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've cited this Kitces piece before:
Tax-Efficient Spending Strategies From Retirement Portfolios
https://www.kitces.com/blog/tax-efficient-retirement-withdrawal-strategies-to-fund-retirement-spending-needs/The conventional view is that taxable inve…
I just checked how Merrill handles mutual fund tax lots. Its inability to handle fractional shares results in its doing backward somersaults to get the numbers to add up right. Fictitious lots are thrown in with phony prices. A single fund purch…
Unfortunately, one can usually count on articles like this to not really dig into details. Especially those concerning fund changes.
MFO doesn't generate a link for #4 (Century Shares Trust), because that fund no longer exists. It was merged int…
For your amusement (10PM EDT, 4/26/2019):
We are performing maintenance between 9/2/2016 at 12:00 PM ET and 9/6/2016 at 9:00 AM ET. During this time, access to eMoney is temporarily unavailable while we enhance and improve the Fidelity eMoney client…
@BenWP - I can't find a BC/BS Medicare PPO in Mass. that has a medical deductible of any amount, let alone $1K. All I see are three different PPOs, all summarized in this BC/BS booklet for 2019. You may have some non-standard plan. No matter.
…
A couple of comments on drugs ...
As @catch22 pointed out, the reason that the chemo drugs were covered by the supplemental policy (here, Plan F), was that they were part of the treatment (i.e. falling under Part B). The coverage for those drugs w…
I forget if you have a Merrill account, but if so have you tried using their MyFinancialPicture?
bulletproof in my experience.
I guess you woulda mentioned if you had or could.
I do keep a Merrill account in which I never trade (as a buy-and-hold …
A few clarifications:
Part A - hospitalization; generally free unless you've worked less than 40 quarters.
Part B - doctors; monthly premium is currently $135.50, or higher if you have high income (IRMAA)
Part D - drug coverage; entirely private in…
I've found Medicare.gov reasonably organized for comparing Part C plans. (I've used it when helping others; I'm still stuck with ACA's skinny network plans.) It's been changed a little since the last time I looked, but you can still compare three …
To bring the business side full circle, eMoney's founder is going to build a competing product for Yodlee's parent company Envestnet.
Envestnet acquired Yodlee about the same time as Fidelity acquired eMoney.
And ... yer out.
Reflexive pronouns.
https://data.grammarbook.com/blog/pronouns/reflexive-pronouns-2/
To keep this on subject ... for @heritage972: Fidelity doesn't pay outside clowns for this. Most aggregators work with Yodlee. Fidelity bought …
The lead story (p. A1) in last Sunday's NYTimes was "Safety Concerns Plague Boeing Dreamliner Plant, Claim of Sloppy Work on a Popular Jet - Whistle-Blosers Cite Retribution.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-p…
@msf, you're one of those people that complained about their tax refund being smaller this year, aren't you? Even though at the end of the day your taxes went down significantly.
This remark about my tax planning skills has exactly what to do with F…
What's wrong with that is that:
(a) Even if one looks once a week or even just once a month, one shouldn't be forced to wait until late in the evening, the next Saturday, to do so;
(b) Without a lot of trial and error, one does not know which tim…
Frankly, I hadn't heard the term interest capitalization before either. I'm not taking out loans to go to college. But as a homeowner, I'm familiar with negative amortization - same thing, different name.
Students often don't have to start paying…
If I hand out a pop quiz with four multiple choice questions, surely I know how many students aced it.
So long as at least 25% answered each question correctly, it is possible that 25%+ got all four correct. So long as the sum of the wrong an…
If they can't do their finances, can they write grammatically correct headlines?
Marketwatch is the source of this thread's subject line (fewer than 25% of grads); other sites like ZeroHedge served up a different article with a headline reading "le…
From the prospectus: "The fund will normally invest at least 80% of its net assets (including any borrowings for investment purposes) in securities of communications and technology companies."
Now you know where that 80% number came from.
You're likely thinking of the 2001 SEC rule that requires 80% of a fund's holdings to be consistent with its name (e.g. sector or geographic region).
https://www.sec.gov/news/headlines/mfnames.htm (PR)
https://www.sec.gov/rules/final/ic-24828.htm (…
"the same federal minimum wage as we have in the 50 states,"
That's misleading. The federal minimum wage is a floor. While that floor exists in all states, the majority of states have minimum wages that exceed the federal floor. Heck, even som…
Alberta appears to be looking to profit by dumping some environmental costs onto BC and/or much of the US. Can you say Keystone? It doesn't matter whether Alberta is part of Canada or the US, the problems with tar sands won't change based on its …
These bonds completely disconnect the use of the proceeds from source of revenue to pay for them.
These are revenue bonds, backed and paid for exclusively from, as you speculated, riverboat gambling. Okay, not exactly something that colorful, but…
Instead of trying to "out-Ted" Ted, by providing links without any comment (at least he provides quotes to give a sense of the pages), consider putting pen to paper and explaining what you think these pages show.
The USA Today column doesn't say th…
That was the expected response. You can quote Romney, you can even highlight sections, but if you're going to reference Politifact, you need to identify the flaw in Politifact's reasoning, i.e. what was wrong with how it came to the conclusion th…
"The situation marks a sharp departure from tradition—stretching back many decades—when major safety decisions from the FAA affecting American-built aircraft tended to be routinely embraced by foreign counterparts."
This schism is illustrative of a…
@Ted -thank for quoting the whole paragraph (as I did simultaneously), as it presents the view that this is a feature, not a bug. Consistent with rono's spitballing suggestion that $100K families pay no income tax either.
Just to be clear about the red herring -- 44% of Americans paid no federal taxes -- that figure (I looked it up, after Romney made his campaign remark) applies to all Americans: babes in arms, retirees, students with no income whatsoever, servicemen…
There may be another reason to keep the money in a separate account. Personally, I don't find it compelling, but many others disagree.
Money that comes from a plan covered by ERISA get unlimited protection in bankruptcy. (This only protects the m…
Corporations are tax collectors as well as tax payers. Taxes are imposed along points of the pricing chain as is the collection, often at point of sale, passed along and embedded in the price.
...And that ought not to be assumed or taken for grant…
"Of course, this is nothing new." Agreed, which is what makes the middle paragraph you quoted so curious, as it asserts how "really remarkable" this is.
In addition to weaker regulatory regimes, something else that is different is the reemergence…
Putting the two together, perhaps the point is that Leona Helmsley was wrong.
It's not that only the little people pay taxes, it's that only some of the little people pay taxes. (Remember, corporations are people, my friend, and the ones mention…
Ah yes, the DC-10. Another plane that was desperately in need of rebranding.
"Except for 9/11, the crash of [American Airlines flight] 191 remains the worst air disaster in American history — all 271 people on the plane and two people on the groun…
@hank - I've added the MD95 to my quote of your text.
As should be obvious, I'm no aviation expert, but as an occasional flyer, I was aware of the renaming of DC9s to MD80s. I did not know about the rest of the MD series.
Somewhat bizarrely giv…
"Wealthfront, for example, harvests losses by switching between the Vanguard ETF and the Schwab U.S. Broad Market ETF."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-sec-fintech/sec-sanctions-robo-advisers-wealthfront-hedgeable-idUSKCN1OK22E
Wealthfront, …
Renaming the plane might work. The 717 was a rebranded McDonnell Douglass DC9/MD95. (Arguably a better and more modern design than the 737). Since they discontinued the 717 they could call the rebranded 737 a 717 and play off of that plane’s good …
To grow an economy, you make sure that it has a good labor force that is well educated (or well trained for jobs), that is not growing disproportionately old, and that brings a wealth of ideas and zeal. The stock prices will follow.
There seems to be a $5K ACH limit for Navy Fed-initiated transfers, but I don't see a limit on transfers initiated from outside.
Wiring out will definitely cost you money ($14/wire plus potential fees on the receiving end), but you might be able to…
I used to work with someone who told me that in the 80s he would shoot for the highest paying Texas S&Ls, knowing that there was a good chance they'd go under. His experience differed from yours - he generally got his money back within a few d…
AFAIK, Causeway never offered ETFs. Turns out these weren't. NextShares are ETMFs, not ETFs.
NextShares’ New Product Combines Active Management With ETFs
https://mutualfundobserver.com/discuss/discussion/26290/nextshares-new-product-combines-a…
Congress originally established the Student Loan Marketing Association, or SLMA, in 1972. The SLMA acronym was pronounced “Sallie Mae,” a nickname that stuck, became widely recognized and therefore had value. Ownership of the right to the Sallie M…
