True, but when I see "official" and "gov regs", I sort of sit up and take notice. LOL.
I wonder if it's new? I had to answer my investing goal (growth, income, etc), something else I can't remember, and the income and NW questions. All were required fields. It was odd. I answered the first few, but canceled the process when I got the income and NW questions. I'll look at it again tomorrow and see if I want to bother transitioning or not. I only tried today since it was the new year and I thought I might move a wee bit to play in stocks. Also, I'd get rid of the annoying "transition now" button and messages.
That was my first thought, too, but it sounded so official!
You might be on to something here. The question about my 'investing goals' was odd.
Yeah, but I figured now that it was a new year, it would be a good way to get rid of the annoying reminders and allow me to do a little trading.
. The broker meets their obligation by sending one out/getting you to fill one in. If you choose not to make any changes year to year, that's not their problem, they did their duty.
Yeah, and they even linked to the regulation. Since I was in banking years ago, when I hear the words "money laundering, SEC, and regulation", it catches my attention. Combine that with my natural inclination to be honest, and it just makes me uncomfortable to answer by just clicking something. Once I get some coffee into my system, I'll read it all again and see how I feel.IIRC, wasn't there some SEC rule instituted some years ago requiring brokers, etc. to send out a form with specific questions to investors asking this information? Some send out the form yearly. I'm real hazy on it now, seems it had something to do with suitability of products for different "classes" of investors.
If I get a chance Friday, I'll try to dig one of these out, there may have been a fine-print statement at the bottom that specified the organization requiring it, and maybe a spec number.
I just put down Growth, Income as objectives, leave the NW lower from years ago, and put down knowledgeable investor. IIRC, there is a requirement for brokers to update this every year, but if there is "no change", you don't have to respond
We just got done converting a bunch of Vanguard mutual funds to same mutual funds in brokerage accounts. Decided to go ahead and do it, as we plan on moving more business over to them this year, and some new accounts will need to be created for some of it. And new accounts are brokerage. Converting a taxable trust account was NOT fun. We did Roth, etc. first, and instructions weren't too bad (but not real good, either). For trust, once we got started, their instructions just left us hanging, confused and bewildered. Finally got through it, figuring if we screwed it up, nothing would transfer and I'd have to spend life on the phone. I guess we made the right choices. Some of the right choices probably was purely by accident. The trust-route instructions suck big-time. There's no nice way to put it. Seems like just another case of people designing things that they themselves don't use.
Once we thought we were done with the trust conversion input, and signed off on it, it took about a week and a half for VG to put it in place. They say 5 to 7 days, so that was close enough. We really expected them to call or email us with questions, but it seems we got through the maze somehow on our own. Amazing! You can keep using the original mutual fund account until they complete the transfer, so you do not lose access to funds or the ability to buy/sell during the conversion time. We, being ever-mindful of the infinite ways that SCHTF, would not make any $ changes until the new account is up and running.
There were recommendations to do the transition early in the year before you have any transactions, so that you'd only get one set of 1099s next year at tax time. But since you've done rebalancing, if it involved your taxable account then know that you will get two sets of 1099s for 2021.
Moving from whatever you call the "old" style account to a brokerage account. If you've only had your VG account for a few years it might've been the new style brokerage account. Otherwise you would probably be getting nag mails from VG asking you to convert.
They carried over the basis for each of my mutual funds, so they probably carried that info over too, or maybe not if it doesn't make sense.
Hmm, I can't remember about my Roth. What matters there is not the basis, but rather how much is contributions if you are withdrawing early.
