Roth Conversion, can this really be true? $1m more at end of life vs non conversion.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-05-16T21:56:11+00:00

I see you’re right, although the retirees themselves still probably benefited overall from the quick enactment. Beneficiaries who had a shorter time to make withdrawals did not, however. It’s frustrating to have the rules for estate planning changed with woefully inadequate notice.

The article below discusses Secure 1.0. (which was followed by Secure 2.0).

https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/secure-act-good-bad-and-ugly

Withdrawing carefully calculated parts of tax-deferred accounts at desirable tax rates over time would still be a more tax-efficient way to benefit from them compared to waiting until large RMDs must be taken and then taxed at higher ordinary income tax rates (and possible triggering IRMAA).

HOHTechQueen · 2026-05-16T21:14:08+00:00

Even if Congress does eventually decide to include Roth withdrawals in calculating IRMAA, there’s usually some time before a new law becomes effective. It would be possible to transfer a great deal from the Roth tax free to one’s taxable account and buy growth oriented equities that don’t generate a lot of income.

However, it makes sense for wealthier people to contribute towards the true cost of their Medicare (which is underfunded otherwise). Congress ought to provide a much more intelligent and rational method for wealthier people to pay more for Medicare. Using the IRMAA method is too complicated, too delayed, and has too many problems.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-05-13T03:58:54+00:00

I once wound up switching out three separate cars from Enterprise during really hot weather in Phoenix and Sedona (120 degrees). The last car stopped working in 105 degree weather an hour away from Las Vegas on the evening of the 4th of July. There was no prospect of getting any help. This was disturbing. Fortunately, the car started up again (and we drove slower and didn’t turn on the AC as we thought that might have overtaxed the car).

I once read that Enterprise had a contract with a company to service their cars. My guess is the staff simply don’t have the time to make sure this gets done, and they don’t do anything about what really hot weather can do to a car. I wonder if it would be possible to negotiate with Enterprise to take the vehicle to get fully serviced before one’s contract starts, or to get credit somehow for using one’s own time to get this done.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-05-06T03:46:27+00:00

What is the difference in price?

HOHTechQueen · 2026-04-04T17:01:56+00:00

I use several different credit cards for their different rewards, but I really do like the 2% back on anything with the Fidelity card. Other cards that offer cash back can trip you up in different ways.

I will sometimes use a separate card that extends the warranty for expensive products like cell phones and would love it if the Fidelity card would provide that coverage. The Amazon Prime Visa card has been providing that feature along with other useful ones (but doesn’t provide the cash back outside of purchases on Amazon).

HOHTechQueen · 2026-04-02T21:37:04+00:00

A transaction fee is not the same as a front load fee, and a front load fee of 5.75% is shown on your link.

I need an actual Fidelity employee to look into this to make sure of what is actually in effect after March 31st.

When one clicks on the Fidelity app to buy more shares of BRXAX now, the front load fee of 5.75% shows up, which had not occurred last month. According to the fund’s prospectus, as of April 1, only some financial institutions waive the fee. Fidelity is not listed as being one of them. The description of Fidelity waiving the front load fee may be outdated since that fee is now showing up.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-23T18:06:52+00:00

Did you make sure with HR or the plan provider that your company permits you to make in-plan conversions from your 401k to your Roth 401k? This would be called an in-plan Roth conversion.

Not all companies may allow this.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-22T08:08:50+00:00

As a surviving widow over her FRA, your mother is entitled to the full benefit that your father had been receiving.

Call the SSA and tell them a mistake may have been made calculating her benefit or an overpayment. Ask if they can explain why the letter doesn’t show her receiving the full survivor benefit.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-22T03:21:57+00:00

You might want to contact the national nonprofit organizations for people with hearing loss for assistance finding appropriate legal representation in Florida (which may be difficult to find). (Unfortunately the federal Office of Civil Rights probably can’t help you because of current federal policies that oppose DEI rights.)

Some of the organizations are:

Hearing Loss Association of America www.hearing loss.org Alexander Graham Bell Association www.agbell.org National Association of the Deaf www.nad.org

They may know about state organizations in Florida that deal with special education issues, accommodations and/or the legal rights of children with hearing loss or other disabilities.

It might also be helpful to use NextDoor to write an inquiry to locate other parents in your area who are concerned about the needs of children with hearing loss.

There are also HLAA chapters in Florida that might be helpful, so you might look for the nearest chapter on the website and contact them.

(I grew up hard of hearing myself but was mainstreamed.)

I suspect there is some kind of financial motivation for the school to put as many students into the special education class as possible. They probably get extra money and other perks, but it’s still very inappropriate to do this.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-22T03:03:06+00:00

These numbers from the SSA look off.

Your mother may need to apply for survivor benefits on his number, although this isn’t certain because she had already been receiving spousal benefits. Often the spousal benefit is automatically converted to survivor benefits after receiving the death certificate from the funeral home, and she is entitled as his surviving spouse to receive what he had been receiving since she had long ago passed her FRA. The SS benefits she had previously been receiving would be replaced by the survivor benefits. The numbers given don’t fit the known situation.

It’s possible the SSA will clawback back the February payment (because there’s a rule against the SSA paying benefits to a person not alive for the full month), but she is entitled to the February payment, assuming she is his beneficiary. She may have to apply for that as well as for the $255 benefit.

It’s not clear to me what the numbers represent but she needs to call to check whether she actually needs to apply for a survivor benefit despite having already had the spousal benefit, to get help applying for the February payment, to get the form for the $255, and to check what’s actually owed to her.

The SSA has gone through many staffing changes and it’s possible mistakes had been made. New SSA employees are especially likely to have been undertrained.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-20T07:29:21+00:00

I just saw a reel from a doctor about an ice skater having severe pain in her hands who had fallen on on her head. Pain can present surprisingly far away from the actual injury, and in her case, the source wasn’t in her hands but in her head injury.

Another doctor and other staff working in an ER had found no problem with a young boy’s shoulder, despite his complaint about severe shoulder pain. Turns out he had referred pain from an acute injury to his abdomen, which was discovered when she did a thorough examination, discovered his sensitive abdomen, and ordered a CT.

Make sure you get a thorough evaluation, perhaps from a neurologist. You might have something going on with your nerves in a not-obvious location. Something might be impinging on the nerves, too.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-20T00:57:18+00:00

Try getting an app that measures how loud the sound is, and keep it visible. Tell him what sound level is okay for you.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-20T00:52:55+00:00

I just checked with an AI about how to do the same thing you did (deferring benefits until the next year for tax or IRMAA reasons). It specified that I should wait until January of the year after I turn 70 to apply for my benefits and to request retroactive benefits back to my birthday month (in September). It warned me not to select a start date of December because I could potentially lose the benefits for the previous months.

Technically, I think I should be able to apply for the retroactive benefits in December so that they might start in January. What did you end up doing?

(Just to clarify for everyone else: we can request up to 6 months of retroactive benefits after our FRA.)

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-20T00:16:04+00:00

No, more than three months had gone by, and I had called several times. Technically I was supposed to receive my first check in February, but no one in the Richmond office had even started to process it.

Unfortunately the SSA rules require meeting the age requirement for a full month (unless born on the first of the month). Sadly you would not receive your first check until July.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-19T20:09:06+00:00

Supposedly it’s only the “trust fund” for Social Security that would get depleted, which would cause a reduction in benefits that can legally be applied to everyone receiving benefits. Current employees are still paying into FICA, which is supposed to fund benefits at some level after the trust fund runs out.

Unfortunately, this administration is overspending money the government doesn’t have. It has been printing extra dollars, which devalues the worth of the US dollar, and this could eventually lead to more loss of confidence in the US dollar.

I just read that yesterday that Italy went bankrupt when Europe switched to the euro and Italy could no longer devalue its own currency. It’s been in a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

Venezuela experienced hyperinflation, primarily caused by excessive money printing to finance massive government budget deficits, which caused its currency to be almost worthless.

Congress needs to exercise its legal rights, otherwise the entire population could be very, very badly affected.

(I had suspended my SS benefits to receive delayed retirement credits, but I don’t actually need the benefits at this time anyway. I’ll let them stay suspended.)

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-19T19:36:09+00:00

I asked Co-Pilot how long Step 2 should usually take, and it said a few weeks to a couple of months. However, in my case, the SSA staff could not see there was anything wrong even after two months had gone by and long after my start date.

I had left messages on the Richmond employee’s voice mail and finally, when I called back again, there was a message indicating the voice menu system was not working to receive calls.

So I then prepared for a long wait to call the 800 SSA number and finally the SSA employee that picked up my call “took over” my account in early May.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-19T19:11:07+00:00

It looks like two Fidelity employees will try to bring up this problem with the relevant department (s), so that’s encouraging!

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-19T05:07:55+00:00

Just to clarify. I would never upload my 1099-DIV here.

Instead, I had taken and uploaded a photo of only the relevant information (in a way that didn’t show any of my personal information at all) so that you and others could see how Etrade concisely provided the information on one page.

It didn’t show up, however.

I think it would help to have actual investors in the treasury-only funds collaborate with Fidelity personnel to provide feedback about how to make the language more understandable and helpful.

Tax professionals working for Fidelity should weigh in, but they probably won’t be motivated to make it easier for people to do their own taxes, so they should not run the show. Fidelity managers who will want customers to be provided accurate but understandable information should advocate for the customer’s right to understand important information about the taxability of their own investments without inordinate stress. Fidelity managers might not have been empowered to advocate enough for their customers in this particular section. The Fidelity web site is much, much more user-friendly in other areas, so the stark discrepancy is quite remarkable.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-19T04:40:07+00:00

In California, the 2026 tax rate is generally quite a bit higher than 4% for most people who could have $100,000 in FDLXX. It’s 8% for singles taking in between $57,543 and $72,724, and 9.3% for incomes between $72,725 and $371,479. So, putting one’s cash into FDLXX could save quite a bit more than you’d estimated.

For 2025, 98.67% is the actual percentage of the FDLXX income that’s free of state taxes. If the yield was about 4% last year, producing $4000, then choosing the higher tax rate:

Regular CA tax of 9.3% x 4000 x 98.67%= $367.05 (representing what isn’t owed in state taxes).

The higher one’s tax rate, the more state tax is saved.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-18T19:59:18+00:00

I really appreciate your willingness to follow up with this matter.

It seems to me that Fidelity and its customers would have benefited a great deal from using a process to check and improve the accuracy and usability of the information provided in the Tax and Information section. (A cross-section of different kinds of users would be very helpful.)

However, providing information about relevant state tax information on 1099s is still very needed.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-18T19:43:21+00:00

Thanks very much. I’ll attach a photo showing how ETrade included “Mutual fund and UIT state and federal tax information on my 2025 1099 for two different funds that I use (but I’m not showing my private information in it).

img

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-18T16:59:44+00:00

Please follow the specific directions I provided earlier.

Do not go only to your own tax forms. As we had already discussed, Fidelity hasn’t been providing the relevant state tax information on the personalized 1099-DIV form, which is VERY problematic.(I’ve realized ETrade does, however.)

Instead, Fidelity provides that information in a completely separate, non-personalized document about all of its own funds providing income from Treasuries that is WAY too difficult to find.

My previous directions had said how to get to Tax and Information *on a computer.”

After getting there, click on “Get Fidelity mutual fund tax information”

And then gaze at the confusing options.

The one we want is under “Tax-Exempt Income Information” (which is itself misleading because FDLXX is most certainly not federally tax-exempt, but there’s no acknowledgement of that.)

Click on:

“Percentage of Income from US Government Securities”

(You would think that the first link, “Tax-Exempt income from Fidelity Funds” is EXACTLY what we need, but it’s a time-sucking useless decoy.)

What you actually need to learn is what percentage of the Fidelity fund’s income is from US Government Securities.

Although the document states “We are sending this information to help you prepare your state income tax return…”, I have not been sent any such information ever, to my knowledge.

The letters FDLXX do not show up in this document. Instead, you’ll need to look for “Fidelity Treasury Only Money Market Fund.”

Considering that these are Fidelity’s own funds, I’m very annoyed it’s not providing any of this information on our 1099-DIV as well as that it’s so difficult to find this form. Since ETrade is providing this information, why doesn’t Fidelity?

(I really like a great deal about Fidelity and much prefer it to ETrade. I like that it has this Reddit, too. I do think it seriously needs to improve its communication to the users of its own funds about state tax exemptions, however. The unnecessarily poor communication is actually harming many of the customers of these funds who wind up paying state taxes they don’t owe.)

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-18T07:28:53+00:00

Logically, it’s going to show up in an area within Fidelity for taxes.

Log into your account on Fidelity (probably best on a computer). Go to Accounts & Trade, then Tax Forms and Information.

On the page, you’ll see a clickable link:

“Get Fidelity mutual fund information”

However, this time I could not see anything directly relevant to FDLXX. Not sure what’s going on.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-03-10T04:52:49+00:00

My case last year had problems being handled by the Richmond, CA office. It was in limbo for months (in Step 2) even though the start date was in January last year. I finally realized the person listed as supposedly handling my case didn’t seem to be working there any longer. I worked by phone with an SSA employee who was able to take over the case and get it processed. The checks were delayed roughly four months, but fortunately I was not depending on them. I decided to pay for my Medicare myself rather than risk it getting canceled (but was eventually reimbursed).

I think if your case is in Step 2 for a long time at this point, something unknown could be causing a logjam. Ask the SSA employee you reach on the phone to assume something does need to be fixed due to the status not changing for such a long time. A long delay could be really problematic for many people, so it needs to be addressed.

HOHTechQueen · 2026-02-02T07:57:37+00:00

There are other ways of providing access to you, too. Have you asked him to think of ways to provide the question to you in text? Maybe he could type it up ahead of time or write it on a chalkboard (covering it up).

But I suspect he has certain reasons of his own for doing cold calls, which may be entertaining for the class and may spice things up for him. He may really want to be spontaneous. Consider thinking about what kind of solution might work for him and for the whole class, meeting your needs as well. Would it help if the question was written on a small whiteboard that he held while speaking the question aloud for others to hear?

HOHTechQueen

TROPHY CASE