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birb_cromble  11d ago (text post)   954 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread - 2026-08-08

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I have a portion of my portfolio that I would like to be highly liquid and effectively zero risk. Currently, my approach is to buy Blackrock money market ETFs, but these present a problem in that a) my broker does not have good tools for daily cash sweeps, so getting compounding interest requires too much micro-managing and b) the gains are subject to income tax.

Do you guys have approaches to the risk-free parts of your portfolios that are brainless and optimized? I'd strongly, strongly prefer for it to be accessible through Merrill so I can keep high status.

Can't get around b, but you can at least hold most of your funds in a state-tax-advantaged fund like TTTXX/GABXX/SGOV/USFR (or a state-specific fund if it exists). You can put the remainder in a HYSA which will not be tax efficient but at least supports ACH transfers. You could also use a vanguard brokerage account with VMFXX as the settlement fund. You can do something similar with SPAXX at fidelity but you lose around 20 bp ATY due to their higher expense ratio. If you want to stay at ML, then buy TTTXX or a tras

Another approach is to set up an M1 account with a few grand in the settlement account and the rest set to smart transfer to USFR/SGOV. You can keep a larger percent of your balance in ETFs compared to the above strategy. Downside is that M1 will charge you a $3/mo fee if you even go below $10k, and M1 may go under at some point and it may take a while for you to access your funds.

Aside from M1, no one offers an automatic investment service because everyone wants to make money off your otherwise-fallow cash.

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