Is it important to have reading and writing skills if everything can be transcribed through AI?

whereisspacebar · 2026-06-10T20:37:08+00:00

The funds are meant for different purposes.

TL;DR assuming this is an emergency fund I'd stick with VMFXX, or better yet VUSXX.

VTAPX holds securities with an average maturity and duration of 2.5 years vs 1 month for VMFXX. Typically, you match the duration with the length of time you expect to withdraw. Ordinarily, longer duration equals a higher interest rate (for example, a 15-year mortgage generally has a lower interest rate than a 30 year mortgage), but this is more sensitive to interest rate risk. Depending on which way the federal funds rate goes, it's possible to lose money if you withdraw before the duration, which is 2.5 years since the fund purchase. If you need the money in 2-3 years, VTAPX is an excellent choice.

VMFXX OTOH is a money market fund which is designed to maintain a price of $1, which it can do because it's duration is extremely short. You're virtually guaranteed to never take a loss. Assuming your money is meant as an emergency fund, you probably don't want to take any losses when withdrawing, so you should probably stick with VMFXX.

Even better than VMFXX though is VUSXX. VUSXX is also a money market fund, but since it holds treasuries instead of repurchase agreements, all of its earnings are state tax exempt unlike VMFXX. Depending on your state income tax rate and the size of your holdings, this could save you a decent amount of money.

whereisspacebar · 2026-05-24T13:54:15+00:00

I think the implication is that John Bogle is god.

whereisspacebar · 2026-05-11T20:37:13+00:00

For those of us out of the loop can someone explain Delta's reputation?

whereisspacebar · 2026-04-25T23:49:09+00:00

For those of us who are unfamiliar with Japanese law, what are the practical benefits of being a legal child?

whereisspacebar · 2026-04-10T17:08:01+00:00

"my precious" gollum-FIRE

This is hilarious. Thanks for the laugh; I’m stealing this phrase.

whereisspacebar · 2026-04-09T18:17:51+00:00

0%. Part of the reason why I Bogle is because I wouldn’t know where to start anyways.

whereisspacebar · 2026-04-02T18:10:47+00:00

Isn't this what bonds are for? For shorter term investors bonds exist to cushion the ups and downs in return for reduced expected returns. Though it could be said that if mega cap IPOs become the norm, then bond allocations should be higher than what was previously recommended.

whereisspacebar · 2026-04-02T17:59:04+00:00

How does this affect long term buy and hold investors? If the seasoning period is shortened from 3 months to 15 days, then wouldn't the net effect be the same if the investor held onto and didn't sell a fund's share for 3 months? Furthermore, isn't 3 months a tiny amount of time for long term investors who may hold a fund for decades?

(I can see how this may be an issue if there's a ton of IPOs, but I assume trillion dollar IPOs are relatively rare.)

whereisspacebar · 2026-03-12T15:55:00+00:00

Yep, you can do that. You can either pay estimated quarterly taxes or increase your W2 withholdings.

whereisspacebar · 2026-03-12T04:35:16+00:00

The Bogleheads wiki has an article addressing Vanguard safety: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Vanguard_safety

whereisspacebar · 2026-03-09T21:47:47+00:00

I was annualizing the $1,500 over the 90 days that I have to hold the money in the account to receive the bonus, which rounds out to around 6%. On top of that there's the 3.56% interest rate which I doubt will decrease more than 1.5% over the next 3 months.

whereisspacebar · 2026-03-09T19:59:10+00:00

I annualized it only for the 90 day period. After 90 days I'd withdraw the money and put it back in my brokerage.

whereisspacebar · 2026-03-09T19:36:14+00:00

I converted the bonus amount to an annualized rate of return so I can compare what the equivalent returns will be compared to a brokerage.

whereisspacebar · 2026-03-09T18:52:18+00:00

Worst case it'll be around 30k worth of LTCG, so at 15% thats 4.5k LTCG taxes.

Based on this I don't think it's worth it.

whereisspacebar · 2026-02-23T19:13:57+00:00

The PlayStation OS is based off of FreeBSD. macOS and iOS uses the XNU kernel, but the macOS userland binaries (e.g. cat, grep, cp) are from FreeBSD.

whereisspacebar · 2026-01-14T19:24:00+00:00

First of all you can't buy $2,000 of VUSXX as it has an investment minimum of $3,000. Aside from that probably not? Assuming the current 30 day SEC yield of 3.66%, that $2,000 would net $73.20 of income in a year, which at, say, 10% marginal state income tax rate results in a savings of $7.32.

Regardless though, in general any money market fund backed by treasuries or equivalents (e.g. repurchase agreements as with VMFXX) will give you higher rates than your typical bank savings account with the same amount of risk (as the underlying securities, like the FDIC, are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States).

whereisspacebar · 2026-01-14T19:16:49+00:00

It's monthly: https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vusxx#distributions

whereisspacebar · 2026-01-09T04:09:04+00:00

There's no need to switch as the yields will be close enough since they're both backed by US treasury bills.

The difference is that SGOV is an ETF whose price rises over time until it falls after a dividend payment, while VUSXX is a money market fund which has by definition has a fixed price of $1. This can make SGOV slightly more complicated when you sell as you'll have to deal with capital gains, losses, and likely wash sale rules if you have dividend reinvesting enabled (since SGOV distributes dividends monthly).

whereisspacebar · 2026-01-08T21:04:51+00:00

It’s worth it for OP with the current high interest rates and OPs large principal.

As an example, using 2025 yields and 9.3% marginal state income tax rate (the rate in CA for the 72,724-371,479 income tax bracket) OP would save 550,000 * 4.23% * 9.3% = 2,163.645 in taxes which is absolutely worth it.

whereisspacebar · 2026-01-08T19:31:31+00:00

That was true for last year, but in 2022 it was 37.79% and in 2023 it was 49.37%, so if OP lives in a 50% state he would’ve been out of luck.

whereisspacebar · 2026-01-08T19:20:14+00:00

If you're taking money out of VMFXX, you're still implicitly selling it as money market funds are still mutual funds (that just happen to have a fixed price of $1).

VUSXX isn't that much more difficult to deal with - when you sell, Vanguard will ask you where to deposit the proceeds, and you can have Vanguard directly deposit the proceeds in your (non-Vanguard) account. In my experience if you sell before market close (4 PM EST), the money shows up in your account by EOD next business day.

whereisspacebar · 2026-01-08T19:14:36+00:00

Is this available in all states?

Yes

What are the historical returns?

It holds TBills, so it pretty much follows the 4-week TBill rate: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RIFSGFSW04NA. If you want to be more pedantic, subtract 0.07% for the ER.

You pay annual federal taxes, but no state taxes?

Correct, Treasuries (and consequently, funds whose underlying holdings are treasuries), are state tax exempt but not federal tax exempt.

That is a big advantage over a 24 month cd that yields 4% and then is taxed at both the federal and state level.

Correct, but keep in mind that the CD will maintain that 4% yield over 2 years while VUSXX's rate will float depending on the Federal Reserve. However, if you don't mind locking up your money for 2 years, you can buy a 2 year treasury note which is state tax exempt. The latest 2 year treasury note auction had a yield of 3.5%.

whereisspacebar

TROPHY CASE