A high-yield savings account and a money market fund cannot be compared on their headline yield alone. The comparison holds only after tax and after the teaser expires, and the two differ on a point the yield hides: one is…
US savings bonds lock a rate formula at the moment you buy them, for the life of the bond. Like a fixed-rate savings contract, they come in generations, each frozen at the terms of the day it was purchased, whatever…
US guaranteed savings products credit a rate that trails the bond market rather than tracking it. Through the recent rate cycle, multi-year guaranteed annuities and stable value funds moved from lean crediting rates to near fifteen-year highs, with a lag…
A variable annuity does not carry one fee, but a stack of them. Mortality and expense charges, subaccount expense ratios, optional rider fees, administrative charges and surrender penalties each sit on top of the others, and most are deducted every…
The question of what order to fund accounts in usually draws a fixed list, presented as a rule to follow. The order documented in US financial literature is something else: a ranking of mechanics, with a rationale, not a personal…
A Roth IRA and a traditional 401(k) are both tax-sheltered, but they are not two flavors of one account. Tax is paid at opposite ends, the clocks differ, and the treatments diverge. Choosing between them is reading their asymmetries, not…
Because most REIT dividends are ordinary income rather than qualified dividends, the account a REIT is held in changes its after-tax return more than the fund itself does. That is why asset location, taxable versus tax-advantaged, is the first question…
A 401(k) and an IRA follow the same tax rules, and a rollover moves a balance between them without triggering tax. What separates them is not the tax code but the wrapper: menu, fees, the match, and creditor protection. The…
The 401(k) is an accident of tax law that became the backbone of US retirement. A minor 1978 provision displaced the defined-benefit pension within two decades, moving market and longevity risk from the employer onto the household. People treat the…
A 401(k) or IRA is not sealed until 59½: it has narrow exits, and each carries its own conditions. Some waive the 10% early-withdrawal penalty; a hardship withdrawal often does not. The same phrase, early access, covers exits whose real…
