Recent content by work4beer

Selling for a dollar won't do anything, you'll still owe gift tax. If you are married, she could give have to your spouse and half to you (i.e. $12k each) and stay under the gift tax limit. The $2M is semi-unified with the estate tax. So if your sister has a lot of assets at death, that may...

Most of the franchisees (e.g., auto dealers) are probably not allowed to advertise outside of their territory per their franchise agreement, since it ticks off the locals.

I should have been more clear, I mean traditional 401(k)s and IRAs. Point being, estates subject to the tax ($2M for a married couple) are made up of assets which are likely to have been largely untaxed. I'd love to see a study which shows what percentage of estates are actually "double...

"Paying taxes along the way" is a major fallacy in the estate tax debate. 401(k)'s and IRA's have never had income taxes paid on either the contributions or the capital gains. Same for those inherited shares of Microsoft bought for 40 cents in 1985. Ditto for most businesses and farms...

I think it may be an issue on your side. I just tried those options you mentioned, as well as logged into my account, from my Linux box, using Firefox 1.5.0.3 and Suse 10.1 linux, no problems at all. Looks just like on windows or mac. Vanguard is my favorite financial website, besides my...

Your HSA and Health Care provider don't care, but it's the IRS you need to worry about. Just keep the receipts with your tax return for that year, only qualified medical expenses from pub. 502 count. (i.e. you can pay for contact lens solution and bandaids, but not vitamins) You might want to...

Or, (more likely, IMO) they'll lobby Congress to put the squeeze on credit unions. Banks hate credit unions.

What I don't like about emerging/international bonds right now is that the yields are so low. e.g. PEBIX, an emerging market bond fund is at 5.35%, ESICX, which invests in foreign government debt, is around 2.5%. I've been getting out of mine until I see more of a risk premium vs. US bonds. As...

Not necessarily, because in future years you might be able to rollover your contributions and gains into a Roth. Just make sure that you file form 8606 with your taxes to track your basis, so that portion is not taxed when you rollover. I think the income limits are loosening up in 2010 to make...

-1.9%, with a 67/23/10 % equity/bond/cash portfolio.... Looking better today so far....

You want to "recharacterize" your excess Roth IRA contributions to a traditional IRA. I had to do it one year, it's not too big a deal but annoying. I think I was able to do it with a form from Vanguard, and then also enter the info on Form 8606. Anyways, "recharacterize" is the key word when...

While I agree that variable spending after retirement should be considered, there are two huge problems with this article (i.e. the example in the graphic): 1) It assumes you have a pension. A pretty generous one, since they are assuming $12K from savings, lets say $12K from SS, which means...

Some statisticians wrote a paper on this a few years ago. I think they looked at powerball, the expected value of a Powerball ticket rose to about 85 cents on the dollar at the 80-100 million range, then tapered off above that as the chances of having multiple winners increased. I recall the...

The advantage that beer has over boiled water is that it STAYS potable. Water might turn bad based on whatever you were storing it in. Small beers for children and the elderly went up into modern times. When I was doing some work on the house, we found some bottles from the 10's or 20's for a...

The performance drag of a mixed portfolio is low (10-15%) and really reduces volatility. Probably a good trade off for most humans. Institutions and others with long time frames can afford to wait for the long term. buying IBonds in January 2000, you would have realized a 50% total return...