Throwback Thursday Classic Post – Check Your Beneficiary Designations
Here’s a tip from one of my favorite blogs and authors, Jonathan Clements from Humble Dollar:
CHECK YOUR BENEFICIARY DESIGNATIONS. Your retirement accounts and life insurance will typically pass to the beneficiaries specified on those accounts, not the people named in your will. If your family situation has changed, or you simply don’t remember who you listed, take a moment to review your beneficiary designations.
Don’t let the ex-spouse get your money when you die! Update your beneficiaries.
How to See Your Beneficiaries for the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP)
If you log on to the TSP page, you need to click on the link along the lower left, marked by the large red arrow:
Then you’ll see this, and you can change them at the bottom:
Intermediate Executive Skills Course – O3/O4
The Intermediate Executive Skills Course has Medical Corps availability for the June 7 – 10 VIRTUAL course, designed for developing leaders within the MHS (senior LT and LCDR). See course description below. Please have interested parties self-nominate NLT 13 APRIL 2021 by completing the attached nomination form and forwarding to CAPT Anthony Keller (contact in the global). Proxy nominations will not be accepted:
Course Description: The Defense Health Agency Intermediate Executive Skills Course (DHA-IES) provides education and training on leadership and management skills necessary to successfully serve in an intermediate-level leadership position within a DHA medical treatment facility (MTF). The course is designed to facilitate attainment of selected Joint Medical Executive Skills core competencies as identified by a Tri-Service review board of MHS senior leaders. The course consists of 21 web-based training (WBT) modules available through Joint Knowledge Online (https://jkodirect.jten.mil) followed by a 40-hour resident course located on JBSA-Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The resident course includes 8 hours of Corps and Service-specific training facilitated by Army, Navy, and Air Force medical leaders.
Disability Insurance for Reservists
Here’s a link to this White Coat Investor article:
Throwback Thursday Classic Post – Invest in Your Taxable Account Thoughtfully
Here’s a tip on investing in your taxable account from one of my favorite blogs and authors, Jonathan Clements from Humble Dollar:
INVEST YOUR TAXABLE ACCOUNT THOUGHTFULLY. If you purchase the wrong investments in your taxable account, you may be reluctant to sell, because you’ll trigger capital gains taxes. A good choice: low-cost U.S. and international total stock market index funds, which should be tax-efficient—and which shouldn’t ever lag far behind the market averages.
For those of us in the military, investing in a taxable account comes into play in a few scenarios…
Scenario #1 – You and your spouse (if you have one) have filled your Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) and all other retirement accounts available including IRAs, yet you want to save more for retirement. In this case, you put the rest in a taxable account with the investment company of your choice (Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, etc.). This is what I do when all of my retirement accounts are full, and just like Jonathan mentions I invest purely in broad, low-cost index funds at Vanguard. The only taxable holdings I have are the Vanguard U.S. and international total stock market index funds.
Scenario #2 – You are saving for a financial goal that is not related to retirement, such as a downpayment on a home or for a new car. If you’re saving for college, you’d use a 529 plan, but for just about anything else you could use a taxable account. For example, I used to have my emergency money and extra spending money in a money market fund among my taxable accounts. The alternative to this is to use a bank and invest in a high-yield savings account (which is what I do now), a certificate of deposit (CD), or a money market account. Bankrate.com will show you the best rates for each of these reasonable alternatives.
If you are using a taxable account, there are a few things to consider. If you are investing in bonds, you may want to invest in municipal bonds in your taxable account due to the tax benefits. If you are a fan of target date funds, you may not want to use them in a taxable account because the bond portion will kick off income that is taxed at your full marginal tax rate. Most feel that bonds are better placed in a tax-advantaged retirement account unless you are using municipal bonds.
Joel Schofer's Career Planning Blog 