Should I sell all these, pay capital gains taxes and then buy index funds

[dvalley]

I have these few individual stocks in one of my brokerage accounts. I'm thinking of selling them all and moving the money into my Vanguard account that is almost all VTSAX and VIMAX.

A couple of these are long term, other's short term. However, the net gain is so little I'm thinking of just selling and moving them all in one shot. Does that sound reasonable?

 

[FIREd]

As long as you don't mind paying the taxes, sure, why not?

 

[JPatrick]

Or you could delay a bit to get everything into long term gain status, but the difference in taxes would probably be relatively small.

 

[dvalley]

That was my initial thought too but with a net gain of about $1k with probably about $250 tax is it a big deal? then again will moving this money into vanguard isn't paramount either since I'm doing it mainly for simplification and to keep dividends in my taxable account to a min.

 

[clifp]

I'd wait until the end of July to get LTG also, although the amount of money is relatively small. Personally it feels like a sideways market to me, and all of the stocks except for Berkshire pay well above dividends.

 

[MBAustin]

The $ difference isn't enough to delay if it's what you want to do - with things like this, I have a tendency to lose momentum through over analysis and trying to optimize when in reality the magnitude of difference isn't worth the time I spend on it.

 

[gerntz]

If the difference is a big enough deal to you such that you felt the need to post it here, imo you aren't close to ER.

 

[dvalley]

I'll probably just go ahead and sell these off just to simplify the portfolio. I thought someone may have a better way of doing it (exchanging of funds) or advice for not doing anything at all since they are decent picks for dividends.

@gerntz, I'm not close to ER - about 10-12 years out.

 

[LOL!]

Or don't pay any taxes: Give all shares with LT gains away to charity. Sell losers. Anything with short-term gains, use the losers to offset, then wait for rest go LT, then give away to charity.

 

[Rustward]

Those stocks are not bad picks, but if $18K - 20K is what you are willing to commit to stocks, I'd say you should probably sell them and put the money in mutual funds. Just wait a few months until all the gains are long term.