Hello, I have a bit of a complicated situation and haven't had any experience handling large amounts of money, so I'd love some advice on how to be smart with it!
The year I graduated from highschool my grandmother passed away and left me around 20K (CAN) to help with educational costs. I was unable to access the funds at the time because she specified that it should not be available to me until I turned 21. I live in the US so I allowed my parents to convert it for me and suggested we invest it, not really understanding how it worked, just that doing so would allow the money to potentially grow while I waited to use it (I don't remember signing any paperwork allowing them to handle it on my behalf or what the language was in the will). So my dad bought some company stock with it and it's been sitting in a joint Scottrade account since.
Currently I am 22. Two years ago I learned that my dad did some terrible things that I won't get into right now, but the important part is I haven't spoken to him since, stopped accepting his financial support for school and dropped out. When I turned 21 a year ago I requested access to the account through my mom so I could take community college classes. He tried to open a new account for me (instead of giving me the login information as I requested) and not transfer a large chunk of the stocks, which had grown to a value of almost 30K USD, claiming I owed him money for school based off a vague agreement we made when I graduated HS. However, I recently found out I could access the joint account (and all the funds) just by calling Scottrade and confirming my identity. Hitting myself for not realizing that and thinking I had to go through him, but I really had no idea how the whole thing worked. (Still don't!)
My plan is to open a new account and transfer all the stocks as quickly as possible. If you didn't know, Scottrade is merging with TD Ameritrade and isn't allowing any new accounts to be opened at the moment, so I have to wait until March to pull that off. For now I changed the email and address on the account so hopefully he won't notice I sold some to pay for my classes this semester, or any other changes to the account.
My main questions are: * How to I pay takes on the money I made by selling some of the stock? (it was about 2,500 to cover my courses I took out a week or two after the new year. I know it falls under capital gains but I'm not sure what form that is. From what I've read however, if I stay in my current income bracket (it's the lowest one) this year I won't owe any tax on capital gains. Please correct me if I'm wrong!) * Once I have all the stocks in my own account, what should I do with them? My plan is to use them to pay for school, as my grandma intended. I don't want to take them all out at once and have to pay a truckload of taxes, however. Right now they're all in my dad's company. Conventional wisdom tells me I should diversify, my gut wants me to pull it all out, put it in a savings acct and pay the tax just to keep it safe.
I know this is a novel, so big thanks to anyone who read it all. Also, please note I am not asking for legal advice in regards to the will/my dad's ownership of the funds! I will be making a separate post in /r/legaladvice for that.
Submitted January 25, 2018 at 08:20PM by bekamarie7 http://ift.tt/2DPUlsj
