Investing - No Idea What I'm Doing - Taking money OUT?

[nessa]

Hey all. I'm super new at this investing stuff. I have a 401k through work (set & forget) and a Vanguard account that is a Traditional IRA (also set to max this year & forget) and an I Bond account (just opened it this month - its for my money-needed-when-I-die fund so I'm only going to be adding to it as I can).

My question is: what happens when I move money OUT of an investment account? Like if the balance goes way up (LOL ITS BEEN A BIG RED LINE DOWNWARD SINCE I OPENED IT) and I want to shift some of that money into another investment account.

Is that when I get capital gains, or extra taxed or something?

Most of what I have is not to be touched, but I am trying to figure out how people move money around their accounts and I see a lot of talk online about "tax loss harvesting" and "wash sales" and I have no idea what any of this is LOL

[MDM]

Hey all. I'm super new at this investing stuff.

You may already know some of the things below, but see
the 'Basic Terms' tab of  the case study spreadsheet,
Getting started - Bogleheads,
Asset allocation
Investment Order and Prioritizing investments,
Stock Series, and
www.etf.com/docs/IfYouCan.pdf
for good introductory material.

Tax loss harvesting - Bogleheads provides a good overview of that topic, similar to many other pages in that wiki.

After digesting all the above - what questions remain, and what new ones do you have? :)

If you want to go into details, see How To: Write a "Case Study" Topic.

[ixtap]

According to what you have told us, you only have two basic kinds of accounts: traditional (tax deferred) retirement accounts and ibonds.

The traditional retirement accounts have limitations on being moved around. You pay ordinary income taxes on these when you withdraw or convert to Roth.

The I bonds you will owe taxes when you withdraw or when they reach maturity (which, I guess technically is also when you withdraw...).

All the other things you mentioned apply to taxable (no special retirement tax status) investment accounts. You did not mention holding this kind of account.

[lutorm]

To be clear, you need to distinguish between moving the money out of the investment account, e.g. the IRA/401k, and changing what investments the account is holding (like changing from one mutual fund to another). The latter are not taxable for retirement accounts, but for the former there are restrictions as ixtap said.