|
-
runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 23:25 on Mar 2, 2020 |
#
¿
Dec 5, 2018 08:56
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 16:16 |
|
|
-
runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Mar 2, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Dec 6, 2018 09:26
|
|
|
My wife just discovered that when she went to max out her 403b contribution several years ago, it ended up set to 0 instead. She never noticed because her employer makes some level of non-match contributions. So yeah, it's been a great day! Is there anything she can do to still contribute for 2019 at least?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2020 23:49
|
|
|
I have an old IRA with around $50k in FSKAX that thus far has prevented me from making backdoor Roth contributions. The available investment options in my 401k are not all that great, but I assume it would still be recommended to roll it over just to enable those backdoor contributions every year? Also, for a taxable account to invest in the standard recommended index funds, I'm considering Vanguard (likely where I'd open said Roth IRA, wife's is already there), Schwab (already have an unused account in order to open checking there), and Merrill Edge (for that high cash back BoA card). Any considerations to help me decide between the three? Thanks. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 00:24 on Jan 27, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jan 27, 2021 00:20
|
|
|
runawayturtles posted:I have an old IRA with around $50k in FSKAX that thus far has prevented me from making backdoor Roth contributions. The available investment options in my 401k are not all that great, but I assume it would still be recommended to roll it over just to enable those backdoor contributions every year? Posted this a few pages back, any thoughts?
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2021 05:11
|
|
|
SlapActionJackson posted:How "not great" are you taking about? What's the ER on your S&P 500 fund? It is .52.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 31, 2021 17:17
|
|
|
So, this is probably bad, would appreciate some advice: I have an old Roth IRA I haven't touched in a while that I'm looking to move to Vanguard for future backdoor contributions. I contributed the max amount to this IRA in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, and 2015, and haven't touched it since. However, I got married in 2015 and filed jointly for the first time, and my wife's income at the time was much higher than mine, such that it seems we were over the limit for me to contribute at all ($216k adjusted gross income when the limit was $193k). How bad is this for me? Is anyone ever likely to find out if I just pretend I never noticed? Assuming the answer is "doesn't matter, don't be an idiot, fix it ASAP", what do I actually need to do now? Thanks. 
|
|
#
¿
Feb 4, 2021 23:44
|
|
|
Grumpwagon posted:You will have to file an amended tax return for that year. It is easy and if you do it before the IRS comes looking for you, it won't be a painful experience. Wouldn't I have to remove the money (and earnings?) from the IRA and maybe pay an early withdrawal fee also? And it sounds like there's a tax penalty every year, would that all have to be paid on the amended 2015 return or something?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2021 03:21
|
|
|
Vlonald Prump posted:This is the kind of engagement I was looking for and appreciate, thank you I mean no disrespect by this, but it will serve you well over the next 4+ years if you instead assume that you don't yet know poo poo about medicine or anything else. Residency is an eye-opening experience to say the least. edit: Welp, sorry, didn't refresh and now I'm just part of the pile-on.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2021 19:00
|
|
|
This is closer to my wife's situation than mine exactly, but if my 401k/Roth IRA are in target retirement funds, is there still a good way to start my taxable account in a tax-efficient way? Or is the main option to switch my 401k/Roth IRA out of the target retirement fund so it can be bond-heavy, and make the taxable account all stocks?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2021 19:06
|
|
|
angryrobots posted:How much of a factor is time horizon in this sort of portfolio balancing? Is it assumed that someone who has maxed out tax advantaged accounts is in a position to desire a mix of stable investments? Or it really doesn't matter? It might help to know that I'm being a bit disingenuous when I talk about just starting my taxable account, not because it's not true, but because I procrastinated so much getting to this point that I have a ton of cash to invest once it's open. So, that's really why I asked about it... this sort of tax-efficient balancing is of more interest to me right now than to someone who is starting (properly) from zero and can slowly rebalance over time. That said, even if you're starting from zero, it seems useful to take this stuff into account and start the taxable account off on the right foot with international stocks.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2021 02:41
|
|
|
Gazpacho posted:Tax stuff, sigh Thanks for all this, even if you don't do this for a living it's very helpful to hear about the process from someone who went through it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2021 20:50
|
|
|
So my IRA transfers are just about finished, and it would be great if I could get some feedback/recommendations on how to allocate my 401k/Roth IRA going forward. Generally aiming for a standard three fund portfolio (target retirement around 2050), and currently about 70% of my retirement funds are in the 401k (with the investment options in the image below) and 30% in the Roth IRA (at Vanguard). Maybe I should do some sort of mix of Great-West S&P 500 Index Fund, Great-West S&P MidCap 400 Index Fund, and Great-West S&P SmCap 600 Index Fund to emulate a total market index, because those are the cheapest? Maybe put like 10% of the 401k in Great-West Bond Index Fund and the whole Roth IRA in international?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 1, 2021 05:24
|
|
|
runawayturtles posted:So my IRA transfers are just about finished, and it would be great if I could get some feedback/recommendations on how to allocate my 401k/Roth IRA going forward. Generally aiming for a standard three fund portfolio (target retirement around 2050), and currently about 70% of my retirement funds are in the 401k (with the investment options in the image below) and 30% in the Roth IRA (at Vanguard). This got buried in tax posts, any thoughts?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2021 19:06
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:A) those are some fairly crappy options in terms of ER (although we've seen worse) and you should communicate to your plan administrator that not having a low-cost index fund option is doing a big disservice to the employees. 0.52% ER is about 0.48% higher than it should be if you had a 401(k) that offered Vanguard or Fidelity index funds Yeah it's pretty garbage, not sure if anything can be improved because we're a very small company that uses some bigger umbrella org to handle benefits and HR. But I'll ask, it can't hurt. I was gonna base it off of Vanguard's target retirement 2050 fund, so that's why I thought maybe 10% bonds and 30% international would be good, but I could do 10%/20% instead (although I suppose the 401k will continue to grow from contributions much faster than the IRA, unfortunately). Is it not too top-heavy to go 70% S&P500, or is it just not worth the slight ER increase to include mid and small cap?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 2, 2021 23:25
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:B) Suggest just using the S&P500 index in this account, and use your IRA to complete your asset allocation with international & bonds, assuming those two categories add up to 30% or less of your intended asset allocation runawayturtles posted:I was gonna base it off of Vanguard's target retirement 2050 fund, so that's why I thought maybe 10% bonds and 30% international would be good, but I could do 10%/20% instead (although I suppose the 401k will continue to grow from contributions much faster than the IRA, unfortunately). Is it not too top-heavy to go 70% S&P500, or is it just not worth the slight ER increase to include mid and small cap? I appreciate and am happy to follow the advice, but if you could share your reasoning it would be really helpful as I try to learn more about this stuff. (If anyone else has opinions, happy to hear them too!) Also scheduled a meeting with the COO tomorrow to discuss the poor 401k options, though I don't expect he'll have good news about being in a position to change anything.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 4, 2021 23:35
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:Most of the options are too expensive. A three-fund portfolio typically has: a total US stock market fund, an international stock fund, and a total bond market fund. The total stock market fund is broader than a base S&P500 fund, but they tend to track fairly closely anyway, and an S&P500 fund is a reasonable proxy for the US stock market: Thanks. The meeting was interesting, actually... they hadn't given much thought to the 401k plan since setting it up over 15 years ago. He said they'd be happy to look at other options, and would actually prefer a plan directly with Vanguard/Fidelity/Schwab, but last he checked none of them offered one (at least to small businesses). Is that still the case?... Is the plan always through a third party? If so, for the people who have 401k options that are actually good, what's the name of your provider? I'd like to give some suggestions to him to see if it's affordable to switch.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2021 19:38
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:For example, here's where to start for Vanguard for employers whose employees have less than $50M in total assets in their retirements: moana posted:We use Gusto as a provider, the vanguard funds they offer are dirt cheap (done through Guideline, but Gusto is the main company that does all payroll handling.) Thanks, sent these options over to the COO, hope he'll have time to actually look into them in the not too distant future. At first glance, I can't imagine our current provider being cheaper than Guideline, and their fund options are clearly much better.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 7, 2021 21:03
|
|
|
runawayturtles posted:Thanks, sent these options over to the COO, hope he'll have time to actually look into them in the not too distant future. At first glance, I can't imagine our current provider being cheaper than Guideline, and their fund options are clearly much better. So the COO has been quick to investigate a couple 401k plan alternatives, and sent me some details for one he's considering that's through Transamerica and is affiliated with our current HR provider. This plan looks like it has some good options: Legal & General S&P 500/400/600 (.01% ER) State Street International Index (.05% ER) State Street U.S. Bond Index (.04% ER) Vanguard Institutional Target Retirement funds (.09% ER) These are all very solid, right? It does seem like the plan has an asset charge per participant based on the amount of total assets in the plan, which would probably be somewhere between .25% and .40% for us. If we were larger it could get down to .05%, but I doubt we'll reach that anytime soon. What do the participant fees look like for a good plan? I know my current one is .60%, so this alternative would still be better.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 12, 2021 23:52
|
|
|
My wife has a taxable account her parents set up for her around 15 years ago. They put in $4k, which was apparently split between two actively managed funds. The account has grown to around $11k by now. Now that we've finally set up our own taxable account with Vanguard, we plan to transfer that money in. We have no desire to keep those actively managed funds, so we're just going to close the account/sell it all and transfer it over. I imagine we'll owe a bunch of tax on the roughly $7k of capital gains. Do we have to make an estimated tax payment this quarter or can it wait? If so, how do we go about actually calculating that tax before we get the 1099-DIV next year?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2021 20:54
|
|
|
Cool, we're within the 15% and don't expect to owe much if anything next tax return, so sounds like we're good. Thanks guys. edit: Hmm, have an unrelated question: Given the aforementioned taxable account with Vanguard that we're now actively contributing to, I've been looking into how tax loss harvesting works, particularly the wash sale rules. We're planning to transfer money in once a month to automatically be divided into index funds, and it's unclear to me how we would partake in TLH if we've always bought some amount of the funds in question within the past 30 days. It's easy enough to delay the next transfer to be more than 30 days out, but how do people make sure they didn't recently buy what they're now selling at a loss? Just contribute less frequently, or like... occasionally alternate between the two funds you plan to swap? runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Mar 23, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2021 23:10
|
|
|
Residency Evil posted:This is what I do. I've set up automatic investing to alternate between VTSAX, VTIAX, and the S&P500. I haven't figured out a better what to do this. Hmm, I'd like to go with this approach, but how did you actually set it up? I'm looking at Vanguard and it doesn't seem like I can, for example, contribute to VTSAX every three months. The least frequent option I can select is every month. Separate question: All the TLH guides say to set the cost basis method to SpecID, but it seems like they were all written before HIFO became a thing. Is HIFO the recommended method now since it seems to automate what you'd be doing anyway with SpecID?
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2021 21:28
|
|
|
Residency Evil posted:I set up 3 separate monthly transactions. Once I did that, I manually set each of them to execute one month, then skip 2 months, on a rotating basis. Once a year I extend the skipped months manually. Ah okay thanks, didn't realize those extra month-specific settings became available after creating one. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Mar 25, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2021 00:54
|
|
|
In Vanguard, there's no way to schedule an investment of the full balance of the settlement account, is there? I turned off auto reinvest for tax loss harvesting purposes, but the inability to schedule a reinvest from the settlement account is killing my plan to be totally hands-off... edit: On that note actually, any suggestions for something I can subscribe to that will alert me before 4pm when it's a good day to TLH (and not bother me with other things)? I don't really look at any news until the evening. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 17:30 on May 29, 2021 |
|
#
¿
May 29, 2021 17:18
|
|
|
Ramrod Hotshot posted:Is there ever any way to contribute the max to your 401k in a lump sum? Right now I'm contributing like $1k a paycheck to it, with the idea that my expenses will exceed my income but I'm drawing down savings I have into the 401k. But this is for obvious reasons tricky to plan for and that money sitting in savings waiting to be put into the 401k could be invested instead. Sort of, usually you can tell work to contribute 100% of your paycheck, and it will do so and automatically stop for the year when you hit the limit.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2021 16:09
|
|
|
runawayturtles posted:Thanks, sent these options over to the COO, hope he'll have time to actually look into them in the not too distant future. At first glance, I can't imagine our current provider being cheaper than Guideline, and their fund options are clearly much better. It's been a few months since I last posted about this, but I want to thank the thread for encouraging me to ask my office about the possibility of improving our bad 401k plan. I heard from the COO yesterday that he pulled the trigger on moving us to a direct plan with Vanguard. Aside from their low-cost fund options that we all know and love, their 401k fee is flat and based only on number of participants, so while I don't know exactly how that fee will be split yet, it's infinitely better than the large percentage fees I'm currently paying on expensive funds. So, huge win there. If only I followed all the other advice of this thread in years past, my financial position right now would be absurdly amazing instead of just really good...
|
|
#
¿
Jun 9, 2021 06:44
|
|
|
MockingQuantum posted:I'm still figuring out how to get some bonds into my taxable investments, and I think I've settled on a mix of Series I and a bond fund (through Vanguard). I have it in my head that bonds are generally less tax-efficient than stocks, assuming you're including corporate bonds. Is that true? And is it true of bond funds as well? I probably didn't do the math correctly, but when I looked into this a few months ago for my own allocations, it appeared to me that the higher ER of VTEAX outweighed the tax savings, so I went with VBTLX. But yeah, it's complicated and changes over time depending on a bunch of factors.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 15, 2021 21:54
|
|
|
Motronic posted:You were talking about 2050 funds....so you're in your mid 30s? If you really want to set and forget go with a 2050 fund but "Principal lets me pick an allocation % per fund and just set+forget from there".....ummm....this is a target date fund. Maybe done administratively differnetly....I don't know because I don't use Principal. It's just a 401k, he's just saying he can pick how much of each deposit goes to each fund. Fake James posted:My real goal is to make sure the 401K fund I am in is not a rip off, which the current 2050 target date one is not horrible but also is not as optimized as say the Vanguard and Fidelity funds. I really don't want to have to spend a ton of time on picking funds, but it looks like Principal lets me pick an allocation % per fund and just set+forget from there, so doing a three-fund option won't be too hard. I'm just going to set it up now and then worry about the possible job switch later. Yep, sounds good. Make sure you change where your current money in the account is invested (to match the fund %s you decide on), as well as the %s for future deposits. Sometimes you can do them both at once and sometimes they're set in two different places. As you said, no reason to wait, you can just redo it or get updated thread advice later if you end up rolling it over. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Jun 17, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jun 17, 2021 07:20
|
|
|
runawayturtles posted:It's been a few months since I last posted about this, but I want to thank the thread for encouraging me to ask my office about the possibility of improving our bad 401k plan. I heard from the COO yesterday that he pulled the trigger on moving us to a direct plan with Vanguard. Aside from their low-cost fund options that we all know and love, their 401k fee is flat and based only on number of participants, so while I don't know exactly how that fee will be split yet, it's infinitely better than the large percentage fees I'm currently paying on expensive funds. So, huge win there. And now I hear they're adding a 3% match at the same time. It's not huge, but still all due to this thread... best  I ever spent 17 years ago.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2021 04:22
|
|
|
spwrozek posted:Dude, that is awesome. Way to go. Everyone at the office owes you a beer.  Funny thing is, I inadvertently found out through this process that my 401k balance is about 25% of the plan's total. Will be over 30% when my roll-in finally goes through. Small company of course, but still... I hope this move encourages more coworkers to take part, for the match at least if nothing else.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2021 17:00
|
|
|
Valicious posted:Dumb question. If I choose to automatically reinvest dividends for ETFs in my taxable account, will it avoid creating a taxable event on them? Which is the better option? Auto reinvest has annoying wash sale implications for tax loss harvesting if you plan to do that, so I turned it off for that reason, but it seems similarly annoying to have to manually reinvest. 
|
|
#
¿
Jun 26, 2021 23:28
|
|
|
Strong Sauce posted:okay so with that rollover ira. if i put that into the trad ira, since the rollover ira has been taxed already that will create issues with the trad ira right? Hold up. Either you or the thread is misunderstanding something. The term "rollover IRA" is usually used for a traditional 401k that has been rolled over into a traditional IRA. So it hasn't been taxed, and is essentially just another traditional IRA. The semantic difference is just because some 401ks allow you to roll any traditional IRAs into them, and some only allow you to roll rollover IRAs into them. If yours has been taxed, then it's a rollover Roth IRA, which you can just roll into your Roth IRA (edit: or leave them separate, it wouldn't matter). But I've never heard of that existing, not that I'm the most knowledgeable here. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jun 29, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2021 06:20
|
|
|
Strong Sauce posted:To summarize, I have two accounts that look like they're traditional IRA accounts. One of them is just from a previous company's 401K that I think I just ended up not doing anything with it... so for simplicity's sake I'd like to just combine the two. I don't really care if I can't put this money into my _current_ company's 401K. This should be easy without any weird tax issues right? Yes, it is easy and there are no tax issues. The reason you might rather keep it separate is just as Fidelity says, to be able to roll it back into a 401k. And the reason you might want to roll it back into a 401k is to help drop your traditional IRA balance to 0 to be able to backdoor Roth. If you don't care about that and just want to trim down the number of accounts you have, feel free to merge it in.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2021 20:24
|
|
|
vandalism posted:I am at a bit of a crossroads here. I use a financial planner with a 1% fee but I am kind of ready to go do my own thing. I am not sure which platform to use, how to get my poo poo to there, or even how to do my own poo poo. I am happy with their performance and advice, but I have always wanted to do more. The advisor set up a good portfolio with lots of diversity (mutual funds, stocks, etc.) but here is an example. I talked to them about the AMD stock and they kind of dismissed it like it was some sort of scam or hot potato (which it admittedly is). Ok, I still wanted to do something with it. If I have to go out and open a robinhood or whatever, what sense does it make to have an advisor and then also do my own stuff? My stuff is in kind of targeted wells fargo type funds anyway, so I could just do something like that through vanguard. My wife also had an advisor-directed wells fargo account. Not only was the advisor fee unnecessary, but the chosen funds themselves charged much higher fees than needed as well. As others said, move the money to Vanguard and put it in a target retirement or three fund portfolio, and you'll save quite a bit in the long run.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2021 05:14
|
|
|
Years ago I worked for a company very similar to HMBradley that eventually had to shut down when the venture capital ran out. Overall, there is very little difference between fintech startups, because they're all forced into variations of the same business model, with the same levers to push and pull. I'll give a brief overview in case some of you guys aren't aware of this stuff and are curious. Due to federal regulations, they all have to contract with one or more actual banks behind the scenes, who hold customers' money and are FDIC insured. Not many banks were willing to do this back when I was in the industry, but there are more now. They charge the fintech startup a certain dollar amount per active account, and then extra for different services like wire transfers, checkbooks, etc. It's up to the startup whether they want to pass those services (and fees, with some markup) on to their customers. The startup and bank usually also contract with Visa or Mastercard to offer a debit card. From there, the startups all make money from three main sources: balance interest, debit card transactions, and fees. It's very difficult to make enough from these sources to turn a profit. You need your high balance/frequent debit/high fee customers to subsidize your low balance/infrequent debit/low fee customers, plus make up for your extra costs (like, I don't know, giving people 3% interest). My former company's business model did not work out because the interest environment was much worse than anticipated, so balances provided very little revenue. It's substantially worse now. Essentially, right now, everyone earning 3% interest at HMBradley is pulling mostly from their venture capital reserves. Which is fine, no reason not to take the money they're throwing at people. But eventually, it's practically guaranteed that they'll do one or more of these things: lessen rewards and coast with customers too lazy to leave, get bought out by someone (probably a real bank that wants their tech and can keep the business model alive with lower costs and higher margins), or go out of business. So what happens if they go out of business? Usually it's very simple, and does not have anything to do with the FDIC. After all, even if HMBradley goes away, their bank partner(s) will most likely still be just fine. All they have to do is send you a check for the balance when the account is closed. Typically, in an effort to not lose too many accounts at once, they'll offer to convert your account with the failed startup into a normal bank account. They might even offer to convert it to an account with a different partnered fintech startup. Either way, it's a bit of a hassle, but nothing to be terribly concerned about. So yeah, if you can deal with some inconvenience, there's no real harm in taking all the venture capital cash you can.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 27, 2021 20:57
|
|
|
I've been meaning to make a TreasuryDirect account to start buying I-Bonds, so I tried to just now. They were unable to verify my info and need me to print and mail in a form. Probably not gonna put in the effort... I vaguely remember this happening several years ago on their old site. Bet I gave up for the same reason back then.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 30, 2021 22:32
|
|
|
I don't have a car (or car insurance) anymore, but have called insurance companies in the past to ask about getting an umbrella policy for car rentals (along with anything else I could get sued for). They all said no. I could probably get one if I kept a non-owner car insurance policy all the time, but that adds up to a whole lot of money every year for like a couple weeks of rentals.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2021 05:24
|
|
|
Turds in magma posted:I'm glad it isn't just me - I found this very confusing. I'll try to contact someone to figure this out - believe it or not the 104 page document they provide didn't help... Assuming it's not actually an annuity, your 403(b) sounds identical to my wife's. She was even in the same position as you until recently, where she had the 10% contribution from her employer accumulating for years without contributing anything herself (although in her case it was accidental). But yes, contributing to it yourself is generally a good idea before putting that money in a taxable account. It will show up in a separate account within the same 403(b), with the same investments and everything. The general advice of this thread would be to max out your contribution (and your wife's - $19,500 each) before dealing with a taxable account at all. Also, because you make over the limit to deduct a contribution to a traditional IRA, and you also make over the limit to contribute directly to a Roth IRA, you and your wife would likely benefit from doing yearly backdoor Roth conversions to make use of that $6,000 each of tax-advantaged space. This all adds up to $51,000 of contributions you could be making to tax-advantaged retirement accounts every year. It would certainly make sense to use it all before touching a taxable account, as long as you don't need that money before retirement. runawayturtles fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Aug 24, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2021 16:34
|
|
|
cheese eats mouse posted:-Max 401k These two share a limit. So you can max your 401k, or Roth 401k, or a mix of the two.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 25, 2021 02:44
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 16:16 |
|
|
Tev posted:First of all thank you so much to everyone in this thread. Learning a great deal. Yeah, a Roth conversion is taxed as income. There are two main reasons to convert: 1. If, in a given year, you have very little income, you can convert IRA funds for free until your income reaches the edge of the 0% tax bracket. It's a nice trick if you're out of work for a while or have just recently retired. 2. If you're above the income limit for contributing to a Roth IRA normally but still want to do so, you need to do what's known as a backdoor Roth, which practically requires you to have no money in Traditional/Rollover IRAs. But, if you have a current 401k, you could avoid conversion and the tax hit by just rolling the Rollover IRA into that instead. If you're not in either of those situations, you're perfectly fine leaving the IRA as-is and contributing to a new Roth IRA. And yes, even if you're within the income limits to deduct Traditional IRA contributions from your taxes, it's generally better (due to being in a relatively low tax bracket) to contribute after-tax money to a Roth IRA instead.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 7, 2021 17:40
|
|