A reader recently wrote in to ask the following about Vanguard Admiral Share conversions:
“We’re getting close to being able to convert our Vanguard mutual funds to Admiral Shares. We’re pretty excited about this, but I’m also a little worried. Are there any tax consequences that I should be aware of? I’d hate to get a huge tax bill at the end of the year.”
That’s an excellent question. In fact, I wondered the same thing before we were eligible to convert to Admiral Shares a few years back.
This roundup is couple of days late because I’ve been absolutely swamped over the past week or so. This is partly due to work life, but mostly due home life. And while most of the busy-ness has been good, some has been very, very bad.
For starters, I was tied up with a work-related conference much of last week. We also had a major sports tournament in the area that kept us (and our kids) going from sunup to sundown (and beyond) on Saturday and again most of the day on Sunday. And our kids had their end-of-year music performances on Sunday.
That’s the good stuff. The bad? Well, there was a tragic death in our community that hit everyone pretty hard. People are moving on, but with extremely heavy hearts.
Last week’s posts about coins (both silver and copper) were inspired by me sitting down with our boys to pay their monthly allowance.
With that as a backdrop, I thought it would be worth spending a bit of time talking about the ins and out of our allowance system.
For starters, I’ll say that we don’t tie our kids allowance to any sort of chores. Some may view this as a minor (or even artificial) distinction, but we expect them to help around the house because they’re part of our family, not because we’re paying them.
I’ve talked in the past about several ways of effectively outsourcing the management of your investment portfolio.
Possibilities range from using an all-in-one mutual fund to engaging a service like Betterment to hiring a financial advisor.
That being said, you may be interested in maintaining a bit more control and/or avoiding the extra fees associated with an investing service or financial professional. In that case, where should you start?
Speaking of silver coins… The good folks at The Consumerist highlighted an interesting marketing scheme (or should I say scam?) that made it to the front page of Reddit during the middle of this past week.
It seems that an enterprising soul has decided to sell ice cream cones for a quarter. The twist? It has to be a 1964 or earlier quarter. In other words, a silver quarter. One with a melt value of more than four bucks.
Given how hard it is to find these sorts of coins in circulation, I doubt this deal is generating much business. But who know? Maybe some kid found his grandpa’s coin jar and is going to town on $0.25 ice cream cones.
As a quick followup to my earlier post on searching for silver coins, I wanted to briefly address the situation with pennies.
As you’re likely aware, pennies used to be primarily composed of copper, though nowadays they’re largely made of zinc.
With the high value of copper, recent years have seen an increasing number of people hoarding not just silver nickels, dimes, quarters, and half dollars, but also copper pennies.
It’s well recognized that your asset allocation should be largely determined by your willingness, ability, and need to take risks.
While your need and ability to take risks are primarily financial, your willingness to do so is largely psychological.
Though you may need to take some risks to meet your financial goals, and you may have the ability to do so (e.g., you’re young and have a secure, well paying job), these things have to be balanced against your risk tolerance. If not, you’re just asking for trouble.
This morning, we awoke to water in the cabinet under our kitchen sink. Not a huge amount, but anything more than none is too much.
Normally, I deal with these sorts of things myself. But this time around, I didn’t.
For starters, I couldn’t figure out exactly what was wrong. More often than not, these sorts of things are a simple fix, maybe even just a loose connection. But this time around it seemed like it would be a bigger job.
