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birb_cromble  3d ago (text post)   656 thread views

Qeekly Finance Thread - 2026-09-26

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

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I maintain a twelve month emergency fund, and I recently got over my various trauma-responses to the point where I was able to roll half of that into a six-month CD that's offering 80bps over my HYSA.

While I know I could probably do "better", sometimes you have to have to take the small victories.

If anybody out there is reading this, don't get so hung up on the difference between"better" and "perfect" that you do nothing at all. Every improvement is a stepping stone.

You could buy BOXX which probably pays as much or more than your CD.

The big advantage is that you don't get "interest" which is taxed as normal income. You get "capital gains" which are only paid when you sell. If it's more than a year, the capital gains are taxed at a max of 20% (23.8% for high income Obama tax victims).

You also aren't locked in like you are with a bank. You can sell anytime with virtually zero trading cost.

If you're curious for how this works under the hood, ask AI. It takes awhile to explain.

Edit: Probably don't buy BOXX right now

I don't trust the IRS not to reclassify BOXX. The tax treatment is using some tricks that I don't think will stand up to regulatory scrutiny.

Possibly but if so I wouldn't expect the unwind to be painful.

That said, I don't think they will, at least not now. Are they going to reclassify futures trades too? Because there are already companies that will do box trades in your Schwab or other brokerage for a small fee. And with AI, it's going to get very easy to do that.

So is it rules for thee but not for me. Box spreads are democratizing finance in a cool way. I thought about buying my house with box spreads.

Edit: I can understand your concern if you're just looking for "emergency funds". I'm mostly doing cash management with a fully invested portfolio that I can sell from any time I need cash and don't have an emergency fund. But for a more normal situation, CD's are probably fine. The tax implications are not as stark either.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-26-62.pdf from today seems relevant; may be applied retroactively.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-26-62.pdf

I saw that on another forum I visited. Crazy timing. They heard that regular people were using a strategy previously reserved for the elite and had to immediately stamp it down.

I still doubt a painful unwind, but it probably makes sense to steer clear of BOXX since the juice isn't worth the squeeze if you have to file an extra tax form somewhere.

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