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Interesting point about RSUs. So you pay tax on getting them, it goes down and you can’t even write off against the tax you paid for them. I just considered RSUs as no risk investment because of 0 cost basis so I was never inclined to sell until I needed the money. I know now this is stupid, cost basis should not matter except perhaps for tax reasons if you think stock is going down. Makes more sense to sell the RSUs right away. ESPP there is a tax benefit to hold them so most of the gains are long term instead of short term. Stock went up considerably over time. Fortunately, I rarely sold any because doing taxes on either RSUs and ESPP is incredibly difficult.

So basically I did well with my RSUs/ESPP because I was lucky, stupid, and lazy. The free random share I got from Robinhood is doing better than anything I picked on my own. Perhaps I shouldn’t bother and just have an index fund.

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The state message is easier to understand. So estimate tax payments for 2023 are also delayed till October 16. I had thought from the Fed message, that delay was only for 2022 estimate tax payments. So I guess the Oct 16 date applies to both fed and state for 2023 estimated tax payments.

What is messed up is I still need to do estimated taxes (dividend income) even though I had huge losses last year for some stocks I just had to get out of. But dividends somehow are treated differently than capital gains and doesn’t apply even though they are taxed the same way.

I suppose I should wait until October to make the payments. So this is a decent benefit from all the flooding. Can buy additional 6 mo tbill to make around 5 percent more by delaying the payment.

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Definitely lost alot of money in stocks when I just started out investing so I stopped for a long time. Thankfully company provided ESPP and RSUs so I got lucky. And also lost alot last year too. For the long term as a kid in his 20s it should be all stocks or at least an index fund. Later in life, probably a safer mix of stocks and bonds I suppose although I’m still thinking only short term bonds.

Just have to play the averages long term – stocks averaging around 10 and bonds around 6 percent. Stocks are definitely more of a roller coaster though.

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I’ve got an account with Chase so perfect, time to cash in! Worst investment ever, only a little over 2x for 30 years! Only got them due to a savings bond drive at my first company I worked for. Don’t know what they were thinking pushing savings bonds. If they had an ESPP, I would have made 10X. So financially stupid when you are young. A few of them are still earning 4 percent. But I should just cash them all. Getting 4.8 percent with 13 week tbills.

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The only thing I can think of to take advantage of this is to do the 5K paper Ibond from your refund. So I suppose you can do your taxes, figure out how much you owe/refund. Then add another estimated tax payment to get 5K back then get the 5K IBond.

Kind of scared of doing paper bonds though. I still have a stack of EE BONDS that matured but figuring out how to collect on them is very hard since it seems like most banks stopped and you need to send it in to the government.

Perhaps we should ask for disaster declaration from FEMA this year too. Yesterday was actually one of the worst storms I drove through for years. And I actually got wet from the rain.

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We had a FEMA emergency in San Diego? Do you actually have to be affected or everyone in San Diego qualifies?

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5% is enough for me to put new savings and dividends earned into bonds (13 week and 26 week tbills) instead of stocks. 401k and current brokerage account is still mostly stock and are long term investments which should grow faster than 5 percent so not going to sell.

Most of the cash in the brokerage account is now swvxx. Also moved most of my bank savings account to 13 week tbill ladder so that is just free money. So just taking advantage of the high rates for now. And when rates go down perhaps in a couple of years, it should be good for stocks again.

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One percent return would be great. Huge loss last year, starting to think diversification might be smart as stocks will not always be better than bonds. Will buy more iBonds now that the calendar turned I suppose.

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I can’t figure out how SWVXX or I assume any money market fund works. Price is a dollar and doesn’t seem to change. So if the price stays the same, then they have to pay the interest with dividends but there isn’t any info on that either. I suppose it pays out the interest daily? How did you find the yield? Thanks.

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Website actually crashed and was down for about a week during the last chance to get the higher ibond rate. Good thing I set up my orders ahead of time. Sort of a retro website like piggington but in a very bad way. But learned how to navigate it. Less people buying bonds due to their website, higher yields for me. So I love their archaic website!

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I’m good with the treasury direct 13 week tbills ladder. Can get money out each week if I need it and it all can come out in 13 weeks. I’ll have to see when it renews there isn’t lost time to the next week’s auction or it’s instant. I do know that the interest is not going to compound. But doing a money market in the brokerage account is definitely something extra I should do.

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CDs and treasury bills seem to pay about the same. My 13 week purchase last week was 4.2 percent. Treasury bill seemed easier since it comes straight out and in from my bank. Treasury bills are state tax free.

I do have some cash in my brokerage account which seems to be only getting 0.3 percent. So SWVXX would be like a mutual fund, you buy/sell and then it doesn’t happen until end of the trading day which would be the one day delay? I could probably do a money market there with some of the cash.

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[quote=The-Shoveler][quote=Coronita]
Funny you should mention that. I’ve been laddering CDs. Though money markets these days are looking good too.[/quote]

Moved some into short duration treasuries, I think fed will take it to 7% potentially (unless the whole shebang blows). Time will tell.[/quote]

Building a 13 week treasury bill ladder to get 4 percent instead of 0.2 in my savings account. Stopped buying stocks, thinking it might be good to build cash in case there is a market crash coming so I don’t have to sell stocks at the bottom. Still losing money because inflation is higher but at least not losing as much this way. Bonds are boring but safe. Crypto is exciting but risky so I never bought any.

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For the backdoor ROTH, I think the reference is to putting in 6 or 7K into a ROTH IRA by first putting it into a normal IRA and then converting (conversion has no income limits versus adding to a ROTH IRA does). And the problem is that having an existing rollover IRA makes it part of the conversion. Been doing it every year but then I never rolled over my 401k into an IRA. If I do roll over my 401k, it probably would not be possible for me to do the backdoor Roth IRA each year.

But I think this is off topic because conversion to a rollover IRA already happened so the question is really how to invest it given that with an IRA you have full control over it.

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Bought some I series bonds yesterday. Creating the account to purchase wasn’t too difficult. Should do it before end of October, to get 9.62 rate as it will most likely be 8 something after that.

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