Call Schwab–They will help and you will learn so that you can do it yourself.
You may want to wait until regular business hours on Monday, but I have called Fidelity at 11pm and found help.
I don’t know how much money you are talking about, but you can create a Treasury bill ladder with varying durations to match your cash flow needs: 1 mo, 3 mo, 6, 9, 12…You get the idea. Buy $10K of each duration (or whatever $$ allocation works for your purposes).
Or, you can just dump it all in a MM, and not worry about it. Treasuries could save you state income tax, which is why I suggested that.
It sounds as though you have the same MM fund in various types of accounts: IRA, Roth IRA, Health Savings, brokerage?
Click on Accounts tab in Schwab, then click Positions. Schwab breaks out a category Cash & MM.
You will then see your MM balance in each account.
Re: Selling you? Don’t call the private client number; just call the general Schwab # 800-435-4000. Since you have not called before, you will have to go through setting up voice recognition or whatever it is they use, but once you have been vetted, it will be easy to call in the future.
Word of caution. If you do buy a Treasury or CD and it matures, Schwab does not deposit the funds in a sweep or core account that pays interest. You have to manually move the money yourself. Fidelity deposits matured funds in something that currently pays just shy of 5%.
My DH likes investments so he does much if not most of it himself. We have one friend with whom DH does some self directed notes (I think that’s what they are called) and the rest is spread across several accounts. DH likes to do it himself. He does the investments and organizes everything for the accountant for the taxes, and he pays the quarterly taxes. He did all that for my business too before I retired. I do all the personal and house related payments, the travel planning, etc.
My DH likes investments so he does much if not most of it himself. We have one friend with whom DH does some structured notes (I think that’s what they are called) and the rest is spread accounts. DH likes to do it himself. He does the investments and organizes everything for the accountant for the taxes, and he pays the quarterly taxes. He did all that for my business too before I retired. I do all the house related payments, the travel planning, etc.
I pay the auto/homeowner/umbrella insurance.
We just switched accountants (ours retired) and I believe they also offer some financial services. Don’t have a feel for them yet.
That is totally normal to have both a cash and a money market component in each of your accounts. When you sell something, it goes right into the cash account until you do something else with it. You could have hundreds of different stocks, bonds, money markets, whatnot in each account (though you probably don’t). I don’t think you have to worry about any trading in these accounts, as your husband is taking care of it now. All you really need to know is how to access these accounts, how much is in it, and play around with it online a bit to figure out what is in them. You don’t need to understand everything, you just need to understand enough that if something happens to your husband, you aren’t frozen with fear and confusion. Schwab does a good job of breaking things down online. It would be worth getting an investing for dummies book, or taking a short course, however you learn best. This doesn’t get easier as you get older, so tackle some of this now while your brain is still intact!
I want to reemphasize the distinction between Schwab and Fidelity on the topic of cash. I had not realized this about Schwab until I logged in today so that I could outline how jym626 should view her account.
When a T-bill or CD matures at Schwab, the proceeds are just left as cash unless one has established auto-roll instructions with the Fixed Income dept. This cash earns almost nothing.
I am much more familiar with Fidelity where sale proceeds (or interest/dividends) are deposited in a core account that is a MM fund paying 4.95%.
I like the documentation trails that a spouse can follow and pick up on if a spouse becomes unavailable/debilitated/deceased. It is helpful for spouses to overlap info a bit for sure, and also know where all the info is, passwords, etc. I had to make sure I understood the way our home data equipment operated (multiple modems etc.) which also includes our other internet like our TV. We got rid of paying for DirecTV when we no longer received a generous discount, and they went beyond what we were willing to pay for the service altogether (they eliminated discount completely) - so I needed to know about our home data equipment for that too. Have found other entertainment to watch on TV and haven’t missed DirecTV at all. You get mad enough about costs… I just ordered some clothing pieces which are getting paid for by my cost savings from TV.
No, it wouldn’t make any sense to upset the status quo. I just wanted to highlight the fact that Schwab deposits proceeds into a cash account and you need to manually move it to higher yielding MM.
Actually, thanks for the reminder. If you have your money in the core accounts at Fidelity or Vanguard, you can just forget about it, and you’re still earning around 5% right now, but you don’t want to let it sit at Schwab. And I’ve been letting things sit awhile.
Sad to admit, but I have a fairly significant amount of money sitting in a plain old savings account (well it’s a little better than that, but not much).
I know what I “should” do, but execution is a problem.
I also need to let my financial planner guy go. He has not done a good job with the money he controls, and I really don’t need the service he excels at. He helps people figure out how to save, how much they need, keeps them from doing stupid things in market turmoil, stuff like that.
I need someone to help me re-structure my money so that it’s more tax efficient, for example. Right now I have more risk in my traditional money when it should be in my ROTH money, for example. I have a bucket with Fidelity that I’m not sure what I should do with, and I need to make that bucket that’s in regular savings work better for me.
I have way to much in traditional and very little in Roth, but (lucky for me) I won’t ever have a “low income” year, and I live in a high tax state and county, so it’s never been an obvious answer for me to do a conversion. I do realize I could be in trouble when it comes to RMDs.
Oh yeah, and I failed to do the tax forms correctly when I did backdoor Roth.
Now you guys know all my financial sins…
Both of my kids had substantial sums of money in their bank savings account. That was the first account we set up for them at a local S&L. They had direct deposit into these accounts. ShawD noticed and said, “Shouldn’t I invest this?” I suggested she talk with the financial advisor on how to invest this. She did and it is done. I noticed that ShawSon did also. Although he is an MBA and pretty financially sophisticated, he focuses on almost nothing but the top two goals (in this case, growing his startup, which has been growing 30% a quarter, and having a great relationship with his wife). Everything else gets ignored. He had well into 6 figures sitting in the savings account. I mentioned it to him and suggested he talk to the FAs about where to invest. I think they have transferred the money. Don’t know if it has been invested. There is only so much I can do. The only thing I can say is that his net worth will be affected most by whether or not they can have a successful exit at some point and the value of his wife’s stock/options in major tech companies where she has worked. The former will likely be the biggest contributor to his net worth, if an exit happens.