Trust Funds For Kids

Tag: CD’s

  • Transition for Portfolio Two

    Portfolio Two is transitioning to ETF’s and CD’s.  This is aligned with the “basic plan” that I refer to here.  The portfolio has $28,781 (all in cash) as of December, 2015. At a high level our investments will consist of: $10,000 in the lowest risk interest rate products (Federally insured CD’s bought through a brokerage,…

  • Portfolio Two Updated October 2015

    Portfolio Two is our second longest portfolio, at 11 years.  The beneficiary contributed $6000 and the trustee contributed $12,000 for a total of $18,000.  The current value is $28,334 for a gain of $10,334 or 57%, which works out to about 6.8% / year across the life of the portfolio.  You can download the detail…

  • Buying CD’s Through Your Brokerage Account

    For many years at this site I have advocated buying CD’s through your brokerage account (Fidelity, Vanguard, E-Trade, Schwab, etc…). If you buy a CD through your own bank you will usually get a far lower rate for what is a completely commoditized product (they are all guaranteed through the FDIC, after all) than what…

  • Investing – Basic Plan

    If you want to invest on your own, there are some basic ways to approach it.  Here is a simple model that you might want to consider using. The goals of this approach are as follows Build a simple, consistent approach that does not require a lot of re-balancing Minimize fees and expenses The money…

  • Dividend Portfolio Final Results

    Since interest rates are so low I didn’t want to just renew my CD bond “ladder” and decided instead to take those funds and invest them in a portfolio of dividend stocks. Currently stock dividends are returning more than government debt, which is a very rare occurrence. Thus I selected a dozen stocks with reasonable…

  • Customer Protection in Brokerage Accounts

    The Wall Street Journal has an article in their November 24, 2012 issue titled “Protecting a Small Account” with the tagline “What the Spate of Brokerage Blowups Means for Investors”. The article discussed some recent events where brokerages went bankrupt or ran into financial troubles, specifically smaller or regional firms. They give some generic advice,…

  • Dividend Portfolio – In Search of Yield

    Pathetic Interest Income (Yield) In order to obtain some sort of return on my cash I built a “bond ladder” out of brokerage CD’s. By this I bought CD’s with various maturities, and as each one came due, I bought a new CD. Due to the 2008 market crash, a lot of my highest yielding…

  • Interest Rates and Returns

    When I was young in the 1970’s I heard a discussion between my grandfather and my father. My grandfather was literally “grandfathered in” as a CPA; he was a practicing CPA prior to the test being a requirement to practice as a CPA so he was able to continue his work without ever taking the…

  • Buying CD’s Through A Brokerage

    Recently I covered iBonds, which are a government bond that you can purchase online that provides assurance against increases in inflation and other tax benefits. The amount you can purchase is limited, however, to $5000 / year, and you can’t redeem them for 12 months, which makes them unsuitable as a short-term cash vehicle. Certificates…

  • Treasuries vs. Certificates of Deposit

    PURCHASING CD’S THROUGH YOUR BROKERAGE ACCOUNT Recently I wrote a post about how CD’s can be purchased through your brokerage account (Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, etc…) and how easy that it is to do so. Recently I built a “ladder” by taking the amount that I wanted to invest and breaking it into 4 equal groups…