Search results

I spent almost two years looking at every product on the market available for individuals, and was dissatisfied with all of them. Many didn't allow for custom investments to be added. Some didn't recognize unusual securities like preferred stocks or baby bonds. Some didn't provide the data I...

I guess what confuses me is I look at a lot of these BBB bonds and they are from companies like Oracle, Allstate, etc. Are people saying they aren't comfortable with corporate bonds and want to stick to just mostly government? In general, I'm struggling on my bond strategy. I didn't like the...

I have a question for those of you that use the Fidelity Full View feature, that allows you to see all of your assets, even if they are held outside Fidelity. It's a good tool (from emoney advisor, who Fidelity bought). However, when I plug in my BBB bonds, it shows them as high yield rather...

Good points on the heirs likely paying at higher tax rates due to the additive nature of the RMDs on top of their salaries. Also, the comment about hedging against future uncertainty also rings true for me. One of the reasons I have larger after-tax holdings than pretax is that I’ve never...

So, I've spent the last two days digging around and man is this topic complicated. Between Obamacare, IRMAA, one spouse living much longer, living long vs not, government action on taxes, government action on social security, the challenges of record keeping if you do conversions, uncertainty...

I'm finally getting around to looking at Roth conversions and I'm struggling to deal with all of the factors. Rough situation: 1. DW and I are 60. We will take SS at 67. We will have a combined amount of ~$60k. 2. We have way more in after-tax than pre-tax. Our pre-tax IRA's are around $1.5M...

hmm, that's interesting. So you were able to contribute more than $7,500 to your self 401k Roth?

We didn't want to put any more money into a traditional IRA because of potential higher tax brackets in the future, especially after age 73 when both social security and RMD's hit, along with a lot of after-tax dividends and capital gains. So, the Roth made more sense. We do also have a...

We do have some earned income. My wife is still working W-2 and we have a consulting business that earns enough to max out a Roth contribution.

I'm 60 and getting ready to make another Roth IRA contributon for 2023. I'm doing it because most of my retirement funds are in after-tax accounts, and I need to move some of those annual earnings to tax protected accounts, like a Rothm to reduce current taxes. Is there any reason to not make...

Yes. But the unclear issue is what happens to the half of the Tenant In Common account owned by a surviving spouse during probate for the dead spouse. Does the surviving spouse have access to those funds? This is potentially an issue for anyone who has TIC accounts, instead of JTWROS accounts...

A financial planner today told me that if you hold three years of cash living expenses you virtually eliminate SoRR. I know this is wrong. I’d like to send him one or more studies that will show him he’s wrong. I don’t think the guy is very bright. He’s also trying to get all his retirement...

The estate planning laws may change in the next few years. Right now, the federal estate tax exemption is $13.61M. So a couple could have up to a combined $27.2M before having to worry about estate taxes. As a result, many people have foregone the strategy of using trusts, especially in states...

Good point. I also forgot about IRMAA. I haven't even looked into that yet because we are still five years from Medicare.

I have 75% of funds in post-tax accounts and 25% in IRAs. To get the 60/40 or 50/50 stock/bond ratio I want, I have to buy quite a bit of fixed income in post-tax accounts. This creates a lot of income (especially with high money market rates right now). So, I don't have a lot of head room for...

Appreciate this. However I can’t follow this description. I guess I’ll try to google it to understand it better.

So, I have a related question. I'm only 60. Every year I get a projected Social Security statement that says how much I would get at FRA (67) or at 70. That number hasn't changed over the years. But if there is a COLA being applied yearly to social security payments, shouldn't that number go up...

I can provide a bit of perspective on NIL and the money in college football. I was involved with the NIL initiatives at Texas. While I agree with many that NIL is really distorting the game, it's very important to understand that there has been a shadow, illegal funding scheme for years in...

I have a deep set of spreadsheet tabs that track retirement funds in many different ways: bond ladders, stock investments by sector, market cap, investment thesis, stocks vs bonds vs alternative assets, security type, etc. However, the one thing I couldn’t model easily was future returns that...

I understand. I'm trying to project the future value of the ETF, not the yield.

I'm trying to model the future income and value of a bond ETF fund, such as VCIT. While I understand the distributions and ETF value can go up and down with interest rates, I still need to understand just roughly what income it might produce and what value it will be, if interest rates stayed...

I've always been underweight international and that worked out okay the last 10-15 years. International valuations are signficantly below the US right now, so one would think international should outperform. I was about to build up my international allocation significantly, until I looked at the...

I would like to have a roughly 50/50 bond allocation between govt bonds and corp bonds, and I'm heavy corporate since treasury rates were stuck in the 4's. When the 10 year went to 5 I wish I would have bought some to build up the ladder in years 7-10.

Thanks, I see that now. But I still have iBonds (US Govt), baby bonds and other securities that the tool can't handle. Also, since I have investments stretched across multiple brokerages it's just tough to use it. I'm on spreadsheets which works okay, but not great. I wish I had a nice third...

Tried this, but there are so many issues. I can't get the bond fund ETF's to add, even though it says it supports them. It doesn't take baby bonds. It takes forever to calculate. It doesn't show the ladder by year. It's really not useful for me.