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How about a little fund selection help? I currently contribute to a 457(b) deferred compensation plan through work. The plan offers about 50 funds through Vantagepoint. When I started 11 months ago, I wasn't really thinking critically about retirement savings, so my contributions were sent by default to the Milestone 2050 Fund. Now that I'm paying more attention, I see that the fund has an expense ratio of 1.10%. I'd like to get out and move into one of more of Vantagepoint's low-expense index funds: -500 Stock Index Fund (expense ratio: 0.21%) -Broad Market Index Fund (expense ratio: 0.22%) -Mid/Small Company Index Fund (expense ratio: 0.22%) Any thoughts about how I should split between these, or whether it makes sense to just move into one of them?
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Apr 26, 2014 00:30
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Vilgan posted:Just look at what happens currently with teachers and 403b's. Are you referring to something specific? I don't know anything about teacher retirement. I'm happy enough with the funds available in my ICMA-managed 457. I just wish I had an employer contribution. I get jealous everytime I hear someone mention an employer match with their 401k.
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Jun 1, 2014 04:14
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Tyro posted:Maybe your locality's HR folks finagled a way better deal than mine. I had a 457 with ICMA and their fees were absolutely atrocious. Huh. That's interesting. I guess I just assumed that ICMA offered the same funds across the board for everybody, but maybe that's not the case. The default target retirement funds all have ERs over 1%, but thanks to this thread I was able to rebalance into four index funds all with ERs under 0.3%.
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Jun 1, 2014 14:41
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Madbullogna posted:I like being a squeaky wheel though. After over a year of harassing them and sending emails, we finally got a Roth option added in to our plan. Yay!!! Hmmm...this may be worth doing myself. We don't have a Roth option right now. Does anybody have any idea of why all 457's don't just automatically come with Roths and regulars? Like, does the investment company extract another pound of flesh from the organization for offering a Roth option?
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Jun 2, 2014 03:32
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EugeneJ posted:What would you do, goons - Who in your company would you be trying to convince to change plan providers? Would that person spill the beans to your brother in law?
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Jun 17, 2014 03:42
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EugeneJ posted:Summary: Real estate is not an investment I view real estate like I view insurance: purchase it on the merits of serving its primary function, and treat any investment gain solely as an unexpected windfall.
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Jun 19, 2014 18:30
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mike- posted:Real estate is absolutely an investment when you are purchasing property to rent out. It isn't an investment when you are consuming your dividend (living in your house). Nail Rat posted:I think a rental property can serve as an investment. However, buying a house with the intention of flipping it or expectation of realizing value gains(especially after taking into account maintenance costs) is silly. Wish I'd known that six years ago Yeah this is what I meant. Thanks for clarifying.
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Jun 20, 2014 13:39
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Do I gain the Admiral shares benefit of a Vanguard index if I have $10,000 split across a tax-advantaged and a taxable account? E.g. $4,000 in Roth IRA and $6,000 in a regular account.
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Jul 1, 2014 01:47
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How does a stock contribution work in a 401(k)? Can you just not sell the stock til you're 59.5? I only have access to a 457 so the whole world of "matching" is foreign to me 
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Jul 15, 2014 04:51
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etalian posted:Taking money out of a 401k early is not a good idea since it has extra tax penalties even though there special cases such as a hardship withdrawal. Yeah I get that. I'm asking more about how having a 401k partially in company stock works. Obsolete mentions being able to switch it when he's fully vested...does that mean it's essentially like a mutual fund he can't reallocate for a period of years?
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Jul 15, 2014 13:29
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Thanks for the  of explanation, Obsolete and Leperflesh
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Jul 16, 2014 04:08
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How far would the market have to fall for you, a self-described terrible investor, to be confident that you had optimally timed the market for buy-in?
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Jul 21, 2014 06:21
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Hog Obituary posted:I dunno, that's why I'm asking for financial advice on something awful dot com. I snark because I love. I agree with Nail Rat and ExtrudeAlongCurve in that timing the market is something that simply cannot be done. Is there a market crash coming sometime in the relatively near-term future (like within a few years)? I'd say the odds are pretty good. But is it gonna start today or in three months or six months or eighteen months? Well that's a lot less certain. So yes you could hold out now and protect yourself against losses if the market tanks immediately, or you could hold out now and miss a massive run-up over the next 12 months. Maybe you would be comfortable with setting up a modest monthly purchase for now and then increasing it if/when prices tumble. That could serve as a hedge against being wiped out by a near-term massive market drop, although again, we have no idea when a drop will happen and you would also be limiting your future potential returns. As for the real estate thing, there are reasons to buy or not buy, but I'd avoid comparing that pricing behavior to the stock market. The SF housing market's price explosion isn't a bubble so much as the logical outcome of an incredible supply/demand balance. SF refuses to let more than a handful of new housing units to be built within its borders, despite massive demand by people who want to move to the city. It's not really a speculation fueled market like stocks can be, nor is it the same dynamic that was present across much of the country's housing markets in '06-'08.
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Jul 21, 2014 13:07
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So yes, they are fear mongering, but yes, it's working. I think my perception is also distorted by the local housing market which also has the appearance of a bubble... as does the local tech job market.
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Hog Obituary posted:That the advice was "don't invest it" seems a little less clear to me. I can afford to lose some of this money, but I would be sad to see it cut in half. If I absolutely needed it and it was 10% below where I started, I could live with that, but it kinda sucks. If I absolutely needed it and it was 40% below where I started that would hurt a lot. As Warren Buffett once said, "Unless you can watch your stock holding decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market."
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Jul 22, 2014 01:33
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shrike82 posted:That doesn't really say anything meaningful to the retail investor. I completely disagree that that quote doesn't have any meaning for the personal investor. The takeaway from that quote is not "sit and think realllll hard about exactly how much money you're willing to lose, and it better be the number Warren Buffett says." The takeaway is "you may encounter a severe market drop at some point, so you should not be buying in unless you feel your personal timeline has enough wiggle room to account for such a drop."
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Jul 22, 2014 13:29
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shrike82 posted:And it's a meaningless statement because most retail investors do panic as you say in extreme bear markets. Should we just tell them to forget about investing in equities? So because most individual investors panic sell during big downturns, I should...not tell people to be prepared to hold during big downturns? What am I missing about your argument?
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Jul 22, 2014 13:48
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shrike82 posted:Great reading comprehension retard, I'm not an advocate of market timing. Are you an advocate of warning people that massive market drops are possible and that investing is a poor choice if they will react to massive market drops by panicking?
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Jul 22, 2014 13:55
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slap me silly posted:Also I don't actually think you're a hotshot finance guru. I would strongly recommend anyone to read Bernstein instead of talking to some loudmouth who's just a few years out of college. hahaha shrike82 posted:I have a large pile of cash (~100K) doing nothing - is now a good time to go long some index funds? e: A three year old post wouldn't be relevant unless someone were claiming to have a financial expertise certification that takes a few years to acquire and requires a certain base level of knowledge to even begin to attempt, which...well, what a coincidence! pig slut lisa fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jul 22, 2014 |
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Jul 22, 2014 17:59
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slap me silly posted:Edit: Can we brag about page-sniping in BFC? When I face a conundrum like this, I find it's helpful to ask myself "What would Robert Boggle do?"
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Jul 25, 2014 04:32
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slap me silly posted:I think you are right. hahahaha I'm so happy e: Like I'm trying to paint a mental picture of Robert Boggle and I still have a lot of details to work out but he definitely has Marty Feldman's face pig slut lisa fucked around with this message at 06:43 on Jul 25, 2014 |
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Jul 25, 2014 06:34
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Last page people were comparing their 401(k) matches. Bloomberg recently wrote an article comparing plans at a couple hundred companies. The worst is Whole Foods, which will match up to $152 per year. The best? quote:ConocoPhillips, a Houston oil and natural gas producer, topped the Bloomberg News rankings of the largest public companies’ 401(k) plans, largely due to a matching formula that contributes 9 percent of annual salaries for employees who save as little as 1 percent of their pay.  
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Jul 28, 2014 13:38
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Ron Don Volante posted:Does it ever make sense to avoid investing in your 401k entirely (assuming no/low match) and just invest the money on your own? I'm not even sure I'll be alive at 59.5, so I'm not liking the idea of a withdrawal penalty. Probably not, but how old are you? When you say you're not sure you'll be alive before then, are you anticipating working up until your early death, or are you trying to get to early retirement/financial independence by age 35 or something?
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Aug 4, 2014 06:04
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CHINA INTERNET
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Aug 14, 2014 05:34
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Saw something interesting on Bloomberg today:Bloomberg posted:Sometimes it takes a second trip to see a place in a new light. If my city or state had an ETF that just held local stuff I would totally chuck a thousand bucks into it just to see what happened.
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Sep 8, 2014 19:08
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Thufir posted:Isn't it probably not great risk management to invest in a fund based on your local economy? Absolutely. That's why I said I'd chuck a thousand bucks in, not ditch all my index funds. There's also a civic pride aspect to it that would be worth it to me. At least at a sub 0.8% expense ratio. I love my city but I wouldn't buy in at 1.5%+.
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Sep 9, 2014 02:34
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slap me silly posted:The company match will be not-Roth regardless, so you'd get a balance. Huh, interesting. Is this statutory or just pervasive practice?
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Sep 9, 2014 04:14
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My fiancee has given me her blessing to manage her retirement portfolio. Currently her Roth IRA is with TD Ameritrade. I'd like to shift her over to Vanguard at some point in the near future. In the meantime, I'm confused about what I'm even looking at with TD Ameritrade. All her holdings are in Vanguard ETFs. Presumably, holding a Vanguard ETF through TD Ameritrade is going to be more expensive then holding it through Vanguard. But when I click on, e.g., the VBK profile on both sites, I see an ER of 0.09%. Where can I find what she's paying on top of that to TD Ameritrade?
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Sep 17, 2014 01:50
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I realize there's probably a decent amount of overlap between this thread and the "Bad with money" thread, but everyonee should check out this post as a reminder about intelligent investing strategies. It might even be worth adding to the OP, e.g.quote:Investing in mutual funds sounds OK, but I know of a really hot stock that shows no signs of slowing down. Shouldn't I just throw everything in there for a while?
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Oct 8, 2014 15:01
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GoGoGadgetChris posted:Opening an IRA doesn't cause any implications of any sort. You could open up 10,000 IRA accounts and it wouldn't matter. Just to clarify for anyone who's new to having an IRA, the above doesn't mean you can contribute $5,500 each year to each account. Your total annual contribution is limited to $5,500, whether that's in one account or multiple accounts.
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Oct 10, 2014 21:22
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TwoSheds posted:So have anybody else's portfolios been making GBS threads the bed recently? My 401k went from ~15% rate of return in July to .26% return this morning. Yeah the S&P 500 is down over 3% in the last three months and down over 5% in the last four weeks. I'm thrilled. I just doubled my biweekly 457 contributions a couple pay cycles again so now I'm buying stocks on sale. Unless you're hoping to cash out your 401k in the very near term you shouldn't worry about this at all, and should instead try to up your contribution if you're not already maxed out for the year.
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Oct 11, 2014 15:16
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jjack229 posted:My company benefits book kept talking about the distribution being within 14 business days of leaving. I'm nearly certain there's a statutory requirement that they must give you at least 30 days to make a decision
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Oct 29, 2014 05:45
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DeltaNui posted:I've been lurking this thread (and the rest of SA!) for awhile but I still have a specific question regarding investing. I'm helping my wife, a California public school teacher, set up a retirement account to supplement her pension. For obvious reasons, we do not want to rely upon CalSTRS for her retirement. We also plan on moving out of state in the next five years anyways. How much money is she looking to invest in total? If it's $5,500 or less, then it sounds like just doing the IRA would be best. But if it's more than that, you should probably invest $5,500 in the IRA and then dump the rest in the 403(b) since the tax advantages will more than offset the fees. Basically you're not facing an "either/or" situation. You are allowed to do both.
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Nov 2, 2014 18:45
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Motif is a super dumb gimmick. Thank you for checking in before sending your money to Motif.
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Nov 20, 2014 19:49
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Here's another take recommending against dollar cost averaging:jlcollinsnh posted:. . .
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Nov 21, 2014 02:57
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Several years ago my dad bought me some shares of TWGTX. Which I really appreciate! I think he bought it while I was in college and what did I know? Anyway, I've learned a lot since then. The fund just distributed its annual dividends, so now I can pick up my ball and go home. Just put in a sell order for the whole ~$2,000. The check should arrive just in time for my Roth IRA maxing in January. The really nice thing is that that $2,000 will be what puts me into Admiral shares of the Vanguard Total Market Index. 
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Dec 19, 2014 04:57
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Thanks for the explanations, everybody!
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Dec 20, 2014 04:48
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etalian posted:I believe if you push out retiring to 68 you get a slightly highly monthly benefit. Your benefit increases every year you delay claiming, up until age 70
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Jan 4, 2015 22:31
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The Wall Street Journal reports that Vanguard saw an inflow of $216 billion in 2014, a record for any mutual fund firm. The word continues to get out there. It appears that actively managed U.S. equity funds had net withdrawals of $12.7 billion too. e: the word, not the weird. pig slut lisa fucked around with this message at 17:14 on Jan 5, 2015 |
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Jan 5, 2015 15:52
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ohgodwhat posted:What's this weird "matching" thing everyone is talking about? Hey there no matching buddy   In my case I guess I do get some sort of employer contribution I suppose. I work for an Illinois municipality, so in addition to my elective 457(b) I also participate in the IMRF defined benefits plan (Illinois' most in-shape pension program ). Both I and my employer contribute to this every pay period.The problem--for me, at least--is that I don't vest until I've made 10 years of contributions. If I leave before then, which is fairly likely, I'll have to decide whether to pull out my contributions (which resets my contribution clock to zero and does not include interest or employer contributions) or leave them in the system in the hopes that I come back to an IMRF employer someday to round out to at least 10 years.
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Jan 13, 2015 14:33
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SweetSassyMolassy posted:Are you sure the vesting period just isn't the minimum amount of time you have to work for the IMRF employer before you can take a retirement package at whatever age they choose is an appropriate retirement age? Yeah, that's how mine works. Sorry if it wasn't clear. If I hit 10 years and quit my job I still can't start drawing pension checks for another few decades. SweetSassyMolassy posted:Do you get to pull the cash, employer contributions and interest if you make 10 years? Is the interest comparable to what the market can get you? I'm pretty sure I only get to pull my portion of the contributions without interest. SweetSassyMolassy posted:In my case taking the money out just nullifies my chance of getting a pension and I'd be free to do whatever I wanted with the money. This is definitely the calculus I'll be facing. Due to my wife's current PhD/postdoc timeline, chances are I would be leaving this job (if at all) in mid-2017, which would put me at 4 years of service. Why might I leave the contributions in IMRF? If I thought there was a decent chance we'd be back in Illinois by 2023-2025 or so, I would leave them in so I could have the option to jump back in and round out my 10 years. But if I think we're done with Illinois, then I'd pull out my contributions. This is all colored by the fact that I'm hoping to at least partially retire by age 40-42, so I'd have to see the potential for another IMRF-qualified job fairly close on the horizon to leave in. Believe me, I would much rather have the ability to self-direct my and my employers' contributions, or hell even just my own! Right now my pension contributions feel like I'm stuffing cash under a mattress. The good news is we're still socking a ton of money away in my 457, both our IRAs, and even a taxable account. So whatever I do with my pension, it's not going to be a major factor in our financial future.
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Jan 14, 2015 05:43
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