We are going in mid November, I’m still holding out hope for rain but I don’t want a bus trip and will happily reschedule for spring if need be.
According the the forums I’ve been reading the Grand European cruise has been very affected. I would not go with the conditions that they are seeing now.
I think it was a great choice to postpone.
Sound great regarding your family longevity. I’m thinking this is the bond portion of the portfolio. Plus I’m still young, who knows what I will be when I’m 80, most likely cognitive decline. At least for annuity, we will not have to worry, we just spend the money. I’m also thinking of CD ladders to see if we can achieve the same thing. The problem with annuity is you lose the money if you die, having a second person as a back up is not as good than having just a single male at 80.
Yes, I hope to live as long as I’m healthy. My dad turned 87 and I was leaning toward recommending he put maybe 25% into an annuity. But then the market changed. For him, passing on the money isn’t as important. The tough thing is, by the time you need to make these decisions you’re already old enough to be lucky to have enough cognitive function to make good choices.
Annuities are tough to figure, IMO.
Well, I tried the Bogleheads forum on this, got a little help, but not so much.
My husband’s friend who has done a fantastic job with our Roths is retiring, so we’re on our own as far as these funds. I’m a little stressed about this, because the portfolio he built is overwhelming. 34 stocks, two ETFs, lots of treasuries and cash. I’m thinking that what we might do is sell the stocks, and start buying index fund S&P 500, and Vanguard total market ETFs.
It’s just hard to figure out how and when to do this. I know I’m planning on a ridiculously aggressive portfolio for a retiree, but we don’t need this money, and it is a Roth. I’m thinking some sort of schedule, like sell 10% of the stock per month, and immediately invest in the ETF’s. Ugh, I dunno. I’m terrible at market timing! Any ideas?
Perhaps ask your husband’s friend what he would recommend for a fund or ETF that has reasonably similar characteristics as the 34 stocks, if you do not want to manage the 34 stocks but want a similar investment.
He did mention the Vaneck MOAT and the S &P 500 index funds, but honestly, I don’t really want to ask him too many questions. He’s going through a lot of family trauma and I just want to leave him alone right now. 
I’d try to find another financial advisor you can trust! That sounds like a complex portfolio!
I’ve not done this, but if any of your stocks are now lower than when you paid for them, I think you can take a loss, which would help with taxes. I think you also want to make sure you’ve owned things at least a year before you sell.
We have more than 34 stocks. Sounds like his plan was to invest in various sectors and buy multiple stocks in each. We’ve done that for the last twenty years and portfolio has done really well. Then again, I detest managed funds.
My thought would be, if you can’t or don’t want to manage funds, is buy an ETF of the market and maybe a few specific ETF’s for various sectors like energy, retail products, healthcare, banking. I’d just mirror the sectors he’s invested in with ETF’s.
There’s lots of good information out there. I used to read Kiplingers and found the articles to be excellent.
In terms of when you do this, I don’t think it matters. It’s nearly impossible to time the market. And what you invest in is going to matter.
The amount of the loss you can take per year on federal taxes is very small ($3,000). You have to spread it out over several years. I think I just finished taking loses from the 2008 crash.
Warren Buffet has left these instructions in his will: “My advice to the trustee [for my wife] could not be more simple: Put 10 percent of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90 percent in very low-cost S&P 500 index fund.” That’s it.
We are retired and I have been investing on my own since Peter Lynch was managing the Magellan Fund which we still own. I am trying to trim my individual stocks and follow Buffet’s advice, but there are some foundation stocks that I will never sell. Make it easier on my beneficiaries.
It’s a Roth, so there’s no tax consequences via buying or selling. That’s also why we’d like to be very aggressive in this account.
Dang, that’s simple. Then again, when you’re leaving your wife a gazillion dollars, it likely doesn’t much matter!
I don’t think he will leave his money to his wife, he doesn’t want to give his grand kids money even.
When the market is down, and I don’t know what to buy, I buy VTI or SPY. I think it’s a good idea to slowly convert to an index ETF. Set an amount to do that, kind of like DCA so you don’t have to time the market.
Asked upstream, but no replies yet, so asking again about inflation : For those of you who do your own projections (or have a FAdvisor do them for you), what inflation assumption do you use? We have a large difference of opinion with our current FAdvisor, so are testing our own scenarios.
BTW: Thanks @DrGoogle123 for the firecalc link. Perfect. Exactly what we were looking for! We’ve run a few scenarios, and come to the same conclusions as our FA (when using their assumptions), so are now more confident using it on our own, and testing various alternatives.
Time to move to a different FA 
. We used them primarily for planning purposes (but pay by percentage of funds managed). I think it is time to look at moving to a smaller mix of index funds. Much simpler - and much less expensive if we can test our own planning scenarios. Our financial lives just aren’t that complicated.
Way, way too complex, IMO, and cash is unnecessary in a Roth that you don’t need (and plan to leave for heirs.)
I’d start selling it all, and move it into:
Index Funds or their equivalent ETF’s won’t much matter. The ETF equivalent can be a few basis points cheaper, but not material. (I have no need to trade during the say, so I prefer Index Funds.)
If you are concerned about market timing, just move a tranche over on the first of every month over the next ~9 months. I’d start with the cash first, and then the individual stocks.
@kjofkw, I’m glad it’s helpful. But honestly I didn’t use it or didn’t know about it until I retired. It’s hard to know inflation rate ahead of time, especially like now, but I planned a very conservative asset growth, mostly just 2% every year, or 2% over inflation. I had my own spreadsheet in Excel.
After I retired, I aggressively cut down on every expense I could think of, if I don’t need it, I cut it out. Even this year, my expense is the lowest in the 7 years since I retired. I think every bit helps. My only worry about inflation is when we get older and we need help, you can’t cut corners there. So in order to counter that risk, my husband and I eat right and exercise frequently, hopefully when we go, it will be fast.
That sounds like a very reasonable plan. I think the T bills will all be at their end date (not sure how it’s phrased) within the next nine months also. I was thinking of selling some calls on the stocks he has more than 100 of, if they’re at a price I’d be happy selling at. It’s hard to resist the urge to gamble a bit.
@busdriver11, if you have lots of cash, and want to invest in the market, you can do cash cover puts on the VTI ETF, set much lower price so if it’s assigned to you, you get it at much lower price. If not, you get a premium of the puts.
“Gamble” in taxable, so you can offset your losses. Can’t understand puts and calls in a IRA, unless you are a professional investor with millions of play money.
Personally, I’d unload the T-bills now if you can, but if you want to wait until the end of their term, take the resulting cash and invest it into 100% equity.