11/10 - Swift Sunday!

If what you posted is correct, you would have $10.43 after a year in pp savings and $10.42 if you left it in 'regular pp'.

It's easier to think about the interest on $100 imo, as then it would be 104.3 vs 104.21 after a year. For any amount, you would multiple .043 or .0421 times the amount to figure out the yearly interest earned.

It's not much of a difference tbh, and it's almost surprising the difference isn't much more, as that would probably motivate people to move their money to savings, which I assume is PP's goal. Still, it's a good savings yield for not having account minimums.

An alternative to savings accounts that I always recommend to people, if they have access to a free investment account and are in the US, is to put the money in SGOV. It's an ETF that tracks 3 month treasury bills, so it is one of the safest investments possible, since you are effectively loaning money to the US gov't. It pays dividends monthly, and the 12 month trailing APY is typically around 5.2% (currently 5.24% for this past year). And you can get the $ out in a business day or two if you need it.

I keep about 12% of my money in it to offset the risk of my other investments. And banks, other large companies, and hedge funds use it to hold their cash that they have sitting on the sidelines sometimes. You also don't pay state taxes on the apy, unlike other savings tools. Google for more info if needed.

 

Thank you so much! I learned so much from your post! I googled SGOV. does it matter where or how you get it to avoid fees or taxes or something? can I get it in acorns? and if it were to continue to pay about 5% APY for 20 years, does that mean in 20 years all the money would have been paid back to me slowly, plus I would still have the money I had put in 20 years earlier?

 

Oh my gosh that is like a really valueable post everyone should read that post!

 

Hi all, Apologies in advance for this Q, as I know there is a scripts forum, but it seems pretty dead over there. If I need to take this down, please lmk.

I haven't been turking for quite a while and just reinstalled hit forker and panda crazy max. They were working fine yesterday, but now I can't get PCM to work. Is this a common issue? Or does anyone have any possible solution? I made sure to open PCM first, which I saw could be an issue (and tried it the other way (Forker 1st) as well). Also, tried reloading hit forker a couple times, as someone said that helped them in the past. Thanks for any help.

 

Jan Bauer [A19UCVP6HTKUVW] Academic survey. Less than 10 minutes. - $0.90 | PANDA

Unrated

Unrated

Unrated

$11.17 / hour
00:04:50 / completion time

​

Pros:

Cons:

Catchability: Great (HIT Last Seen: 2 minutes ago)
Qualifications: HIT approval rate (%) > 98; Location EqualTo US;

To read Jan Bauer's full profile check out TurkerView!​

 

I actually don't think it does anything at all yeah, at least i've certainly never gotten a notification from it

I do get occasional emails but that's not a browser notification and only a small fraction of projects ever send an email

 

Apologies for the length of this, but I figured if I can help one person that is starting to get into investing, like I was a few years ago, then it was worth it. The 'HOWEVER' part toward the bottom is probably the most important message I have to share... don't make rookie mistakes thinking you can 'time the market' like I did.

I'm not familiar with acorns, so I thought you were trolling at 1st. LOL. SGOV is available on most investing apps, etc, so I would be surprised if it wasn't available on there.

AFAIK, there are no state taxes, but you will pay federal taxes on the money made in a year. Profits' taxes are based on if the dividends are qualified or nonqualified/ ordinary, just like regular stocks. Here is a page that explains the difference: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualifieddividend.asp . Basically, for all dividends, if you hold the asset for 60 of the 120 days surrounding the ex-dividend date, then you pay lower fed taxes. Qualified dividends are taxed lower like long term gains, while ordinary dividends are taxed like normal income/ short term gains. This makes a much bigger difference for people in higher tax brackets.

You might also want to google wash sale rule, as SGOV sales and purchases can trigger a wash sale, as the price goes up a penny or two each day of the month before effectively resetting on the 1st of every month since the yield is paid out a few days after that. This rule only really matters, if you take a capital loss when you sell. Then, you can't use that to offset gains for the year if it was a wash sale (selling for a loss and buying the same asset in the 30 day period before or after your sale), unless you get rid of the entire asset before the end of the year.

To answer your last question, if you held the principal for 20 years, you would make slightly more than the original amount and still have what you started with. If you reinvested your profits each month, you would have quite a bit more, as it would 'compound' monthly. So, the principal would grow, and you'd be making more each year.

***HOWEVER, this is really conservative for investing, and I would not recommend keeping all of one's assets in something so conservative. If you look at any 20 year period of the S&P 500, even with things like the dot com bubble, the 2008 housing crisis, the covid downturn & downturn in 2022 due to recession fears, you would do much better in an etf like VOO or SPY that track the S&P500.

Side note: VOO is better as it has a super low management fee (3 cents per year for every $100 invested that comes out of the share price automatically/ SGOV's is actually 9 cents per $100, but also the 5.2% return I quoted before is after the fee). And you get ~1.5% dividends in VOO as well (varies, but that's the 5 year average). You can/ should probably reinvest those too.

Right now, a more conservative approach may be best, as the S&P is at all time highs. I'll likely take some money out of the market early next year, if it starts to look like there will finally be a downturn. But if someone was just putting a little into the market each month or quarter or something and can afford to wait out a few years of poor returns, then VOO or similar etfs is almost guaranteed to outperform safer investments.

Historically, S&P returns that VOO track are 10% per year since inception. It's slightly lower since 2000 because of the downturns I mentioned above, but still would have beat things like SGOV handedly. A good approach may be to split between something like VOO/ maybe some other quality etfs and SGOV, so in the case of a downturn, you can sell your SGOV and throw it into VOO or something else at a lower price.

Personal Example: I only started investing in Spring of 2021. The market/ VOO, etc was rising through the end of that year. However, it dropped considerably in 2022 and took until late 2023 to get back to the price it was at in late 2021. This past year was one for the books though, so even though I was down for 2 years, I ended up making a ~10% return per year over those 3.5 years, as the S&P was up about 35% in the last 12 months. That's double what I would have made in the same time period in a high yield savings account or sgov. It's also super passive, so you really don't have to pay attention/ worry all the time, especially if you continue to invest periodically when possible. That's called dollar cost averaging (dca) because your purchase price all kind of averages out despite market swings, etc. There is a reason people say 'VOO and chill' in responses to investing q's on the reddit subreddits.

Lastly, I'm not a finance professional or anything, so definitely google investing advice, as there is plenty that I am still learning about. There are a lot of free resources out there, and like I mentioned before, reddit forums like stocks and etfs have people in similar positions asking and answering similar questions. Wallstreetbets is more about the gain/ loss memes.

I think the fact that finance type things aren't taught earlier in life to everyone is kind of a crime. Best of luck out there!

 

https://forum.turkerview.com/threads/11-11-military-monday.5886/

new thread