Advice For Setting Up Vanguard

[MWorkman]

Just a general question. I've had a Vanguard account for about 6 months now, thanks to the advice of my now retired financial advisor uncle who travels and is also now hard to get ahold of. Being That I'm officially working towards Badassity I was wondering if I should have my wife open up a Vanguard account and transfer some of her cash/investments there (She doesn't have too much yet) or should we just use mine., or does it matter. Sorry question mark button doesn't work on this compy LOL

Matt

[sherr]

If you're just talking about a regular taxable investment account than it doesn't matter at all and one account for both of you is fine. Maybe in the case of a divorce or something it might make a difference, I don't really know, but I would expect it wouldn't.

If however you're talking about having set up an IRA (Individual Retirement Account) with Vanguard and you are currently contributing the maximum to the one you have then it makes sense for you to set up a separate one for your wife. The yearly maximum for contributing to an IRA is currently $5,500, but it's an *Individual* retirement account so you can both have one, which doubles the amount your household can contribute to $11,000.

[nordlead]

It depends on what you want to do.

I have a vanguard login, and my wife has a vanguard login. Because we both have vanguard IRA accounts (we can each contribute $5.5k) and need our own login for them.

If I was just opening a taxable account I would open a joint taxable account under my Vanguard login and be done with it. I don't split hairs over my money vs her money. Doing so would be unfair to my wife who stays home with the kids. If you need to keep your money separate, then the wife would need her own login and own taxable account.

[Gen Y Finance Journey]

I actually have a related question. I'm getting married next month and I have an investment account with Vanguard but my soon-to-be-husband does not have any investments outside of his retirement accounts. The plan is to add him as an joint owner of my account, but once I do that, will we have to file our taxes jointly? We haven't discussed yet whether we'll file separately or jointly for 2014, but in 2015 we will certainly file jointly. Should I wait until next year to add him to the account, or will it not be a problem adding him in 2014?

[MWorkman]

Thanks, I have an Individual Retirement account set up and will likely hit the max this year and the rest of money in a few index funds so may end up setting an IRA up for her as well. She has one with American Funds but I'm sure Vanguards fees are much lower.

[nordlead]

I actually have a related question. I'm getting married next month and I have an investment account with Vanguard but my soon-to-be-husband does not have any investments outside of his retirement accounts. The plan is to add him as an joint owner of my account, but once I do that, will we have to file our taxes jointly? We haven't discussed yet whether we'll file separately or jointly for 2014, but in 2015 we will certainly file jointly. Should I wait until next year to add him to the account, or will it not be a problem adding him in 2014?

no having a joint account doesn't mean you have to file taxes jointly. I know that much, but not enough to advise more. Personally (since I don't live in a community property state) I'd just keep the account separate if you intend to file separately.

There are VERY few reasons to file separate when married (mostly when you make roughly the same and you have miscellaneous deductions where expenses must exceed a % of your AGI like medical expenses). So, it is probably a useless question as filing joint will mean less taxes and if you file joint it doesn't matter who is on the account. You could use a program like TaxAct or TurboTax to run a fake 2013 tax return married jointly and then use the software to evaluate a married filing separate return. It'll give you an idea of what you'll do in 2014.