u/Penguin_Life_Now

The title sums up the basics, 37 year old with no near term major expenses expected and $25K in cash sitting in a checking account, needing to invest in a regular brokerage account, what ETF's do you pick. Assume money may be needed in 10 -12 years or so.

What what do you think of a portfolio of equal parts of GARP, SPMO, VFLO and GFLW? If not what do you suggest, some risk is acceptable for this investment as this is extra money that needs to be put somewhere.

How do you think 23 hour US stock market trading is going to change the way the market and investors behave?

I effectively retired 10 years ago at the age of 47, I just did not know it at the time, I had planned to semi-retire start my own sideline business, then just never did, then covid hit, and I admitted to myself that I was really retired, though I do still have thoughts of opening some sort of part time side business.

I am now about to turn 58, getting closer to traditional retirement age, note the rules of this very group that considers early retirement as retiring before the age of 59. So I was wondering how does everyone else deal with this transitory age, the age where you have years of retirement experience vs your age peers who are just hitting the early years of traditional retirement age, also potentially getting penalty free access to IRA accounts, having to start thinking about things like Medicare and Social Security planning, etc?

For the last couple of months I have been helping my elderly mother in Louisiana clean up her estate planning, as well as doing some of the same for my own, as neither of us had updated our wills in about 15 years, and there has been some deaths in the family, changes of finances, property ownership, etc. since then. Part of this process has involved dealing with banks, lawyers, etc. Along the way I have been surprised with some of the attitudes I have ran into against inheritance, generational wealth, etc. by people working in the periphery of these transactions. So I am wondering are you also seeing a societal change in attitudes against leaving money to relatives as inheritance?

My elderly mother inherited some land 40+ years ago, and now it may be time to sell it, if it can be promoted and priced correctly. The land has been in the family for almost a century, and has always been used as farmland (circa 125 acres), but has real potential for recreational land use, as it has water frontage on a secondary navigable river, as well as formerly connected Oxbow lake, which is also used recreationally for fishing and boating which adjoins a 25,000 acre national wildlife refuge a couple of miles down. It has about 3500 ft of water frontage combined between the river and the lake. Now for the negative stuff, it is located in an extremely rural part of northeastern Louisiana, it is in Floodzone AE with most of the land 2-5 feet below BFE so would require any structures to be elevated, and any waterfront access along the river would have to involve Corp of Engineers building permission, as well there are extra requirements for septic systems.

We listed the property about 6 weeks ago, for what we thought was a fairly high price, close to double the local going rate for farmland, and within 9 days received a full asking price offer, then with closing coming up in a couple of weeks the buyer backed out last week after deciding access road construction would cost more than he thought it was worth. Which has us wondering if we underpriced the land, to complicate matters more we received a second offer on it the next day after the initial buyer backed out for about 60% of asking price.

There really are not any good comps out there, there is some other riverfront land, but it is a lot lower and wetter, there are also some lots for sale along the same oxbow lake, but are a MUCH smaller tracts (only about 3 acres in total divided into circa 0.50 lots , as well as a 1.7 acre lot also along a pubic road all priced at about 4 times our per acre listing price),

We are not desperate to sell, we don't want to over price it and have it just sit on the market, but at the same time don't want to give it away.

Any thoughts or suggestions on how we should proceed, how to value such a unique property with water frontage on 2 different bodies of water, etc.

I have asked this same basic question in 2 others subreddits today (personalfinance, and investingforbeginners ), only to hear the Don't Count on Inheritance Mantra, and be down voted for daring to counter it with relevant facts of the situation. It has been so bad that I have had commenters state that they hope hackers find me and take all the money.

I have hopes that maybe I will get more substantial answers here with detailed reasoning for the position from a financial analysis viewpoint.

The title pretty much sums it up, does a 35 year old earning a typical working income have a good resason to start an IRA if they stand to almost certainly inherit in the circa $10 million ballpark by around the age at which they would not be penalized for IRA withdrawals. Assume the money is in a reasonably diverse portfolio and is a mix of mostly real estate and stocks.

I am in my late 50's and find myself wondering about this question, I was born just before man walked on the moon, here we are almost 60 years later potentially finally going back, I grew up in a world with computers, satellites, color TV, and jetliners, about the only real NEW thing is the AI boom.

I hope this is ok to post here, I tried posting over at r/realestateinvesting which seemed to generally be on topic, but had it removed and locked by the moderator after it received several comments, they suggested posting in r/realestate but it really did not seem to fit in there with all its first time home buyer and seller threads, so I thought I would try here.

This is not a sales pitch, just looking for advice on what to do now. My elderly mother has about 130 acres of farmland she inherited back in the 1980's for the last 30+ years a cousin has been farming it, bringing in some side money each year, now the cousin has developed health issues, so we have decided to sell it rather than let it sit and get grown up. It has potential for being developed at recreational land, camp sites, etc. has about 1,500 ft of footage on a moderately popular recreational river (Ouchita, limited barge traffic river in NE Louisiana) as well as about 2,000 ft of footage along the associated but dammed off since the 1970's Oxbow lake which borders a 25,000 acre national wildlife refuge at the other end of the lake about 4 miles away. She has received a few unsolicited offers over the years, a couple of years ago there was one for $1.1 million but that did not go anywhere, she has also been contacted by a number of real estate agents that specialize in waterfront and recreational land over the years. This summer she spoke to one of them, he said he could realistically sell it for $1.75 million, which is well above going rate for farmland in the area, she listed it and 9 days later had a full price offer, we were supposed to close on it next week, but day before yesterday the deal fell through, and today we received a low offer of $900K. So now we are wondering if we under priced it given the full asking price offer that fast, or maybe over priced it with the $900K offer today, and $1.1 million offer a couple of years ago. The land is in a floodplane being river front, but is well over mean river level (circa 8 ft above), and last had significant flooding about 50 years ago.

I welcome hearing your thoughts, note she is not desperate for the money, but there is less family connection to the area every year as cousins keep dying off, she lives in a nice house on the 350 acre family cattle ranch, that she turned down a $3 million offer on in July (they started at $1.2 million in January and keep offering more every few months, she says she has a price to move, and they have not reached it yet.)

p.s. in case it matters most of the property is shown as flood zone AE, part is flood zone X, though these are OLD scanned maps and may be out of date. (doing a little more digging it looks like ground level across the property sits 3 to 6 feet below the zone AE BFE elevation)

I am looking for a good re-investment option for my elderly mother to use as an estate planning inheritance vehicle. If all goes as expected she will start receiving monthly dividend like income income in a couple of months totaling between $55 -$95K per year that needs to be re-invested in a tax conserving vehicle until she passes away and capital gains are wiped out by step up. The issue is her current pension, social security and other passive incomes are pushing her towards multiple higher tax rates thanks to MAGI, NIIT and IRMAA, etc. To minimize these consequences without loosing sight of the ultimate goal of passing wealth on to her heirs. Hence the search for low to no dividend stocks and ETF's.

I know this is backwards from what most people are after, but there is reasoning here, unfortunately just about all the options I find have land mines attached. BOXX and its Ilk are likely being investigated and might turn into ordinary income at time of sale, which does not step up the same as capital gains, so seems attractive at first, but might be a time bomb. Others like BRK.B have historically not paid dividends, but there is no promise this will not change after Warren Buffet's retirement, ... Some ETF's are very low dividend but tend to be riskier like VUG

If you have any thoughts or suggestions I am happy to hear them.

p.s. note using historic performance over 10 years BRK.B vs SCHD would result in a yield difference that is roughly a wash (slight advantage to BRK.B on average) depending on which 10 year sliding window you start with, but would result in over $70,000 higher tax burden on average with SCHD.

I would like your help in picking the right ETF investments for my elderly mother, she has an excess of money in CD's and will likely be getting dividend like payments in the $55K up to $95K per year starting in a few months, in monthly or quarterly payments, she already has ample income from government pension, social security, and family farm income, AGI of around $130K now. The attempt here if to minimize MAGI, NIIT, and IRMAA by avoiding re-investments that throw off dividends and other taxes, so no international funds either. Keep in mind the plan is to hold until inheritance step up which erases Capital Gains, etc. One implication of this is the investing in Gold or Gold ETF like GLDM does not matter that it is taxed as regular income since that would be wiped out by step up. Relatively safety is also important, growth is good, but not at the expense of excess risk. Note also the majority of the estate will be in real estate and this total stock portfolio will only amount to about 20-25% of the estate. We are looking at inheritance step up occurring likely within 10 years (50% chance by 6.5 years based on actuarial data), with remote possibility out to a bout 15 years, but life expectancy drops off very quick after the 10 year mark.

Right now we are looking at 60% VUG or SCHG, 20%VFLO or SPMO, and 20% GLDM or IAUM (these two are nearly identical) or some sort of fine tuning there on.

I welcome alternative thoughts and ideas.

thanks

I hope I am in the right place to ask this, I retired early at the age of 49, I'm 57 now, my wife is a bit younger and still works full time, she is waiting to reach minimum retirement age (55) to draw on her government pension. My main source of income is dividends from non publicly traded stock, these dividends have recently increased and have been building up in my checking account, I don't really need to buy anything, I have adjusted to the casual retirement lifestyle, I am content driving on older basic car, etc. So I am looking for advice on re-investment of the money rather than just letting it sit in my checking account.

Unfortunately most of the advice out there is aimed at saving for retirement, not , not for a guy in his late 50's who is already retired. I don't really need the money, but I don't want to just let it sit or worse yet throw it away. I feel investing in something with some low

Does everyone else that does both, also have the problem of switching mindset between real estate investing with depreciation, depreciation recovery, etc. mindset vs stock investment where you have its own capital gains, and dividend issues. With me if someone asks me a Stock question while I am deep in real estate thought, I just go blank, and need a few minutes to change my moods of thought before being able to converse on the topic.

I have some money sitting in my checking account from dividend proceeds, I have never been an active investor, I am more passive sit back and let the dividends show up type. Having said that the other day I decided to try my hand at active investing, I opened an online Fidelity account and put a few thousand into it as starter funds to experiment with, and get to know the platform.

What I am doing is using Claude (Fable or Opus 5), I am having it generate a list of what it thinks are potential undervalued daily picks, then through guided research narrowing it down to a pick of the day, and investing at least $100 in it, and let it ride to be re-evaluated periodically. Spending no more than about an hour refining the list down to a top 3, and then not more than another hour refining it down to a pick of the day, for every additional hour of my time that goes into the pick, the investment goes up by $100 to in theory compensate me for my time (I'm retired by the way). On alternate days I let AI do all the work, deep dive into whats going on with the stocks, any landmines, etc. The goal is two fold, can my guided questions with AI lead to a better outcome than a straight AI pick, and will this outperform an index fund investment.

Let me give you an example of what a typical pick might look like, A stock that had what on the surface appeared to be a disappointing earnings call a week ago, took a 30% reduction the next day followed by a couple of more news cycle induced panic sell offs, for example sell off due to the latest tariff or government regulation scare, even though their particular product in the sector is not covered by the regulation, then an announcement of a class action lawsuit over some regulatory compliance issue, or better yet something in the financial investor record (mis stating profits, etc even if it appears to have been beyond their control) driving the stock down for the 3rd time in 10 days. Leaving it at near its 52 week low, while having years worth of locked in orders with government backing.

Does anyone want to guess how this will work out, will AI by itself win, will I win with AI assistance with stock selection, will the index funds out perform all of it, and will I loose my shirt in the process.

I have some money sitting in my checking account from dividend proceeds, I have never been an active investor, I am more passive sit back and let the dividends show up type. Having said that the other day I decided to try my hand at active investing, I opened an online Fidelity account and put a few thousand into it as starter funds to experiment with, and get to know the platform.

What I am doing is using Claude (Fable or Opus 5), I am having it generate a list of what it thinks are potential undervalued daily picks, then through guided research narrowing it down to a pick of the day, and investing at least $100 in it, and let it ride to be re-evaluated periodically. Spending no more than about an hour refining the list down to a top 3, and then not more than another hour refining it down to a pick of the day, for every additional hour of my time that goes into the pick, the investment goes up by $100 to in theory compensate me for my time (I'm retired by the way). On alternate days I let AI do all the work, deep dive into whats going on with the stocks, any landmines, etc. The goal is two fold, can my guided questions with AI lead to a better outcome than a straight AI pick, and will this outperform an index fund investment.

Let me give you an example of what a typical pick might look like, A stock that had what on the surface appeared to be a disappointing earnings call a week ago, took a 30% reduction the next day followed by a couple of more news cycle induced panic sell offs, for example sell off due to the latest tariff or government regulation scare, even though their particular product in the sector is not covered by the regulation, then an announcement of a class action lawsuit over some regulatory compliance issue, or better yet something in the financial investor record (mis stating profits, etc even if it appears to have been beyond their control) driving the stock down for the 3rd time in 10 days. Leaving it at near its 52 week low, while having years worth of locked in orders with government backing.

Does anyone want to guess how this will work out, will AI by itself win, will I win with AI assistance with stock selection, will the index funds out perform all of it, and will I loose my shirt in the process.

I am in the process of dealing with selling land and probably rolling it over into a 1031 DST UPREIT, but in the process I toyed with the idea of investing some of it into a some type residential rental property, I have mostly discounted that idea for now as it does not really fit into our situation.

Having said that we live in an older well established neighborhood, and the house next to ours is a rental house, which had the same renters in it since before we bought our current house in 2021. They moved out in March, the property owner who I had met a time or two before then spent 3 months doing renovation on the house, completely redid the landscaping, new decorative columns on the porch, I assume all new appliances inside as I saw old ones being hauled off and new ones arriving, etc. It is now August and it has been sitting vacant since late June, with only the lawn service showing up to mow the grass. These same people own the smaller house across the street and when it was vacant a few years ago they did much the same thing, major renovation, then it sat vacant for almost a year.

The landlord owns over a dozen rental houses, the one next door used to be their primary residence a decade ago or so. I just don't get it, why renovate and let it sit afterward, no for rent sign in the yard, no one coming to look at it, etc. Is there some tax benefit that I don't know about, .... Any idea why they would do this.

For those that have been through the process, When doing a 1031 DST 721 UPREIT transaction with whichever Broker or RIA one picks, is there typically an ongoing relationship there after the DST identification and placement phase?

This is something I am tying to deal with at the moment, I am 57, basically retired at 49, my wife is a few years younger and still works full time until she can retire at the minimum age of 55 in order to get her government pension. Most of my income currently comes from dividend paying non public stock in a growing local community bank. I am also helping my elderly mother with her need to reinvest similar dividend payments, she also have income from family cattle ranch and a government pension that exceed living expenses, which are just going to increase with the sale of some long held inherited farm land that is being rolled into an UPREIT through a 1031 exchange and is expected to bring in an additional $60K-$95K in dividend like passive income.

This leads to the big question what to do with dividend like passive proceeds that get paid out a bit at a time quarterly. I know the lazy simple answer is put them in CD's but what is the better answer that still remains passive or mostly passive, while keeping an eye towards estate planning, and eventual inheritance concerns.

Let me try to make this concise, sorry if it drags on. My elderly mother is selling some land she inherited back in the 1980's that has appreciated significantly, she received an offer a few weeks ago at far above market rate on it, otherwise we would have held it until inheritance step up, proceeds after commissions, etc will be about $1.65 million, she does not need the income, she has about another $3.5-4 million in total assets plus pension income. Our plan at this time is to either do a 1031 into a portfolio of DST 721 UPREITs, or possibly into a single NNN property with a long term lease if we can find the right one. My 36 year old son lives with her and is her low level caretaker, she is in good health and independent, has other income from pension, and farmland but it is good to have someone there. I am 57 and doing my best to stay retired early, and have my own dividend income, so our goal is more wealth preservation, but it never hurts to have more.

Right now we are exploring all options, including paying the roughly $375K in capital gains, etc taxes and investing in safe stocks. Given her age, and good health actuarial data suggests another 5.5 years of life on average with a 30% chance of her lasting another 10 years, but things fall off rapidly after that with less than a 3% chance for her to last 15 years. Having said that long life runs in her side of the family and she had aunts and uncles live past 90, and a grandmother and grandfather that died in 1940 and lived to 96 and 90 respectively.

Anyway if we go that way either a NNN or DST UPREIT we will have $75-$100K per year that will need re-investment options as she already has a surplus of cash on hand in CD's etc sitting in the bank. We don't really want to do traditional DST for fear she will still be alive when the first cycle completes, hence the leaning towards a DST forced 721 UPREIT. To complicate matters due to her low basis it looks like a higher LTV UPREIT would have tax advantages even though all cash is an option since the land being sold has no mortgage against it.

Where we are at right now is 40 days out from closing, needing to pick a direction, AI projections say paying the capital gains then investing in safe stock will take a safe stock about 8-9.5 years to break even with the projected performance of an UPREIT due to having to catch up from the tax hit. So certainly possibly the winning move the actuarial math says step up is more likely to happen before then rather than after.

Now that you have the rough picture, what are your thoughts, are there other options we are not considering.

Note all the NNN I have found in our rough price range have major concerns, either not much time left on lease, being an older building being spun off from corporate ownership (35 year old fast food chicken restaurant selling off property to raise money at inflated prices with 20-25 year NNN leases plus 5 year renewals) etc.

My 87 year old mother is selling some farm land on the other side of the state that she inherited 40+ years ago, the intention had been to pass the land down when she passed away, but she has received an offer that is too good to pass up. The question now is how to re-invest to proceeds, she is in very good health and may live another 10 years or more (long life runs in the family she has a 94 year old brother who is the caregiver for his wife, and had 5 aunts and uncles that made it past 90), though that is never a given and actuarial tables puts it at more like 5.5 years on average.

We are mostly considering doing a 1031 land exchange in order to shelter from capital gains which are estimated to be substantial (sale price $1.75 million, estimated taxes $375,000, $1.65 million in expected proceeds after sales cost), though we are also considering paying the tax and investing the money.

Which leads us to our options:

A: Use a 1031 to invest in other place holder land until step up, nearby bare land, timber land, etc. Our CPA is pushing timber land as that is where his personal money goes.

B: Do a 1031 DST 721 UPREIT until time of inheritance and step up, likely earn around 5% or so for the next circa hopefully 10 years until step up at which point sell it for an estimated $1.95 million all the while it is paying out roughly $100K per year that is mostly tax free (estimated 5% tax rate) thanks to ROC repayment and having depreciation recapture along with capital gains wiped out at step up. Estimated Total payback to family around around $3 million, or around $3.2 million if annual payouts are reinvested through DRIP after 10 years.

C: Use a 1031 to invest in a NNN property, issues are finding a good NNN in our price range, there is a lot of junk out there, and the all your eggs in one basket concern as well as what to do with the NNN at time of inheritance.

D: Pay the taxes and invest in safe stocks

E: Other, do you have any ideas?

I have spent over $100 on AI tokens, and all the Claude AI simulations I have ran come back to the same thing, paying the taxes and investing in safe stock vs a 1031 UPREIT investment is basically a wash with a 10 year time horizon until step up (circa $2.98 vs $2.99 million so well within the noise projection margin for error), as $375K is a lot of tax to make up for, with less than 10 years until step up favoring the UPREIT.

I am open to ideas and thoughts here, any suggestions

p.s. note she is not dependent on this for income, lives on circa $3 million family cattle ranch ( she had a recent offer for $2.8 on it), and gets $100K per year from pension and social security

While doing my due diligence having AI scan PPM's for a potential investment it found a "Death Clause" in the Ares PPM where if the DST owner dies their heirs may be forced out of the DST and is AI reads it right Ares is allowed to set the value and charge a 7.5% fee in the process. I ran PPM's from 4 other companies through AI, none had similar clauses, and most explicitly said the opposite, that heirs are allowed to stay in the DST if they qualified as accredited investors.

Here is the AI summary of the issue:

Subject: Question re: ADREX Diversified 9 DST — Call Right triggered by death of Beneficial Owner

In reviewing the ADREX Diversified 9 DST Private Placement Memorandum (dated June 1, 2025), we found that the Call Agreement gives a wholly-owned Ares subsidiary (the "Call Right Holder") the right, at its sole and absolute discretion and with no expiration, to force a purchase of a Beneficial Owner's Interest upon the owner's death.

Specifically, the PPM defines a "Disqualifying Act" to include: "a Beneficial Owner or a Beneficial Owner's direct or indirect owner dies or becomes disabled" — placing death in the same trigger list as fraud, felony conviction, and bankruptcy. Upon this trigger, the Call Right Holder may purchase the Interest at a price equal to the pro-rata fair market value of the Properties "determined in good faith by the Call Right Holder" (no independent appraisal required), reduced by a 7.5% "Disqualifying Act Fee." The PPM states the fee may be waived in death/disability cases — at the Call Right Holder's discretion, not automatically — plus a further 1% fee where a Redemption Fee applies under the investor's pricing supplement.

Where this appears in the PPM:

• Page iv (cover summary) — Call Agreement description and full Disqualifying Act trigger list, including death
• Page 12 (Summary of the Offering — "Call Agreement" entry) — pricing mechanics, 7.5% fee, discretionary waiver
• Pages 214–215 ("Summary of Certain Agreements – The Call Agreement") — full terms: exercisable "at any time" after trigger, revocable and re-exercisable "for any reason whatsoever," assignable to any party
• Page 218 ("Disposition of Interests for cash in certain limited circumstances") — cash-out mechanics on exercise
• Page 225 ("Transfer Limitations") — investor must acknowledge Call Rights in the Purchase Agreement; rights survive a Transfer Distribution
• Page 262 (Definitions) — formal "Disqualifying Act" definition

Given the investor's age this clause is materially likely to become operative during the hold period. Before proceeding, we would want written answers to:

1. What is Ares' policy and track record on exercising the Call Right following a Beneficial Owner's death?
2. Under what circumstances has the 7.5% Disqualifying Act Fee been waived, and will Ares commit in writing to waiving it for death?
3. Would heirs be permitted to retain the Interest (or resulting OP Units) through the 721 exchange path rather than being cashed out?

For reference, we reviewed comparable PPMs from Origin (Nona DST), Hines (HREX 9), Blue Owl (OREX VI), and Blackstone (BXREX Portfolio I) — none contain an equivalent death-triggered call right; all treat death transfers to heirs/executors as permitted transfers.

Note: page numbers are the PPM's printed page numbers (the ones at the bottom of each page), not PDF page positions.

The email text above is ready to copy. A few notes on how I sourced the citations: the page references are the PPM's own printed page numbers pulled from the document footers, so whoever receives this (advisor, Ares wholesaler, or estate attorney) can go straight to them. The three questions at the end are ordered by importance — the written fee-waiver commitment in question 2 is the one most worth pressing on, since that's the difference between a ~$140K haircut and near-zero cost if the right ever gets exercised. And the last paragraph naming the four other sponsors is there deliberately: it signals you've done comparative diligence, which tends to get sharper answers from sponsors than an open-ended question would.