My situation is a little unusual. Normally I'd wait as long as possible to take SS especially since my wife is ten years younger than me. However, we have many children and the youngest two are still teenagers (13 and 16). I'll start taking SS at full retirement age (66 + 2 months for me) because I can collect some money on their behalf until they hit 18 or graduate high school. Has anyone else actually done this? I've only read about the option. Later this year I'll get serious about researching it. I plan to sign up this winter.

Bottom line: I [Ed Slott] believe this will be corrected by IRS to show that the 10-year rule means no required distributions until the end of the 10-year post-death period, and no RMDs will be required for years one through nine. However, RMDs can be taken voluntarily by beneficiaries at any time within the 10 years based on their own tax situations.

I keep looking through the Pub to find a statement that one must take RMDs.
p. 12 says that "if the deceased beneficiary was an eligible beneficiary, any remaining balance in the account must be distributed within 10 years of the beneficiary's date." The Pub then gives an example of how you might use standard RMD calculations for the first nine years without ever saying that you must draw money out this way. This is the example that Ed Slott refers to.
Other Pub writing says more even clearly that you must either start taking RMDs or take full distributions under the 10 year rule:
p. 10: "[Death in 2020] Any ... individual beneficiary of an owner who dies before the required beginning date ... must start taking distributions in 2021 based on his or her life expectancy (or elect to fully distribute the account under the 10 year rule by the end of 2030).
p. 11: "The terms of most IRA plans require individual designated beneficiaries, who are eligible designated beneficiaries, to take required minimum distributions using the life expectancy rules (explained later) unless such beneficiaries elect to take distributions using the ... 10-year rule.
Finally, worth noting is that IRS Pubs are just writing for the masses. They are not regs or legal interpretations of regs. (Though often, the IRS just carbon copies the regs into the Pubs, which defeats the purpose of making the regs clear to the general public.) As Slott notes, "IRS has not yet released official regulations." So it's absurd to think that this Pub could be presenting the IRS interpretation of regs that don't yet exist.
In the immortal words of Douglas Adams:

I believe that all the funds listed above have strong/aggressive growth orientation. Growth was beating value for many years. If the trend changes (because of reopening), value may beat growth for many years. If you have money in growth AND value, then as an investor you may just wait. If you have money only in growth, I would add value (or replace some part of growth by value) and wait. I do not pretend that this is a wise advice, just the standard diversification/rebalancing argument.

“Professional money managers are turning up the heat on Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. California Public Employees’ Retirement System and Neuberger Berman have demanded that the Omaha, Neb., conglomerate bring in new directors and provide more disclosures on climate risks and executive pay.
Leading up to Berkshire’s annual meeting on Saturday, proxy advisers Glass Lewis & Co. and Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. have recommended that investors withhold their votes for board members. While many of the complaints aren’t new and none of the shareholder proposals are likely to pass, Berkshire’s lackluster returns in recent years have made it more vulnerable to criticism amid a growing wave of investor interest in corporate sustainability issues …
Under Mr. Buffett’s leadership, the firm boasts 20% compounded annualized gains from 1965 to 2020, outperforming the S&P 500’s 10.2% gains including dividends during the period. Berkshire’s total returns over the past three- and five-year periods were 12% and 14%, respectively, compared with the index’s 19% and 18%.”
Link: The Wall Street Journal - May 1, 2021
Lengthy article. While I’ve excerpted portions relevant to Berkshire’s investment returns, other areas of contention are also addressed, including Berkshire’s commitment to fighting climate change,

The 10 year RMD rule for non-spousal inherited IRA's was part of the legislation in the Secure Act of early 2020. This rule is now subject to a language interpretation and also will have a new public comment period to formalize "the rule".
The below article provides some information; as well as a link to the current IRS Pub. 590-B.
I will attempt to keep track of this rule change going forward, but solicit others here to provide information as discovered.
Note example: For our house, part of a written plan instruction was that: One has 10 years to "take" all of the monies from a non-spousal inherited IRA; meaning that all of the money could taken in year 10, if desired. The "new" rule meaning would require RMD's for years 1-9, with the balance taken in year 10.

Secure Act, Ed Slott article
Regards,
Catch

@zigster M* works well for your purpose. I’m almost exclusively in funds vs. individual stocks but when I’m tempted...I always check Yahoo conversation boards (old habit) as well. From a newish subscriber...MFO Premium is the best value and insight for funds and I often wish I found it many years ago - this from a long time Valueline subscriber. Agree with what @Crash said above and I also use Fido.

@JonGaltIII
PDFDX is sketchy at best. The fund has been around for many years. It previously invested in micro cap stocks; now it invests in micro cap health & biotech companies.
Caveat Emptor...

Well stated, except for the assertion that "mutual funds with a load are ... not always going to show lower fee-adjusted long term performance than a comparable ETF or mutual fund without a load [and any load fund underperformance] can disappear the longer the mutual fund is held.
If one replaces "comparable" with "identical except for load", aka "all else being equal", then the long term performance (including effect of the load) must be lower for the load shares, and this difference does not disappear over time.
The first assertion, that loaded funds could perform better over the long term even accounting for load is just the usual handwaving that fund A might do better than fund B even though fund A costs more. Sure, but not likely, especially if one assume "all else is equal."
The second assertion that the underperformance of loaded funds gradually diminishes over time is a misrepresentation of arithmetic. If you buy a fund with a 5% load, then, all else being equal, it will underperform a comparable fund by 5% over the first year, but just 1%/year over five years. It's not that it is catching up, it's just that you're amortizing the underperformance over more years. After 5 years, you've still got 5% less money with the load fund; after 10 years you've still got 5% less, and so on.

Tom Madell article:

-Vanguard index mutual funds and comparable Vanguard ETFs are merely different classes of the exact same fund. Their returns are virtually identical while they have had no capital gain distributions over the last five years. Therefore, there is no particular performance superiority of one over the other.
-An ETF will not always outperform a nearly matched mutual fund. Some ETFs can still sport higher expense ratios than comparable mutual funds. And managed, as opposed to indexed mutual funds, can tilt their portfolios as to sometimes achieve a better return than an ETF which adheres strictly to its benchmark index.
-Mutual funds with a load are typically, but not always, going to show lower fee-adjusted long-term performance than a comparable ETF or mutual fund without a load, although that difference can disappear the longer the mutual fund is held.
-Nowadays, many mutual funds have very low expense ratios, especially non-managed funds.
-Be leery of performance tables that do not take into account a load's effect on performance.
-When comparing an ETF with a mutual fund, investors should look beyond just the conventional fund vs. ETF label. Some apparently similar investment vehicles, even passively managed funds, may have important differences from each other which might favor one investing in a mutual fund, or vice versa.

not-simple-truths-etf-vs-mutual-fund-performance
Screeners:
https://etfdb.com/screener/
https://mutualfunds.com/screener/#etfs-anchor
https://mutualfunds.com/screener/

fwiw, I myself thought BO's Nobeling to be silly and a lowering of the prize, and many suspected he thought so as well (there was writing about it), although the notional reason had to do w weapons nonproliferation and Midwest reachout, at the time anyway.
Why they went ahead and voted it, yeah, probably what LB says, the first AA prez and such.
But FD1k: why, since we are to admire and maybe trust your constantly impressive investing and esp bond-fund-choosing success, do you make such basic historical mistakes?? Why do you throw banana peels in front of your promotional path by not knowing the years and events when these really important things happened?

@FD1000 Again your timing is off. Obama won the Nobel in 2009. Putin annexed Crimea in 2014. Gadaffi died in 2011. And the stuff about Isis is hogwash and occurred in 2011. Obama won the award because despite America still being an incredibly racist nation some 400 years after the first slave ships arrived, he overcame great odds to become the first African American president. That by itself is an incredible accomplishment. Even today given some of the asinine comments I read online about him, I find it amazing he won--twice.

My current thinking is to wait until age 70. That gives me 5 years (age 65 to age 70) to convert tIRA money to a Roth without having SS push me into a higher tax bracket. (Before age 65, my conversions are limited because I am on ACA).
As Kings53 said - 15% of your SS will be tax free, so it pays to make that as big as possible. For some, that tax free portion will be higher.
As one data point, my FIL waited until 70 to collect - he’s 97 now. His checks haven’t kept up with his personal inflation but we are certainly glad they are not 30% less.

Just moved into a new home over the past month...when going thru my "stuff", I found notebooks and literature from seminars, presentations from industry conferences from the mid-90's. I worked leading an OEM sales team selling to the Semicon "tool" mfg's (a tool might be a 200 or 300mm CMP machine) such as Applied Materials etc. I distinctly remember in the late 90's parking 3 blocks down a side street when visiting AMATs corp site in Sunnyvale as there was no parking in their lots, too full, too busy. Tons of highly paid, talented associates working there.
Absolutely amazing to me when I looked where the tools were being sold and where the market share was then compared to now. Crazy how much semi business has been sent overseas in the last 20-25 years. Absolutely crazy. No really. It is insane!
And now we sell weed, raise taxes, build casinos, hand out fee monies because all the good jobs were exported. Dang!
Baseball Fan

Greetings,
Curious as to the class' life experience in selling a home. Wife and I are getting ready to sell our wonderful home after 25 years...
Have found out that real estate agents are generally not worth their comission fees. None of them will help you find a home unless your budget is over a 1.5M. Then they will chauffeur you house to house to look at them. Otherwise you surf the net or they take your email and put you on an auto email with all the beat up overpriced crap homes on them, waste your time and then they unlock the door for you and walk thru the home like they are experts. Sheet.
They have this game they play, called comps. Called the shall we say Orange Fish agent, showed me chart how he gets 99% of ask price then tells me based on comps your house is worth xyz. I say really. You can't find another home for sale in my neighborhood of over 300 homes. The one's that have sold have sold in a day and sold for $10k over ask. What do I care what a home sold for 10 months ago. Can you sell me SPY ETF at the price it was 10 months ago? No, then why the freak should I go to market with an old price? I told him no wonder you gave me the 99% figure. You are selling me on my selling my home under it's current value so you can sell my house in a weekend and move onto another sucker. Then he starts telling me what I should fix up on my home as with an FHA loan you will get a high degree of inspection, don't want to fail that. Told him go freak himself, I'm not going to add onto this housing charade by selling my home to someone who can only put 3.5% down and leverage himself to the hilt. Told him this conversation is over, you can leave now, don't let the door hit you on the arse on the way out, bye bye.
What has been your experience and apologies if this should be in off topic etc
Baseball Fan

Retired @53 and took it @63. I didn't need it but took it because tomorrow is not guaranteed. A bird in the hand yada yada yada... Unfortunately I know someone who only benefited 2 years. I'm glad they took it asap.

I sometimes imagine the Cayman Islands as just one big UPS Store with shiny walls of P.O. boxes for the tax shelters and a few palm trees in the background. This is fascinating reading: https://taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Tax_Notes_0707_Lessons_from_the_war_on_tax_havens.pdf
If the U.S. truly turned against these havens--and it had in the past briefly--I doubt there would be anything they could do to stop us. The Cayman Islands has a population of 66,350 and anywhere between $1.5 trillion and $1.9 trillion custodied there, depending on which estimate you believe. But the U.S. never will, especially with Biden who represented America's biggest haven for other countries--Delaware--for many years.

@hank -- First Eagle does value. Value has gotten spanked for a long time now, so not sure PRPFX is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
That said, in looking for a place to put some $ (I've held First Eagle Global in the past), I'm taken aback by it's volatility. I don't mind trailing markets in go-go years, but the FESGX has seemed to be more volatile than promised.

@Sven et al
The initial reports began about one month ago, but this BBC story is a recent update.
Having lived in Taiwan (Taipei area) for 2 years, I continue to follow a variety of news about the country, over the years.
ADD: Phoenix plant Taiwan Semi
Not a fix for the current circumstance, but........

A passing question about inflation: was it not "through the roof" immediately after WW II? I have no idea, just conjecture. The total cost of the war was an absurd, uncountable amount. But we survived, and I think we are better off without swastikas flying overhead, or Tojo in charge, over in the other direction. Sadly, millions had to suffer under uncle Joe Stalin for years and years, afterwards.

A passing question about inflation: was it not "through the roof" immediately after WW II? I have no idea, just conjecture. The total cost of the war was an absurd, uncountable amount. But we survived, and I think we are better off without swastikas flying overhead, or Tojo in charge, over in the other direction. Sadly, millions had to suffer under uncle Joe Stalin for years and years, afterwards.