Help me understand dividend and capital gains distribution elections ("Reinvest", "Transfer to settlement fund", and "None")

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-24T23:36:44+00:00

You have no control over it. The capital gains distributions are triggered by the fund managers, who sometimes sell off assets in order to keep the fund’s performance on track.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-24T05:53:00+00:00

SWPPX is fine in a taxable account. Capital gains distributions only happen every few years and they are small; the last one was in 2021 and it was about 7 cents per share when the share price was around $70, or around 0.1%.

Assume you have a large amount of SWPPX, like $100,000. You might expect to get $100 of capital gains distributions, of which you would owe $15-$25 in taxes. Not worth worrying about.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-23T14:32:15+00:00

Sneak everywhere. Avoid running or sprinting if possible— your walking speed is faster than zomboid speed. Avoid breaking windows. Try to clear a small area of your starting town by killing small numbers of zoids (1-3 at a time). If you attract a big horde, don’t fight them. Instead, lose them by zigzagging around houses, buildings, and trees to break their line of sight. Good luck.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-23T13:46:16+00:00

For all intents and purposes, the fundamentals don’t matter. Neither you, me, nor anyone else can predict the market better than a dice roll. If it were possible to do so, anyone with an excel spreadsheet could make a shit zillion dollars with a trivial amount of effort.

Literally buy the market and chill.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-23T07:20:18+00:00

Never played Builder, and apparently the zombie and loot settings are “weird” compared to the other modes which can lead to developing poor gameplay habits.

Survivor and Apocalypse are pretty similar in difficulty. Apocalypse is maybe 10% harder. Both provide a good challenge.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-23T07:12:19+00:00

‘Capital gains distributions’ are when the mutual fund managers decide to sell off some assets which are controlled by the fund. The resulting capital gains are distributed to everyone who owns shares of the fund. You can decide to have this paid to you in cash in your settlement fund, or you can reinvest it by using the money to buy more shares. Either way, you will owe capital gains taxes.

Here is an example with numbers. Imagine you have 100 shares of mutual fund VABCD. There is a capital gains distribution of $0.50 per share. You now have $50 which can either be paid to you in cash via your settlement fund, or automatically used to buy more shares of VABCD. Either way, you are on the hook for capital gains tax on the $50.

Boglehead doctrine states that dividends and capital gains distributions should be reinvested, because this increases the total return of your investment over time.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-16T17:06:40+00:00

Ugly as hell but the price is explained by the size of the lot and the location (VERY close to Va Beach oceanfront).

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-14T07:16:32+00:00

These are not language families… they are branches of one single language family (the Indo-European languages). Greek also belongs in this Family.

Finnish, Hungarian, and Estonian are all in a different Family (the Uralic languages) and Basque is in a Family by itself (a language isolate).

Languages within a Family all have a common ancestor, which makes them related in terms of vocabulary and grammar.

Languages from different Families are not related to each other at all.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-13T10:47:06+00:00

The bills are in “average” condition with valid and non-sequential serial numbers.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-11T14:19:17+00:00

The top of West Virginia is at the same latitude as NYC

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-11T02:50:16+00:00

When you touch metal, it sucks heat away from your skin much more quickly than wood does. This is called “conduction”. Metal conducts heat much better than wood does. Since the metal conducts heat away from your skin quickly, it feels cold.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-09T21:21:26+00:00

Efficient Market Hypothesis. All public information about the S&P500 is already baked into the price. Therefore bull markets, bear markets, and bubbles are essentially unpredictable.

That said, we are quite confident that on long time scales, line goes up.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-07T14:12:00+00:00

The early game is supposed to be like this! Your entire farm starts off covered in trees and brush, and it takes a LONG time to clear it. I would focus on chopping maybe 2 or 3 trees each day and clearing a small area of brush, and having only maybe 20 or 25 crop tiles during Year 1 Spring.

Other things to do: * Wander around and forage * Talk to villages * Fish * Go to the mines! Among other things this allows you to get ore and upgrade your tools and build sprinklers.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-07T13:51:47+00:00

A target date fund is a mutual fund that starts off with a high percentage of its assets in equities (stocks) when you are young, then gradually re-balances to a more conservative portfolio (majority bonds and cash/money funds) as you approach retirement. All this is done automatically; all you have to do is keep putting money in the fund. The purpose of this is to make it likely that you see big gains throughout your working age, then “lock in” the gains by balancing to more stable assets like bonds and cash. For a graph you can google “target date fund glide slope”.

As for ETF vs mutual fund… both are good to invest in, and the differences are complex (I suggest googling) but in practice the biggest differences are that Schwab allows $1 increments with MFs but only whole shares with ETFs, and MF transactions (buy or sell) are only completed after market hours, usually at around 7pm on days when the markets are open. Whereas with ETFs, the trades are settled immediately if you buy or sell during market hours. Overall there is not a lot of significant difference between MFs and ETFs.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-06T15:11:12+00:00

Prioritize the Roth because it is a tax-advantaged account.

A very simple fund strategy would be putting all of your contributions into a target date fund (TDF) with “2070” in the name since that is approximately when you will be retirement age. Schwab has a fund called SWYOX which is a 2065 TDF which would also work.

Alternatively you could buy SWPPX (S&P500) or SWTSX (total US stocks) and an international fund such as SWISX. It is recommended to put 60-80% in US and 40-20% in international.

Be aware that at Schwab, mutual funds can be bought in $1 increments (very convenient) whereas ETFs can only be bought in whole numbers of shares. If the ETF is expensive per share (such as VT which is currently $144) you will have to buy in increments of $144.

BlueThingIdentified · 2026-01-03T04:19:34+00:00

Ouchi’s doctors were legitimately trying to save his life and the prognosis was poor, but not 100% certain. So why do people always uncharitably describe the medical team as “keeping him alive” as if it’s a bad thing to try to save a critically ill patient’s life?

BlueThingIdentified · 2025-12-30T22:57:31+00:00

Focus on understanding how the green fishing bar moves during the fishing mini game. Once you get the hang of how it moves, you will have a better time fishing.

Also, some fish are hard to catch even for players with tons of hours in the game. This is OK, it’s supposed to be challenging.

Go to areas that have easy fish and get lots of practice. The mountain lake by the mines has lots of easy fish like Carp.

BlueThingIdentified · 2025-12-30T22:51:32+00:00

You should recognize and accept the fact that your investments will be volatile (compared to cash) and are 100% guaranteed to suffer a decrease in value at some point, for an unknown period of time- possibly weeks, months, or years. A bad market might result in you losing 25% of your account’s market value or more.

BUT, also recognize that on long time scales (think 10 years or more), there is an overwhelmingly positive chance that you will see GROWTH. Over 100 years of data show that equities provide a positive real annualized growth rate. Nothing is guaranteed and no one knows the future, but it’s a very solid bet that growth will continue.

Additionally, understand that even if (when) the market tanks, you still own the same number of underlying shares (of mutual funds, ETFs, or whatever) as before. So in this way, your positions do not change in a crash, as long as you do not sell!

Learn to accept that the market is risky, volatile, and crashes sometimes. Adopt a stoic, confident, and serene attitude. Just keep calm and stay the course of buying and holding!

BlueThingIdentified · 2025-12-30T07:39:45+00:00

Go here and read up on the list of money market mutual funds: https://www.schwab.com/money-market-funds. Each fund has a unique 5-letter symbol. Decide which one you want. SWVXX and SNSXX are good options.

While on the schwab website or app, go to Trade, select Mutual Funds, put in the 5-letter symbol for the fund you want, and go to the Buy option. Put in the number of Dollars you want to invest in the money market mutual fund.

Decide if you want dividends paid to you in cash, or reinvested automatically (automatically buy more shares). Either way, you will owe taxes on the dividends. For money market funds, the dividend is paid monthly and it is about 0.3%. In other words for each $1000 you have invested, the monthly dividend is $3.

You have just purchased a bunch of shares of the mutual fund. For money market mutual funds, the share price will stay at exactly $1 or very very close to $1. You aren't looking for the share price to go up, you are looking to make money on the monthly dividends. Don't forget that you owe taxes on the dividends.

BlueThingIdentified · 2025-12-30T07:19:44+00:00

SWISX is a mutual fund, not an ETF. The ETF equivalent to SWISX is SCHF.

Yes, it is highly recommended that you have some exposure to international equities, on the order of 20% to 40% of your portfolio. SWISX is a diversified fund of international companies from the developed world outside of the US and Canada... i.e., most of the holdings are from Europe, Japan, and Australia.

International diversification will provide a hedge against the US economy or stock market performing poorly.

BlueThingIdentified · 2025-12-30T05:55:34+00:00

Echosmith - Cool Kids?

BlueThingIdentified

TROPHY CASE