The mistake you are making is tracking your credit score regularly.

Behave responsibly with credit and the score will follow. Don't worry about it - it doesn't matter much.

Because conventional wisdom doesn't always align with pure rational financial decision making.

Interest rates move up and down - in general, short term rates are lower than long term rates so in general you will pay less over the term of a loan if your rate is tied to shorter rather than longer rates. That said, they are volatile like stock returns, so you are taking on some risk to expose yourself to that volatility. If you can withstand that volatility you are generally better off with the ARM.

You don't know if they are relative cheap or expensive today - you certainly don't know if it is the best time to buy.

Your first two sentences are contradictory - are you trying to time high's and low's or just staying invested for periods?

This is the problem with trite mantras replacing understanding.

That's not true at all - people make plenty of money buying a top as long as they have investment horizons that take them to the next one...

We haven't been in a recession in nearly 3 years - we may be in one later this year though.

Stocks don't go on sale - you can only know in retrospect whether now is an 'excellent time' to buy stocks or whether it will turn out to have been a bad one.

Things being in the red means it would have been wise to have moved out of stocks (which you can do within a 401k - don't know why anyone would advise you not to use tax-advantaged space because of one asset classes performance) before they went down. Of course you didn't get that advice before they went down so not much you can do about that now. As for what happens next, well I assure you the person giving you advice hasn't a clue.

The 401k rep doesn't surprise me - it wouldn't be in the plan document and they can't be faulted for not being an expert of general tax law. The CPA was close but a shame, the financial advisor also probably should have known better.

To be clear though, you do need to fully separate from the employer, not just go part time.

There is no impact from taking another job - so long as you separated from that employer the year you turn 55 with an active 401(k) you can take withdrawals without penalty.

Can I ask who gave you an answer to the contrary?

>So just look up the stock price of your different holdings on that day

For publicly traded stock, you actually use the average of the high and low for the day of death - not the open/close or randomly chosen price that day.

You should be looking sell all the position now and rebalance into your current desired portfolio allocation.

You may have some capital gains tax implications but they will be much reduced due to the stepped-up basis on death.

At your income level it is all just a matter of personal priorities - there is no 'should' that anyone else can direct you to.

No, you do not save money on taxes by owning a home - you may reduce some of the costs of owning the home via deducting those expenses on your taxes, but it is still an expense not savings.

That's pretty low and not rising all that quick. I wouldn't even consider paying more towards it for the next few years. Absolutely not when even savings account rates are higher - me personally, I wouldn't rush it so long as the rate is less than 300 basis points over the 10-year treasury (about half of the historical equity risk premium).

So it is a variable rate? What is it now and what are the adjustment steps?

What's the interest rate on the mortgage - that is the single most relevant piece of information to making a financial decision about whether to pay towards it or not and you didn't even mention it.

It doesn't need to be a notarized document - just a signed form would do. Easy to draft, scan (or use an e-signature), and store electronically.

But accurate record keeping is the most critical part (including of your employer and employee contributions).

I'm sure you can ask your provider for whatever primer they have. It isn't difficult in the sense of being hard, but it does require diligence.

Yeah, lying and fraud can never come back to bite you, just ask Congressman Santos.

You need to make a formal election as an employee, your 401k provider probably has a standard form or you can make your own but you need a written record as administrator noting the election.

And that election does need to be made by the end of the year so it is too late to make one for 2022. You can still make employer contributions though.

It is important to keep in mind that a Solo 401k is still a 401k, an employer-sponsored plan with plenty of regulatory requirements including record keeping. If you aren't paying someone to be the administrator, you are the administrator and it is your responsibility to know how those regulations apply to you or you risk having the entire plan disqualified.

On line 4c put an amount equal to her gross pay and they will withhold it all - that way you can get it all back at the end of the year (for some reason).

No, it isn't calculated over the term of the loan. Interest is accrued (typically) daily on your outstanding balance. Interest payments aren't 'front loaded' and the total amount of interest you will pay isn't fixed up front.

The reason why more of your fixed payment is interest early on is because you have a higher balance accruing more interest.

Yes, over time the evidence is quite strong that index funds outperform managed funds when adjusting for the risk taken.

The expected return of a managed fund is the return of the market minus costs - even if there are indeed managers out there who can consistently outperform the market, why would you think your ability to identify them is better than your ability to identify the stocks that will outperform?

And if your ability to do so really is that good you probably should either be working for fund company in hiring or open your own.

You are mistaken because you are forgetting that the dollars you got as a loan are treated as post-tax dollars.

Look at it this way, take out a loan for $10k, immediately pay it back with that same $10k - did you convert them into 'double-taxed' dollars, of course not.

No, that doesn't make sense. You'll be turning what would have been tax-free growth into taxable growth only to put it back in the same account that would have been tax free.