doing a comparison of what would happen if you had $12,800 in cash and $12,800 in gold in a safe since 1976 and ZOMG the cash stays the same but that gold is now worth $122,000!!!!!! Conviently leaving out a lot of factors in the intervening years, or what would have happened if that money was invested instead.
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Aug 29, 2023 13:58
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Turbinosamente posted:Invest in whiskey is a new and exciting one. I wind up seeing a bunch of old people tv (Me TV) and some gold company has hired Chuck Woolery for an ad promoting the old "give us money and we'll give you a piece of paper that says you own a part of the gold in our vaults" I’m sure 1976 was some historic low in the gold market too.
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Aug 29, 2023 14:33
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Turbinosamente posted:Invest in whiskey is a new and exciting one. I wind up seeing a bunch of old people tv (Me TV) and some gold company has hired Chuck Woolery for an ad promoting the old "give us money and we'll give you a piece of paper that says you own a part of the gold in our vaults" Nothing makes me feel prepared for the coming collapse like a piece of paper saying I own some gold somewhere. What's really funny is that having a bunch of booze in your basement would probably be much more useful than a bunch of gold in some hypothetical mad max scenario. A quick run in portfolio visualizer shows that $12.8k in gold in 1976 would be worth $165k today. So they are strangely under selling themselves. But yeah, that same $12.8k in the total US stock market in 1976 would be worth $2.3 million today.
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Aug 29, 2023 15:02
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Even the people who assert the dollar and fiat currency are fake value their alternatives (precious metals, crypto etc.) in dollars. It's like even at the end of their dollar liberation story they still plan to cash out for more dollars.
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Aug 29, 2023 15:44
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I could be misremembering the final amount of the gold (and the intial money amount). It was more concerning how slick the ad was, and that the piece of paper method of "ownership" was being used still today. I thought it had gone out of fashion. Perhaps you guys are right that 1976 was a low for gold and they backfigured whatever the biggest pay out was then on Wheel of Fortune to get the goofy 12k and change amount? The ad begins something like "Hi I'm Chuck Woolery. Back in 1976 when I hosted Wheel of Fortune I gave a contestant $12,800, which was quite a lot of money back then. Now what if that contestant had put that money in a safe?" As he's wandering to a wall safe to pull out the stack of bills vs the stack of gold and make the comparison. It bugged me because I'm not used to well produced buy gold ads; it was at least on the level of a reverse mortgage ad if not better. I'm sure it suckered somebody's grandparents.
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Aug 29, 2023 15:58
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Subvisual Haze posted:Even the people who assert the dollar and fiat currency are fake value their alternatives (precious metals, crypto etc.) in dollars. It's like even at the end of their dollar liberation story they still plan to cash out for more dollars. lovely double post but I think that's the plan, at least for the precious metal stackers. The current excuse is it's a store of wealth for the future, so that when the economy shits itself and bread is $500 a loaf they can cash in and provide for their family. Either Weimar era level inflation happens again or metals shoot up so much in price they become the new 1%.
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Aug 29, 2023 16:28
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The recent question about HYSAs motivated me to look at my savings account as well and I clearly need to do something about it. The last couple of pages have made me uncertain about HYSAs vs. SGOV vs. whatever, so I'd appreciate a quick sanity check about my specific situation if anyone has time. In brief, I've maxed out my Roth IRA every year and am on track to max out my 401k contributions for the year. I also bought I bonds this year and last year. After that, I still have enough money in my current checking & savings accounts to cover about a year of regular living expenses (barring emergencies). I have a mortgage at 2.75% but no other debts, so nothing worth paying off. My savings account interest rate is trash right now (0.04%). I feel like I should switch this over to an HYSA, but haven't done so just because of laziness (my current bank doesn't offer HYSAs in my state) and the general confusion of "if this is so good, why do traditional banks still have trash interest rates". Can I assume this concern is irrational and I should just switch so I lose less money to inflation? Additionally, I've seen people in the thread recommend SGOV or more complicated things. If I don't want to put a lot of extra time into this, what's preferable? My 401 account is with Fidelity and my IRA is with Vanguard, so could I just do SGOV through those? Or just get an HYSA and call it good?
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Aug 29, 2023 16:39
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re: whiskey casks, it's very clever of some distillery to offload risk onto "investors." In the whiskey business, you basically have more or less hand-made oak casks that you age your booze in. You stack them up in a purpose-built building and wait for however many years you're aging it, you can check on it periodically. Some of the water escapes by migrating through the wood cask, and so does a bit of the alcohol (which means there's sort of a slightly alcoholic haze of booze air surrounding your big stacks of casks) - this loss is referred to as the "angel's measure". Then when it's time to bottle, you draw the booze out of the cask, mix with water to get the required proof, usually also mix with other casks, and bottle it. Thing is, every once in a while one of the barrels is full of spoiled product. The wood had a flaw or a tiny gap or a bug got in or whatever, the contents are ruined. A distillery has to just account for some slightly unpredictable rate of loss, and the longer you age the whisky the more loss you get both from the evaporation and cask spoilage. So... hey, "sell" the barrels to individual investors, who take on the loss risk for you! Brilliant! If "their" barrel spoils, they get nothing, if it finishes unscathed, buy the whiskey back from them at wholesale, bottle it, charge them shipping and handling to send them however many bottles they want to buy, and you can't lose.
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Aug 29, 2023 16:48
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Vesna posted:The recent question about HYSAs motivated me to look at my savings account as well and I clearly need to do something about it. The last couple of pages have made me uncertain about HYSAs vs. SGOV vs. whatever, so I'd appreciate a quick sanity check about my specific situation if anyone has time. If you already have a taxable brokerage account, buying SGOV or a federal/treasury money market is easier than opening up a new HYSA. If you dont have a taxable brokerage account, maybe now is the time?
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Aug 29, 2023 16:54
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drk posted:If you already have a taxable brokerage account, buying SGOV or a federal/treasury money market is easier than opening up a new HYSA. If you dont have a taxable brokerage account, maybe now is the time? I don't think I have a taxable brokerage account - my Vanguard interface lists Roth Ira and Traditional IRA (only used for rollover once). Fidelity also only lists retirement accounts. Would this just be opening an "Individual or Joint Brokerage Account" (https://investor.vanguard.com/accounts-plans/individual-joint-brokerage) on Vanguard, putting money into it, and then dropping it into SGOV or one of Vanguard's funds like VMFXX?
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Aug 29, 2023 17:10
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Vesna posted:Would this just be opening an "Individual or Joint Brokerage Account" (https://investor.vanguard.com/accounts-plans/individual-joint-brokerage) on Vanguard, putting money into it, and then dropping it into SGOV or one of Vanguard's funds like VMFXX? Yes, though if you already have a Vanguard IRA account, you may be able to log in to that and add a taxable account using your existing information. I've done it but it was a while ago.
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Aug 29, 2023 17:23
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Vesna posted:The recent question about HYSAs motivated me to look at my savings account as well and I clearly need to do something about it. The last couple of pages have made me uncertain about HYSAs vs. SGOV vs. whatever, so I'd appreciate a quick sanity check about my specific situation if anyone has time. I already had an account a Fidelity due to my 401k being there. I moved my savings over to them and put it into SGOV a couple of months ago. Mostly due to SGOV having a lower expense ratio than the default position. (SPAXX, a government money market fund) Both SPAXX and SGOV are highly liquid and super safe. My plan is to keep my efund in SGOV and my new car fund in SPAXX just so the totals are separate on the screen. The practical difference between the two is pretty small. Technically an FDIC insured HYSA is a bit safer I suppose but I don't want to bother opening an account at yet another place. I don't have a Vanguard account so I'm not familiar with their interface but Fidelity makes all this stuff really easy. I've sure Vanguard has an equivalent of SPAXX. (Edit: They do, VMFXX.) Traditional banks pay zero point fuckall interest because they know most people are lazy and won't bother to move their savings. That's it. There is no reason not to move other than the effort required to do so. Antillie fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Aug 29, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 17:25
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Antillie posted:I don't have a Vanguard account so I'm not familiar with their interface but Fidelity makes all this stuff really easy. I've sure Vanguard has an equivalent of SPAXX. (Edit: They do, VMFXX.) I'm pretty positive in general regarding Fidelity. Currently I'm using my individual brokerage account there like a savings account. I have a bank elsewhere that I use for paying bills and cashing checks, but I just transfer over excess funds to Fidelity to short term invest in FZFXX/SGOV/t-bills. It's pretty easy and quick to transfer money either way between the bank and Fidelity. In theory I could even use Fidelity for checking account stuff too via their "cash management account", but I haven't crossed that bridge yet.
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Aug 29, 2023 17:44
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Subvisual Haze posted:I use both Vanguard and Fidelity but I find Fidelity's website much more intuitive and easy to move money in/out of. Vanguard's UI is a maze and I had to google to figure out how to move money out of the account. Fidelity CMA was so easy to set up I regret not doing it years ago. It was like 3 clicks or something ridiculous. That's probably a little exaggeration but not by much.
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Aug 29, 2023 17:47
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Thanks all, I just opened a brokerage account with Vanguard since they already had all my info from the IRA.  Follow-up question! Looks like Vanguard has two relevant funds: VUSXX - Vanguard Treasury Money Market Fund: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vusxx VMFXX - Vanguard Federal Money Market Fund: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vmfxx I didn't immediately find SGOV but eventually found it on a more annoying Vanguard page: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/stocks/profile/sgov Is there a clear better option here?
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Aug 29, 2023 17:50
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vmfxx can be used as a settlement fund in VG brokerage accounts and will be fewer clicks to park money in than SGOV while giving a basically identical return (just a bit choppier since vmfxx pays out once a month, while sgov's market price continually adjusts). if you're not doing things frequently I'd just use the default/cheapest VG mmf sgov is more useful if you do not have a mmf like that available in your account (e.g. schwab's settlement options are low yield)
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Aug 29, 2023 17:56
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Thanks! I put $5000 into the account and bought VMFXX with it - just as a way to ease into this new thing. Will gradually move more into it once I become more comfortable with the concept, but it definitely feels easier now that I have the account and a fund already.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:09
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Vesna posted:Thanks! I put $5000 into the account and bought VMFXX with it - just as a way to ease into this new thing. Nice work!
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Aug 29, 2023 18:11
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Vesna posted:Is there a clear better option here? Not really. We're talking about savings here so returns aren't really the goal. Nothing wrong with going with whatever takes the least effort. Any of them are going to pay over 100 times what your old bank account did. The only possible caveat would be state income taxes. Being 100% US government treasuries SGOV is exempt from state income taxes. That probably isn't the case for VUSXX and VMFXX. (Not tax advice, just a rando on the internet. Consult an actual tax pro for actual answers.) Personally I live in a state that doesn't have state income tax so it makes no difference to me but for people in places like NY or CA it might matter.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:14
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Antillie posted:The only possible caveat would be state income taxes. Being 100% US government treasuries SGOV is exempt from state income taxes. That probably isn't the case for VUSXX and VMFXX. (Not tax advice, just a rando on the internet. Consult an actual tax pro for actual answers.) Personally I live in a state that doesn't have state income tax so it makes no difference to me but for people in places like NY or CA it might matter. This is a good point. I do currently live in a state with state income tax, so I might need to consider this for any additional investment. I already use an accountant for my tax returns so it wouldn't be a ton of extra paperwork, but I'll talk to them about whether I should take this into account.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:28
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Someone on the Bogleheads forums made a google sheet that you can input your top federal and state tax rate into and it'll tell you what has the best post-tax return out of the Vanguard funds at the moment. The difference is pretty small in the end, and there's no predicting where the rates will go tomorrow. VMFXX tends to have slightly higher current rates, but VUSXX tends to contain more treasuries by percent so can potentially make up the difference via state taxes avoided. But even estimating the percent government obligations in the two funds has been difficult this year due to reverse repos, so it's hard to predict the percent of state taxes you'll avoid too. Either are good options and the difference is probably pretty minimal in the end.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:33
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With all of the microscopic min/maxing, I wonder what the over/under is on number of days spent tinkering with spreadsheets (therefore reducing your time in market) before you come out behind where you would have been if you had just followed one of the basic/default fund recommendations and invested immediately.
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Aug 29, 2023 18:46
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Should I just open an IRA with TD Ameritrade since my brokerage account is with them already? My plan is to just put the IRA money into VTI or treasury ETF. I'm very close to the Roth contribution limit so maybe I should just open a regular IRA to make things easier. For background, I currently have 401k withholding into a Roth but my employer match goes into traditional. The last 3% of the match goes into a "savings" retirement account that you can withdraw from after 2 years (savings in quotes because it basically generates no interest). Since it's a retirement account, it's subject to withholding and early withdrawal penalties before age 59 1/2 if I just transfer it to my bank account, hence the desire to open an IRA to avoid those penalties. Since it's just 3%, this is a relatively small amount. I'm almost 38. Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Aug 29, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 18:58
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Don’t open a Trad IRA other than to do backdoor Roth contributions.
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Aug 29, 2023 19:01
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Don’t open a Trad IRA other than to do backdoor Roth contributions.
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Aug 29, 2023 19:09
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Josh Lyman posted:Should I just open an IRA with TD Ameritrade since my brokerage account is with them already? My plan is to just put the IRA money into VTI or treasury ETF. I'm very close to the Roth contribution limit so maybe I should just open a regular IRA to make things easier. I don't fully understand that savings plan, but if it's the difference between getting no interest for 2 years and being able to invest the money, that's a good reason to open a traditional ira. You can always convert the money to roth later if you want to enable the backdoor. And I'm pretty sure that anything you open with TDA will be schwab very soon, if they even allow you to open one. Which is fine, I like schwab, but YMMV.
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Aug 29, 2023 19:15
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Josh Lyman posted:Should I just open an IRA with TD Ameritrade since my brokerage account is with them already? My plan is to just put the IRA money into VTI or treasury ETF. I'm very close to the Roth contribution limit so maybe I should just open a regular IRA to make things easier. It's odd that you can't invest the funds from the 3% match that are in a traditional 401(k) account. I likewise have my contributions in Roth 401(k) and my employer contributions in traditional 401(k), but I can invest those in the same funds as my own. Perhaps you can look at doing an in-service rollover to get that money out into an IRA where you can have better choices for investments?
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Aug 29, 2023 19:38
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Josh Lyman posted:So your suggestion is to open a Roth IRA to put the 3% extra match into? Who enforces the Roth contribution limits? That's my main concern. My annual raise is quite small so it's not clear whether I will be above the Roth contribution limit in a few years assuming the limit is raised each year. What match? IRAs don’t have matching. If you’re around the income limit just do the back door up front: 1. Open and Contribute to a trad IRA - lump sum is most convenient. 2. Convert this in to a Roth IRA leaving zero trad balance. 3. Indicate that you have done this on your taxes.
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Aug 29, 2023 20:09
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esquilax posted:I don't fully understand that savings plan, but if it's the difference between getting no interest for 2 years and being able to invest the money, that's a good reason to open a traditional ira. You can always convert the money to roth later if you want to enable the backdoor. Muir posted:It's odd that you can't invest the funds from the 3% match that are in a traditional 401(k) account. I likewise have my contributions in Roth 401(k) and my employer contributions in traditional 401(k), but I can invest those in the same funds as my own. Perhaps you can look at doing an in-service rollover to get that money out into an IRA where you can have better choices for investments? So I withhold 8% into a Roth TSP (401k), get a 5% match into a traditional TSP (401k), and 3% match into this "savings" account. That 3% match is what I'm asking about. I generally like to keep my checking account between 10-15k for credit cards bills and emergencies, and will transfer "extra" money to my TDA brokerage account a few times a year. KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:What match? IRAs don’t have matching. If you’re around the income limit just do the back door up front: 2. After I do this for the first time, can I contribute to my existing trad IRA and move it to my existing Roth IRA once/year? Or does the trad IRA no longer exist after the convert and I have open a new trad and Roth IRA every year and then combine the Roths at some point?
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Aug 29, 2023 20:26
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Josh Lyman posted:1. This gets back to my question about who enforces whether you can open/contribute to a Roth IRA. Should I just open a Roth IRA while it seems like I'm eligible? I can't speak to anything specific to your weird savings plan but these are general questions with general answers: 1. There aren't ever any limits on opening a Roth IRA - the limits are on how much you can contribute to them. There's no need to open one preemptively. 2. When you convert traditional IRA money into Roth IRA money, you pick a destination Roth IRA. It can already have money in it, so most people doing backdoors just have one Roth IRA that they convert into every year. If you convert all of the source account you typically have a choice between closing it and leaving it open with $0 in it. Most people doing backdoors opt for the latter so they don't have to open a new account every year.
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Aug 29, 2023 20:48
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Opening a Roth IRA can get a head start on (one of the many, confusing) five-year clocks.
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Aug 29, 2023 20:53
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raminasi posted:I can't speak to anything specific to your weird savings plan but these are general questions with general answers: With respect to the contribution limit on a Roth IRA, if I'm over the MAGI limit, do I end up paying a penalty when I file my tax return? Seems like neither your employer nor IRA administrator would know whether you're over the MAGI limit, except if your wage alone is above it then your employer would know. But even then it's not clear to me that HR would bother blocking you from withholding into a Roth 401k. Should I just go ahead and open a Roth IRA with TDA and move over the 3% that's vested (around $4200)? Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Aug 29, 2023 |
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Aug 29, 2023 20:57
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Josh Lyman posted:Thanks, this clears up some of my specific process questions. Yes, if you overcontribute to a Roth IRA and you don't fix it in time (there are a few different ways to do this) you get hit with a pretty gnarly penalty when you file. This has nothing to do with your employer (because your employer has nothing to do with any of your IRAs - they don't even know they exist) or your IRA provider (because they know nothing of your income). You just have to keep track of it yourself. (I'm not sure why you even brought up the Roth 401k - it's got a similar name to a Roth IRA because its tax treatment is similar, but it's a completely separate account with different rules, funding sources, and contribution limits.) As to what you "should" do, again, I have no idea what the rules are for the weird match savings account. If that's pre-tax money that you are allowed to roll into a tIRA - and that's the "if" I have no idea about - I can think of three options that are all "bad" one way or another:
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Aug 29, 2023 21:21
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