<p>It does depend on what you own. Individual stocks that are still traded are easy to move. But I some investments in various funds that I have had for a long time (20+ years) that can’t be transferred. I am not sure if it is because the funds are closed to new investment or if it has something to do with whether the company I am transferring to includes those funds in the ones they allow you to buy & sell (can’t remember, just know when I wanted to consolidate a couple of accounts to Fidelity accounts a few years ago I couldn’t do it without selling those funds, so I didn’t do it because I wanted to keep them in my portfolio and couldn’t do that if I moved the accounts). </p>
<p>I’d like to ask a new question…as notrichenough notes, cash sitting in a checking or savings account makes next to nothing. What do you do with your cash on hand (emergency fund or other cash you may have)? Or do you just accept that it won’t earn interest and leave it in an account earning next to nothing?</p>
<p>I gave S a loan of some of our cash–H really likes having a significant amount of cash available. It’s a 12 month loan and he pays interest only until he is ready to repay it. We are charging the IRS minimum of 40 basis points–4/10th of 1% interest. </p>
<p>We earn next to nothing with the money we have in checking and savings anyway. Some folks buy TIP–Inflation Protected Treasury Bonds but we have not done that so far. We are contemplating buying some tax exempt municipal bond index fund with some of it, perhaps. If you may need it in the near future (like the money H wants to use to purchase a new car), don’t want it tied up in something that may lose principal or have trouble accessing later.</p>
<p>“The rules announced today provide a new way for retirees to
limit the drawdowns of their account balances that are now
required starting after age 70 1/2. Instead, under the rules,
they could use as much as 25 percent of their account balances
up to $125,000 to purchase deferred annuities.”</p>
<p>“New York Life Insurance Co. was the largest seller of
deferred-income annuities last year, followed by Massachusetts
Mutual Life Insurance Co. and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance
Co., according to data from the Limra Secure Retirement
Institute.”</p>
<p>I wonder how much it cost these companies or how much they lobbied to get the Treasury Dept to issue these new rules?</p>
<p>^A lot! With everybody’s 401k being cashed out, there is a huge opportunity I bet. It makes you wonder if there’s such thing as free market.</p>
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<p>You can transfer closed funds as far as your new firm deals with them. Firms don’t support every fund/stock. You have to check if your new firm supports what you own. When we did this, our new firm checked individual ticker symbols to make sure if everything was transferable. </p>
<p>We too have a fair amount of cash - some of it is invested in CDs - the local credit union offers 0.9% for a 9month CD which is better than the 0.01% that we get for the checking/savings account. Been thinking of putting some of the cash into a conservative fund - James Balanced Golden Rainbow was one of the suggested ones that we are looking at.</p>
<p>Some people feel good about managing their own funds and believe they can do a really good job w/o paying a percentage for investment service. I understand investing. Our investment guy can get us into ‘closed’ funds which make sense for us, plus other investment instruments that open up (often by insurance companies, like a particular annuity that would fit for us). Another important factor is our guy Don explains things so my husband also understands what is going on. We go to updates. Also he can do things like put to use some of the cash in our life insurance policies (we need to meet with him to get that started).</p>
<p>The ‘Where should I live’ series (link on one of these recent posts)that Time did in 2010 has some good information - however important to see what has changed since then. </p>
<p>Does anyone know - if you subscribe to print edition of Time, can you access the info online free?</p>
<p>Sometimes decisions on where to live or how to travel is limited because one spouse isn’t interested in doing what the other wants. So common ground is important. Also having the flexibility to changing health situations.</p>
<p>Aunt and Uncle bought one of those small pull campers and regret they didn’t get one with slide-outs. So my take away is to view what is out there and tweak the concept down to what is right for you.</p>
<p>Haha, well, my H said he earned more in his 401K then working so I know the feeling. I’m trying to pull the retirement date sooner. I came back a from vacation and heard one woman’s husband died of a heart attack at 66 and another died at 38 suddenly. You bet I don’t want to work any longer than I have to. I just hold on until the youngest one get an internship so I know she can earn some money and not relying on us.</p>
<p>All stocks for me especially for Roth IRA. I stay away from bond at the moment. The only thing close to bond is the mutual funds that have bonds in their portfolio. I believe it’s Wellesley something, but this mutual fund has a track record since the Depression.
I did a research of Vanguard funds and only picked the one with gold star rating from Morning Stars except Fidelity Select Biotech which had a #1 return last year, a whooping 50%+, but I sold it after it went up sharply. I can see why it does not have a gold star rating from Morningstar because it’s kind of risky, when you win you win big, when you loose you loose big, not steady. All my other portfolio has biotech stocks in them, so it was ok to get rid of this very specific one. It was a gamble and it paid off.</p>
<p>I agree with DrGoogle. All stocks (or stock funds) for the Roth. I think you want to put your most aggressive (though not stupidly so) investments in that, because that is what will not be taxed. If you’re going to put something in with a miniscule return, why bother even putting it into a Roth, since the taxes would be low anyways. Put the big tax items in there.</p>
<p>I handle the household bills, and DH tracks our investments. He’s done a nice job developing a spreadsheet. </p>
<p>Based on my request, he has a designe a way to designaate “savings” vs “401K” categories in net worth charts. It’s just our reminder that our 401K (all non-Roth) will be taxed in retirement, ie it is not quite as good as it looks. WIthdrawing $1000 from 401K will only yield $700ish, depending on tax bracket. Of course with luck we can avoid tapping the principal for a long time. </p>
<p>Recieved our first annuity check and another amount since H is working 1/2 time in the float pool. Does not match what we have been living on but could if we want to tap into our principal. It is not so much the $ amount but more the adjustment to having my system gone and now need to figure out a new one. A friend warned me that it takes awhile as we will have 3-4 checks arrive at different times a month. I figure it will take 6 months to make sense of it all.
Yes, the taxing of the funds is a big thing. As H had a full time salary for 6 months this year, we are hoping to delay taking any principal for the next 6 at least.</p>