Almost everything is either at Fidelity or Schwab.
What’s a Medallion sale?
All of these funds are held in a few 401ks and IRAs, so definitely wouldn’t need 40 death certificates. And since they are all in retirement accounts they require no paperwork or tax treatment or anything on a per-fund basis.
We actually have no stock investments outside of retirement accounts. All of our non-retirement-account investments are either cash or real estate.
I do have two old 401ks from previous employers. Neither offered index funds. I need to roll these over, but I am lazy and haven’t gotten around to it.
My current 401k offers only one stock index fund, an S&P 500 fund. I’ve asked them to add more, but I don’t think the “consultants” who figure this stuff out for my company would get paid much if they just picked a bunch of index funds with fees in the 0.1% range, instead of a “select group” of funds that theoretically will perform better but cost a lot more. We also have a bunch of “target retirement” funds, which are basically baskets of a few index funds, but I don’t really like these.
I did all of the consolidation for my father when he died. It was a lot of work.
I consolidated my own – we used the brokerage firm that one of the companies I helped start was using. They provide unbelievably good service but some bad investment advice. So, I moved the bulk of the money to a financial advisor who charges a fixed fee and really does a good job on financial planning broadly and sensible on investments. I don’t think I have 40 mutual funds but have 14 different personal accounts including two 529 accounts and 5 for my mother and from a modest trust my father set up for my mother and some accounts for a couple of companies. The FA has software to compile all the information in one place, but it is hard to absorb.
“I hold shares in around 40 mutual funds”
40?? thats way too many!
are their holdings overlapping? can they be converted to ETF’s that cover the same stock allocation, at far less cost to you?
I imagine that collectively they mirror a broad-market index fund, except I am overweighted in the tech sector.
As I said, most of these come from the three 401ks I have, that don’t really offer much in the way of index funds, and have few if any funds in common. I guess I need to go through and prune them down though.
My current 401(k) also deducts monthly fees, which essentially double the expense ratio of some of the less expensive funds. Pretty annoying that my company is too cheap to cover these, the total per year is pretty small.
Where is your current 401K, @notrichenough, Schwab or Fidelity? Consolidate everything under one roof (I personally prefer Fidelity). Stick a chunk in index funds as you are technically recreating an index with all those funds, just paying higher fees. You can continue to have your overweight in tech stocks if you choose. I have one, too. Google and Apple have been making me happy lately. Spring cleaning time!
The plan for my current job is with ADP. If they are using another company to actually manage it, it is not obvious from the web site who it is. The plans for my previous two jobs are with Voya and SchwabPlan.
We also have two smallish ($60K each) IRAs at Schwab. Everything else (large majority) is at Fidelity.
fwiw: I was executor of a family member’s estate. Some organizations accepted electronic copies of the death certificate, so we didn’t need a sealed original for all of them. Of course you don’t know that in advance.
Man, none of the places would take an electronic death certificate, but a few would return our originals. I believe about 25 were obtained for SisIL’s estate–only a few remain since the estate was wound up.
This article is full of baloney. It lists Seattle’s average house price at under $500k. Really? Maybe counting remote suburbs with 2-hr commute time. Has Forbes looked at the recent Seattle Times numbers? Close to $700k and climbing.
Makes me wonder how accurate the other numbers are.
Yeah I agree, that article has some weird numbers. How can they predict job growth down to 1/10 of one percent accuracy? “Average house price” is almost completely meaningless. It lists $371K as the average price in Boston… I looked at zillow, pretty much the only thing for sale in Boston for $371K or less are tiny condos or small distressed houses (boarded up windows for example) in really bad neighborhoods.
There are zero houses listed for sale in my town for under $400K and only one (barely) under $500K.
So I don’t know where they are getting their information.
I thought some of those cities and the prices were quite off. I do think those are places where if you own real estate, you will find it gaining value. Some places more than others.
IDK why we have so many new homes here continuing to be built. It makes it difficult for current homes to compete. The new homes may have cut corners in the ‘guts’, but the finish work makes it look good. For example, I know a gal that bought a new home; sod looked great and sprinkler system was good. Problem was they didn’t do any real soil work and the grass was shallow - had a huge water bill ($400 a month, and our water prices are not a bad rate) to keep the grass green. Same thing with home energy, or stuff like pipe leaks because plumber used was cheap and didn’t finish off pipe joints correctly. Another friend had a A/C put on the roof to keep the yard space - but the water/condensation drain wasn’t finished and they had water coming into their kitchen from the ceiling.
I think you get to $371K in Boston if you include some pretty down and out towns, Zillow has the median home value in Boston itself as $542K. I think that includes a lot of condos. If the Metro area goes out to towns like Haverhill and New Hampshire, it would be easy to get to $371K.
I check Zillow out with home listings and real estate activity in our area. It keeps me motivated in doing what we need to do once we decide to go the next step on eventually selling our home and downsizing.
An older home cannot compete with new construction directly but instead can offer something different: a larger lot, mature landscaping, solid bones, unique materials and finishes that can be incorporated into the remodeled look. I would not sweat to much trying to catch up with the (new construction) Joneses.
In eastern MA, there is almost no land left. So new construction tends to be on crappy lots that no one has built on yet because they are crappy, or they are tear-downs. And if you are tearing down a house, you are putting up a new house that costs 3-4x as much or more, or you can’t make any money. So it’s hard to find new construction in desirable towns for under $1mil, until you get pretty far from Boston.
When your metric covers half the state or parts of other states, it becomes pretty meaningless IMO.
All I can say is that many new home buyers in our area are in a bit of dream world. Agree @BunsenBurner that our home has many upgrades and a beautiful lot, easy work commute. Don’t think many think about the work commute and the traffic until they actually experience it. However still have to pay attention to the new home details we are competing against, and stage home to make it hopefully sell quickly and for close to asking price. A 2015 National Association of Realtors study revealed that the median cost for staging a home was $675.
However new home construction is getting more pricey in our area, so our home value should go up - esp if there are less new homes on the market. Our older home competes well against older ‘new’ homes.
And going back to the title of this thread: we expected to retire back in Seattle. Family is there ( including two of our kiddos), sibs, MIL.
Sigh.
We missed that 2009 window of affordability- still working and paying tuition back then.
Spring cleaning time!