gpburdell

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My company uses Optum as the HSA and they have Betterment as the investment vehicle. Betterment is somewhat limited, imo.

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My company until end of last year was using Optum. What I did was every 6 months, I'd initiate at Fidelity an online transfer of assets from Optum to my Fidelity HSA. No issues, it would usually take 2-3 weeks for it to show up at Fidelity.

I wouldn't transfer everything and leave $100 so that the account doesn't get closed etc.

I used to play around with I-ORP and have used Boldin too. I've seen on Bogleheads that many people use Pralana. Pralana was originally built as a package on top of Excel.

They recently released an online version which is easier to use/better interface and doesn't require Excel. The online version has a yearly subscription fee but seems reasonable. Probably don't have to buy it every year once you have an overall plan unless significant changes come up.

I haven't tried Pralana yet as I'm still a few years from early retirement but I've seen videos, read some of their docs etc. But I may test it out at the end of the year just to see what it can do. Like you, I'm more interested in tax optimization and what withdrawing from my portfolio will look like in retirement.

Fyi, you can still buy the current Excel version but it won't get feature updates and there won't be future versions. It is supposed to still get changes for bugs and any tax law changes.

https://pralanaretirementcalculator.com/

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Just cash them in. What a waste of an investment.

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The money I have in I-bonds are part of my emergency fund and would never be used for investing. I can't think of a better place than I-bonds for that as they offer protection against inflation. Which is the biggest risk to holding cash long term.

Just watched the finale... wow.

I literally couldn't take my eyes away from the screen for 25 mins straight. What's funny even when the ads popped up, I watched them as I was ready for the action to start again.

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Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the voice of Conquest

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Negan vs Glenn (round 2)

Never used a travel agent or concierge for Vegas. Though I've been going to Vegas for 20 years. I'd recommend staying mid strip if this is your first trip.

Vegas can be done so many different ways; really depends on your budget.

Personally i prefer staying at Aria, Cosmo or Vdara. Vdara has no casino/restaurants but it's only a couple minutes walking to Aria or Cosmo. Also, it's just a few mins to Bellagio now with the new interior walkway they built.

Park MGM is also a good option if trying to save some $ on the room and can get to the above hotels easily.

I get comp rooms from MGM resorts so I'm biased toward those group of properties.

If you haven't heard, Amazon on 2/26 will no longer let you download your ebooks to devices besides Kindles.

Also I read that with newer Kindles, you can't use Calibre to pull books off of it anymore (maybe it's because the files are encrypted). Though I'm sure people will eventually find a way.

Just went through my ~250 Kindle books on Amazon and downloaded them to my NAS as a backup.

I should have done this earlier anyway; if Amazon ever terminated my account I'd have lost access to my books.

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So if you make above this, you can't contribute to a ROTH?

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It's not a hard cutoff; there is an income phase out range where your max contribution amount allowed goes down as you go up in the income range. If you're within the phaseout range, you'd have to calculate how much you're allowed to contribute.

Single $150,000-$165,000
Married, filing jointly $236,000-$246,000
Married, filing separately1 $0–$10,000

Just finished book 2; loved it. I finished it in a few days of reading time. I haven't binge read like that in years. I went ahead and bought books 3-7.

Not a CPA, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no. If you haven't already, contribute and build up your taxable investment account for now. Long term capital gains can be very useful in retirement (especially if you retire before SS/pension).

Let say you have no other income and file MFJ. With the standard deduction, a couple could have up to $126k in capital gains as yearly income and pay 0% taxes. That's on top of the cost basis.

Of course that's based on tax laws today; things could change in the future.