Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
I further speculate that there's a vast majority of part-time workers out there that fall into that hole because the companies they work for only allow full-time workers access to their 401k plans. Not that part time workers have any leftover funds…
Here's a radical thought: Instead of focusing on how tax breaks for retirement ostensibly for the masses are limited, we could look at why those tax breaks exist, and who really benefits from them.
Nearly half of all families have no retirement sav…
>> pension and RMDs, both of which received favorable tax treatment specifically for retirement.
The selling point of the 457b (IRAs too) in the 1980s was that one’s retirement tax bracket was going to be lower than one’s working tax bracket.…
"While a 55-cent stamp will work, I prefer to add tracking (via priority mail). So my annual cost is $7.35. "
I'm a cheapskate: first class mail (55¢) + certified mail ($3.50) + electronic return receipt ($1.60) = $5.65. Just proof of delivery, n…
Here's a page related to the Michigan Retirement/Pension page that Hank linked to. It focuses specifically on Withholding Taxes.
At least for Michigan employers, "Every Michigan employer who is required to withhold federal income tax under the Int…
You're supposed to be able to rollover a 403(b) directly to a Roth IRA. See IRS chart.
Despite the fact that the rollover conversion is taxable, withholding is not supposed to be mandatory. You don't want taxes withheld, since it's better to…
@John - why would you stop the Roth and start a SEP-IRA?
...small business owner, tax reasons...save much more in tax long term since we contribute upward of 60s K [both of us] ...
You can have 401k /sepIRA /pensions at same time as long as we do…
I'm not clear on the income/tax situation: "If she doesn't make enough money from which to deduct IRA contributions."
So let's start with the mechanics. First, as @Gary1952 said, don't take a taxable distribution. If you're going to pay taxes,…
Yes.
Two relatively easy ways to gain access to DFA funds are through HSA accounts, e.g. HSA Bank, and noload VAs, e.g. Ameritas.
These types of investments generally have overheads, e.g. M&E fees for annuities. But if you're going to own the…
Vanguard sells ZEOIX along with all other OEFs it carries, with no transaction fee (up to 25 trades per year per SSN) to its Flagship customers. More to its Flagship Select customers.
WellsTrade does not sell ZEOIX, so grandfathered customers can…
It's not just that no broker sells it (see M* purchase page for the fund), and that it's not shown on DoubleLine's public-facing website, but that only DoubleLine itself (acting as an adviser for accredited investor clients) may buy shares. The fun…
"Something went wrong in our system processes in checks and balances that we have that should have caught this and fixed it."
No, that wasn't a comment about this software glitch. It was the JPL administrator talking about a different glitch:
Interesting how everyone is focused on Mullenburg's ouster as CEO. What about the fact that the Chairman, Calhoun, is being installed as CEO?
From the Seattle Times article on Oct. 11 reporting Mullenburg's earlier ouster as Chairman:It’s general…
Here's another way to view this, which may address people's reactions.
The IRA was created as a retirement vehicle. However, people have used IRAs for other purposes as well. That's okay so long as they're legal. But benefits that are derived …
>> pension and RMDs, both of which received favorable tax treatment specifically for retirement.
...
No matching, no taxes then, deferred to later; beyond that no special treatment.If deferring taxes on investment earnings isn't significant, t…
There seems to be little rhyme or reason as to which funds within a family are sold NTF at a given brokerage.
Fidelity displays Advisor class shares for a couple of TRP funds on its retail site. Still, they're only accessible through Fidelity®…
>>NAESX is investor class with a minimum of $3000 but it is closed.
And yet this is the share class that appears in the US News article. Makes one wonder if this is yet another column that was just phoned in.
>> So VSCPX with ER 0.0…
In 2005, Congress passed the BAPCA to provide bankruptcy protection for IRAs. Since only IRAs were involved in the case, there was no ruling on 401(k) accounts. But the same reasoning ought to apply.
The court ruled that the bankruptcy protectio…
[A friend wrote:]
I get the IRS wanting to recover deferred income taxes somehow, but the 10-year requirement appears to assume the balance in an inherited 457b account will be pretty small (and that any capital gains included in them should be ta…
"I presented written concern for the stretched IRA provision to our 2 senators; as this provision is a tax grab towards the middle class for the most part, cutting into the poor man's/woman's self provided estate planning"
Many see something that a…
Always nice to read stories with a hometown touch. I believe my high school math department chair used to live in the area. Great find!
BTW, the Queens Daily Eagle was just launched last year as a sister publication of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. …
Actually you made an astute observation that might have been missed, not in the reporting but in the actual creation of the Act. But a "deemed distribution" appears to present so many opportunities for mistakes that perhaps the House (where the Ac…
Most of your questions aren't discussed in the various articles because the SECURE Act doesn't change much.
RMDs work the same way as always. All that's changed is the age at which they start. Same amounts required as before based on age (thoug…
An older column from Kitces:
https://www.kitces.com/blog/managing-sequence-of-return-risk-with-bucket-strategies-vs-a-total-return-rebalancing-approach/
In short, if one uses multiple buckets (say, a 3 year short term bucket and one or two others),…
Bond funds, even short term ones, get some of their return from rate movements. That's why VSBSX has a YTD figure that's so much higher than its interest yield. With short term bond funds and MMFs paying about the same in interest, the question …
Just looking at the mechanics, and not the particular funds ...
It looks like with a little flexibility, you could get down to two institutions - Fidelity and Vanguard - pretty easily. TRP is now NTF at Fidelity (and at Vanguard, though I'd favor…
This is not unusual for small company plans. Small companies tend to shift the cost of running the plan onto the participants in the form of higher expense ratios (level loads).
Companies are going to spend a certain amount of money on each emplo…
I was just piggybacking on a sequence of threads for continuity; the others weren't mine.
Regarding trends in interfaces - it seems to be a common problem that as applications are generalized, insufficient attention is being paid to interface deta…
"Rest assured the money grab will never end."
Indeed. Taxpayers will continue to do what they can to avoid or defer paying taxes on their income. So they try to use "tax-favored vehicles to build up large bequests". With the exception of Roth's…
The legacy pages of M* still let you do that.
Here's the link for the performance page of VFIAX. In Enter Tickers box of the Compare section, you can enter the tickers of the funds or ETFs that you want to compare. While the graph only goes bac…
Along Lewis' lines, and keeping in mind that this thread started with Christmas song video, here's Tom Leher's Christmas Carol dating back to the 1950s:
Christmas time is here by golly,
Disapproval would be folly, ...
FDYZX would still be better if you can buy it, since it carries no 12b-1 fee.
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=FDYZX®ion=usa&culture=en-US
IMHO it's more than multiple cockroaches (discrete problems). It's cultural, it's reputational, and yes, it's political.
Even if these drip-drip-drip events were individually not that significant, and were not representative of deeper company cul…
It's not just that less money is flowing to the working class. It's also that so much work isn't valued at all. Literally. Unpaid work, whether housework, or home care for the elderly, or charitable labor is not only not rewarded, it is not ev…
Yes, OEFs are different. And also rather confusing. When purchased through a brokerage they tend to settle one day after trade (not T+2, and not same day). But when purchased directly from a fund company, they seem to settle "immediately" (end …
Thanks for the reminder:
Natural gas is an efficient, safe, colorless and odorless gas. For easy detection, we add a harmless chemical called mercaptan to give gas a distinctive odor. Most people describe the smell as rotten eggs or hydrogen sulfid…
@Simon makes an excellent point about how single years can skew figures. Regarding 2009, it would likely be more informative to include both 2008 and 2009 or neither. Volatile funds tended to crash harder in 2008 and surge higher in 2009 than ot…
Well, yes but. The max you can put into that CD is the min you can put into VMMXX. $3,000. It's a 12 month Special EasyStart℠ CD.
Limit one Special EasyStart Certificate per member. This offer, including the stated APY, is effective Dec. 10, …
