Bogleheads.org

After seeing this morning's futures forecast of -11 and -21 for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ, I was expecting the US markets to open down 2-3% today. That didn't materialize and markets are back to about even (not saying it still couldn't take a dive later today). I guess the losses in Japan will make...

jstar32 wrote:That was one of the questions I had about the chart - it doesn't show the compounding negative effect of that expense ratio, correct?

Incorrect. Morningstar charts show the performance after all fund fees (ER and trading costs).

Another thing to keep in mind is employees often hate when they can't look up a fund's performance in something like Morningstar. The SSgA funds have this problem. It is weird that the Vanguard funds in Plan A don't have the actual ERs of the corresponding Vanguard funds. They are close, but off by ...

jerome99 wrote:If all my international exposure is vanguard total intl index am I getting the appropriate intl small and mid cap allocation?

Yes.

You must have had a good reason for getting out in 2008. What has changed that has made you decide you need to get back in? It is hard to recommend something to you without understanding the reason for such a drastic move.

Also, what did your asset allocation look like before you got out.

Each box represents the percent of your portfolio (with rounding error) that falls into each of the following categories. LgValue LgBlend LgGrowth MdValue MdBlend MdGrowth SmValue SmBlend SmGrowth So, based on your break down, you have more than 15% in small and medium (5+5+6+2+2+2=22). Be aware tha...

1. Yes, 80/20 is reasonable for someone your age. 2. I don't see a reason for you to move only 70% of your portfolio to BrokerageLink. Either move all of your 2050 and Capital preservation money there or none. There is no reason for you to keep to 2050 and Cap Pres. funds if you are going to set up ...

Funny, I just got done reading this post on TLH before I came here: http://www.kitces.com/blog/archives/509-Is-Capital-Loss-Harvesting-Overvalued.html It has a lot of good information and can explain when it is of value and when it isn't. Personally, based on reading it, I don't think I'll be doing ...

I like that the moderators add the additional information to the thread titles to help us know which threads we should check out and which we might want to skip. There are a lot of doctors on this board and by adding it to the title it helps pull in those that can give them relevant advice. It also ...

I'm not sure what you are trying to get at here, but hopefully this will help. If you move to a new state, you are a resident of that sate and you'll pay state taxes in that new state (if they have them). California won't have any rights to collect taxes from you. Your company doesn't have to do any...

The point of a CD ladder is to keep your money earning the most it can while still allowing you access to some of the money if need be. Since CDs normally, have a penalty for breaking them, you typically don't want to put all your money into a single CD. For example, lets say you have $100K to inves...

I only missed one; the question about a company going bankrupt. The way the question was worded, I figured that the company would stay in business. I figured the bond debt would be wiped just like any other creditor debt. I figured the stock holders would still own the stock, even though the price m...

If it makes you feel any better, it happens with mutual funds too; the phenomenon isn't isolated to ETFs.

Do you mind sharing with us what these other investments are that return you 8%? Is that 8% guaranteed?

Its a little late now, but the question could have been even better worded by adding 'during your contribution years'.

The other way around this is to use the 401k's auto rebalance function. Many 401ks these days can rebalance for you on a schedule you choose. You could just use that feature. Since it is handled by the 401k plan, you shouldn't be locked out of anything.

Assuming: all income is from W-2, flat 6% state tax with no exemption or deductions, four exemptions, standard deduction on federal income taxes, no child tax credit, no contributions to 401(k), no HSA, no cafeteria plan, no IRA, no student loan interest, etc.: $136,131.61 $136,131.61 - $7,049.40 (...

I'm not sure how many people here also follow the Long-Term Returns blog, but on April 1st they posted a nice asset allocation spreadsheet for people to make a copy off. Although I already had my own, this one was much simpler and it seems good for people with multiple funds spread across multiple a...

I haven't had this happen with Vanguard yet, but Fidelity has called me in the past. It was a useful conversation and it prompted me to get rid of a bunch of funds that I should have gotten rid of a long time ago. As long as you understood they called you and you don't give them any information, the...

Sure. I do it with my target date fund in taxable. Before I came here and learned about tax efficient placement, I had opened a target date fund in my taxable account. Once I learned how poor of an idea that was, I redirected my capital gains and dividends from it into new tax efficient funds I set ...

Folow-up question - is anything and everything out of China/India considered EM? I haven't considered those terms interchangeable, but perhaps that's the common definition? Yes. Here is a link that breaks down what various entities consider to be Emerging Markets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerg...

mephistophles wrote:Probably keep the first one and get rid of the others. Buy term for present and expected famlly insurance needs.
ole meph

Care to share how you came to that conclusion? I'm assuming there is math behind it somewhere. I'd be interested to see how you figured it out.

I don't see a Vanguard fund called US Equity Index. What is the ticker symbol you are researching?

Do you have corporate VPN access? That is what I use whenever I'm in a hotel. Most well set up companies even force you to VPN in to use corporate WiFi. Once you are VPN'd in, all your traffic is encrypted and you don't need to worry about a thing (other than your laptop being compromised, but then ...

Did you receive it via the secure message facility on their site, or to your normal email address where phishing attacks can come in? Has it been a year since you joined them?

Or, are you not supposed to pronounce it and instead say 'assets under management'?

MY credit union also just lowered their CD rates by approximately the same amount. We had some of the best 5 years CDs in the nation at 2.1x%. I had three CDs maturing in a three week span. The first one I managed to get the old rates on, but I wanted to combine and split the other two CDs. I've bee...

SpaceSashimi wrote:Just to have a concise sum up, admiral shares are more or less a class (with a low ER ratio) that vanguard rewards you with when you are investing a certain amount of cash with them?

Correct.

There really is no difference between the Admiral and Investor class mutual funds. They are the same fund. What is different is the amount each person is charged for owning that fund. You can kind of think of it this way. If you have a resource you want to sell people, the more people you have buyin...

It doesn't sound like you need whole life at all, unless you are leaving out some facts. Is your son in any way disabled? Will he need care for the rest of his life, or just through the college years? Who will care for your son if you pass? All you probably need right now is enough term life to cove...

Your formula appears to be correct per Rick Ferri's free book Serious Money. Since discovering his book (and the appendix on calculating your return) late last year, I decided to try and calculate my Association of Investment Management and Research (AIMR) performance every month this year so I coul...

Why would they? Its not like it is income. It is money you earned last year and already paid taxes on. They are just giving it back to you because you gave them too much.

It would help by you first telling us how you calculate your return; give an example if possible. Morningstar YTD numbers can't be trusted for several hours after market close. Sometimes, they are real slow in getting the numbers updated. If I question their numbers, I always check right before the ...

Today's dollars.

Here is a breakdown of various US/International portfolios for comparison. All ratios were done with Vanguard Total Stock/International Market Admiral shares (VTSAX/VTIAX). 100u 24 24 25 06 06 07 03 03 03 90u/10i 24 24 24 06 06 06 03 03 03 80u/20i 24 25 24 06 06 06 03 02 03 75u/25i 25 25 24 06 06 06...

Stocks
18 19 27
09 07 08
05 05 02

Bonds
00 15 00
00 00 00
00 12 00
Unclassified: 73.38% (I have a large holding of PTTRX which for some reason M* doesn't classify)


@empb,

Now that is some small/value tilt you've got going on there. Actually, I think your portfolio has fallen over.

It sounds to me like a teacher's union (negotiated) 'equal' pay and benefits clause. Why an annuity? Probably because teacher finance vehicles seem to be dominated by insurance companies.

A word of caution about tankless systems. We recently had one installed. Tankless systems need a higher gas pressure than tank systems, so the install costs will be higher. They have to run new lines or make changes to your existing lines. In our case, we chose to make changes to our existing lines....

You know, I almost posted the same question about a month ago. I keep the Google Finance page open every day and I noticed that Nikkei does seem to have many more days over +/- 1-2%. However, before I posted the question I thought I should actually verify that what I was seeing wasn't just my percep...

It is possible they are including those extra years of work (at her current salary) and driving up her high 35 by a little bit. They always seem to assume you are working right up until the time you collect. I really wish they would provide you the ability to state the year you'd stop working.

Do you do your taxes by hand, software, or online? If it is either of the later, there really is no extra work involved, maybe 10 minutes. And, it is as easy as filling in your W2 information.

I disagree. Why would it be difficult to NOT include fees? Fund companies do this all the time when they advertise fund returns. Because someone that is doing research is going to be using something like the Morningstar databases that already have fees removed. I've also not heard of fund companies...

Before the article gets taken down, I'll go ahead point out one of several glaring issues. The author does not compare "after expense, after tax" returns. As we know, these 2 items would eat into the actively managed fund returns more so than the passive funds. I don't see where it said f...

She presented two hypothetical portfolios of managed vs Vanguard (mostly index funds)in a 10 year time frame from 2003 to the present. Did you ask her why she made up a hypothetical portfolio? Why didn't she use her existing portfolio for you? It is easy for her to cherry pick the best actively man...

I am just wondering where all the bond money is going, I looked at 3 or 4 bond funds, Vanguard & Fidelity and they all seem to have been going down in Net Assets by a factor of 2 to 3 over the last 3 years. As an example VBMFX 29.7B in 2008, 19.5B in 2009, to 11.8B in 2012. It's not really just...

I'm not sure why you need the information and what you think you have to figure out.

Every dollar you put in your 401k reduces your tax bill. It is hard for them to tax a dollar they consider doesn't exist.

Thanks Rick. I downloaded it a month or two ago when you posted it in a thread on how to calculate performance returns. The thing that really stood out in it for me was your example of chasing the hot dot and the PBHG Growth Fund. I was one of those people that got into that fund after it had made a...

Trust, but verify. Goggling and checking the fund website isn't good enough. Either log into you plan's website and pull down the information yourself or ask your plan administrator to give you the info from the new employee packet. That should have the information specific to your plan.

By all means, if you know you want money to do something in the future, don't stick it all a way in an account that you can't access to without penalty. The money you put in your 401k should be money that you don't need until retirement. It is okay to raid your Roth contributions (just not gains) so...

I've never tried using one outside, so I don't know how far they'd go. I'd recommend you look for one that can support multiple base stations. They normally converse with you over a base station. For example, if you put the base unit in the kitchen, do you think they could hear you in the master bat...