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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...

The problem with examples like Edelman gives is that there's no warning of the risks involved. You get higher return by having a larger and/or interest only mortgage because you're investing in stocks (instead of the bond-like paying off the mortgage earlier). Stocks aren't a magic 8% flat rate...

Especially for younger folks like myself, I look at the Roth has hedging my bets. If I live to be 100, that's 65 years of possible tax code / rate changes. The last 65 have seen 90% marginal rates, the end of the gold standard, etc. etc. Tax rates today are the lowest they are going to be and...

I've heard this argument many times and think it's baloney. The kids in this case are sitting on a goldmine yet complaining about having to pay any taxes on it. The land has gone from $2K/acre to $20K and acre. So if they had to pay taxes on a 100 acre farm, even with a 50% estate tax (and...

I wouldn't pare down her application list too much based on anticipated cost. Wait until you get the full picture (which schools she's admitted to, and how much aid they will offer) before deciding. Spending $50/school to keep your options open is probably worth it, especially if she's gunning...

I don't know how a no-estate-tax system would work since the law is not passed yet. Who knows what would happen to the son's cost basis? And I thought the whole problem some people have with the estate tax is that it forces heirs to sell businesses, not that they have to pay taxes when they do...

The fallacy here, of course, is that the guy who, for example, bought microsoft in 1985 and dies in 2005 has not paid ANY taxes on the capital gains. So eliminating the estate tax only insures that his heirs won't either.

Peggy, You should certainly look into lower expense/better return funds. You're paying twice: once for the higher expenses, and second for the weak performance of your funds vs. the benchmarks (at least all the ones I checked). You should also check how you are calculating your returns. Even...

I'd say 30% savings should be good enough, even though it never hurts to increase more. It sounds to me like you're returns are being taken by high fees and poor diversity/selection. A couple of very easy things you could have done (all at Vanguard since I'm most familiar with those options)...

How is your portfolio allocated that you have had flat returns for the last three years? The S&P 500 is up 25% over the last three years. Even if you really meant flat for the last FIVE years (which is pretty much true) you should have seen some positive returns just from DCA'ing into stocks...

Hmm. on vanguard.com, it says the inflation adjustment is capped at 10% annually (and on the downward side at the level of your initial payment). I'm not sure that this risk is any worse than what > 10% CPI would mean for stocks. This also gives you a ~100% success rate (minus whatever the...