Investing & Finance
Financial Freedom 101
Work because you want to, not because you have to. An ironically practical roadmap to smart banking, index investing, tax evasion (legal kind), and the simple math of buying back your life.
Presentation at https://fi101.mcawesome.org/.
Maximum Retirement - 2026 Edition
Learn about 401(k) myths and pro-tips, how to truly maximize your 401(k) and other retirement accounts, and more!
Presentation is here.
Rebalance Calculator, MMFs, Target Date Bonds, Investment Strategy, and More!
Years ago I wrote a spreadsheet to calculate how to rebalance my investment accounts based on my target allocations percentages and current values. In other words, I keep my target allocations static, and every 1-2 years I would just update the current value of all the positions, and the spreadsheet would calculate exactly what I needed to sell and buy to get back to my targets. This is called rebalancing, and through the principal of regression to the mean, it can earn you a little higher return over the long-term.
I shared this with some coworkers and friends. Then they asked about just adding new money, and not rebalancing, especially in a taxable account that would incur taxes for sales. Ok, cool, good idea. I added another column that calculated how to get as close as possible to the targets by only investing new money and not selling.
They started asking what I invested in. Ok, sure, I can share that. It's generally a Bogleheads strategy, but I do it just a little different. I added the Target Allocations tab, with the ability to calculate allocates between bonds, US, and ex-US. And if my strategy is too much hassle for you, I wrote simpler equivalents trailing off to the right. Pick the one that's best for you.
Then I started getting questions about cash positions, e.g., which MMFs were best, what about some of these MMF-like ETFs, etc. So I added the MMF Yields tab that updates the most common MMFs from Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab, as well as some common MMF-like ETFs. And I added the ability for you to enter your tax rates at the top, and it shows you the after-tax yields. This can help when there are tax advantages for some funds, especially for high earners and those that live in states with an income tax. You can also view this on the dedicated Interactive MMF Yields Calculator on this site.
Next I was asked where someone should stash cash that they're saving for a large purchase in the future, e.g., a car, a house, etc. Yeah, there are better places than MMFs for that since you will hold for several years. I added the Target Date Bonds tab, also with the tax calculation feature.
The MMFs and target date bonds rates update automatically via a rate scraper I wrote and published on Github. It runs on my server and the spreadsheet pulls the latest rates from the server. This is why you will be asked for permission to pull external data if you make your own copy of the spreadsheet.
"Hey, so you have a lot of Vanguard funds listed, but I [inexplicably] don't like ETFs and would rather use mutual funds from [broker]." Insert doubting face. Fine, check out the new tab I added called Equivalent Funds that shows a matrix of equivalent positions across Vanguard ETFs, Vanguard MFs, iShares ETFs, Fidelity MFs, Schwab ETFs, and Schwab MFs. It's as close as I've been able to figure out so far.
Then I realized some people would benefit from the Roth conversion tracker I used for myself, mostly to track Mega Backdoor and Backdoor Roth conversions, so I added the Roth Contributions tab.
The spreadsheet can be accessed at https://invest.mcawesome.org/.
Retirement Drawdown Strategy
The primary vulnerability of an investment portfolio during its distribution phase is Sequence of Returns Risk (SRR). A severe equity drawdown combined with simultaneous forced asset liquidations to fund lifestyle expenses can cause permanent capital destruction. This protocol establishes a multi-tier cash-flow engine designed to systematically immunize five years (and is easily adjustable to more years if desired) of anticipated spending requirements from public equity market volatility.
By segregating capital into functional liquidity tiers and matching them to the correct tax environments, this strategy achieves four core objectives: it guarantees a highly predictable cash-flow stream, completely eliminates interest rate risk for the intermediate runway, minimizes structural tax drag, and can pace inflation over the long-term.
Read my full paper here.
Banking (you can do better!)
Banks are generally terrible. Credit Unions are generally better.
The best I've found so far is Alliant Credit Union, which at the time of writing offers 0.25% interest rate for checking and 3.01% interest rate for savings. This is typically much higher than at banks. Alliant also increased their rates very fast after the Fed rate increases over 2022-2023, and then plateauing in mid-2023. And Alliant doesn't require any hoop-jumping to qualify for these rates like many other institutions may (e.g., monthly direct deposit of a minimum amount, minimum spending via debit card per month, etc.). One caveat about Alliant I discovered recently: if you are not a US citizen or resident alien, don't even bother applying for credit (loan or credit card); they make it extraordinarily difficult for non-resident visa holders.
You might also consider Wealthfront's cash account, currently offering a 3.30% interest rate (up to 4.20% with bonuses).
Another consideration for stashing cash that you need for short-term expenses, emergency fund, etc., is to deposit into a Vanguard regular brokerage/investment account. Vanguard will invest the cash sweep account money automatically into the VMFXX (Vanguard Federal Money Market) fund*, which is currently paying 3.69% compound yield. You can ACH transfer money to and from Vanguard in typically 1-2 days, so this is a great way to earn extra dividend while still treating this account as liquid. The dividend is calculated daily and deposited on the last day of the month.
Fidelity also has a money market fund for the default cash position. It doesn't pay quite as much, but Fidelity does offer cash features in the account such as Bill Pay, ACH draft for bills, checks, debit/ATM card, free wire transfers, etc. Fidelity also auto-liquidates many of their other MMFs so you can keep all of your cash invested in those and they will auto-sell for bills pays, drafts, etc.
A cool trick is to setup a large auto-invest into the MMF every Thursday, for example, so when your paycheck arrives (a day early at Fidelity), it is automatically invested into the MMF you choose. The way I do this is to setup the automatic investment rule for more than my paycheck every other Thursday. The way this works is weird, but it's a cool hack. My paycheck arrives on Thursday, for less than the amount I chose to auto-invest. When the auto-invest rule kicks in, it will first pull from the default cash position, which is where my paycheck and any other miscellaneous deposits over the two weeks go, and then for any excess it then pulls from the other MMF, and then reinvests in that same MMF. In other words, let's say my paycheck is $3,000. That goes to the default cash position, SPAXX. When the auto-invest rule for $4,000 starts, it will pull the $3,000 from SPAXX, and then another $1,000 from FDRXX, and then invest the full $4,000 into FDRXX. Weird, but it works!
You can also take a look at the MMF Yields Calculator on this site (or the spreadsheet at https://invest.mcawesome.org/) to see a lot of competing rates. You can enter your tax information at the top and you may find that some funds provide a better after-tax yield than the default MMFs at Vanguard and Fidelity.
* Invested in 99.5% cash and US government securities and repurchase agreements; this is the safest fund available, and I would consider it equally as safe as FDIC/NCUA/SIPC insurance since those insurance plans are also backed by the same US government issuing the bonds. The fund keeps the NAV price (price per share) steady at $1.00 and pays the difference in the dividend instead of increasing the share price. In a worst-case scenario where the Fed would drop interest rates fast, and people would pull their money out of the fund, it's possible the NAV price could drop below $1.00 per share, but if you wait for it to recover instead of pulling your money out of the fund, you would never lose money. A NAV price below $1.00 per share ("breaking the buck") has only occurred twice, and these were holding commercial paper, not Treasuries.
I wrote a more detailed paper here.
Updated 2026-08-26.
Municipal Bonds Seasonal Yield Surfing
Historically, the municipal short-term bond market (which Fidelity’s FTEXX money market fund, for example, tracks) has two major peaks and two major troughs each year. Treasury bonds, on the other hand, stay relatively flat, acting as a steady baseline.
When you’re holding short-term cash, there is a small optimization you can take advantage of by moving the cash between Treasuries and muni bonds during certain periods of the year when the muni bonds are paying higher.
See the full document below to see how you would time your moves:
Expense Ratio & AUM Loss Calculator
I made a quick little calculator to help you see how much an expense ratio or AUM fee would cost you over the years.
Retirement Calculator
I wrote a Retirement Calculator (https://retire.mcawesome.org/) to help someone. Fill in the yellow fields.
The Living Expenses tab is approximate and has a lot of categories; be sure to compare against your actual expense categories to make sure none were missed.
The low- and high-return rate is a safe estimate based on the stock fund allocation I've outlined. The buffer return rate is a safe estimate based on the bond fund allocation I've outlined. These outlines are laid out in the Investment Strategy tab.
The buffer account here is sized to 3x the annual expenses. If you aren't retiring in the next 5-10 years, don't use a buffer account at all. The closer you get to retirement, the more you want to have in your buffer account, if your regular retirement income won't cover your living expenses.
Regular retirement income consists of Social Security and any Pension. Whether to keep 3x or 5x or 10x of annual expenses in the buffer depends entirely on how much of a shortfall you have in your regular retirement income. In this case, my in-laws are super afraid of investing and money in general, and with their regular retirement income don't actually need any buffer account at all, but I set this to 3x their annual expenses to be ultra-safe and give them some comfort.
The buffer account is used in the stock market down years, because you don't want to sell stock on its way down. Once the stock market has recovered, start refilling the buffer account from the stock gain excess. In a long run of good stock market returns, the buffer account will grow and you will want to occasionally (every 2-3-4 years) skim off the excess and put into the stock market allocation.
You also want to look at the stock market returns every 2-3-4 years, and rebalance from the funds that did better, to the funds that did worse. It's counter-intuitive, but over the long-run (10-15 years), these sectors regress to the mean. By doing this rebalancing, you can potentially make an extra 1-2%.
Lastly, if you're not going into retirement soon, I would shift your international exposure up to 20%, and also buy about 5-10% of junk bonds. Otherwise this is a good split for a more conservative portfolio.
This portfolio is passive and long-term. There is no need to rebalance more often than 2-4 years, and in fact could have higher tax consequences in a non-qualified (i.e., taxable) account if you rebalance too often. When you have extra money to invest, you can put that money toward those that fell below the target, as a method to rebalance without selling.
Use this link to make your own copy.