I am overweight equities and cash, underweight on fixed income, relative to what most investment advisors would recommend.
I should look at re-balancing again soon. I’ve been 80% equities and 20% bonds for a few years, I don’t see myself ever going over 25% bonds. And I’ve historically bought just a Russell 2k fund, basically, and I should add some international exposure.
Same. But I’ll stay that way for a few more years.
I’m thinking of putting 6 figs in a single stock just to see what happens.
Nah, go six figures deep in OTM SPY options. 
1 share of Berkshire Hathaway?
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nah, I’m pretty much all in on NIO at this point
Hope the chip shortage finds some resolution. GM shutting down some production today.
Part of the reason my cash allocation is so high is that I have some income I have to take over the next 2 years and 50% of that I put in money market, 50% in equities. It gets distributed in Feb 2022 and Feb 2023, but I can’t draw on it in the interim
After then, I plan to rotate into more fixed income and high dividend stocks. Right now fixed income is a little under 10% of my portfolio.
if NIO goes to 100+ I’m gonna quit and rest for a year
I am going to sell some $100 NIO puts, this way at least one of us gets to quit
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For my 401(k) and Rollover IRA (from prior job) I’ve just always put the money into the Fidelity retirement fund for my target retirement date. What’s everyone’s opinion on just leaving your money in those default retirement funds?
One, check the expense ratio. They might be getting you there. And, if so, maybe some kind of robo advisor can effectively do the same thing for less? Not sure.
My other reason to avoid them: if you’re looking at early retirement, then from what I’ve seen they go too heavy on bonds/money market type stuff.
If you don’t actively manage your portfolio, then I think these are reasonable funds. Set it and forget it.
I have used them. The expense ratios have been reasonably low when the investment banks were the big boys like Fidelity and Vanguard.
I agree with Mathman that they were relatively heavy on the low risk side of things, so I just “cheat” a little and use a target retirement date that is later than I actually plan on retiring. Problem solved.
This
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I checked two of the funds and the expense ratios were north of 0.5%
It should be trivial to improve on that with 2-4 Vanguard funds and get closer to 0.1%
CORRECTION: if you have the investor class funds one was 0.12%
I guess you could also cheat by doing 80% target date and 20% equities or whatever. Either way, it’s a tractable problem.
Definitely save your receipts if you do this because the IRS may well question it.
BTW, my MO with HSAs is to max the contributions but use them for my medical expenses as I go. I didn’t want to fool with saving and organizing my medical receipts for future withdrawals.
I’m still getting the tax-free contribution and withdrawal. I’m just missing out on the opportunity to let the contributions grow and pay no tax on the withdrawal.
Also we ended up switching off the high deductible plan with HSA because we are now seeing an out-of-network provider and we get much better coverage on the PPO plan. So no more HSA for us. For now. If/when we ditch the OON provider then we’ll probably go back to the HSA. We do at least get the flex spending plan, but that’s use-it-or-lose-it so of course we put everything on the FSA card.
Are they suggesting that you contribute to the kid’s Roth IRA?
Be careful there… the child has to have earned income and you can’t contribute more than the amount of their earned income.
So this is a possibility when your teenager gets a McJob, or if you have a child actor.
If you or your spouse has your own business then you/spouse can hire your kid as contract labor, deduct the kid’s pay as a business expense, kid pays no FICA taxes on income from a family business if they are under [16 or 18… can’t remember] and the income is taxable to the kid, who may be below the filing threshold or owe little to no tax. But they have to do real work for you (which can include “run to Staples and pick up ink and printer paper and put them both in the printer”, or even “vacuum and dust my office every week and wash the windows twice a year”) and you have to pay them an amount that is reasonable for the work they’re doing. They’re exempt from labor laws & OSHA regulations. You do have to issue the kid a 1099 if you pay them $600 or more.
If the kid is old enough that they’re subject to FICA tax, note that if they earn $433 or less then the FICA tax is $0. If they earn $434 or more then they pay FICA tax from dollar one. At the higher self-employed rate, of course. Kid gets to deduct his or her expenses though (gas, cleaning supplies purchased from allowance, etc.)
And if the kid is over the filing threshold and has investments, then you have to start worrying about kiddie tax.
But a lot of parents don’t have this option during most college-saving years due to the earned income requirement.
Also, note that if you live in a state with a state income tax and your state gives you an incentive for contributing to the 529 then you ought to at least contribute enough to the 529 to pick that up. The states I’m familiar with don’t give you that much. My friend in Ohio with a kid that I asked y’all about on AO several years back… Ohio only gives you a deduction on the first $4,000. But they do let you roll the unused portion of your contribution over indefinitely, sort of like capital losses on your federal taxes.
So my friend is now up to contributing $12,000 a year (nice easy-to-remember $1,000 a month) and she’ll be deducting $4,000 a year from her Ohio taxes for 529 contributions until her kid is 46 years old and long since out of college.
Even if your kid doesn’t go to what you consider “college”, you can use 529s to pay for trade school, or ultimately have your kid roll the 529 to THEIR kids.
That’s what I do too, but with about 4 chiro visits and a doctor visit each year, I’m barely spending $250. I can’t be bothered to worry about letting that compound, and if I waited ten years to recoup that $250 the spending power of that money would have diminished anyway.