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The act does this without cutting benefits. In fact, it increases them: An across-the-board benefit increase of about 2%, a better cost-of-living adjustment, and an increase in the minimum benefit. To pay for those increased benefits and to address the actuarial deficit, the act would increase the Social Security payroll tax from its current 6.2% to 7.4% in increments over the next 24 years, for both employee and employer, and begin levying the Social Security payroll tax on earnings above $400,000. (Currently that tax isn’t levied on income above $132,900, which means that, if this act became law, income between $132,900 and $400,000 would be untaxed.)
While the price of your gasoline bill may fluctuate more than that every month, the rate of taxes on your gas bill doesn't.On the cost side, the act would increase the Social Security tax rate by 1.2 percentage points, for both you as well as your employer. Landis downplays the significance of that increase, since it will take place over 24 years, meaning that the increase in any given year (for both you and your employer) will be 0.05 of a percentage point. He says that his “grocery and gasoline bills change more than that every month.”
By purchasing Investor class shares while qualifying for Institutional class shares, VTTVX is skimming investors' money and using it to make it seem that there's no second layer of costs. Vanguard certainly does claim a 0% management fee for VTTVX.So what's the catch? Expenses, mostly. The fund of funds structure creates a double layer of costs. First, there are the expenses associated with running the fund of funds itself—management fees, administrative costs, etc. Second, there are the costs associated with the underlying funds—the same sorts of management fees, administrative costs, and so on.
Compare that with the way Fidelity reports the fees in its funds of index funds. No deception there.Fees and Expenses
The following table describes the fees and expenses you may pay if you buy and hold shares of the Fund. ...
Annual Fund Operating Expenses
(Expenses that you pay each year as a percentage of the value of your investment)
Management Fees None
12b-1 Distribution Fee None
Other Expenses None
Acquired Fund Fees and Expenses 0.13%
Total Annual Fund Operating Expenses 0.13%
Fee Table
The following table describes the fees and expenses that may be incurred when you buy and hold shares of the Fund. ...
Annual Fund Operating Expenses
(expenses that you pay each year as a % of the value of your investment)
Management fees None
Distribution and/or Service (12b-1) fees None
Other expenses 0.15%
Acquired fund fees and expenses 0.03%
Total annual operating expenses 0.18%
But Vanguard doesn't claim this at all. On their fund page for VTTVX, they clearly report an expense ratio of 0.13%, which includes the fees of the underlying funds. Nowhere do they claim that they have a 0% fee. Anyone can plainly see that the "Target Retirement" funds like VTTVX are more expensive than the plain index funds -- no deception here.By keeping the Investor shares around, and by using those Investor shares in VTTVX, Vanguard is able to collect an extra 0.11% in fees while claiming to have a 0% management fee on VTTVX. This is deceptive.
@rforno , I wouldn't recommend that in retirement without a cash bucket (another asset class), unless you don't need to withdraw from your savings. Withdrawing from a full-in equity portfolio during a bear market could be detrimental to your savings, especially if that bear market is at the start of retirement. So if you had that cash bucket, 1, 3, 5 years, whatever your comfort level is, I think 100% equity for the remaining portfolio is perfectly fine for a risk taker like yourself. Probably do better than most....when I hit retirement I still expect to still be practically all-in on equities as I am now in my mid-40s. While I won't be 'diversified' across so-called "asset classes" I will be 'diversified' by my own comfort levels,
I don't disagree with you on this at all, but you know these are not asset classes.And no, I don't care about LC/MC/SC G/B/V designations
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