Bogleheads.org

I don't completely disagree with some of the article's points, but I feel like he cherry picked a lot of the numbers. For example, he only looked at private colleges, not public. And he only included private school debt numbers for students who borrowed money. Not everyone borrows. Per the College B...

RNJ - have you done an analysis to see if you generally pay a .5% premium when you buy the ETF?

As mentioned earlier, my hunch would be that you do. If that's the case then the only real differences for you would be a higher expense ratio for the mutual fund but more hassles buying/selling the ETF.

My understanding is that a lot of emerging market countries with good credit don't issue debt in USD. Ex. Singapore issues their debt in local currency (Singaporean dollars). Therefore, this fund will leave out a bunch of the better emerging market credits.

I'm wondering if there's anything that would prevent them from doing the same thing for their qualified plans (403b, RA, GSRA, etc.).

My hunch would be - no.

Take a look at 26 C.F.R. § 1.148-4(b)(2)(ii).

It states that bonds are substantially identical if their "interest rate, maturity, and payment dates are the same."

I believe when you sell, you'll have to recapture the depreciation (pay 25% tax on all previously declared depreciation), even though it turned from a rental to your primary residence.

FICO scoring loves low utilization. I pay my CC's the day before the statement drops to minimize the reported balances. Let at least one card report a small balance though, as several scoring models mark you down for reported 0% utilization. Interesting. I've never heard of this strategy before. An...

The credit score system is such a mess. Well, at least I have a higher credit score than Warren Buffett --


"Fortune Magazine reported that Warren Buffett has a FICO score of 718"

http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/a ... score.aspx

Take a look at this data analytics job board -- http://www.icrunchdata.com/ The core skill sets are generally being very adept with statistical software and having good stat analysis skills. If that's the kind of thing that interests you, there are lots of opportunities, they pay well and there's ev...

From the IRS web page (bolded applicable part): http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Estimated-Taxes For estimated tax purposes, the year is divided into four payment periods. Each period has a specific payment due date. If you do not pay enough tax by the due date of e...

Sources that use the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) tend to give a better picture because it tracks all types of retirement funds (401k, IRA, Roth IRA etc.). The problem for lay people (and journalists) who want to use SCF is that there's a lag (most current available is 2010) a...

The other well-traveled career option at HYP besides investment banking is to work in consulting. If she doesn't get an i-banking internship, why doesn't she look into that. Though I don't believe the Big Three: McKinsey, Bain and Boston Consulting - have very big internship programs. Also, it's ver...

Thanks for the info dratkinson and tfb.

Anyone tried filing an early (Jan. or Feb.) extension (Form 4868) along with a payment to "top up" their refund to $5,000? And then the plan would be to wait for the payment to be cashed and immediately file your tax return (i.e. well before April 15th). I might try that this year, unless ...

The BBC has a lot of good podcast documentaries. Topics are much wider than those covered in most US outlets --

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/docarchive

Re: your girlfriend's subsidized loans I haven't looked at student loan rules in a long time, so the rules might have changed. Won't the US government pay the interest if you are in school more than 1/2 time? If that's still the case, I wouldn't rush to pay those off until after she graduates. One o...

This is on the BlueBird homepage --


Important information for current Cardholders
Bluebird is changing. As part of these improvements, we are ending the current bluebird program and closing all accounts from that program on December 8th, 2012.

DetroitRed Re your point--you don't need the data back then, just look at data as I showed over last 40-50 years. And look at international data for about last 20+ years. It's the same everywhere Larry Hi Larry, I'm still uncomfortable with drawing such strong conclusions where we only have 1 non-o...

I'm very uncomfortable with small cap return calculations that go back to the 1920s. We don't have complete data for small caps prior to July 1962 because the primary US stock return data source, CRSP, doesn't have American Stock Exchange (AMEX) coverage until 7/2/62. That means that an enormous num...

Warren Buffett says there are two rules of investing: 1) Never Lose Money 2) Never forget rule No. 1 I sure don't want to dispute Warren Buffett, but I do not understand the above. If I have $100,000.00 invested in the S & P 500 Index fund and the value goes down to $75,000.00, then in my opini...

Warren Buffett says there are two rules of investing: 1) Never Lose Money 2) Never forget rule No. 1 I sure don't want to dispute Warren Buffett, but I do not understand the above. If I have $100,000.00 invested in the S & P 500 Index fund and the value goes down to $75,000.00, then in my opini...

I'm not that interested in ETFs, but it's curious that Vanguard will now have a short-term TIPS ETF but not one that replicates Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities Fund.

My recollection is that Vanguard had trouble getting a previous TIPS ETF approved. Am I remembering that correctly?

Regarding Korea, surely it would have been evicted from the existing index before too long. I haven't looked at all the changes, but it's possible that some VG funds will now need the Korean equities that the emerging markets fund won't, so I'm not sure the transaction costs would have that much of...

If it's all about costs like they say, then why doesn't Vanguard self index? They certainly have the brainpower to form their own indexes based on what they want. That way they don't have to keep changing every few years I'm not sure they're allowed to. BlackRock asked for SEC approval to use inter...

Hi, Has anyone run across a cheat sheet of the various AGI and MAGI levels that cause things to happen? Some examples - for a joint return, over $142700 bumps you up a tax bracket The $142,700 joint return "tax bracket" number is not AGI or MAGI. It's taxable income, which includes all de...

Note that the Intl funds are going to start paying quarterly dividends instead of doing it once a year. Total Intl and FTSE All-World ex-US will both be paying quarterly dividends in September.

Similar to the comment about good pensions triggering higher taxable income, if you have very large 401(k) or traditional IRA balances, once you are required to do required minimum distributions (RMDs), you're going to have lots of taxable income. Does that mean you shouldn't try to accumulate large...

I'm fond of Charlie Munger's opinion on the relevance of 19th century stock return data. From an interview with Kiplinger's - http://mungerisms.blogspot.com/2009/09/munger-speaks-with-kiplingers-steven.html Q: [Kiplinger's] Ibbotson finds 10% average returns back to 1926, and Jeremy Siegel has found...

It's impossible. Been trying to deal with this sporadically for years. One problem is that many medical procedures, even "routine exams," are decision trees. The doctor decides what to do next depending on what has gone before. The surgeon doesn't wake you up in the middle of the operatio...

The Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) would have this data - http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/scf_2010.htm . They ask total value of checking accounts held by household (variable name: CHECKING) and total value of savings accounts held by household (variable name: SAVING). Unfortunately...

kalons wrote:http://www.httrack.com/

Interesting. Do you know if this will this save Excel spreadsheets that are part of a website? Thanks.

555 wrote:I was thinking about signing up but looks like I missed it. So that's one thing I can scratch from my "to do" list.

Didn't know they had a freeze on new accounts. Thanks for posting.

Ugh, I just hope there isn't a return to writing checks. For the first time in years I got stuck in the grocery checkout line last weekend behind a lady who wrote a check, wanted cash back, showed her ID, then proceeded to enter the check in her register and calculate the balance. Took well over a ...

Check Appendix Table 1 (school average SAT score) at the end of the paper to see that several, but not all, ivy league schools were included in the comparison. Both authors were from Princeton as well. While some ivy league schools are in the data, I don't believe the study makes any ivy v non-ivy ...

How America Saves 2011 . It's a big sample. [/quote] Per page 38, the median account balance for workers 55-64 is about $61,000. So half of all participants in that age bracket have less than $61,000. This amount doesn't include other retirement accounts, but only half of all employees have access ...

I also filed a paper return.

Didn't have any problems getting my $5k in paper I bonds.

SSSS wrote:
I've dealt with APMEX, Kitco, Bullion Direct, and Northwest Territorial Mint with no issues. I've heard good things about Tulving but it's only suitable for larger orders.

But weren't your transaction fees and storage costs much higher than owning a gold ETF?

Numbers 1-25: Try to keep your name from being reported (which usually isn't possible).

Don't know if anyone else saw the recent Forbes article about Roth IRAs being used by billionaires like Peter Thiel (the article says that apparently he was able to put at least some of his Facebook stock inside his Roth IRA). They also mention Yelp founder, Max Levchin, who probably has over $95 mi...

My experience with storage units is that things get pretty dusty. It could be that there's no more dust than at my house and that it's just more noticeable in the storage unit, but when I've left things in the unit uncovered they're really dusty after 9 months or so. Because reading means you'll be ...

Goetzmann, Ibbotson and Peng put together a US stock return dataset that runs from 1815 to 1925. Their paper describing the dataset (and it's limitations) is here: A New Historical Database For The NYSE 1815 To 1925: Performance And Predictability http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2...

DetroitRed: Sure, you could do that, but you can do the same thing with many other combinations of Large-cap and Small-cap funds-- e.g., the Vanguard funds of those names--for purposes of TLH with Total Stock. Kevin If the goal is to replicate Total Stock Market, then S&P 500 + Extended Market ...

Another possible reason to hold Extended Market -- you wish to have Total Stock market exposure in a taxable fund, but you already regularly contribution to a Total Stock Market fund in a non-taxable location (or vice versa). If you owned Total Stock Market (TSM) in both locations, you could trip th...

In the past I've rented a mail box from a UPS Store. It had a street address and I never had any problems receiving deliveries there.

Query for VanessaB. Where do you come down regarding TIAA Traditional Annuity? If you dislike TREA you must loath TIAA Traditional. It's at least 25x more opaque than TREA. It's probably 25x less liquid but it can still be gamed (just in different ways than TREA) - for example Traditional is present...

Yeah, but have you considered that if management is allowing this to go on then what else might be going on that even you aren't aware of? You might be waiting for the big dip to transfer your losses to the ignorant, but the insiders might be transferring their losses to you on a daily basis. The i...

One other advantage (to TIAA's detriment) of the Real Estate account is that it is possible to market time. During the financial crisis the Vanguard REIT dropped much faster and many people were able to get out of TIAA Real Estate before its price adjusted down. Because of that TIAA CREF instituted ...

I also think people forget about it because until last year it had an onerous redemption fee (shares had to be held for over 5 years). Now that that's gone, I believe a lot more people should use Vanguard Tax Managed Balanced. For extremely diligent investors (like many of the folks on this board), ...

As I said in the other thread regarding TIAA: I imagine that if they (TIAA-Direct) were really serious about paying more in interest than the competition for any length of time, their CD rates would be better, but, unfortunately, that isn't the case. (their CD rates are lower than the HY savings ac...

As I said, [Warren Buffett] gives a nod to index funds. You originally said, "It is true that he sometimes gives the nod to index funds." As I showed above, that's not true. He doesn't only sometimes give the nod to index funds. He has never, however, suggested that you should stay away f...