And if the market shits itself tomorrow? You never keep on debt for the hope you can make an extra $1
Yeah. You probably wanna find a new accountant. I'm not sure how the IRS didn't flag that on your taxes, honestly. Straight from IRS: You can deduct your contributions if you qualify. The most you can contribute to all of your traditional and Roth IRAs is the smaller of: $5,500 (for 2015 - 2017), or $6,500 if you're age 50 or older by the end of the year; or. your taxable compensation for the year.
This is very surprising because dude has been great and is a partner at his office. It wasn't a substantial traditional contrib because I didn't qualify for much but yeah.
So he had you put more than $5500 total between a Roth and traditional in the same year? Are you sure? It's a pretty basic IRa rule. Maybe one was for you and the other your wife's?
Correct. $18k is your max contribution. $53k is total contribution limit including employer match and contributions.
Shit, it could have even been my fault. It could have been as easy as not bringing in my brokerage statement because I didn't think I had any taxable transactions. I'd have to dig into it too because I think we're talking about a few hundred dollars total. Still not great and I will obviously be cognizant of it in the future.
Yes. Max out the HSA. No taxes on the way in, no taxes on capital gains, no taxes on the way out as long as you use it on medical expenses which you will eventually have. In an ideal world you can leave it there and use it for your medical expenses in retirement. In a less than ideal situation you can tap it early to pay for unforeseen expenses and you maintain your emergency fund.
If we're talking about small car loans that are at the tail end of their financing, I would agree with watson that he's better off investing that money instead of paying them off just to save a few bucks in interest.
Not crazy at all. Over the long term short vol is a hard bet to beat. My hunch is that Labor Day might be a little early as for whatever reason October usually seems like a volatile month. Also be aware of how xiv is structured. In a surprise sell off it, it wouldn't be that hard to lose 100% of that money. Also I think there is an arb with being long xiv and long s&p 500 puts. In the event of a sell off the xiv goes to zero, but your puts in theory won't stop. It's almost like a free call option, or rather a very cheap call option. Or cheap catastrophic insurance. We can discuss if interested.
When do y'all call it and cash out a stock before you lose to much? I have a pharmaceutical that I invested that isn't performing well. It's still in trials but the stock keeps going down. I believe I've lost about half my investment so far. If it clears trials and comes out to market though, it could do well. Just torn on if I should ride it out or cash out. It's psdv.
I'm not following how the ETF could lose 100%. It isn't like VXX that slowly bleeds money on contango. It has leverage so it can have some huge moves but I don't follow how it could lose 100%. https://sixfigureinvesting.com/2014/05/how-does-xiv-work/
This answer won't help you at all, but it depends entirely on each stock, the reasons you bought and what has caused the downturn. If the reasons you bought are still valid long term, then don't stress too much about current valuation. If say you bought because you heard they had a promising new drug but that drug has since failed trials and development shuttered, maybe it is worth dumping.
Don't you inherently lose a lot of money on all volatility ETFs over long periods of time? My assumption on how they work is that you are constantly having to purchase new options resulting in trading costs in addition to time decay eating all your initial investment.
You do on VXX because as long as there is an upward slope on the term structure of the futures curve you lose money extending or rolling. This is the inverse of that though so with shorting index futures I don't think the roll should hurt you. Judging from the stock chart over long periods of time, it certainly doesn't appear to have the problems that VXX does.
Thanks. It was a long term. From what I've read trials have done good and are being revealed at this weeks conference.
I'm sure this has been addressd in this thread, but what's the best site to use for Roth IRA? And what are the fees per year? I've seen Vanguard mentioned in here a few times.
I use Vanguard to purchase Vanguard target retirement date ETFs. Vanguard invented the low fee ETF game.
I use Wealthfront because I've managed to get nearly every $ managed free so far but once I get above that threshold will likely move to Vanguard Wealthfront is also stupid simple and the fee isn't bad at that point. Haven't done all the homework to see if it'd be worth for a taxable account.
I use Schwab but I don't have it professionally managed so can't speak to that. I use them for the vast majority of my banking and investing.
who all in here has a betterment account? Trust level? Satisfaction? Background: Spoiler I opened one because a friend sent me a link and got 6 months free, moved 10K into it just to give it a go, and have gotten exactly 10% return in the 1 year I've had it (started 50/50 cause it was savings but moved to 80/20 stock/bond split so could have been even better). I have to say I've been very impressed so far, with the resources available, their continuing to grow the site and options added, the tax-loss harvesting, and the extremely low fee (0.25% for normal account, 0.4% for premium account 100K minimum). I'm starting my research about moving more of my investments to them, but I'm curious of more success/horror stories in the meantime. I think I've mentioned before but I have an investment account with a guy my dad has used for years, but he isn't as much advisor as pure investment firm. He has been outperformed by Betterment over the same year period, even with my conservative start on Betterment. He's held 20% cash which has always seemed high to me (he says he wants to get it in but keeps missing moments and 10% corrections he's waiting for). He's old school in that he is always studying FANG/Disney/Boeing/Gold etc., and he basically made an exception for me since I didn't meet his floor for an investment with him, but what I had at my age at the time (25) he took me on. I feel like I don't get much access and subconsciously like I'm a charity case. He charges 1.5% for that account, so I could be saving 1.25% by simply moving to Betterment as well. Planning to meet with a recommended financial advisor soon to see what that is about, never done so, but will lay out all my locations of investments and see if he has some advice on consolidation and strategies. (I'm 30, married, 1 baby, not sure what else would be privy)
Betterment, Wealthfront, etc are great starter accounts if you don't know much about investing and/or don't want to worry about it. But honestly, read a book or two, and then just do it yourself with Vanguard. It really isn't that difficult to invest in index funds.
Getting back to this. When the VIX is really low, as it has been the past couple months, it has the possibility to spike. A move from 12 to 20 would not be out of the question on a major suprise event. The XIV has rules in place about when they must cover their short volatility ( i think its +70% or something like that). Say a spike in volatility happens during the day, the XIV could in theory be forced to cover all the rolls and become insolvent. Small chance? yes. Impossible, No. So me and a couple other traders were discussing how long puts, long XIV could be used as a catastrophic insurance protection. The gist is that short vol can go to infinity, but XIV can only go to zero.
I think the fee that Wealthfront charges (.35% i think) is worth the re balancing and tax loss harvesting that they provide.
He seemed super nice. Basically laughing about the fact that he's not that rich (comparatively to what you would think for a dude who invented the fucking index fund) and doesn't give a fuck because he doesn't like to buy stuff and his wife shops at lands end
I have a Betterment account as well, I opened it early this year. I have an IRA with $100 that I tried for fun so I could track its returns against my Vanguard ETFs, and I have the "safety net" taxable account of a bit over $1000 that's an 80/20 stock/bond split. So far, I've liked Betterment -- fees are low and decent returns for something I don't have to think about. There's really no reason IMO for you to keep paying this family friend. He's getting outperformed, like most people do, by robots who are indexing the market. Time in the market beats timing the market and this dude is costing you money.
Yes, Jack Bogle invented the index fund and started Vanguard to do just that. I assume you listened to Planet Money (or was it Freakonomics?) too.
I agree, but it's a rather large sum of money that still makes me nervous handing over to a website to be honest. It's like logically it makes sense, but there is something holding me back, kind of fear of the unknown.
Almost everyone is going to underperform a robot in a strong bull market. Most people think its prudent to have 10-20% cash in case of a pullback or good opportunity (even Warren Buffet suggests this). If you aren't fully invested in this market you will be against the odds to outperform an index. Peoples feelings about robo advisors will change, quickly imo, once the bull market ends.
Im not opposed to using an advisor, but 1.5% is a steep fee. If he refuses to cut that in half to 0.75% then i would probably take my money to Wealthfront. I know it feels like a big decision, but if you are truly in it for the long run, then the odds are its probably in your best interest to move the money.
Please tell me like I'm an idiot the best way to open a 529 plan. Do I have to go through some type of advisor or do i do it myself?
Being an active investor works for you, but the large majority of people don't have the time, money, knowledge, or desire to dig into the weeds. I sure as hell don't and I'm a single electrical engineer with no kids. I'm a layman, but I doubt that we'll see a slowdown in the growth of index funds and robo advisors. Their big appeal is low fees and most people aren't investing so that they can live day to day.
Thanks dudes. I'll probably do the DC one for tax deductions. If I don't have any kids yet, does it make more sense to make myself the beneficiary or my nephew/niece? If I'm reading things right, it looks like I keep more flexibility if I name myself the beneficiary.
I opened one through Fidelity. They have a credit card in conjunction with Visa that gives you 2% back on all purchases and that 2% goes into your 529. It's nice to build it up and all I'm doing is spending money like I normally would.