We're about to redeem a large chunk of money from our taxable investment money to put a down payment on a house.
Funds are in VTSAX, VIPSX, and VFIIX. Some have unrealized short term and long term gains, some have unrealized short and long term losses.
Is there a general strategy for choosing a cost basis accounting method to minimize taxes? Can I elect to sell only older shares to avoid the short term capital gains tax rate? Do I sell some from the losing funds and some from the gaining funds to try to cancel out as much as possible? Do I want to sell shares that are more than a year old, but that have the minimum amount of unrealized gains?
I've never sold anything from our taxable account before, as we're firmly in the wealth-building phase and just buy buy buy, so I'm not sure how this works.
Has anyone tried to just call Vanguard directly to ask these sorts of questions?