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I agree with Closet_Gamer that you need to research your own situation, but by way of comparison I would have been able to benefit from an end of year 529 contribution. My state offers a state tax deduction for its own 529 plan and also enforces a one year holding period for money in 529...

As I pointed out earlier in this thread, stable value funds are poor investments right now - no growth potential and below market yields. For the sake of completeness, I should also mention another big negative that I had to deal with last year - trading restrictions that make it difficult to...

Stable value funds will always be an inappropriate investment for a 26 year old's retirement savings. But it's an even worse mistake for him to put money into a stable value fund in a rising interest rate environment. It's likely that the yield on the stable value fund is much lower right now...

I hope everyone is pondering the possible future implications of this "cash back (including interest)" treatment of exceeding one's annual limit on i-bond purchases. It seems to me that this is likely to be a favorable way to make early redemptions of i-bonds that are sitting in my gift box...

You are right that the worst case scenario for I-bonds purchased in November is the possibility of getting no return at all except for sixth months at 7.12%. You could then cash them in November, 2022 and get performance roughly equal to a one year CD at 3.56% However, as a general rule one...

I bought the maximum amount of i-bonds this summer, reasoning that the 3.54% was way above the return on comparable safe investments and even back then it was already looking as if the November inflation adjustment would be well above 5%. It's not as clear cut now. True, you can buy in October...

The composite rate combines the fixed rate with the inflation adjustment. The Feds have promised never to allow the composite rate to go below zero, but appear to have remained completely silent on whether the fixed rate could ever go negative. "

How do you know with absolute certainty that the fixed rate won't go negative? The Treasury has never issued an I-bond with a negative fixed rate, but I'm unaware of anything preventing them from doing so. I see that Vanguard's TIPS fund, VIPSX, has a current yield of -1.85%. If the Feds want...

I think you should be much more concerned with the tax implications of what you're contemplating rather than the relatively minor differences between an S&P500 index vs. Total Stock Market fund. Specifically, I'm fairly certain there's a limit on the amount of unearned income a child can have...

Those are benefits, but I don't think they're the biggest benefit. I have a very concrete benefit from tax loss harvesting last March that doesn't depend on future events like charitable gifts or stepped up basis for heirs. I didn't mention it in my earlier post, but I wasn't actually a net...

That's an interesting question. I was curious enough to look into my own transaction history from last March, when I sold shares of a Vanguard mutual fund on three separate dates to establish a loss for tax purposes. Assuming that I would have sold the same number of shares on the same dates...

Boho, I see that you are posting as though the Investopedia summary page is accurate, and ignoring interest charges against your account. In order to keep followers of this thread informed of your actual performance, could you please post the latest interest charges/credits? I believe the...

Thanks for posting this, Boho. Your screenshot ends with the 5/1/18 interest payment, so we are still missing the interest adjustments needed from the beginning of the game through 4/1/18. Using just the numbers available from your screenshot, you would have to subtract $10,429.47 from your...

Boho, I know that you've been using significant leverage for many months now. In fact, it's the primary reason I think you've improved as an investor over the course of the game - instead of taking crazy fliers on stocks of companies you know absolutely nothing about, you've recently stuck...

It's even worse than that. Boho not only got the index performance wrong, but he gives his own portfolio value from the Investopedia rankings page. I went into some detail earlier this month explaining why the Investopedia rankings are hopelessly inaccurate. If Boho took the trouble to make...

I am ambivalent about joining this game, but have tentatively decided to do so. I am unconvinced that a third contest is necessary. The previous game clearly demonstrated what most of us already know - that passive index investors will beat the majority of active traders, and that the traders...

As an example of how Investopedia mishandles interest payments on cash during its end of month processing, consider my (DieWurst's) experience in the past few days. On 4/29 I made some trades that caused me to go from a small positive cash balance to a negative balance of -$631,830.55. On May...

I wouldn't take that monthly summary too seriously. Like everything else in the game, the numbers appear to be hopelessly inaccurate. So far, at least, I haven't seen any evidence that interest payments/charges are reflected in portfolio value. If so, that makes the numbers totally bogus...

Sure, Boho made a lot of silly trades early in the game, but to his credit he learned from his mistakes and has been playing better lately. As far as I can tell, the people most affected by the purge of trade history are not frequent traders like Boho, but the long term buy and holders like...

That's why your trade history may be accurate, but Boho's is hopelessly wrong. You may not have been affected by the purge of trade history from 2017, but Boho definitely was. The game thinks he started trading early in 2018, but of course he made countless trades in 2017 that have now...

Maybe, maybe not. Like practically everything else in the game, the statistics of transaction volume are hopelessly inaccurate. If you check your transaction history, you will see that all of your trades from 2017 have disappeared. The first trade of yours that the game has a record of is...

Moderators need not, and in fact shouldn't, be required to feel "outrage" in order to enforce policy. In my view, if a post is slanderous it should be removed, or edited. Are you saying that slander is now ok on er.org? Or do you think that none of the posts in this thread contain any...

I am completely at a loss to see how you characterize anything in this thread as a "catfight". The question is simply what is the responsibility of the moderators. This thread contains frequent posts slandering the integrity of a CFP who is not here to defend himself. I find it hard to...

CaliforniaMan, I willingly acknowledge that some of the posts in this thread were helpful and avoided gratuitous ad hominem attacks on the CFP. Yours was one of the them, and I apologize if my criticism of this thread as a whole comes across as unfairly including the helpful posts. But I stand...

Sorry, MichaelB, but I don't agree at all. To me the tone of this thread is that, no matter how highly rated the investments are that a CFP recommends, he is certain to be accused of being a "charlatan" at best, a thief at worst, unless every single one of his recommendations is a low cost...