You should max out a Roth each year, $6,500. Increase your 401k deferrals to about 10%, and save the rest in a taxable brokerage account. At 26 your long term investments should be 100% stock, emergency fund in a savings account, and short term savings (house, new car, big vacation, etc) in either a HYSA or an index fund.

You don’t need to contact NWM. Just setup a Roth account at a discount brokerage, and initiate a Full Account Transfer. You will need to provide a NWM statement with the transfer form.

However you will need to contact them to cancel the whole life policy. You won’t get any money back from your premiums paid. Consider these premium $s paid as a stupid tax. You won’t make this mistake again.

You are 25, make lots of money, have fun and buy the toy. In your case I would use the emergency fund, but repay it in 2 months or less by sacrificing fun stuff in your budget. If you do have an emergency in those 2 months you can always borrow from the 401k.

Establishing discipline regarding retirement funds will greatly help in your future. Also the fact that you are actually thinking about toy purchases and their negative consequences at 25, bodes well for your financial future.

Poster is right get the check sent to you coded as a Direct Rollover, then send it on to Fidelity as above. Don’t sign the back, Fidelity will stamp it correctly before depositing.

You probably will not be able to directly deposit a DIrect Rollover check into a personal account. This check should be made out to “Fidelity Investments- FBO “your name” IRA. If you get a check made out to you alone, your 401k custodian should code this a full distribution and try to withhold taxes. Getting this fixed is a pain, why subject yourself to this risk?

Send the check USPS certified mail with tracking and return receipt requested. You will have full documentation of the received status of the check at Fidelity.

I would split the investment into 2 chunks $5k each and use 1 chunk against the $7.5k cash payout. Hold the 2nd $5k as the cost basis of the received stock. The $400 payout is like a dividend, so cost basis is $0.

Read any article on tax efficient asset placement to learn about this.

Owning bonds in a Roth is dumb. Own bonds in your 401k or IRA. Over the long haul maximizing growth in the tax free account wins.

I would buy VTI instead of either of these MFs. More tax efficient, lower expense ratio, better diversification and 100% stock are most appropriate for a Roth.

OP makes $60k (in post), 11% is $6,600. Pretty close.

Keep track of these losses ad you can use them in the future to offset any gains. These losses never expire, but you have to keep track and enter them on your tax returns.

Offering to prepay rent will make your application more attractive in NYC. My daughter had to do this to qualify when she was just starting her new job.

Be sure to get everything in writing, documenting the prepaid rent.

Save 4% in 401k to get the match, then 11% into a Roth account. If you invest like this in retirement accounts until your are 65, you will have millions. You don’t need to save harder for retirement.

Put any additional savings into your taxable brokerage account invest in an S&P500 index fund. This account can be for buying a house, a new car, vacations, etc.

You are in great shape. Save like above, but also live your life while you are young.

Seems like it is time to pay a professional $500 to do your taxes. It is likely an EA or CPA will save you way more than $500 by doing your taxes correctly, and also making sure your W4 is correct for 2023.

You are saying that the Value Premium over growth is still an important aspect of investing. Some recent academic research has cast doubt on the continued existence of this premium. Im not saying totally avoid Value, but am saying Growth should be held in a Roth. VBK would have to decline almost 200% versus DFFVX to make it better to hold value instead of growth in the Roth. Doesn’t seem likely to me that this will occur any time soon.

The problem with this study is it ended in 2012. If you look at a comparison between VBK and DFFVX (US small cap value) since 2012 until 2022, VBK had gained 309%, versus 85% for DFFVX. The world has changed since 2012, and my investing approach has changed with it. I used to follow the DFA approach religiously, but have changed my opinion since Value has lagged SO far behind growth for a very long time.

In a Roth you should be more aggressive. I would recommend buying Vanguard US small cap growth ETF (VBK). VTI is great, but I personally want to maximize growth in a Roth account, so when I take withdrawals it comes tax free!