I’ve registered on Schwab’s developer site, which has listed ‘individual trader api’ as ‘coming by the end of 2023’ as long as I’ve been aware. They do have a slew of active professional APIs, but those are contract-dependent and not fit for (my) purpose.
I got forcibly migrated a couple months ago, and also expected them just to migrate TDA’s API to their own system, but I’m losing faith in their ‘end of 2023’ promise. I haven’t been able to get any more detail on their timeline/progress, although the developer portal is responsive. It’s frustrating. There’s nothing magical about Schwab’s website, fees, trading, or account services, so if I can manage my frustration and restore my data access by migrating, I’m open.
The options my own search has turned up are Alpaca and Interactive Brokers. Alpaca seems pretty sketchy; still in the ‘startup’ phase. IBKR seems legit, but isn’t one I’d heard of before. I was hoping someone on social media might have had great experience somewhere and be ready to share. Or even that some brokerage might be watching for the opportunity to advertise, even on a community with barely 100 monthly users.
As long as it’s actually a TDA account, the API will work. They’re transitioning all those accounts to Schwab, though. Once they transition your account, you no longer have TDA account, so no TDA credentials to authenticate with the API.
Sure, but you can’t practically hoard beans against the collapse of society, and you have to live in society until it collapses.
In the meantime, the stock market represents human activity - as long as there are more people doing more things with the tools and technology built by previous generations, stock market is going to trend up.
US Garcia frigates (1960s) were 2600 tons; Knox (1970s) 3000; Brooke class FFG/heavy frigates (1960s) were 5400 tons, and Oliver Hazard Perry class FFGs (1980s) 4100 tons.
Nuts are super nutrient-dense. Just a handful gets you a decent amount of calories & protein. You can crush some up and mix with your oatmeal if they’re too much to chew.
So, definitely coming from a position of privilege, but I think of a 6 month efund sitting at 2% (historical) MMA or having a couple of 10-20% years. If you’re looking at an efund that’s 105% of what you put in vs 150%, then that crash is a much smaller concern. Especially because the actual nadir of values (at least in the last 30 years) has been quite short lived. Why I distinguish between emergencies and events that happen once or twice a year: personal emergencies are kind of likely to coincide with stock market dips/crashes, but there’s a lot of growth potential in the meantime. I have taxable and tax-sheltered investments, and don’t distinguish a specific efund.
Risk tolerance is definitely a thing, though. I was 98% equities, 2% cash for 20 years, and only started getting some junk bonds when the yields got above 7%.
My usual drinking vessel is a souvenir cup from the 1992 Miramar Air Show. I still use a “boom box” style radio and clock timer from 1985 as an alarm clock. The tape player on the radio is long expired, but it still plays radio.
I think of my checking account as a buffer - direct deposit goes in, bill pay goes out, any amount beyond this month’s bills goes to/from brokerage. My particular account has a minimum balance and the actual balance hovers right around there. Any interest lost/earned on that balance over a year isn’t enough to worry about, and no payee/payer ever sees the magic numbers to access my real savings.
The key is not to have cash just sitting around, regardless where. If you don’t have immediate need, get it into investments. Modern mutual funds or ETFs are liquid enough to serve as emergency fund - unless your ‘emergency fund’ is something you dip into every other month. While interest rates are so high, it may not feel pointless to keep cash, but even those high rates are only 1-2% above inflation (and have only risen above inflation recently). Get your money back into the economy; don’t pay a banker to do it for you.
I think the real use case for FSAs is people who have regular or predictable health care costs. If you know that, every month, you need $500 for insulin, or every year you have two $200 dentist visits that aren’t covered by insurance, then paying those expenses with pre-tax money can be a big savings - saves federal tax, payroll tax, and state tax. If you’re a young, healthy person whose biggest health expense is hangover advil, then FSA is not for you.
The vlogger’s problem is he was putting money into the FSA “just in case,” and got screwed because he didn’t have need. I’m sure there are tons of HR departments out there that do a terrible job of explaining the use-it-or-lose-it nature of FSAs, so it’s valuable to have the rant out there, but they are good accounts for the people that benefit.
They’re structured to pay barely more than inflation - 0.0-0.5% more through most of this century - which means that even the 5.27% rate on todays bonds will fall when inflation goes back to its 2% target. They’re about the safest investment you can make, but you’re not going to increase your purchasing power.
Google is probably your best bet, honestly, but it’s not as easy as I implied. www.napfa.org is a good place to start. I tried to find one willing to do a one-off consult when I retired. Figured “fee only” would have a business model like lawyers, but most of them seem to be built around annual contracts with fees based on assets (1+%), which generally means that their target market is people with at least seven figures liquid wealth. At least in my MCOL urban market. There may some good options, or courses, for normal humans associated with a local university or community college.
Astonishingly, to me, a lot of the financial planners I contacted were fully subscribed and not accepting new clients. There are a lot of people out there ready to spend $10,000+/year for the reassurance of a quarterly meeting with a CFP who’s almost certainly not getting them $10k/year in tax savings or investment return. Definitely not improving tax savings by that much in the second year over the first year.
I mean, I’m a numbers guy, so I’m totally comfortable with exponential growth, uncertain returns, and tax models, even if I don’t know all the legal loopholes. To me, the CFP is most useful for knowing those loopholes. I know enough people who are intimidated by calculating the tip at a restaurant to understand the value a financial planner subscription brings, but the fees for apparent effort absolutely blow my mind. Even famously low-fee Vanguard offers a personal advisor service, for 0.3% of assets, which is basically a human to plug your numbers into their robo-advisor.
Definitely true, although I think this is more of a concern when you hire one on an ongoing basis to manage your accounts. That management leads to conflict of interest between commissions the advisor might earn on particular investments and maximizing return for the client. Fee-only (is supposed to) mean the advisor doesn’t accept commissions, and should minimize the conflict of interest practically, rather than legally.
Index funds because none of us (including the professionals who study them all day long) know enough about individual companies and the future of the economy to pick winners consistently. Investing in “everything” averages out the winners and losers and gives you the natural growth of human activity.
Tax protected accounts because you’ll make withdrawals at a time when your income is (presumably) lower, and deferring income to that time means deferring taxes to the lower tax bracket. In the US, tax protected accounts have special purposes: education, healthcare, retirement.
At 48, education is probably only relevant if you want to pay for kids’ college, and that’s what [www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc313](529 plans) are for.
You are definitely coming to the point in life where, regardless of your general health, you will begin to incur healthcare costs. In the US, that’s an incredibly complex topic, but one aspect to be aware is [www.healthcare.gov/…/health-savings-account-hsa/](Health Savings Account). You have to be on ‘high deductible’ insurance to qualify for these, so probably not empoyer-sponsored insurance, but if you’re self-insuring through the marketplace, many of the lowest-premium plans qualify. HSA will let you save around $4000/year tax-deductible and tax-free, with the restriction that it can only be used for healthcare costs (not insurance premiums) until age 65, at which point the money becomes available for any purpose, still tax-free.
Retirement is probably you main long-term concern. If your employer offers a 401(k), you can put up to $22k in that every year. If your income is $42k, you pay $3200 in OASDI and around $1500 in Federal income tax. Putting $20k in a 401(k) will reduce your declarable income to $22k, your OASDI tax to $1700 and Federal tax to $0, effectively giving you an extra $3000/year to spend/save. 401(k) money is fully taxable when withdrawn, but if you have to withdraw $18k/year (1500/month) after retirement, that is still below the Federal tax threshold (depending on your social security benefits).
For sure, if your employer offers any kind of match to your 401(k) contributions, contribute at least enough to get all of that match. It’s literally free money.
Non-employer retirement accounts are IRAs, either Traditional (tax deductible contributions, tax deferred withdrawals) or Roth (taxable contributions, tax free withdrawals), with $6500/year contribution limits. Roth makes retirement planning very easy, because however much you have saved is what you can spend, but they also mean paying taxes on that money today. In your case, at a marginal tax rate of (7.65+12) = 19.65%, that means $1280/year, where, as with the 401(k), it looks like your after-retirement tax rate will be around 0%, anyway. For most people who qualify, traditional IRA is the lower cost solution, even though it increases the after-retirement tax cost.
Finally, I’m not a pro, this is all just information I’ve picked up. If you’re really unsure, it might be worth your peace of mind to find a fee-only financial advisor and pay them a few hundred dollars for a consultation. Think of it like therapy for your financial mental health. They’ll give you completely boiler-plate advice, but they know all this stuff inside and out, and should be able to set you on a good path in just one meeting. Don’t sign up for an annual contract.