A few years ago, I tried to transfer a fund from Fidelity IRA to Vanguard IRA and Vanguard required that I obtain a medallion signature on the Vanguard paper work. I was not going to jump through the hoops and did not transfer - the Vanguard customer service told me if I transfer cash, then medallion signature would not be required - did not make any sense to me but I was not going to be out of the market to accommodate Vanguard. This time I am trying to transfer from taxable to taxable. Selling else where and transferring cash to rebuy at Vanguard is not a viable option. May be I will wait for Vanguard to become a for profit company or will consolidate assets from Vanguard to a different brokerage which Vanguard allows very easily.

According to the Oct 21, 2021 issue of "Investment News," Schwab hopes to move the individual T.D. Ameritrade accounts into Schwab by "the second half of 2023." That's still around two years away!
I had expected it would be faster.

Following up on BenWP -
I drove to West Virginia several years ago just for pleasure. Stayed about a week. What gorgeous mountain vistas!. Very nice / friendly people - but a lot of poverty. Like any scenic region, there’s also a few secluded areas of opulence.
Yes - Manchin is a bit of a political paradox. Tough state to be a Dem. (I suppose we could try and analyze / understand the tendency of some groups to vote against their own self-interest.)
Here’s some demographics.

@LewisBraham and @rono: in the case of Manchin, it may not be party affiliation but the state he represents. A close friend, native of SE MI, moved a few years ago to WVA because his spouse got a new job. He says it’s an entirely different world there, even though the driving distance amounts to 6 hours. I have no reason to doubt him based on the anecdotes he has supplied.

15% on all forms for income (wages, cap gains, rents, interest, etc.) with zero deductions. None. Give every person (including corporations) a $25,000 personal exemption. This would mean a family of four wouldn't start paying taxes until they hit $100,000. Very easy - just pay at the window.
rono

Nice. I would add a deduction (childcare credit for working parents) or stay at home credit for parents with kids under 5 years of age. If you choose to stay home, a credit. SS and Medicare deductions worked into that credit to recognize that staying at home raising kids is a job. Stay at home requirement - both the child and the parent participant in Pre-K /Adult Training offered in the same facility.
Corporations and small businesses offer a paid / government supported entry level work program for graduating parents. This offers offers full-time pay of $50K / year.
Which leads me to the question of how do we get a handle the welfare side of government programs? Can this be simplified as well?

You’d have made less than a half-percent annually had you bought the fund when it opened 21 years ago.

That is really sad. After 2% inflation, the investors are behind every year.

Why not BGHIX? I've lived with this fund also HIXr years (including prior to the recent BrandwineGlobal affiliation), and its fantastic.

This 21 year old fund’s a former board favorite. John Hussman’s writings were often displayed and discussed. Real looser of a fund however. You’d have made less than a half-percent annually had you bought the fund when it opened 21 years ago.
I owned the fund for a year or so and sold it probably 15 years ago. But can’t stop from tracking it and hoping this seemingly gifted financial analyst and writer could somehow turn his floundering fund around. HSGFX got off to a good start this year and everything looked promising. But the fund’s been in a nose-dive now for several weeks. Today’s negative 0.49% return puts the fund into negative territory YTD.
I can sympathize with him if he thinks the markets are overvalued and has pulled back./ gotten defensive. I happen to agree with that prognosis. But, managing a fund like this is “big league” stuff. More is expected.
HSGFX
ER 1.23%
Early Redemption Fee 1.50%
Lipper Link
Chart

davidr,
My interpretation of Joe's question: the 1 Million doesn't grow with inflation, but the annual spends increase each year.
An example. For convenience, say the annual inflation rate is 2%
So in Year 1, Joe's spending is 40,000;
in Year 2, Joe's spending is (1.02)*40,000 = 40,800;
in Year 3, Joe's spending is (1.02)*40,800 = (1.02^2)*40,000 =41,616;
in Year 4, Joe's spending is (1.02)*41,616 = (1.02^3)*40,000 =42,448.32;
etc, etc
in Year 25, Joe's spending is (1.02^24)*40,000 =64,337.49.
(For those of you unfamiliar with the jargon,
2*3 means 2 times 3, and
2^3 means 2 raised to the 3rd power.)
The question then becomes: what's the sum of all the annual spends?
That is, 40,000 +(1.02)*40,000+(1.02^2)*40,000+
(1.02^3)*40,000 + ...+(1.02^24)*40,000.
If we factor out the 40,000, then this total spending is
40,000 (1 +1.02+1.02^2+1.02^3+1.02^4+ ... + 1.02^24).
You could get out a calculator to add the 25 terms in the parentheses, but ...
wait for it
wait for it
there's a formula!
1 +1.02+1.02^2+1.02^3+1.02^4+ ... + 1.02^24 =(1.02^25 -1)/.02
A calculator can handle the 25th power term, to get
(.64061)/.02 = 32.031,
so the total amount Joe needs to live on for 25 years is
40,000*32.031 = $1,281,212.
So he needs to find 281,212 more dollars to stash away under his mattress.
The final answers:
for inflation rate 2%, the total initial amount needed is $1,281,212;
for inflation rate 2.5%, the total initial amount needed is $1,366,311;
for inflation rate 3%, the total initial amount needed is $1,458,371;
for inflation rate 6%, the total initial amount needed is $2,194,581.
David

Why not BGHIX? I've lived with this fund for years (including prior to the recent BrandwineGlobal affiliation), and its fantastic.

According to M*, they have $85B AUM in this strategy by the one manager - combining all the funds like RPMGX, PMEGX, etc. I think that is a lot for a mid cap fund to be effective, assuming mid cap is what investors are looking for. For the past three years it has underperformed both its category (47, 75, and 68 percentile) and LG category. As somebody else suggested, they are likely to open all the funds that are being split into a separate firm - the reason for the split being capacity constraint.

What if:
A. Joe begins the 25 year period by putting 50% into an S&P 500 index fund and 50% into GNMA funds
B. After 3 years the S&P index fund has fallen 40% in value. The GNMA funds have retained their initial value.
C. Joe than panics and moves his remaining equity balance into his GNMA funds for the duration of the 25 year term
For simplicity, let’s assume Joe’s GNMA funds’ managers achieve an annual 3.5% return over the 25 year period as the rate on the 10 year gradually increases from under 1% initially to 5% in year 25.
ISTM that that initial loss (near 20% of portfolio) over the first 3 years has done significant damage to Joe’s future earning prospects. (This proposition can be sliced and diced in a number of different ways.)
-
Taking into account the stocks losses in the beginning, I’m showing that w/o the annual withdrawals the sum after 25 years would have grown to approximately $1,787,262 (using 3.5% monthly compounding).
Had Joe avoided stocks altogether and gone 100% into GMNA funds at the onset (3.5% average return) he’d have approximately $2,234,007 at the end of 25 years.
Difference in return: $446,745 - Approximately 25% more without having incurred the initial stock losses
* Neither hypothetical case takes into account Joe’s $40,000 yearly withdrawals, which would alter the numbers somewhat.

M*'s methodology does have a recent (read: three year) performance bias. It averages a fund's three year, five year, and ten year ratings. Since the three year performance is part of the five year and ten year metrics, those recent years get weighted more heavily.
Nothing conceptually different from other metrics like exponentially weighted averages.
For the moment at least, one can read M* analyst reports via Firstrade. For example, here's their page for VTCLX; just click on "Read full Analyst Report" under "Morningstar's Take".
https://www.firstrade.com/content/en-us/researchtools/research?ticker=VTCLX

@Crash - Thanks for the aviation tidbits. You meet all kinds for sure. Once, riding in first class years ago, a couple older gals seated behind me were downing the free alcoholic beverages as fast as they could. Sloshed by the time we landed. Obnoxiously loud. Not a great ride. “Pedestrian class” might have been better that day,
I have no particular gripe re M*. They are what they are. I always consult at least 3 different sources before buying a new fund. I do think M* favors funds that have been hot recently in awarding stars. So there’s a good chance those stars will propel you to buying at the worst possible time while the fund is hot. Suspect that’s true of a lot of rating systems.
FT is $12 monthly on Amazon Kindle. Six issues weekly. It only takes one really good idea, bit of information, insight, suggestion or revelation to make a huge difference in your investment approach and outcome. Ben Franklin: “An investment in knowledge always pays the best dividend.”

TRLGX. TRP. Holds the usual high-flying suspects: Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Apple, Visa. PRGFX. TRP. Almost a clone of the other.
Just noticed: HCAIX holds no bonds, as expected. But it's doing just a tiny bit better this year than PRWCX, which does hold bonds and is heavily into utilities. But you can't get in, unless you're already in.
Morningstar puts Mairs & Power Growth MPGFX into its large-blend category. It has slipped behind the Index that Morningstar compares it to. Instituted in 1958. Only two "bad" recent years I can see: 2014 and 2017. Past 15-year performance = 10.74%, in top 13th percentile vs. "peers." Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, United Health, US Bancorp, Ecolab...

I like several funds in this category - POLIX, HCAIX, FBGRX, JGQIX. You need to look at the Sector weightings and holdings concentration among other things before investing. Stating the obvious, most of the top performers over the past 5 & 10 years more than likely held the FANG (Facebook, Apple, Netflix, Google)

We've seen this before:

There was once a king in India who was a big chess enthusiast and had the habit of challenging wise visitors to a game of chess. One day a traveling sage was challenged by the king. The sage having played this game all his life all the time with people all over the world gladly accepted the Kings challenge. To motivate his opponent the king offered any reward that the sage could name. The sage modestly asked just for a few grains of rice in the following manner: the king was to put a single grain of rice on the first chess square and double it on every consequent one. The king accepted the sage’s request.

https://purposefocuscommitment.medium.com/the-rice-and-the-chess-board-story-the-power-of-exponential-growth-b1f7bd70aaca
Reduce the number of squares on the chess board from 64 to 25 to represent the 25 years.
Reduce the multiplier from 2x to the inflation rate (e.g. 1.025 for 2.5%)
Instead of starting with 1 grain of rice, start with $40K scrip
Standard mathematical technique for solving problems - transform them to something already solved.
Even if inflation averages 2.5%/year, there's always sequence of "return" risk. You might have all the inflation in year one, in which case you'd need 25 years x $40K per year x (1.025)^25, or all the inflation could be just as Joe reaches the end of his estimated lifetime. Which brings us to longevity risk.

“Stock investors may be feeling a tad jealous of their crypto cousins. Bitcoin, the largest crypto-currency, blew past its record high this past week, reaching new heights around $67,000, up 50% since Sept. 30. Bulls now see a path to $100,000.”
“After years of false starts, a Bitcoin-futures-based ETF, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy (ticker: BITO), debuted on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange. It racked up a record $1.1 billion in assets in two days, but it already has company. Another futures ETF, the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy (BTF), launched on the Nasdaq on Friday. Other futures ETFs that could win approval soon include funds from VanEck, AdvisorShares, and ARK 21Shares. The flurry of futures ETFs may be a turning point.”
Barron’s October 25, 2021

Your post helps tremendously in understanding what you're thinking about. Much appreciated.
My head is full of loosely connected thoughts that would take too long to organize coherently now, so I'll just toss out a few for the moment.
I like BLS's idea of separating out expenses from investments. Just as we don't include stock prices in inflation, OER is designed to exclude the cost of a home as an appreciating asset. At the same time, it attempts to count the costs (including operating costs) of the shelter aspect of one's home. While we can debate how well it accomplishes this, it is a reasonable approach.
Side note: my property taxes are based not on the selling price of comps, but on the theoretical value of my home as rental property. Take market rental rates, and use current interest rates to work backward to compute the "correct" assessment, regardless of what my home would currently fetch. This has got its own set of problems, but serves to show that using OER is not limited to CPI calculations.
Side note: the fact that homes can be viewed as a potentially appreciating asset is something that differentiates homes from vehicles. Except for antique vehicles, which BLS explicitly excludes from the CPI. They're viewed as pure investments, not transportation.
Similar to homes, education has attributes of daily expenses and attributes of an investment. (Perhaps I've been listening too much to Build Back Better's expression of education as an investment in human "capital.") Thinking about this it seems that the two categories of expenses could be treated similarly.
Amortizing the expenses over several years, as a homeowner does with monthly PITI payments could be a reasonable way to incorporate home prices directly and smooth some of the price volatility. Just as students wind up carrying college debt for many years.
Not only do different people experience inflation differently, but inflation on the national level can be different from the way individuals experience inflation. For example, last year the cost (premium) of Medicare insurance went up $3.90, but it should have gone up roughly four times that to cover projected expenses.
From a national perspective medical costs rose by some given amount; it didn't matter who was paying the increase. However, as a result of the subsidy, individuals experienced a lower rate of inflation in 2021. Of course now that this subsidy has expired, Medicare recipients feel like there's a higher rate of inflation. This, despite medical costs having stabilized from a national perspective.
Regarding Forsyth, I haven't really read him. But I did read the cited Carson blog that has much of the same flavor. I tend to tune out things like that because people are good at complaining about perceived wrongs, but tend to be silent when the same measures work out in their favor.
For example, the Senior Citizens League is very good at banging the drum for using CPI-E as opposed to CPI-W for COLAs. But we haven't heard a peep from them this year, not since CPI-W came out a percent higher than CPI-E. What will Fosyth say the next time housing prices fall?

I keep getting money building up in my bank account.

That’s quite common. The experts say we’re still flush with cash. A lot of spending was curtailed during the worst of Covid. Folks travelled little. And with less travel - plus working from home - new wardrobes weren’t necessary. Fuel was cheap.(Crude went below 0). People drove much less. I put off some interior maintenance for almost a year - not wanting workers in the house before being vaccinated.
That cash is beginning to flood back into the economy. I’d like to say I invested mine like @Anna did - but, instead, it went into some important home upgrades this summer (an investment of sorts I guess). While the costs were high, I suspect they were much lower than they will be in 3, 5 or 10 years time.