Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Discussion of the Cash portion of the Permanent Portfolio

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barrett
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by barrett » Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:19 am

mathjak107 wrote:
Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:08 am
Remember fdlxx is not a core , so buys , sells and bills still have to have money moved manually to the core. Kind of like from savings to checking would be
Thanks for that, MJ. Much appreciated!
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jhogue
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by jhogue » Sun Apr 18, 2021 12:30 pm

@ barrett:

-I like the idea of “re-loading”: I also switched from EE bonds to I bonds after our daughter graduated from college. So far, it seems like a workable plan.

-In the short term, the upcoming minimum variable interest rate guarantees a minimum one year yield on 1 May 2022 of 1.77%. That beats any 1-year CD, government, agency, corporate, or municipal bond yield AND beats current yields on 1, 5, or 10 year Treasurys.

-In the long term, meaning once you have constructed a ladder with 5 – 10 years worth of rungs, I don’t see how you can accumulate “too much” Deep Cash. I have 37% of my entire Cash in I-bonds and don’t think that it constrains my ability to withdraw funds in case of a rebalance.
“Groucho Marx wrote:
A stock trader asked him, "Groucho, where do you put all your money?" Groucho was said to have replied, "In Treasury bonds", and the trader said, "You can't make much money on those." Groucho said, "You can if you have enough of them!"
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mathjak107
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by mathjak107 » Mon Apr 19, 2021 3:00 am

MangoMan wrote:
Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:30 am
mathjak107 wrote:
Sun Apr 18, 2021 8:08 am
Remember fdlxx is not a core , so buys , sells and bills still have to have money moved manually to the core. Kind of like from savings to checking would be
Incorrect.
If my core doesn't have enough cash to cover a transaction and there is money in FDLXX, Fidelity will automatically move the money. This happens repeatedly as I use Fidelity as my main checking / billpay account.
Yes they will but if you have more than one other non core account they may pull from the wrong one ... I have their premium money market fzdxx which is a non core as well as fdlxx for the pp ....I don’t want any money pulled from fdlxx so I always move the money I want to the core
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by barrett » Tue Apr 20, 2021 7:40 am

jhogue wrote:
Sun Apr 18, 2021 12:30 pm
@ barrett:

-I like the idea of “re-loading”: I also switched from EE bonds to I bonds after our daughter graduated from college. So far, it seems like a workable plan.

-In the short term, the upcoming minimum variable interest rate guarantees a minimum one year yield on 1 May 2022 of 1.77%. That beats any 1-year CD, government, agency, corporate, or municipal bond yield AND beats current yields on 1, 5, or 10 year Treasurys.

-In the long term, meaning once you have constructed a ladder with 5 – 10 years worth of rungs, I don’t see how you can accumulate “too much” Deep Cash. I have 37% of my entire Cash in I-bonds and don’t think that it constrains my ability to withdraw funds in case of a rebalance.
Regarding your last point, jhogue, my savings bonds inventory is very lumpy as I either didn't buy many years or redeemed a bunch of bonds to buy places to live. Anyway, through less than ideal planning, I have a lot of EEs that are coming due in the next 21 months with interest gains of over $90,000. So for 2021-2023 I kind of have RMDs from my cash position. And I'll have the same situation for I-Bonds in another 9-11 years. That is, I'll have a bunch of them maturing over a span of 2-3 years and the gains will be considerable. All of these EE-Bonds and I-Bonds are just too good to cash in early (The EEs have been chugging along at 4% for years after an initial interest rate that was even higher. The I-Bonds all have very nice fixed rates).

It's not a bad "problem" to have, but having a lumpy ladder means that I can't just treat them like cash in the same way as I would, say, SHY or T-Bills. Over the next couple of years I really have to take gains from these savings bonds into account for tax planning/health insurance purposes (I retired at 59.5 and won't start Medicare for another 29 months).

Will keep this all in mind going forward and hopefully build a smoother ladder for old age. O0
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jhogue
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by jhogue » Tue Apr 20, 2021 9:59 am

@ barrett:

Congratulations on your first world problem. A few suggestions, if I may:

-Create a spreadsheet from now through final end of I-bond maturity. It could show you that it might make sense to cash some of them in early to smooth out that “lumpiness” of redemption years.

-One way to stem tax bracket creep with your EE bond maturities is to make an offsetting contribution in the same tax year to a charitable donor advised fund. To make it worthwhile, the amount of the donation should exceed your standard deduction and you have to itemize your deductions.

If all else fails, take the redemptions, pay the taxes, and take a nice long cruise or buy a new car with all the extras. Both are on sale now, but probably not next year.
“Groucho Marx wrote:
A stock trader asked him, "Groucho, where do you put all your money?" Groucho was said to have replied, "In Treasury bonds", and the trader said, "You can't make much money on those." Groucho said, "You can if you have enough of them!"
barrett
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by barrett » Wed Apr 21, 2021 1:59 pm

Just checked out the fixed income options at Fidelity and there's a AAA six-month corporate bond available with a yield of -1.09%!

Das ist ja mit der LANDWIRTSCHAFTLICHE RENTENBANK!

Might just nix all the good advice I get here and load up on these babies just to be on the safe side. O0
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by jswinner » Wed Apr 21, 2021 7:56 pm

barrett wrote:
Wed Apr 21, 2021 1:59 pm
Just checked out the fixed income options at Fidelity and there's a AAA six-month corporate bond available with a yield of -1.09%!

Das ist ja mit der LANDWIRTSCHAFTLICHE RENTENBANK!

Might just nix all the good advice I get here and load up on these babies just to be on the safe side. O0
Good thing I got 912796G52 last week then. Will be looking for a large truck in October to haul that load off to my hidey hole
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by ppnewbie » Mon Nov 15, 2021 6:42 pm

Restarting this thread.

My autoroll got cancelled based on the negative interest rates for tbills. Now either I reset it all up. Add 1/3 1-month, 2 month, and 3 month. All autorolling to 3 month. It's painful to write about. I think I may just put it in SCHO based on the expense ratio, even though its notes and not t-bills. Or maybe BIL / SHV but I think I'll probably go with SCHO.
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jalanlong
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by jalanlong » Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:16 am

ppnewbie wrote:
Mon Nov 15, 2021 6:42 pm
Restarting this thread.

My autoroll got cancelled based on the negative interest rates for tbills. Now either I reset it all up. Add 1/3 1-month, 2 month, and 3 month. All autorolling to 3 month. It's painful to write about. I think I may just put it in SCHO based on the expense ratio, even though its notes and not t-bills. Or maybe BIL / SHV but I think I'll probably go with SCHO.
GBIL is the cheapest Treasury Bill ETF I believe.

https://www.gsam.com/content/gsam/us/en ... r-etf.html
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by Kbg » Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:34 am

I find it amazing these funds aren't like .03-.05% in fees. The biggest market on the planet and essentially free trading if you buy direct in the auction and hold to maturity. I don't get it. Obviously there is some overhead and the company needs to make a profit so there will be some fee. Maybe they don't want to compete too much with money market products?
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by ppnewbie » Thu Nov 18, 2021 2:28 pm

Thanks for the GBIL recommendation. It’s probably a bit irrational but I have an extreme distrust of Goldman Sachs (GBIL is their ETF) In reality they may be no more corrupt than the average large Wall Street firm.
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by johnnywitt » Tue Nov 23, 2021 3:26 pm

Why not just buy actual T-Bills and hold them to maturity. At Charles Schwab in my IRA it's free to buy any duration of Treasury Issuance, both at auction, or on the secondary market.
When I had a 401k, it had a SDA where I could've done the same thing. Maybe if you have an SDA in your 401k you could do the same thing. You could also max out an IRA and then your 401k every year and keep what the 401k lacks in your IRA: this is what my Wife does.
Last edited by johnnywitt on Tue Nov 23, 2021 3:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by ppnewbie » Tue Nov 23, 2021 3:32 pm

I set that up using the Autoroll at fidelity but the autoroll (auto) stopped when rates went negative. In an earlier post I explained that I set up a purchase of a third one month tbills, to auto roll to 3 month, a third 2 month tbills to autoroll to three months, and a third 3 month tbills auto rolling. That way I had one third rolling to new bills every month instead of all of my cash expiring at once and going into another auction.

Anyway maybe it over complicated it and should just be OK with a mass money event happening every three months. Have not bought SCHO yet but will likely to that.
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by mathjak107 » Thu Nov 25, 2021 4:04 am

fidelity fdlxx the t-bill money market is paying about .01 …if it wasnt for the fact fidelity waived all fees the fund would be down .33%

the equivalent etf BIL is paying minus .09% so it is costing you money

so the fund family money markets are a better deal
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Re: Best Low Cost ETF for Cash

Post by ppnewbie » Fri Nov 26, 2021 3:29 pm

Good point.

I ended up moving the cash to SCHO. The lowest fee at .05 percent ER even if I have slightly more risk with treasury notes.
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