I've never understood why RMDs were such a scary thing?
Like, aside from the not wanting the government to tell you what to do, I don't see the scenario where you're 72+ (presumedly that number will increase in the next 40 years, too) and taking those RMDs somehow ruins your financial plan.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I've never understood why RMDs were such a scary thing?
Like, aside from the not wanting the government to tell you what to do, I don't see the scenario where you're 72+ (presumedly that number will increase in the next 40 years, too) and taking those RMDs somehow ruins your financial plan.
Less scary and more that a small amount of effort can save you a significant amount of money, if you have a lot of money in the account and/or still have other sources of ordinary income.
$500 a year savings at retirement age is worth a couple hours of time each year taking steps to shelter that money.
I've never understood why RMDs were such a scary thing?
Like, aside from the not wanting the government to tell you what to do, I don't see the scenario where you're 72+ (presumedly that number will increase in the next 40 years, too) and taking those RMDs somehow ruins your financial plan.
Less scary and more that a small amount of effort can save you a significant amount of money, if you have a lot of money in the account and/or still have other sources of ordinary income.
$500 a year savings at retirement age is worth a couple hours of time each year taking steps to shelter that money.
Low effort, high reward.
I don't follow what you're saying.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I've never understood why RMDs were such a scary thing?
Like, aside from the not wanting the government to tell you what to do, I don't see the scenario where you're 72+ (presumedly that number will increase in the next 40 years, too) and taking those RMDs somehow ruins your financial plan.
Calculating it can be a logistical pain in the ass for someone who is already well on in the years and doesn't want to bother. Especially when doing it wrong brings up the threat of an IRS audit. Especially since a lot of people who are now at that age, like my folks, also have pensions. They can live comfortably without touching their 401(k) and letting it continue to be invested, except legally they can't. And the idea of losing __% in penalties to the government for doing the math wrong is extremely frustrating to them. And they're relatively decent with computers and online banking for their age.
Ok I'll accept "the US's tax system is clownshoes" as a good reason to not want to deal with it.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I've never understood why RMDs were such a scary thing?
Like, aside from the not wanting the government to tell you what to do, I don't see the scenario where you're 72+ (presumedly that number will increase in the next 40 years, too) and taking those RMDs somehow ruins your financial plan.
Less scary and more that a small amount of effort can save you a significant amount of money, if you have a lot of money in the account and/or still have other sources of ordinary income.
$500 a year savings at retirement age is worth a couple hours of time each year taking steps to shelter that money.
Low effort, high reward.
I don't follow what you're saying.
You can use Roth comversions to pay tax on IRA income while youre in a lower marginal bracket than your RMDs will force you into.
If you make 20k but have a $1m IRA, your future RMDs of about 40k will be partially in the 22% bracket. You can use up to 20k yearly in Roth conversions to pull money out in the 12% bracket, to the point where your income hits 40k. You pay 2000 now to avoid paying 4000 later, and you can do this every year until you have to take RMDs.
You are spreading a spike in income into the low-income present to try and keep it in a lower marginal tax bracket.
I've never understood why RMDs were such a scary thing?
Like, aside from the not wanting the government to tell you what to do, I don't see the scenario where you're 72+ (presumedly that number will increase in the next 40 years, too) and taking those RMDs somehow ruins your financial plan.
Less scary and more that a small amount of effort can save you a significant amount of money, if you have a lot of money in the account and/or still have other sources of ordinary income.
$500 a year savings at retirement age is worth a couple hours of time each year taking steps to shelter that money.
Low effort, high reward.
I don't follow what you're saying.
You can use Roth comversions to pay tax on IRA income while youre in a lower marginal bracket than your RMDs will force you into.
If you make 20k but have a $1m IRA, your future RMDs of about 40k will be partially in the 22% bracket. You can use up to 20k yearly in Roth conversions to pull money out in the 12% bracket, to the point where your income hits 40k. You pay 2000 now to avoid paying 4000 later, and you can do this every year until you have to take RMDs.
You are spreading a spike in income into the low-income present to try and keep it in a lower tax bracket.
Except people earning $20k per year aren't going to have million dollar retirement accounts.
I've never understood why RMDs were such a scary thing?
Like, aside from the not wanting the government to tell you what to do, I don't see the scenario where you're 72+ (presumedly that number will increase in the next 40 years, too) and taking those RMDs somehow ruins your financial plan.
Less scary and more that a small amount of effort can save you a significant amount of money, if you have a lot of money in the account and/or still have other sources of ordinary income.
$500 a year savings at retirement age is worth a couple hours of time each year taking steps to shelter that money.
Low effort, high reward.
I don't follow what you're saying.
You can use Roth comversions to pay tax on IRA income while youre in a lower marginal bracket than your RMDs will force you into.
If you make 20k but have a $1m IRA, your future RMDs of about 40k will be partially in the 22% bracket. You can use up to 20k yearly in Roth conversions to pull money out in the 12% bracket, to the point where your income hits 40k. You pay 2000 now to avoid paying 4000 later, and you can do this every year until you have to take RMDs.
You are spreading a spike in income into the low-income present to try and keep it in a lower tax bracket.
Except people earning $20k per year aren't going to have million dollar retirement accounts.
They could if they retired at 55 and don't really work, or their spouse died, or they mostly get capital gains income, or they wound up on disability, bet big on TSLA, etc.
Some people benefit more than others from the concept, obviously.
Yeah the Roth conversion thing seems like a weird edge case, where you're retired before you're retired?
Like if you have lower taxes in the last years of your career before retirement so much so that you can start pre-paying the taxes on your Trad by converting chunks of it to a Roth and still make money that's just... unusual.
(and kinda cements my opinion that Roths were mostly created just to make new tax loopholes)
Plus it doesn't really address the 'why are RMDs bad' question. Like we're positing a scenario where you have a very low cost of living and income, while still having large enough retirement savings such that going into retirement is a large income increase.
But you're not avoiding the actual distributions here (you're planning on making those withdrawals anyway) it's a strategy for minimizing tax paid.
I dunno I guess the whole scenario is you winning the game already. You have a retirement account that will pay out far in excess of your current cost of living. What's the harm in being forced to finally pay taxes on it. If you don't want to spend it just put it back into savings.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Though maybe that is getting more into philosophical territory.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Id guess that the scare pitch is tax planners and telling 65 year olds who aren't financially literate or good with taxes that they are going to pay twice as much tax as they need to unless they pay them a bunch of money to handle their money. It seems like a sales tactic.
I mean ultimately it's still down to the core Trad vs Roth question: do you think you'll be paying higher taxes in retirement than now?
So the RMDs are bad here because they set the time limit, and you have a chance to change sides though Roth conversions before they hit. But they're really only 'bad' if that change makes sense. If you're making 150k up to retirement and then your RMDs are 50k or whatever they're hardly an issue.
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I mean ultimately it's still down to the core Trad vs Roth question: do you think you'll be paying higher taxes in retirement than now?.
It's not quite *entirely* that, since Roths and traditional IRAs have the same caps, but Roths are post-tax while traditionals are pre-tax. That means that you're effectively allowed to contribute more (on an after-tax basis) to a Roth.
I'm going to probably mess up some of the language in this, but I'll try to be clear:
My fiancee has several investment accounts from various jobs over the years, including a couple of standard index funds with Vanguard and also a kind of old school investment account with an actual broker who picks stocks and shit. I'm pretty sure the second thing is a waste, especially for the amount of money we've got in it (low six digits, say). We basically asked the advisor/broker/whatever why we shouldn't just pull the money and put it all in Vanguard.
The response was (I'm doing it as an image so it's not easily searchable):
This feels like flimflam to me, but I don't know enough about it to be sure. Even if it's not flimflam, my assumption is that any possible advantage (aside from picking a good/lucky stock) is eaten by management fees anyways. What say you, thread?
I guess my simplest question is: in owning FXAIX do we get dividends, how is that handled, etc...
I'm going to probably mess up some of the language in this, but I'll try to be clear:
My fiancee has several investment accounts from various jobs over the years, including a couple of standard index funds with Vanguard and also a kind of old school investment account with an actual broker who picks stocks and shit. I'm pretty sure the second thing is a waste, especially for the amount of money we've got in it (low six digits, say). We basically asked the advisor/broker/whatever why we shouldn't just pull the money and put it all in Vanguard.
The response was (I'm doing it as an image so it's not easily searchable):
This feels like flimflam to me, but I don't know enough about it to be sure. Even if it's not flimflam, my assumption is that any possible advantage (aside from picking a good/lucky stock) is eaten by management fees anyways. What say you, thread?
I guess my simplest question is: in owning FXAIX do we get dividends, how is that handled, etc...
Quick answer to the first question is that yes, you do get dividends for an index fund but only if the stocks in the index pay out dividends which not all do. Those are usually reinvested in the index through they'll be counted as income on your taxes.
The second "Why should anyone invest in anything but index funds when they historically out perform nearly everything else and require little management?" question is one that keeps coming up in various financial magazines I read. It's a bit of a sore point people have with mutual funds as they don't seem be any better than investing in index funds which have lower fees. Here are some of the more common answers to the question as I understand them.
1) I feel like I have a better understanding of a section of the market and can get a better return than an index fund. (You probably can't unless it's your fulltime job).
2) I get enjoyment out of investing in individual stocks and tracking their performance.
3) This index thing is fishy and weird.
4) I want an investment with different qualities than an index fund.
The last is probably the most relevant to you. For example, I recently bought some more AT&T stock instead of adding more money to my fidelity index fund. The reason I did so was that I wanted to was that I wanted more dividend income in case I lost my main source of income and needed to pay expenses in the mean time. AT&T pays out really high dividends (~%5.5 currently) while the index has more modest dividends (%1.4). Now the index has probably out preformed AT&T but mostly by increasing in value while AT&T's has increased more modestly but I like having it as one of my positions.
Note that if you hold individual stocks that you selected, you probably aren't paying management fees. I don't know what your setup is like but I can't imagine that you're actively trading that much. Now if it's an account with a firm that's actively managing the money, I could understand that you might be paying fees and those fees probably aren't translating into higher performance.
Edit: You said these investment accounts were with a job, do you mean they're a 401k? You can roll that stuff over to one account and I recommend it as it reduces the hassle of having to deal with separate accounts and makes taxes easier.
What is the maximum a person can convert from Trad IRA to Roth IRA each year?
Infinite. It's all ordinary income.
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
How hard is it to consolidate money from my old companies 401k into my current companies 401k? Is the company getting the money transferred from going to charge me for this?
Also, is there a way to transition some of the funds into a "I'm terrified the market is going to collapse in the next two years" stock that might be more stable? Or is that not how these work/not going to help anyways?
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
the second part i dunno but if your new company offers different portfolios you might be able to allocate to a conservative one and a riskier one
It's managed through Vanguard? Idk, I should probably go through and try and read everything again. A while back iirc they gave me the option to select of a variety of indices, and after trying to muddle through all that I think I just selected the generic "retiring in 30 years" fund.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
the second part i dunno but if your new company offers different portfolios you might be able to allocate to a conservative one and a riskier one
It's managed through Vanguard? Idk, I should probably go through and try and read everything again. A while back iirc they gave me the option to select of a variety of indices, and after trying to muddle through all that I think I just selected the generic "retiring in 30 years" fund.
yeah most people just choose that
i don't know the restrictions on changing your allocation. i know you can change how much you allocate like every month if you wanted to but changing which funds in your program might be different
If the market collapses, but you aren't withdrawing from your retirement fund, all that means is you get more shares per dollar as you ride it back up.
Theoretically you could move everything to bonds and pocket the current bull run, then back into stocks when the market bottoms in a Recession. But... that's timing the market, and you're probably going to be wrong.
Life cycle funds are, well, fine. But they can be kind of conservative, putting a lot of money in to bonds well over a couple decades before you'd even be eligible to withdraw.
Life cycle funds are, well, fine. But they can be kind of conservative, putting a lot of money in to bonds well over a couple decades before you'd even be eligible to withdraw.
Also they tend to be actively managed, so check the fees.
Life cycle funds are, well, fine. But they can be kind of conservative, putting a lot of money in to bonds well over a couple decades before you'd even be eligible to withdraw.
Also they tend to be actively managed, so check the fees.
Yeah for fidelity the management fee on the 2050 fund is fifty times what it is for the S&P 500 index
For vanguard the numbers are much closer.
VishNub on
+2
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BrodyThe WatchThe First ShoreRegistered Userregular
I guess mostly I'm just paranoid anything is attributed to the success of a certain world leader, and I graduated in 2007, so I got to watch how that screwed up a bunch of my friends parents right as I was trying to figure out what I was going to try and do.
"I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood."
Everyone is colored by their own experience. I have enough faith in the markets that I'm willing to be more aggressive. I'm 42 and I have less than 20% in bonds (off the top of my head).
The original thinking was that you should have your age as a percentage in bonds, but I feel that's way too conservative.
My mom is 70 and is playing this weird CD shell game with her advisor and I just wish she'd be willing to accept a little risk. She missed out on almost all of the gains this year (as an example).
Now granted, she's also living off the money, but she's got to keep some of it in the market to cover inflation and changes in lifestyle.
I guess mostly I'm just paranoid anything is attributed to the success of a certain world leader, and I graduated in 2007, so I got to watch how that screwed up a bunch of my friends parents right as I was trying to figure out what I was going to try and do.
I started my retirement account during the Bush years. Based solely on those years it performed abysmally in growing, but on the flip side I was buying more stock than I would have been able. It's grown significantly since then and will easily pay off any retirement home in a few decades.
If you're not touching the money for 30-40 years, no one world leader is going to negatively affect it to a notable degree.
I have zero faith in the market to predict the future, particularly the stock market as it exists now (mainly private vs public companies).
But it's the only game in town, and who is to say it'll be more "right" tomorrow than today? Risk and return appear to be connected, and in the long run the economy seems to grow which makes owning companies valuable.
I guess mostly I'm just paranoid anything is attributed to the success of a certain world leader, and I graduated in 2007, so I got to watch how that screwed up a bunch of my friends parents right as I was trying to figure out what I was going to try and do.
I started my retirement account during the Bush years. Based solely on those years it performed abysmally in growing, but on the flip side I was buying more stock than I would have been able. It's grown significantly since then and will easily pay off any retirement home in a few decades.
If you're not touching the money for 30-40 years, no one world leader is going to negatively affect it to a notable degree.
And if they do, you'll either have died in the wars to come, or be ranging amid the wastes and tax sheltered investment will not be a concern.
I turn to a vampire any time i want to. i become a vampire because of how people treat me, this world is a wicked world and not fair to any body. at the snack of my finger things are made happened. am now a powerful woman and no one step on me without an apology goes free. i turn to human being also at any time i want to. and am one of the most dreaded woman in my country. i become a vampire through the help of my friend who introduce me into a vampire kingdom by given me their number. if you want to become a powerful vampire kindly contact the vampire kingdom whatsApp at +1 4313007649 on their email worldofvampir@hotmail.com
At that point inflation would be the largest driving concern.
Is there a good mortgage broker website? I might be looking to refinance into a 15 year fixed rate soon, and I don't really know where to start looking at rates and stuff.
@Brody I'll try to find some time later today to pull together my return percentages through the years. I started in the heady days of 2002 so I rode through the recession and rebound.
Is there a good mortgage broker website? I might be looking to refinance into a 15 year fixed rate soon, and I don't really know where to start looking at rates and stuff.
You can check the daily rates mostly by just googling "15 year refinance rates" or something similar. However, I'd recommend not using one of the big online brokerages to refi, or even a national bank. Local banks should have the exact same rates, but actually care about getting you through the process. Every time I've tried to use a national bank, I've been screwed one way or the other. YMMV
Posts
Like, aside from the not wanting the government to tell you what to do, I don't see the scenario where you're 72+ (presumedly that number will increase in the next 40 years, too) and taking those RMDs somehow ruins your financial plan.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Less scary and more that a small amount of effort can save you a significant amount of money, if you have a lot of money in the account and/or still have other sources of ordinary income.
$500 a year savings at retirement age is worth a couple hours of time each year taking steps to shelter that money.
Low effort, high reward.
I don't follow what you're saying.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Calculating it can be a logistical pain in the ass for someone who is already well on in the years and doesn't want to bother. Especially when doing it wrong brings up the threat of an IRS audit. Especially since a lot of people who are now at that age, like my folks, also have pensions. They can live comfortably without touching their 401(k) and letting it continue to be invested, except legally they can't. And the idea of losing __% in penalties to the government for doing the math wrong is extremely frustrating to them. And they're relatively decent with computers and online banking for their age.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
You can use Roth comversions to pay tax on IRA income while youre in a lower marginal bracket than your RMDs will force you into.
If you make 20k but have a $1m IRA, your future RMDs of about 40k will be partially in the 22% bracket. You can use up to 20k yearly in Roth conversions to pull money out in the 12% bracket, to the point where your income hits 40k. You pay 2000 now to avoid paying 4000 later, and you can do this every year until you have to take RMDs.
You are spreading a spike in income into the low-income present to try and keep it in a lower marginal tax bracket.
Except people earning $20k per year aren't going to have million dollar retirement accounts.
They could if they retired at 55 and don't really work, or their spouse died, or they mostly get capital gains income, or they wound up on disability, bet big on TSLA, etc.
Some people benefit more than others from the concept, obviously.
Like if you have lower taxes in the last years of your career before retirement so much so that you can start pre-paying the taxes on your Trad by converting chunks of it to a Roth and still make money that's just... unusual.
(and kinda cements my opinion that Roths were mostly created just to make new tax loopholes)
Plus it doesn't really address the 'why are RMDs bad' question. Like we're positing a scenario where you have a very low cost of living and income, while still having large enough retirement savings such that going into retirement is a large income increase.
But you're not avoiding the actual distributions here (you're planning on making those withdrawals anyway) it's a strategy for minimizing tax paid.
I dunno I guess the whole scenario is you winning the game already. You have a retirement account that will pay out far in excess of your current cost of living. What's the harm in being forced to finally pay taxes on it. If you don't want to spend it just put it back into savings.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
So the RMDs are bad here because they set the time limit, and you have a chance to change sides though Roth conversions before they hit. But they're really only 'bad' if that change makes sense. If you're making 150k up to retirement and then your RMDs are 50k or whatever they're hardly an issue.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
It's not quite *entirely* that, since Roths and traditional IRAs have the same caps, but Roths are post-tax while traditionals are pre-tax. That means that you're effectively allowed to contribute more (on an after-tax basis) to a Roth.
My fiancee has several investment accounts from various jobs over the years, including a couple of standard index funds with Vanguard and also a kind of old school investment account with an actual broker who picks stocks and shit. I'm pretty sure the second thing is a waste, especially for the amount of money we've got in it (low six digits, say). We basically asked the advisor/broker/whatever why we shouldn't just pull the money and put it all in Vanguard.
The response was (I'm doing it as an image so it's not easily searchable):
This feels like flimflam to me, but I don't know enough about it to be sure. Even if it's not flimflam, my assumption is that any possible advantage (aside from picking a good/lucky stock) is eaten by management fees anyways. What say you, thread?
I guess my simplest question is: in owning FXAIX do we get dividends, how is that handled, etc...
Quick answer to the first question is that yes, you do get dividends for an index fund but only if the stocks in the index pay out dividends which not all do. Those are usually reinvested in the index through they'll be counted as income on your taxes.
The second "Why should anyone invest in anything but index funds when they historically out perform nearly everything else and require little management?" question is one that keeps coming up in various financial magazines I read. It's a bit of a sore point people have with mutual funds as they don't seem be any better than investing in index funds which have lower fees. Here are some of the more common answers to the question as I understand them.
1) I feel like I have a better understanding of a section of the market and can get a better return than an index fund. (You probably can't unless it's your fulltime job).
2) I get enjoyment out of investing in individual stocks and tracking their performance.
3) This index thing is fishy and weird.
4) I want an investment with different qualities than an index fund.
The last is probably the most relevant to you. For example, I recently bought some more AT&T stock instead of adding more money to my fidelity index fund. The reason I did so was that I wanted to was that I wanted more dividend income in case I lost my main source of income and needed to pay expenses in the mean time. AT&T pays out really high dividends (~%5.5 currently) while the index has more modest dividends (%1.4). Now the index has probably out preformed AT&T but mostly by increasing in value while AT&T's has increased more modestly but I like having it as one of my positions.
Note that if you hold individual stocks that you selected, you probably aren't paying management fees. I don't know what your setup is like but I can't imagine that you're actively trading that much. Now if it's an account with a firm that's actively managing the money, I could understand that you might be paying fees and those fees probably aren't translating into higher performance.
Edit: You said these investment accounts were with a job, do you mean they're a 401k? You can roll that stuff over to one account and I recommend it as it reduces the hassle of having to deal with separate accounts and makes taxes easier.
Infinite. It's all ordinary income.
Also, is there a way to transition some of the funds into a "I'm terrified the market is going to collapse in the next two years" stock that might be more stable? Or is that not how these work/not going to help anyways?
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
it's pretty straightforward
It's managed through Vanguard? Idk, I should probably go through and try and read everything again. A while back iirc they gave me the option to select of a variety of indices, and after trying to muddle through all that I think I just selected the generic "retiring in 30 years" fund.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
yeah most people just choose that
i don't know the restrictions on changing your allocation. i know you can change how much you allocate like every month if you wanted to but changing which funds in your program might be different
Theoretically you could move everything to bonds and pocket the current bull run, then back into stocks when the market bottoms in a Recession. But... that's timing the market, and you're probably going to be wrong.
Also they tend to be actively managed, so check the fees.
Yeah for fidelity the management fee on the 2050 fund is fifty times what it is for the S&P 500 index
For vanguard the numbers are much closer.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The original thinking was that you should have your age as a percentage in bonds, but I feel that's way too conservative.
My mom is 70 and is playing this weird CD shell game with her advisor and I just wish she'd be willing to accept a little risk. She missed out on almost all of the gains this year (as an example).
Now granted, she's also living off the money, but she's got to keep some of it in the market to cover inflation and changes in lifestyle.
I started my retirement account during the Bush years. Based solely on those years it performed abysmally in growing, but on the flip side I was buying more stock than I would have been able. It's grown significantly since then and will easily pay off any retirement home in a few decades.
If you're not touching the money for 30-40 years, no one world leader is going to negatively affect it to a notable degree.
But it's the only game in town, and who is to say it'll be more "right" tomorrow than today? Risk and return appear to be connected, and in the long run the economy seems to grow which makes owning companies valuable.
And if they do, you'll either have died in the wars to come, or be ranging amid the wastes and tax sheltered investment will not be a concern.
At that point inflation would be the largest driving concern.
You can check the daily rates mostly by just googling "15 year refinance rates" or something similar. However, I'd recommend not using one of the big online brokerages to refi, or even a national bank. Local banks should have the exact same rates, but actually care about getting you through the process. Every time I've tried to use a national bank, I've been screwed one way or the other. YMMV