How much of a tax hit to move my wife's investments (in taxable account) to Vanguard?

Contact Vanguard and ask them to talk through the options

Thank you. Any other advice from anyone?

Yes. Contact Vanguard. They will walk you through the steps.

dfsfdas wrote:

Thank you. Any other advice from anyone?

pics?

dfsfdas wrote:

Thank you. Any other advice from anyone?

I have some. Don't ask financial questions to a group of anonymous, unqualified people on a running board.

Reported for being an a**hole.

Take this with a big grain of salt as I've never invested with TIAA-CREF, but why would there be a "huge" tax liability? You say your wife is invested in non-retirement(?) taxable funds? Those types of accounts you just close and reopen elsewhere as you see fit. There wouldn't be a 10% penalty like there is when withdrawing from an IRA or 401(k), although you'll probably have some long term capital gains to deal with, but tax rates on those are low.

What you want to do, I think, is a "transfer in kind". This should let you avoid taxes.

And, yes, call up Vanguard and ask them. They make it really, really easy to do this and are very helpful.

Can I transfer money between mutual funds without paying taxes?

I have mutual funds that are not performing like they used to. I want to transfer the balances and automatic investments to another fund. These are not retirement funds, however. So how can I transfer them without incurring a tax liability?

Unfortunately, there is no way to "transfer" balances from one mutual fund to another without triggering a taxable event, says Garth Scrivner, a certified financial planner and CPA at StanCorp Investment Advisers in Albuquerque, N.M. You actually have to sell shares in your existing mutual fund and buy shares in the new one. If the shares that you sell have gained in value, you will owe taxes on that gain...

dfsfdas wrote:

My wife has about ~$110k in a taxable account at TIAA-CREF she started in 2003 (when she was in grad school). She is invested in about six funds (90% stocks, 10% bonds). She hasn't contributed any new money since 2006, but has the dividends reinvested.

Is there any ways to move these funds to a taxable account at Vanguard w/o taking a huge tax hit? The ERs on her TIAA-CREF funds are about 0.8%, while ERs at Vanguard are about 0.2%.

Thoughts for a newbie?

If I understand your question, the answer is that if you want to move holdings from mutual fund A to mutual fund B, you need to sell fund A and buy fund B. If the sale of fund A results in tax liability, then you need to pay that. You will always need to pay taxes on your sale of fund A (assuming it has gone up in value) whenever you make the sale.

If the funds were in a retirement account, you would not need to pay any taxes until you started taking money out of the account.

I'm not completely sure what you mean by a "taxable" account. All accounts are taxable (except Roth IRAs) including retirement and non retirement accounts. With retirement accounts, you pay the taxes when you start cashing out.

Truther wrote:

dfsfdas wrote:

Thank you. Any other advice from anyone?

I have some. Don't ask financial questions to a group of anonymous, unqualified people on a running board.

Wait, I thought that flaggy dude knew everything about financial topics...well except what a mutual fund dividend really is...oh, and how to calculate an internal rate of return...well, and...oh never mind.

The taxes won't be as big as you might think. Her cost basis increases each year as stocks are sold and capital gains are declared.

Call Vanguard and ask them to explain it to you.