This is a response to a question by one of my young adult children. She was looking for a place to put some safe money (i.e., funds that she might need in the next 1-3 years) and wanted to obtain a better rate of interest than that offered by her bank.
Vanguard money market funds are a good place to park money that you may need in the next 1-3 years. At your tax bracket, I would not worry about finding a tax-free fund. Tax free money market funds don’t become advantageous until you reach the 28% tax bracket or higher. You can ask Vanguard for a check book for your money market account and redeem shares by check. However, the check has to be $250 or more.
Here are three suggestions. The fund are listed with the safest funds first. The spread between the Treasury-based fund and the prime rate fund is very small. It comes out to about a $25 per year difference on $10,000. So you might want to stay with safety (either Treasury or Federal). That way if the world goes nuts, your funds will be secure. (more…)
For the quarter ending March 30, the Moose Pond portfolio increased in value by 2.9%. In comparison, the S&P 500 increased 0.18% for the same period. See the portfolio performance report for the quarter.
The top five advancers for the quarter were SYK (+20.8%), IFIN (+16.9%), GYI (+13.6%).,CAH (+13.4%), and JKHY (+12.7%). The laggards were AMGN (-18.2%), JNJ (-8.4%), INTC (-5.0%), CBH (-5.0), and BRO (-3.9).
Other than normal dividend reinvestment activity, we bought WAG and added to our position in JNJ. We bought more Vanguard total stock market index (an exchange traded fund) as a holding place for funds available to invest. We sold UTSI and IFIN. (IFIN was acquired by another company.)