Now that we're approaching 31 days before the last trading day of 2018, it's a good time to examine and/or temporarily pause/modify any automated investments to avoid triggering the wash sale rule.
If you aren't familiar with TLH, it's (at a high level) the practice of selling losing investments as a way of effectively decreasing your net taxable 2018 income come next April. The wash sale rule, among other things, disallows harvesting of losses if you bought a substantially similar investment within 30 days of the sale (in either direction). Thus, if at the end of this year you want to sell some lots that were purchased automatically, you would want to ensure no other automated purchases occur within 30 days of December 31.
Here's a gentle introduction to help you out (targeted mostly at Vanguard, but applicable to others, too): https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=172568
Submitted November 29, 2018 at 02:23PM by DESTWOY https://ift.tt/2RlVlb3
