I have a 401(k) through Principal sitting around doing nothing for a couple of years now from an old job. My current job does not offer a 401(k), so I have everything in a Roth IRA (Merril, which I mainly picked because I bank with Bank of America and it was like right there since BoA owns Merril now). Anyway, is there any reason to keep the 401(k) sitting over at Principal, or should I go ahead and move it over? I believe I read somewhere that I might have to pay some taxes on the 401(k) money if I move it to a Roth IRA but idk
It’s trash if you want to buy individual stocks. But if you just want to buy passive mutual funds then it’s as good as anything else. Sure you can get the same thing at any other brokerage but that’s only because vanguard exists and has singlehandedly driven down the vig that wall street crooks take. So I like to just buy at Vanguard because if they didn’t exist I’d be paying 1% or more vig to a bunch of finance assholes for no reason.
Yep and my understanding is that they are just set up in a way that there is less incentive to maximize profit off their customers, so some future shady bullshit is less likely which to me is comforting considering I am in a multi decade relationship with this company
I don’t remember from prior events like this - is this the first time we’ve ever “officially hit” the debt ceiling? Or has this happened in the past and we used similar extraordinary measures to avoid substantive problems?
Apparently the extraordinary measures are:
Treasury will start using two extraordinary measures to allow it to temporarily continue financing the federal government’s operations, Yellen wrote on Thursday. They are mainly behind-the-scenes accounting maneuvers.
The agency anticipates beginning to sell existing investments and suspending reinvestments of the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund. Also, it will suspend the reinvestment of a government securities fund of the Federal Employees Retirement System Thrift Savings Plan.
My understanding is you can roll it tax free to a traditional IRA. If/when you want to convert it to a Roth, you can do it piecemeal and pay taxes in that year.
For example, if it’s $50k and you roll it to a Roth you’d owe taxes on all of it. If you put it in a traditional IRA and then convert $25k this year you’d just owe taxes on that. You can then convert the balance at a later point.
That’s not true. The interface is inferior. The website layout is terrible and number of mouse clicks you need to to basic stuff is more than necessary. You definitely can backdoor a Roth on Vanguard, but it’s just easier on Etrade (which is what I use to do that).
Also on the rare occasions you need customer service they are very mediocre. Fidelity, Etrade, and Schwab blow them away in that regard.
Vanguard does work fine. So, I’ll grant that “trash” was bit of hyperbole. But it’s just not as good.
Also, as you know, you don’t need a Vanguard account to hold Vanguard mutual funds. I hold Vanguard funds and ETFs at different brokerages. Arguably if you’re a Vanguard-slappy, this is the optimal way to go. You’re still buying their products but you’re helping keep Vanguard’s overhead down by not opening a free account there. So you’re paying their tiny vig, but not costing them extra resources. You would be doing them a favor.
