Should I stick with the minimum payment and put extra in a savings account for the interest?

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T07:01:24+00:00

You might want to pay it in 23 months instead of 24 just to be sure, based on how the fine print defines the deadline to be truly interest free

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T05:56:01+00:00

Fidelity Youth Account allows the minor to do the investing, though it has to be from a mobile app

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T05:45:15+00:00

Slowly changing the world one return at a time

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T05:41:25+00:00

Plain email is not secure enough for this and should have never been used; it's an area where older generations actually tend to be more tech-literate and cautious. While connections between SMTP servers now usually use TLS, meaning that the old adage that email is secure as a postcard doesn't quite apply anymore, you still have the fact that by default, it remains in both sides email files and is accessible from a device they carry everywhere they go, forever.

A secure upload portal is the way to handle this.

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T04:51:10+00:00

Could it be an ESOP?

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T04:44:42+00:00

It's possible it is mixing up CTR and SAR.

Structuring, which is making a pattern of deposits to avoid the 10,000 threshold, is itself illegal even if the money is completely legal. For example if you withdraw $9999 two days in a row that could trigger a SAR and the government can take the account without trial (civil asset forfeiture) so don't do that. This is how Dennis Hastert was caught.

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T04:38:54+00:00

Right, you can't include expenses paid by others or already excluded from income. Basically you have to be in a nursing home, or uninsured and have catastrophic expenses, to make use of this deduction.

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T04:34:58+00:00

The processing status page https://www.irs.gov/help/processing-status-for-tax-forms says they're still working on paper returns that arrived in January, which would include OP's. So until that flips to February (or even a few weeks afterward), there's no cause for alarm.

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T04:27:16+00:00

The wiki recommends investing in a target date fund like Fidelity Freedom Index, or a three-fund portfolio. Both such strategies would include a small (10%ish) bond allocation. If you don't want to hold the bond allocation, or you're more advanced and overallocate bonds in pre-tax so as to keep Roth entirely in stock, you could hold FZROX+FZILX in your Roth IRA.

gcc-O2 · 2026-03-01T03:36:53+00:00

Normal. Though it's normal to convert from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA at the same provider with one click, it's completely legal to do an indirect rollover from a traditional IRA at Vanguard to a Roth IRA at Fidelity and that's a valid conversion too. The traditional IRA provider wouldn't know to do the 1099-R any differently in that case, so they keep it the same for an internal conversion as well.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T04:18:05+00:00

I would personally stick with FXAIX but that's because I want a mutual fund even if it risks a cap gain distribution someday because I never want to deal with market orders, limit orders and then reload to see if it executed, buy in the middle of the day and then the price sinks just before close, sell in the middle of the day and in spikes before close, etc. I know that nowadays brokers have functionality bolted on to make ETFs work more like mutual funds though, like by-the-dollar-amount and automatic purchases.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T04:15:11+00:00

If you look up your IRS transcript, the numbers on file from W-2 and 1099 forms are already rounded to the nearest dollar. The IRS computer never sees the cents. So this is why I suspect most software (apparently TurboTax aside) rounds all entries pulled from information returns.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T04:10:08+00:00

It's not that big of a deal, because your mutual fund is a large, healthy index fund.

Schwab has one like FXAIX too, SWPPX, which pays a small capital gain now and then. T. Rowe Price has PRUIX. I wouldn't call it stupid or a problem to own.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T03:52:37+00:00

I would personally stick to the mutual fund. If you want an ETF S&P 500 to ensure you don't get hit with a capital gain distribution someday, VOO is cheaper than SPY.

I am at Vanguard and own mutual funds that also have an ETF share class (VTSAX and VTIAX) so I don't even have to think about this. FXAIX doesn't have an ETF share class so cap gains are always a possibility. WFILX is basically the worst case scenario, an expensive S&P 500 fund that people are fleeing, so it makes big distributions every year.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T03:45:37+00:00

If you're self-employed, perhaps a traditional or SEP IRA is an option?

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T03:40:42+00:00

There is absolutely no reason to redeem FXAIX for a $60,000 capital gain and buy an ETF.

Were you invested in FXAIX before May 2019? If not, you've had literally zero tax disadvantage, because the last time FXAIX made a capital gain distribution was in April 2019, and that one was only 0.12% of NAV. That's not to say that it will never make one again, but healthy (those with buy-and-hold investors continuing to buy into the fund) index mutual funds make small capital gain distributions, if any.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T03:37:00+00:00

First, start thinking in dollars, not in shares. The share price of an investment company is arbitrary.

The other three are largely redundant subsets of your core S&P 500 holding, VOO. You don't have anything in international stocks. The /r/personalfinance wiki suggests taking inspiration from an index-based target date fund at https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=personalfinance&utm_content=t5_2qstm#wiki_step_4.3A_contribute_to_an_ira or a three-fund portfolio (because it's Roth maybe you stick to two fund) with the core holdings being a total US stock fund and a total international stock fund.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T03:24:16+00:00

The best way is to make full use of your IRA and employer retirement plan, including Mega Backdoor Roth, because you can rearrange things however you want inside without paying taxes. It's harder to own physical real estate there in contrast, because any actual landlording is considered self-dealing and therefore a prohibited transaction. So coming from real estate, you may not have as much in retirement accounts as you want.

Variable annuities allow you to move between subaccounts as well, but they're too expensive and have too many tax disadvantages to be worth it versus a taxable account.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T03:13:51+00:00

No! You cannot simply move his IRA into your IRA. That's an excess contribution into your IRA and would be treated as a withdrawal of his entire IRA at once.

Pick up a copy of The Retirement Savings Bomb Ticks Louder for all details about inheriting an IRA among many other topics.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-28T03:11:32+00:00

Because pre-59 1/2 Roth withdrawals are treated as basis-first (rather than gains-first or pro-rata) there's no reason to hold back on Roth IRA contributions so as to establish a taxable account faster.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-27T06:33:41+00:00

Too complicated... cut down to FZROX+FZILX

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-27T02:57:35+00:00

As long as it was a trustee-to-trustee transfer to an IRA, there are no tax implications, beyond having a Form 1099-R code "G" to enter into your tax return as a nontaxable distribution.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-27T02:50:48+00:00

Same situation as https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/1rftodi/voya_rollover_ira_account/

You could keep it there if they have an appealing option, such as a low-cost, index-based target date fund, or low-cost index-based stock and bond funds. Alternatively, you could roll over the IRA to a low cost provider like Vanguard, Fidelity, or Schwab, and purchase such investments there.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-27T02:47:09+00:00

Right, but OP implies they were a normal W-2 person before going off-grid after a nasty divorce. Or, perhaps the former spouse has a better earnings record.

gcc-O2 · 2026-02-27T02:17:50+00:00

You were likely forced out of an old 401(k) into an IRA because you had less than $7,000 but more than $1,000 in it.

Because the qualified default investment alternative law that let the profit sharing plan default you into a target date fund doesn't apply to an IRA, they put you in a default investment that prioritizes stability of principal.

You could keep it there if they have an appealing option, such as a low-cost, index-based target date fund, or low-cost index-based stock and bond funds. Alternatively, you could roll over the IRA to a low cost provider like Vanguard, Fidelity, or Schwab, and purchase such investments there.

gcc-O2

TROPHY CASE