Bogleheads.org

How much in fixed income before one should begin to consider buying individual bonds vs. using a fund? 500k? 1M? 2M?

What if half your FI is held in a company 401k? Don't have the option of buying your own bonds.

I suppose you could fill it with stocks and move all your FI to taxable...

My FIL sent me this since he knows I'm a pretty passionate boglehead.

Thought you all might find it interesting.

http://www.pimco.com/EN/Insights/Pages/ ... tions.aspx

People mention buying individual tips through treasury direct...how exactly do you do this through a tax advantaged account? Can you buy them and designate location? Or do you buy them through your Ira? I assume you can't buy them through your 401k?

Thanks for the info. I'll look into the 1035 stuff.

Hello all, My parents recently informed me that they purchased a variable life insurance policy in my name in 1990. It was a 75k policy. We pay $320 a year for it. It's current value if I were to close is a little under $5k. I'm told by the operator it has grown to $76k total. $1k growth in 21 years...

This was spurred from another TLH thread and Taylor had the following post which I found interesting. Does anyone have recommendations for alternative funds for these? And when you harvest and pass the wash sale period, do you usually sell the alternative fund and switch back to the original? Hi zab...

Hey there. I'm in a similiar situation. I'm a 2nd year resident right now and not really interested in fellowship or the academic route. Obviously have an interest in business/finance so naturally was thinking the same thing...go get an MBA after residency. A couple of thoughts, from various people ...

I'm trying to build up as big a surplus of losses...so the latter... Yeah. That was what I was thinking after today...but if we have another rbd I might not be able to resist...

The last two weeks have given me a lot of opportunities to TLH. But now I'm starting to run out of equivalents...especially for INTL...here have been my trades...If the market keeps dropping this week, what should I do? 8/2/11 Sold VEU@47.46 Sold VBR@66.47 Bought SPY@127.34 Sold VWO@47.37 Bought JKI...

So why don't people routinely buyin to IPOs at the opening bell and then just sell at some point during the day? Quick way to get 20% in a day?

Good points on both sides.

Im buying 20k worth of i-bonds this year and probably yearly for the forseable future. Will likely hold off on a tips fund and revisit in a couple of years.

From all my reading, I see that it's recommended to have some bond portfolio in TIPs. I see the rationale for those that are near the end of their accumulation phase or in their retirement phase (or who have a heavy weighting towards fixed income). I don't see the logic for those just starting out o...

Hmm...I was hoping to be able to simplify instead of having to slice and dice even more....

I have a substantial loss with VSS right now....what would you recommend I TLH into? I was thinking DLS...but I'll have to search for some taxable friendly substitutions...

The events over the last week make it seem like now is a great opportunity to TLH and rebalance the international portion of my portfolio... I wasn't able to in the past because this is a taxable account and I didn't want to generate any gains...now my losses in VEU/VSS will outweigh my EEM gain... ...

Yeah. That was my plan.

I could see having a large % of TIPS if I was close to retirement... but if I'm in the early accumulation phase...I think I'm going to do all intermediate term treasuries...

After all this discussion and some derailment I think I'm going definitely stay away from Whole Life and purchase Term when my wife and I want to get pregnant....

Thanks to all.

Portofolio goal is 70/20/10 equity/bonds/gold I've done a lot of reading of past threads on here and a lot of reading on swedroe's blog... IIRC, the general consensus is that intermediate treasuries (IEI) > TBM and for portfolios with 60-80% equity, 5 year duration seemed to be most efficient. I'm w...

The financial advisor who I have disability insurance through (medical resident), is interested in getting me to invest through his company (I've pretty much already deferred as most of his funds cost 1.5-2%). He is also suggesting I get whole life insurance. He is saying that it's a great diversifi...

I don't understand the draw to CDs or Money market funds for short term emergency cash. If you carry a high enough balance some checking/savings accounts are comparable and the cash is liquid. i.e. ING electic orange, if balance is >50k you get 1.1 or 1.2%. Meanwhile the best I can get on a CD is 1....

This is an old one, but I've just come across it....

thoughts on this theory:

http://thefinancebuff.com/rebalancing-i ... arket.html

I guess the big issue is that you don't know how far down the market is going to go...

What exactly are rebalancing bands and how does one go about applying them towards rebalancing?

If I just swap out all JKG for VTI: 16 15 15 8 8 7 12 13 6 But again, have held JKG for a long time and cannot sell at this point due to capital gains.... I also like the extra midcap exposure... I just watned to make sure I wasn't weighted too heavily that I was reaching the point of diminishing po...

I've done a lot of reading since discovering this site a few weeks ago....I've read a lot about small/value/emerging tilts and I was thinking of tweaking my AA a bit... I used to be 50/50 US/INTL with equal splits among small/mid/large for US and equal splits developed/emerging in INTL...thinking of...

Livesoft - Yeah, it's splitting hairs, but I think VEA/VSS/VWO would be more diverse and less weight on emerging markets than VEU/VSS/VWO...since I already own a healthy chunk of VWO I'll likely buy up VEA/VSS for my developed portion. I don't really want more than 15% of my portfolio to be emerging...

I did a little more digging, and it looks like both VEU and VSS are ~25% emerging market...if that is the case, and I'm looking for 50/50 developed/emerging is this too much weight when including VWO? For recap: I have 35% International equity...I was planning on splitting it 10% VEU 10% VSS 15% VWO...

Also, if you are frequently TLH + add new money + rebalance, how do you track the long term performance of your portfolio?

Unfortunately both my wife and I are maxing out our 403b but are still within in the 25% bracket. I don't think there is any way we can get lower...

Well, it was in an account that my mother was custodian of, but technically it became mine when I was 21. It has been essentially untouched until now. What's the best way to reduce the tax burdern of selling it when I need it (i.e. in 3 years or so when I buy a house)... If you mean step up the basi...

The more I read on this site, the more I learn. I was thinking about doing some TLH on my taxable portion of my portfolio.. a few questions first. 1) I've read about wash sale rules, a search of the forum turns up some conversation about what works and what doesn't. Does anyone see anything particul...

I have my US split Small/Med/Large with the following ishares: IJS, JKG, SPY, I'd like to condense to fewer funds...anyone see anything wrong with keeping IJS but selling JKG/SPY and buying VTI?

That was sort of what I was thinking. I don't rebalance frequently. Once a year, maybe twice, tops. So I'd like to simplify things... What's the simplest way to get 50/50 Developed/Emerging with good exposure to all countries? If I understand what you are saying, then a good way to get a 50/50 small...

I currently hold 50/50 US/Intl for the stock portion of my portfolio with my Intl portfolio split 25% developed/15% emerging... I think I am going to change the INTL to 50/50 between developed/emerging, but this is neither here nor there. The developed is split evenly between EFA, EWJ, EPP. My emerg...

Also, when I first set up a taxable account with ishares, I selected reinvest dividends...but after reading a lot of stuff on here I'm under the impression that that is extremely tax-inefficient, and instead, you should pool dividends to help re-balance to your original AA yearly.... am I understand...

Laura, Thanks for your advice. You bring up very good points. I could potentially fully dedicate my 403b and IRA to bonds to help bring up the %. As of now, my 403B is roughly 7% and my taxable account is the other 93%, so even maxing out my 403B and IRA won't bring me close, but I suppose it's bett...

Hi all, First time poster...had a question.... Briefly, I came into a windfall 5 years ago, luckily a friend's dad helped me invest the $. Similar mindset to what is suggested on here. He recommended a # of ishare ETFs at the time... and I have the following Asset allocation...at the time given my a...