I was just looking at what taxes I would pay on this move. I invested a total of $17,100 into a handful of American Funds. $2,400 in 2004, $14,600 in 2006, and $100 in 2012.
For simplicity purposes, I'm going to say I invested all of it in 2004. It's grown to $38,661 as of today. That's 226.1% more than what I put in. I was reinvesting all capital gain distributions and dividends, which added about 11K to my basis. If I cashed out today, I'd have 10K of capital gains on which to tax, and if I can stay in the 15% income tax bracket (very likely), I'd pay 0% tax on this 10K.
This linked illustration of VTSAX shows that over 10 years, a 10K investment would have grown to $22,443, so the balance would be 224.3% more than what was put it. Can anyone see if this illustration assumes reinvestment of dividends?
https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0585&FundIntExt=INTIt's a pretty marginal difference, but I wonder if this doesn't mean I should just leave my money where it is. Or maybe just sell and re-buy American Funds (I pay no sales charge) to take advantage of currently low capital gains taxes.
Thoughts?