Decide for me: Investment matters

[ohgillian]

I think I'm being dumb here.

I have a brokerage account with perhaps $40k of stocks in it, which have perhaps $20k of (very long term) capital gains.

I am doing exactly nothing with this account. I don't buy and sell. I don't manage it. I have owned some of these stocks for 20 years.

I want to turn it over to my (salaried) financial planners to manage. But doing so means sucking up and paying perhaps $3k in capital gains taxes, b/c they will want to clean house and invest it in things that make sense.

I think I should do it, and just have them reserve $3k in cash out of the proceeds that I can use in April to pay the tax. But $3k just sounds like, "omg, I'm deciding to spend three thousand dollars!!!" I think in the long-run this move would pay off, but I can't get past the hurdle of thinking of "spending" that much money.

This is dumb. Tell me to suck it up?

[ohgillian]

Oct 16, 2012 10:23:50 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Do you have losses to sell as well to offset the gains?

Nope. It's all gains. (I know: woe is me.)

[Deleted]

I would do it now before they increase the tax on long term capital gains.

[ohgillian]

Oct 16, 2012 10:30:31 GMT -5 d0ri said:

I would do it now before they increase the tax on long term capital gains.

Thanks. I really know I should do it, but DH isn't at all involved in these types of decisions and I just needed someone else to tell me my gut was right.

[SJ]

I don't see a compelling reason NOT to do this, especially if you already have and trust a financial adviser.

It is totally reasonable to ask the FA to hold back enough of the proceeds to pay the tax bill- we assume that we will be paying taxes on the capital gains we accumulate in most of our accounts.

[ohgillian]

Done! Thanks again.

[kaylie]

Do you make any charitable contributions? If so, you might want to consider donating stock instead of cash this year or next. You can donate appreciated stock, claim the full deduction on your return and not pay the capital gains. It might help offset the tax bill if you had planned on making donations anyway.