Bogleheads.org

Your post doesn't make sense. The first part says you don't listen to Dave, say his advice is lunacy and following it would cost you money. Then you go on to agree with his advice to the caller. PS - there are many Bogleheads that agree with his debt-reduction advice and his steps for doing so. Me ...

I've never listened to the guy but from what people say here he fetishizes debt out of proportion to its actual importance for careful, responsible people. For the average boglehead his advice would be complete lunacy. If debt plays a role in your financial life that is analogous to what alcohol doe...

I suspect you may be asking the wrong question. If you need the money in just ten years, you should be scrutinizing your AA much more carefully. If I needed money in ten years I would not have it in 80% stocks, more like 20% or 0%. In the end your choice of AA is going to have a far bigger impact on...

Normally you get a title when you first buy the car, and it lists your loan provider as a lien holder. You normally get a release-of-lien letter after the loan is paid off. That plus your title give you full rights to the car. That's how it is has worked for me -- I imagine this is all regulated at ...

Craigslist is good, but definitely less than smooth all the time. We recently sold our car for $7500, but I went through about two weeks of getting 3-4 calls per day asking if we would take $5000, etc. I got very tired of the question "What's your best price?" or "How low are you wil...

I sold our last two cars through Craigslist and Cars.com. We keep them too long to be able to get much through the dealers and services. I sold a 2001 Honda Odyssey just yesterday. If you set your goal of making the process run quickly and smoothly, it can be done very straightforwardly. + write a g...

I do a simplified version of the kind of glide path that the target date funds use. When I worked up my plan a few years ago, I was comfortable with a very aggressive allocation, but I knew I'd want something more conservative when I got older. I drew a straight line from where I was in equity perce...

In some places you can simply tell the town you wish to relinquish ownership. You then stop paying taxes and eventually the town will take over ownership. I had a family member do this with an unsellable plot.

A few things clicked, in ratchet manner. + When I had my first academic job the only choice was TIAA-CREF, and their most popular funds were pretty close to passive indexing (if not entirely). So I got into the habit involuntarily, to a degree. + Around the same time I was at a meeting sitting next ...

You can't use a smart phone on AT&T without paying the data charges. They will detect the change and hit you with the fee immediately. I have a family member who has similar needs to your mother in law. We got him a Pantech P9020 Pursuit. AT&T doesn't consider it to be "smart" but ...

Preaching to the choir but a fun read regardless: http://www.businessinsider.com/best-investment-advice-2013-5 "This means that, if you plan to hold your investment for 3 or more years, you have about a 1 in 9 chance of picking a fund that will beat the market." This can't possibly be tru...

Did you sign a contract? Does it commit you to pay for whatever labor is needed to get the done, regardless of the estimate? Or is it a fixed-price contract? Or is there no contract at all? There is a signed estimate, that constitutes the contract. The estimate only specifies if additional time is ...

Did you sign a contract? Does it commit you to pay for whatever labor is needed to get the done, regardless of the estimate? Or is it a fixed-price contract? Or is there no contract at all?

Based on what you say he should probably stay where he is. You will provide better help if you talk him out of making more off the cuff moves rather than trying to steer the next one. You are [not] going to be at his side every time a whim strikes him. You could have him go through the exercise of a...

When you cross a busy street because you want to get to the other side, do you ever deliberately walk slowly because you think that if you take longer to cross you'll improve your outcomes? Crossing a busy street slowly never improves outcomes. A better analogy is choice between taking an expresswa...

That's an interesting question. If I interpret "wbern" correctly, valuations and volatility enter into the decision to employ DCA or not when purchasing into an allocation, so I would think they should also be considered when selling out of an allocation. When buying, high valuations and ...

bucksfan2 wrote:If someone said to you, you can beat the market by over 1% you would take it, wouldn't you?

Of course not. Such a claim would have no credibility.

I have been in the same position as you. I ended up with a bill for $2300. I tried to negotiate the bill down because we were paying out of pocket, but had absolutely no luck.

The HDHP world is a very different world than what we lived in before.

...4) When I add something new to the paper archive, I try to remove something, to avoid having it grow. E.g. I need to keep two years of utility bills for Little League eligibility .... OK, my apologies, I tried hard not to thread-jack, but say what?? When my son plays in Little League tournaments...

1) I scan almost everything that comes in, without stopping to think about how important it is. I mirror the archive on multiple computers, including one off-site, and in the cloud. Scanners are fast and storage is cheap, so it works best for me just to scan anything other than junk mail. What prog...

If you step back and think for a moment, the answer ought to be obvious. If you know where you need to be, you should of course get there as fast as your emotions will tolerate. Any other answer is beyond the range of logical discourse. The answer follows from the premise of knowing where you need t...

1) I scan almost everything that comes in, without stopping to think about how important it is. I mirror the archive on multiple computers, including one off-site, and in the cloud. Scanners are fast and storage is cheap, so it works best for me just to scan anything other than junk mail. 2) I keep ...

Based on the information you provided, the only clear choice is to move the money to the U.S. Bogleheads don't speculate on currencies. If you are wavering, pose yourself this thought experiment: imagine you inherited the money in U.S. dollars instead. Would you be moving them to Kroner now? Why is ...

You're on a roll -- keep it up!

I'm not sure the issue is being framed very clearly. 1) An individual who wants to buy a specific item in a specific auction needs to enter a bid that automatically increments to their maximum price. 2) If all buyers behave that way, markets operate at their most efficient. 3) In a particular auctio...

If it were me, I would go in this order: 1) 529 2) HSA funds already covered through out of pocket medical expenses 3) Taxable stocks if tax hit not significant (some combination of low gains / low marginal rates) 4) Credit card if you can arrange ultra low interest rate (e.g. promotional balance tr...

I should have added to my list of ER drivers the constraints imposed by your employer. But that's just another source of incomparability.

I don't quite see the point of this exercise. Unless you are making a gross error in fund choice your aggregate expense ratio is going to be driven by what fraction of your portfolio is in fixed income (and within that fraction how much is in zero-cost options such as individual TIPS); by the degree...

The solution in such cases is always the same. Use your brain to tell where you want to end up, and your emotions to decide the speed. Go as fast as you can tolerate, and don't worry about whether it might be too slow. Some people can make the leap in a single day, others need a year or so. Do what ...

I live in NJ. When I fly anywhere, the car service costs for me round trip is about $300. Think about it - NYC to Florida for $300 round trip. It seems like so little !!! If you are talking about a car to get you to and from the airport then there may be a less expensive way that you can use. What ...

I would recommend getting your emergency fund up to 6 months of expenses first. Without that, you'll be in trouble if you hit some unexpected expenses or loose your job. After that, I would pay extra towards your student loan (that gives you a guaranteed 6% return). Most here will recommend you foc...

1) Attack your student loan debt like it was the plague. Really? An $11K student loan debt is like a fatal disease? I would prefer to look at the big picture and steer a course that ingrains good lifelong habits. Maybe treat it like seasonal allergy or something, but not the plague. If you treat it...

You instincts make sense to me. In your shoes I would opt for the Target Date account at Vanguard. Before deciding on the monthly contribution, I would do some realistic planning regarding your financial needs for the coming decade. What do you need to save for in addition to retirement? A replaceme...

Check out airports near Miami. Fares vary a lot. Kayak lets you create a fare monitor. Also investigate whether there are discount airlines that don't participate in the fare aggregators .. For those you have to search them individually.

Past volatility is a predictor of future volatility. So in that sense past performance is useful information--"performance" not meaning 5 year annualized returns. But by the time you pick your index fund, haven't you already made a choice about what combination of return and volatility yo...

While the poll has only captured 19 votes, the results are a bit surprising to me I am also surprised at the results, but, I suspect that different responders are using or thinking about different interpretations of the question. Such as, What do you mean by "use". You say you were surpri...

Your reply to my question troubles me. It doesn't make sense to eliminate existing debt without regard to the cost. If you like your car and you can afford the payments, it makes more sense to keep it. Instead of paying an extra $1100 a month toward paying it off early, under almost any conceivable ...

You already have the money invested, in the rental property. Why compound your risk by investing it twice? I'd never touch such a strategy in a million years. It is high risk, potentially high reward. Some people can tolerate such risk -- it isn't wrong per se. Before embarking on such an approach, ...

Your picture is incomplete and confusing. If I'm making the right inferences about your car loan, the interest payments are quite trivial and need not concern you. I'm guessing you will be making something like $500 in interest payments on your current car between now and the time the loan is paid o...

You probably got to the right answer even if your reasoning wasn't quite right. Your return over the past three years is irrelevant. What matters is the expected return over the next 15 years or so. I hope you aren't counting on 10% annual returns for the next fifteen years. But if you are counting ...

Again, no offense, but this forum is almost "cult-like" about jumping on anybody that asks a question about anything that doesnt fit 100% into the boglehead cult rules (which I follow by the way)........ People are jumping on you because your original question didn't make much sense. Your...

I should add that if you translate you somewhat quirky question into a more straightforward alternative -- what is the asset category bogleheads are most likely to add to a portfolio consisting of total US stocks, total international stocks, and total bond market -- then the answer is readily availa...

You put the term "valuation metrics" within quotation marks, which implies you are using it in a non-standard way. Indeed, you must be using it in a non-standard way because you include a couple of bond categories and bonds are valued differently than equities, normally in terms of price. ...

THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY CURRENT EMPLOYMENT 401K - PERSONAL RATE OF RETURN FROM 01/01/2013 to today IS 2.6% ONLY PERSONAL RATE OF RETURN FROM 01/01/2012 to 04/05/2012 was 5.5%. First of all, I don't know if I need to continue this post because my info has been posted in the beginning, ...

If you say so. I know you believe strongly in it, but I suppose I'll be more convinced once I see some published articles espousing the strategy. I don't understand why I would ask the question of whether to increase equities or tax-loss harvest in the middle of a bull run, and it seems like a RBD ...

I count the TIAA traditional fund as a bond asset, and the other funds you mention as equities.

Given the entirety of your situation, I think the heir's opinion counts most. Ask them.

For some people appearances don't matter. But if they do matter, here's my purely personal, non-objective take on how serious a personal email address looks to others, form least serious to most: 1. ISP-provided address 2. aol 3. yahoo 4. gmail address which clearly was given no thought (e.g. firstn...

The cash is a red herring not relevant to this tale. You are asking about the equity portion of your portfolio. But even if this is now clear it still isn't clear what the exact question is. If you want commentary on small cap stocks you'll find lots in the archives. If you are looking for somethin...

The cash is a red herring not relevant to this tale. You are asking about the equity portion of your portfolio. But even if this is now clear it still isn't clear what the exact question is. If you want commentary on small cap stocks you'll find lots in the archives. If you are looking for something...