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I have around $15k in my brokerage fund after getting out from under a financial advisor. I've already maxed IRAs for 2014 and 2015 for both my wife and I. I'm already maxed on my 401k and using some other windfall cash to put even more money at the 401k above and beyond the company match. I'd like to put that extra $15k into something that will have a decent balance between risk and maintaining the principal so that if I need to buy a new car in the next two or three years (or more, hopefully) that would help with the cost. I'd rather keep with ETFs and as such VFICX looks fairly solid. My concern as a newbie - given the likelihood of interest rates going up within the next year or sooner, and VFICX's focus on bonds approaching maturity, would that put a hurt on the 2/3-year performance? Should I be looking at different factors in my research?
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Apr 15, 2015 14:28
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slap me silly posted:In the last five years, VFICX has had two 6% drops almost overnight. The first one took two years to recover and the second one hasn't recovered yet. If your time horizon is 2-3 years and your withdrawal is determined by when your car breaks down, you have zero ability to avoid that kind of thing. Are you comfortable with taking on that kind of risk to boost your expected (not actual) return by a couple of percent? That's a good point and my risk aversion would depend on comparable/better funds. But definitely thank you for pointing out the ETF/normal fund point, I was looking only at Vanguard's description of the fund. I'm leaning towards them since my IRA and brokerage are already with them. I'm also at this point open to mutual funds so long as they're diversified enough - I'm not looking for a single industry/region/market focus. Its drops were quick to recover. VSMGX seems to have fared well enough over time. Would that be a better option for my needs?
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Apr 15, 2015 15:14
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MickeyFinn posted:If I were in your position I would use a high interest online savings account, a CD ladder or some other FDIC insured vessel. Yeah, even if I go into bond funds like VBIRX, the increased rate of return assuming 2-year terms is less than 1%, and I'd much rather have the peace of mind than the money at this point. Thanks for the reality check, thread!
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Apr 15, 2015 15:57
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BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:Why don't you just invest in the same holdings as the rest of your retirement portfolio? I don't really see the point of being excessively risk adverse for a maybe, possible non-critical expense in 2-3 years. Your absolute worst case is the market drops 30% or something at the exact time your car breaks down and you end up with a.... cheaper car, right? This is true. I wouldn't mind not having to buy another car or otherwise. I just had a stop-loss execute on another holding that the broker had thought of as a money park - IYC - so it brings things upwards a little bit. If nothing else, VFORX had very good 1-year returns.
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Apr 15, 2015 16:52
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My wife had back disability come in (your tax dollars at work) and my grandfather passed away, with me being the beneficiary of his life insurance. The former check cleared and I'm filling out paperwork for the latter. Where can I park roughly $27k until I figure out what to do with it so it appreciates a little more interest than a savings account? Following that, once we have all this together, we'd have around $50k. That's 1/4th the principal on our mortgage. Would it be a better idea to: A) pay it towards the principal and recalculate our monthly payment for the remaining 27 years on the mortgage then use the extra money freed up monthly to add to our normal brokerage account contribution (we've already maxed our IRAs for the year) B) put it into VFORX, which is basically the backbone of our brokerage for retirement C) Do a mix of A and B Also, earlier this year I was gifted around 120 shares of PRU. Should I basically be holding onto this until retirement, because it's freaking PRU, or should I be keeping an eye on the price and unload if it goes below $85 for a long period of time?
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Aug 21, 2015 17:08
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Dessert Rose posted:That sounds like it makes up a pretty large chunk of your portfolio. I'd probably sell it and stick the proceeds wherever it makes sense based on your asset allocation. Our PRU holdings are one of 14 other holdings in our brokerage account (my IRA is separate, it has its own holdings from rolled-over 401ks and normal yearly contributions) and is the only single-company stock I own. Everything else is mutual funds or ETFs. Secondary question: given the slump, what is a good 5-year investment in case I need to fund a chunk of a new car? I have around $11k from selling AMBA at around $120 after buying at $74ish which I don't mind a moderate risk on, but since China's growth is finally coming into question I'd rather focus on something that's focused on the US domestic market, or a Vanguard/Vanguard-ish ETF thereof. Not sure if this qualifies in the investing thread given the timeframe.
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Aug 24, 2015 13:26
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I have around $10k from rolling over an old 401k. I currently have around $83k in a normal brokerage account, $35k of holdings in a traditional IRA as follows: VFORX, 998 shares VTV, 16 shares JKE, 20 shares JKK, 18 shares JKL, 17 shares I was thinking that it would be a decent idea to go into VCR, at least until after Christmas, but I'm open to suggestions on what to do with the $10k. I've already maxed mine and my wife's IRAs for the year.
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Sep 8, 2015 19:49
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Cicero posted:What's your reasoning for your current ETFs over just having a total stock market index fund? Why VCR (until after Christmas)? The ETFs are from when I was still working with a financial planner. They go back to 2008 and have done very well over the years. I've thought about selling them but I like the idea of a very balanced portfolio that brackets the four corners of the Morningstar bracket, and ETFs throw a huge amount of diversification into the fray. It seems like a secure keeper. I'd be open to arguments to sell them but I'm in no real hurry to do so. VCR covers consumer discretionary spending and the holiday season is coming up. It's a relatively simplistic reasoning that people will spend on discretionaries more during the holidays. I would see how well it did thereafter and either keep it there or sell and revisit.
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Sep 8, 2015 20:36
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Cicero posted:They don't look like bad ETFs to me so I think keeping them is fine, especially since you avoid paying capital gains for now. In the future I would just buy total stock market funds for your stock allocation if you can't think of a strong rationale to do otherwise. Fair enough on both points. Given that I've got just enough to make Admiral shares, should I put it in the mutual fund (VTSAX) or ETF (VTI)? The long term performance of both is comparable, but it seems to make more sense to go for VTSAX than VTI given share price.
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Sep 9, 2015 16:36
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I bought VHT in June as a place to park former 401k funds in hopes of diversifying a bit into healthcare. It's down to 131, I bought at 142, in the red for around $284 and it doesn't look like it'll recover, at least the way I'm reading healthcare these days. Am I better off putting it into VTSMX if I want a good option to hold for a year or two?
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Nov 6, 2015 17:12
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BEHOLD: MY CAPE posted:Buying a sector ETF is the opposite of diversifying. Unless you are a professional financial analyst with experience in healthcare economics I would probably discard your personal read of the healthcare sector. Where you put money to hold it for a year or two depends a lot upon how risk adverse you are with the principal, I'd just put it in cash if you absolutely must have $X in two years or in a broad index ETF just the same as your long term savings if you wouldn't mind being forced into a realized loss if the market happens to be down when you need the money. I'm not risk-averse - on the scale of 1 to 5, 1 being risk-averse to the point of only being in bonds and 5 being ready to lose 75% of the principal if it means getting an eventual 50% return, I'm between a 2 and a 3. I don't have concrete plans for the money - it only comes to around $3k - I just don't want to lose more than the $284 it's already decreased in value.
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Nov 6, 2015 19:00
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The only thing is that I don't have a concrete goal for the money. I have a pretty broadly spread portfolio - mostly from advice I've seen here in this thread - for just a regular old non-IRA brokerage account, intended to appreciate interest at a better rate than any savings account can do right now. We're a single-income household, and fortunately my income is enough that I can max my IRA, use any bonus I get to max my wife's IRA, do 6% pre-tax for 401k, and still keep a paid-down balance sheet. It seems like there's really no decent mid-term option... am I really basically screwed to savings account (this thread) vs. gambling that I'm not willing to do (the stock picking thread)? Or should I just dump it into VFORX or VTSAX and let that be that? I get sunk-cost fallacy and that my personal choices haven't been meteoric. Hell, everything other than the iShares funds are decisions I've made, after getting rid of my adviser after Four Pillars and some less-than-optimal decisions he made. It was my decision in the end, after all - not blaming the guy - but those iShares funds have also been in my portfolio since 2006. Here's my portfolio as it stands now, for what it's worth - again this is the non-IRA brokerage, this is all post-tax money that, for all intents and purposes, would become retirement money unless we have major expenses. We do have a savings account populated to allow for 5-6ish months of zero income, as well as enough to do a bathroom renovation next year.  Edit: the PRU was a gift from my FIL, he works for the company and had shares to gift. Edit 2: poo poo, I just realized that any of the purchases I've made (excluding the PRU and iShares) totals to a very real net loss. How am I supposed to have a retirement if everything save for VFORX is a bad idea? Is there no such thing as a stock that gives decent returns over 5 years with minimal principal risk in the chance I might need the money? MJP fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 21:37
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On mobile but after sleeping on this (and you are correct to lol @ me wanting high returns at no risk) you guys are all basically correct. Should I wait a bit to get PRU higher up to sell? It seems like it would be good to hold it because it's PRU and it was free, but it's also going to keep me saner having it in VFORX. Should I also sell the ishares funds? Those have been in my portfolio for almost 10 years now, wouldn't it be better to keep them and hold for a while? All the other funds, yeah, those are getting sold. My strategy for them was something like "I have some extra $$, let's put it in one particular industry or Morningstar quadrant until I get a better idea" and then all the big drops happened. Into VFORX it is, unless I should put some in VTSAX as well.
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Nov 7, 2015 14:19
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You know what, at this point I'm just gonna go with "there is no more portfolio," sell everything, put it half into VFORX and half into VTSMX. Unless it's stupid for capital gains, that is, but I guess I have enough losses to offset them? Maybe I should do a one-time consultation with an accountant/financial planner to make a graceful exit from active investing and just keep up in VFORX/VTSMX. I recognize the need to have a retirement/rainy day investment fund that isn't all bonds, but I don't have the time and dedication required to make big calls on how to diversify and manage a portfolio. MJP fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Nov 7, 2015 |
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Nov 7, 2015 22:43
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app posted:Hard to call AAPL a growth stock with a 12 PE ratio. AAPL, NFLX, and CRM were just gambles I took based on selling AMBA when it was still doing really well. That was the last advisor-recommended stock I bought.
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Nov 7, 2015 22:53
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OK, I'm gonna do it. Everything gets sold. Including the ishares funds. And PRU. I wanna hang on to AAPL and NFLX in hopes of bumps for the holidays. CRM has been doing well but everything is everything. I'll probably find something with bonds to park around 10k for a 1-5 year plan, in case a car dies or the roof gets tree'd, unless VFORX is a good place to sell a bit from should the need arise.
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Nov 8, 2015 14:33
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Mr. Glass posted:the 10k is an emergency fund, so you should put it in a savings account. ally and discover typically have the best rates right now. Oh, I already have an emergency fund. Enough to exist for six months of zero income from anything at all and an extra $25k for an upcoming bathroom remodel (although we're gonna be way way under that). The portfolio sales will all go back into VFORX. The $10k I mentioned would be for "gently caress, it's 2018 and the car finally died" (it probably won't) or "gently caress, it's 2019 and Sandy II: Superstorm Boogaloo hurled an oak tree across our roof" given that our IRAs are already maxed for the year. Totally open to a 5-year suggestion.
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Nov 9, 2015 00:05
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If I sell a stock that's subject to long-term capital gains tax, will I get some kind of a form for tax season or will I need to keep records of it for myself? If the latter, would it suffice to know the quantity of shares, purchase price, sell price, purchase date, and sell date? What about for short-term capital losses, or do those not even matter?
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Nov 9, 2015 14:23
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Saint Fu posted:Your broker should send you all the forms you need with numbered boxes to make it easy. Who's your broker? I have a Vanguard account, no broker, so I guess it comes out with the other 1099-INTs and other stock forms? Wait - the PRU I have, it was gifted to me and I've held it less than a year. Should I hold off on selling it to get the long-term capital gains rate? It's a big chunk of taxable change, and since it's gifted, isn't it all technically a capital gain? MJP fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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Nov 9, 2015 15:36
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Happiness Commando posted:Your cost basis is set at what it was when given as a gift. So if you got it at $100/share and now its $200/share, you only pay cap gains tax on $100/share. If it has appreciated noticeably, I would hold it until it would be taxed at long term gains OK cool. I got it 5/8/2015, so it's a loss, hooray!
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Nov 9, 2015 16:43
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Hmm. $10k of stock would be one hell of a tax deduction. At this point I definitely do gotta involve an accountant... I do my taxes through the goon tax guy, so I'll start with him.
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Nov 9, 2015 18:14
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The bulk of my current brokerage account, of which I've stopped post-tax contributions and instead allocated all that to pre-tax, is in VFORX, which has been going really, really south. Should I be looking into exchanging those shares for some other Vanguard fund if I want to have any appreciable retirement? Or should I not even be asking this question for another five or six years? Cynically at the end of that, after selling all my other holdings that were "diversifying" when really all I want is VFORX, should I be buying given their recent decline?
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Jan 14, 2016 17:10
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Moneyball posted:2. Cheap hamburgers, or something. McDonald's cheap or Jersey diner cheap? Specifically, should I keep buying VFORX or should I be buying some other broadly diversified fund, either target date or total stock market/sector-specific?
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Jan 14, 2016 17:25
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Droo posted:VFORX is fine as a solo investment unless you can't handle the risk. If you are already contemplating selling everything because you've lost 15% you might need to create a less aggressive portfolio. You could move everything to an earlier target date fund like 2030, or add a conservative bond fund on top of the 2040 fund. Oh, I didn't meant "sell VFORX, buy VJOEBLOW" - just whether my future purchases, or using proceeds from getting out of my own cobbled-together portfolio to buy into something else. Right now I have $18k in the settlement account that's doing nothing, so I figure it was time to examine using it for VFORX. Given that I'm uncertain, would it be best to find that conservative bond fund for the $18k if I intended it to be retirement money?
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Jan 14, 2016 17:52
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Droo posted:It is only a good idea if losing ~50% of the value in your retirement account will freak you out and force you to make bad decisions. You will almost certainly be better off in retirement by investing entirely in VFORX compared to a less aggressive mix though. That makes sense. I was 60/40 against making any changes, mostly because very smart people outside this thread basically confirm this. It just never hurts to have an unaffiliated third party confirm. Into VFORX the $18k goes.
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Jan 14, 2016 19:08
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Any recommendations for a step up in return above a savings account? 2 out of 5 on the risk scale, but basically I want to hang onto around $20k for the next few years for a rainy-day fund. I'm already fairly well covered in VFORX and others for my IRA and brokerage accounts, IRA's already maxed out for the year, and 401k is at 11%. VCORX just spun up and that got me thinking about my savings account - well-protected, yes, but only because I wasn't sure how best to set aside the excess beyond a 3-month survival fund.
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Mar 21, 2016 01:25
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I parked $10k each in VGAVX, VBIRX, VSCSX, and VFTSX because it was sitting in a savings account. I wanted to at least get a slightly better return. Should I be keeping an ear out for interest rate changes and giving thought to moving these back into savings? I'm not yet risk-tolerant for these - other parts of my portfolio are more exposed - and I'd only really want to move these into other long term conservative holdings or savings accounts/money markets, depending on risk or APY.
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Sep 8, 2016 15:46
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Alereon posted:To clarify, do you mean you just did this, or you've been holding these for awhile? I've been holding them for only a few months - March for VGAVX, early June for the rest.
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Sep 8, 2016 16:03
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My current portfolio is fairly stable and not going anywhere, neither up nor down. Since I'm the sole income earner and have been for the last four-ish years, I've been somewhat risk-averse. Our savings account is $40k. I'm prepared to put $15k into a slightly riskier investment. My end goal would be to do as well as I can in 2-3 years, in hopes of funding a really nice vacation or chunk of a kitchen remodeling. I've already gone above my 401k max - 11% at present - and both my wife and my IRAs have had their max 2016 contributions already. Would splitting the $15k between VTI and VXUS be simply too much risk exposure? Should I just put everything into one or the other? Our current brokerage holdings, if it helps: IWO - 49 shares (31 bought at 109.55, 18 bought at 136.16) IJK - 38 shares (26 bought at 133.02, 12 bought at 152.75) VFORX, 1878.955 shares (I used to put windfalls and post-tax investments into that before I went higher on the 401k, 456.432 bought at 31.27, 935.571 shares bought at 29.78, 478.936 bought at 26.80) PRU - 107 shares (gifted as options earned by FIL since he works there, so basically $0 cost basis for me) VGAVX - 780.574 shares bought at 19.22 VBR - 39 shares bought at 109.05 VOE - 44 shares bought at 91.61
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Oct 24, 2016 16:32
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IWO and IJK were leftovers from my previous advisor. Those were the only two decent long-term holdovers from him. PRU I'm not attached to - it's had good growth since it was vested in 2005, but it's not going anywhere - for better or for worse. Everything else were just my attempts to have a broad range of exposure over time and I'm not that attached to it. Wouldn't it be a better idea to hold IWO/IJK, though? I've held them for some time and they've gotten something like 21% return. I could see myself selling PRU and VGAVX to go 70/30 VTI/VXUS, but then would I be needing to invest more into bonds to at least counteract equities exposure? I previously had $30k of that savings account in various bond ETFs with $10k as an emergency reserve. I have no objection to bond ETFs as a savings account alternative, it just seemed like they weren't going anywhere at all. MJP fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Oct 24, 2016 |
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Oct 24, 2016 19:16
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I just crunched the capital gains taxes for selling IWO/IJK. I'd rack up around $517 to sell against $2510 gross proceeds for both. Given that those are broad index funds and I've held them for so long, I'm thinking it might be best for me to not lose out on how much more growth I can get out of them. I took a step back and wrote out what I wanted to do here. Seeing as my job is secure and the mortgage is intact, I have enough in savings to last for several months with absolutely zero income (which is not likely but I'm not touching that six-month lifeline) and I have enough disability insurance to cover my income 100% if something happens to me as the sole earner, we don't want kids, our parents have elder care plans/funds/insurance, I am okay with roughly 70/30 equities/bonds in the brokerage account. To be honest, I don't have concrete plans for the brokerage money, I'd just like to get halfway decent growth. I'm basically looking at allocating as such with the following given: -IRAs get maxed every year in target-date funds. -401k remains at 11% allocation. -VFORX in brokerage stays as-is. -IWO/IJK stay. -VGAVX, PRU, VBR, and VOE all get sold. I don't know the cost basis for PRU nor does my FIL since he had it vested as options. -The proceeds from above combine with the $15k I was thinking of investing and go into VBLTX/VTIAX. -The end result: IWO, IJK, VTIAX, and VFORX constitute equities exposure to 70%, VBLTX constitutes bonds for 30%. Does that seem like a saner mix? MJP fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 14:16
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Ralith posted:You can get the same growth out of any other broad index fund. VTSAX, for example, is both much broader and five times cheaper to hold. I don't know how long exactly you're planning on holding, but you've only done half the math here: for example, these 0.25% expense ratio funds will cost you more than 5% of your holdings over twenty years, while the same money in VTSAX, which has a 0.05% expense ratio, will only cost you about 1% in the same period. At your current amount invested, the savings is slightly more than the immediate capital gains would be. It's not a spectacular difference, I admit. Oh, I haven't purchased IWO or IJK in forever. I just didn't want to go chasing money around. You do make a salient point with the expense ratio issue, but it seems like it'd make more sense to hang on and let them do their index funds given that my quantities are small, no? Edit: I just checked the price. OK, so yeah, VTSAX seems like a good idea to sell IWO/IJK to buy into, given current prices of IWO/IJK and VTSAX. Makes sense about going into VTSAX for future purchases. Next windfall I get will go that direction. MJP fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Oct 25, 2016 |
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Oct 25, 2016 20:45
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So it looks like my end result is "keep VFORX, sell everything else, final allocation is 55% VFORX, 15% VTIAX, 15% VBLTX, 15% VTSAX," right? That Morningstar tool is pretty good. I did a lot of tweaking until I was able to get a decent visual of a 70/30 equities/bonds mix. Edit: with future purchases going into VTSAX MJP fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Oct 26, 2016 |
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Oct 26, 2016 14:40
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Ralith posted:This tilts you further towards international equities than even Vanguard recommends, and Vanguard's recommendation of 60/40 US/intl equities is often seen as rather high. Minor, but strange decision. I was putting this into the Morningstar X-Ray tool, and it seems like there's either something really weird with the proportions in each fund or something is up. I ended up crunching to VTIAX 5%, VBLTX 18%, VTSAX 22%, and VFORX 55%. That gives a 23% exposure to foreign stocks, 24% bonds, 51% stocks. I can always change things up later or change my future investment direction for windfalls but I experienced massive swings in bonds holdings by changing single percentages on the Morningstar calculator.
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Oct 27, 2016 14:37
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monster on a stick posted:No. That's VBTLX. VBLTX is long-term bond. Okay, lots of bond throwing around - for my bond allocation is it VBTLX, not VBMFX? This is for the 20% of my portfolio going as bonds. Everything else I finally have sorted out.
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Oct 28, 2016 15:20
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monster on a stick posted:VBTLX is the admiral share version of VBMFX. So if you have $10K, buy the admiral shares version and save yourself some cash. OK, and just confirming that VBTLX and NOT VBLTX is what I want?
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Oct 28, 2016 16:34
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Any words of advice or wisdom from goons who saw losses in 2008ish on how to stay sane and focused going forward? Trying very hard not to just give up and sell everything, thus cutting losses, which I know is completely antithetical but then again so are some of our possible forthcoming economic policies.
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Nov 9, 2016 14:49
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I'm not exactly a frequent poster in this thread, nor an expert, but they finally just had stable enough data to start posting charts on Google Finance - it was "charts not available" until around nowish, 9:50 AM Eastern time, and it looks like the actual drop has stabilized, at least according to available news and my barely-lurky opinion. I don't even wanna speculate on the buying/picking thread and what's going on there, but I kinda wish I had the guts and cash to take some margin calls or whatnot right now, at least for any further volatility throughout the day. It seems like the overseas markets had the worst of it - wasn't it just the end of the trading day in East Asia when things started to tank?
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Nov 9, 2016 15:53
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At least the markets have stabilized. I wasn't seriously thinking of selling, more looking for reinforcement, which came in droves. Thanks goons.
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Nov 9, 2016 19:32
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Someone tell me to not sell VBLTX and cut losses then buy again when things look better 
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Nov 21, 2016 20:09
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