Bogleheads.org

I "abruptly" changed my mutual fund allocation in my 401k. Why? I discovered Morningstar's X-Ray feature, and found that the mutual fund I was using in my 401k was heavily tilted toward very large Value side stocks. I moved some of that over to a fund that's tilted more toward growth, givi...

I was told that Envestnet was a transparent, open architecture investment platform that only financial advisors had access to and that its performance figures were better than Vanguard even with fees of 1.4% deducted. I am trying to become more financially literate and hope to learn from y'all. Tha...

I'll just quick throw this in, that using too few descriptors could possibly be a problem, or at least open the door for it. I've not been able to get any better fund options added where I work, but I can see where it could go astray. My employer's 401k exclusively offers American Funds mutual funds...

401k and IRAs are tax- advantaged - there are still taxes to be paid, it's just a matter of when it gets paid, and what gets taxed. These accounts are just "holding areas," like financial suitcases, where investments (mutual funds, stocks, bonds, money market funds) can then be placed. Sta...

Banks profit on the difference of the interest they pay me and turning around and lending that money to someone else. I don't care if it's $1 million or $50. To say that the bank makes nothing off of consumers with small balances is wrong. My guess is that, with interest rates as low as they are, t...

A common one: Starting later than I should have. - I had long regarded the stock market (picking individual stocks) as a fancy form of gambling, so didn't invest there. The term "mutual fund" was something I only heard about, but didn't know what the term meant. - 2000, then 2008 - stocks ...

Toward the end of the show, the journalist essentially asked Michael Falcon, "Should I, or should I not, use a financial advisor who is legally required to act in my best interests?" You would think that it would be very easy to answer this question. Nope. It's just amazing stuff going on....

Working class parents. Firmly middle-class, I'd say. Why a "Boglehead?" I knew about the benefits of compound interest and the value of real investing, but all I knew of was the stock market, and picking and choosing individual stocks. It all just seemed really "gambley" to me th...

How much were the Higgs particles detected at CERN worth? :) Probably this. Or if you want to go with atoms, antimatter, specifically hydrogen. It's made an atom at a time, and if you go by the gram, it's insanely expensive. Trillions of dollars. Sounds like sports-collectible propaganda... In 1921...

The funds you chose are of different investment styles. The American Funds Washington Mutual is a large-cap value fund, the Fidelity Mid Cap Value is a mid-cap value fund, and the Growth fund of America is basically a "closet index" fund with a small bias to large-cap growth stocks. All o...

It seems like "actively" managed accounts get more oversight, so they may have a better chance to avoid disaster. This is a triumph of marketing for active managers. In fact, there is no evidence that active management outperforms during bear markets> It sure sounds good, though. Rick Fer...

Another thing to consider is the idea that Vanguard would not have disclosed prior data breaches. Well I suspect that this is unlikely. Pretty much every state in the US requires that users be notified if they have private information compromised by a commercial web site. Keeping such information s...

Has anyone who has posted in this discussion have their Vanguard account hacked into? Seems to me this thread is a solution looking for a problem. That doesn't mean it's not worth discussing or investigating though. My house has never burned down, but I'd still be concerned if I found out that all ...

I don't budget at all. My expenditures are way below my income and I'm naturally . . . thrifty (my brother says cheap) . The only thing I have done at all is mock up an average monthly spending model for the purposes of determining the size of an emergency fund. So I spend what I spend, and save th...

Excuse my ignorance, but are there any statistics (numbers) on how many investment web sites have been hacked, and money lost for their owners? Have any Bogleheads had their accounts hacked? I don't think you should separate out "investment sites" for this, and instead ask, "How many...

Man, it's about time. But twenty characters? Really? Why does Vanguard persist in putting artificial limits on the strength of passwords people can use? Allowing longer passwords does not preclude anyone from user a shorter crappier password if they want to. And as LadyGeek points out above, even t...

My "automatic" plan to avoid locking in losses is just to never sell * -- simpler, too. 8-) *Well, at least until I need to in retirement. Well most people are by nature risk-averse, and hence holding through thick and thin is not for everyone. Which is why Warren Buffet said, "Inves...

... You want index funds and simple... How about total stock, total international, and total bond (Vanguard funds) and be done with it. We like to call that the three fund portfolio [link added] here... it's low cost/ER, diversified, and got you covered. Best of luck with your endeavors. I believe ...

neurosphere wrote:Class A funds AND 1.5% assets under management? Holy cow, that's a ton of money in fees. I'm glad you've come to this board and hope the information you gather/learn will help you keep more of your money in your pocket.

NS

Sales loads too. 5%, 5.75%, 5.75%. Ouch.

I'm not a haggler. My wife is. She accompanied me to buy a new used vehicle a few years ago. I found the car I really wanted. She told me I better be prepared to walk away from the negotiation. I told her I was not interested in haggling with the salesmen. She disregarded any of my concerns with ha...

... Tax-deferred money is in American Funds. Can't convince my partners to switch TPA's for better investment choices at work so I'm stuck with those. I can, however, manipulate my asset allocation between tax-deferred and taxable accounts to minimize taxable gains. Oooooh....my sympathies there. A...

... You want index funds and simple... How about total stock, total international, and total bond (Vanguard funds) and be done with it. We like to call that the three fund portfolio [link added] here... it's low cost/ER, diversified, and got you covered. Best of luck with your endeavors. Brian I be...

Like OP, in my work life I dealt with many vendors and often negotiated large contracts. One of the keys is to make sure vendor knows it is a competitive situation and that you have options beside their product or service. Also, do not fall in love with the product before you buy it. If you do, the...

... Here's an example. An earlier poster wants us to think that it's possible for new hardware to try 350 billion Vanguard password combinations per second, implying that the current password scheme weak. If you dig just a bit, the article linked to indicates that the crack was run at that rate aga...

I've got a 2012 Subaru Impreza. I got that after having owned a Hyundai Elantra for more than 10 years; it was also an automatic transmission car, 4 speed I believe. I never did too well on manual transmission cars - couldn't get the hang of the clutch, and most of the time I'd stall a car if I trie...

I'm glad that they're doing this. Though with computers becoming incredibly powerful, you can brute-force a lot of passwords per second. If you're cracking password hashes offline, 350 billion combinations per second . Now, this of course only applies if you've got the data stored locally. If any we...

Another calculator, which allows you to put in 3 expenses, and also regular contributions.

It looks like the right forum to me. :) It just might be a few hours before someone comes in to properly answer this, as different people visit during different times of the day. (I'm here over my lunch hour, at the moment. I unfortunately carry no answer to your question, though my feeling is that ...

"How can I tell when a generally bad or good time to buy is?" For me: Thursdays. ;) Automatic weekly investments, with Thursday as the day. (Or maybe it's Wednesday? I checked my bank account, and that's when the charge shows up. I guess that shows how concerned I am with the specific day ...

It could easily end up being more than 8%, though that largely depends on how many years we're talking about until the money is needed. Assume you've got a fund that's returning that 5% of assets per year, but it's charging an expense ratio that's 1% of assets. That seemingly small-sounding expense ...

I'm in the "now's as good a time as any" camp. I started in earnest into my IRA venture back before the presidential election. Everyone's all clamoring about how the market is going to be incredibly depressed/indifferent/thrilled after the election - I figured that this was that "nois...

Another renter here. I saw that calculator as well; nifty thing. According to that, I'd also do well to have bought a house about 2-3 years ago, based on how long I've been renting. However, the things that keep me renting thus far: - If anything at all goes wrong in a house I own, I'm on the hook t...

I'm also not a fan of gift cards.
You take some perfectly good cash, the universal gift card, and severely limit its usability.

I started into university life late, so I finished my 4 year degree at age 27, with somewhere around $30k in debt, and an aging car. (Now age 31.) I paid off the debt within 2 years, then went and bought a car. :) :( Bad financial move, as I knew. I also don't buy fun things much...and I expect it t...

OK something is seriously wrong. 16 year old girls are giving out investment advice and getting tons of press. I constantly preach Bogleheads philosophy @ my office and people think I am mad. :? "Costs matter" - everywhere else, it seems. There's always the push to take costs out of produ...

There have been a lot of posts lately about bad 401K choices. I didn't think many of them were all that bad. This one is terrible. I'm looking forward to the responses from Bogleheads much smarter than I. My experience with it: The person at the company responsible for picking a plan knows very lit...

I think it's good to get some exposure to this sort of article. While reading through the various Bogleheads' Guide to Investing/Retirement Planning books, and Common Sense on Mutual Funds , I just couldn't help but keep thinking that I was only getting one side of the issue, regardless of what the ...

There's absolutely no way to guarantee a 5% return between now and June. This is gambling, not investing. "Investment games" are inherently harmful. They promote market timing, short-term speculation, "stock picking", unsound decision making, gambling mentality, and high-risk be...

Many people want kids, some don't. Each person evaluates costs and returns, both financial and emotional, differently. That's about all there is to it.

I think young people are more worried about never recovering from graduating into the worst job market in 80 years. Wasted generation. As a junior-year and senior-year engineering student at college back around 2008, it was ever-so-discouraging when the employers at job fairs held in the Business&a...

Link to the fund's "fact sheet" at BlackRock (PDF)

On the right is an Annual Operating Expenses table, which shows that 8.70% figure.



And hopefully this one works: Prospectus. (PDF)

^ Ok, thanks.
There are about 50 people where I work, and we've also got American Funds.

Hm...maybe once a week on average? My ridiculously complex usernames and passwords are stored in an encrypted file with another ridiculous password. If I go to the trouble of opening that file, and I feel like taking the extra time, I'll also have a look at my 401k and IRA. Observation only, no medd...

I'd keep contributing to the 401k and become an absolute pain in the butt about how the funds stink. Make a chart on excel showing how much money that 1.5% ER fund will drain from your returns over 30 years and give a copy to every person at your office. Get everyone to lobby for a better plan - it...

Just curious - about how many people are at this start-up company?

I wish Vanguard would go the extra step and show 15, 20 and 25 year looks - we are talking about long-term investing, aren't we? Hear, hear! We and hundreds of thousands of Vanguarders all know! Showing our day trader friends that data, which would cost VG more to produce, won't convince our friend...

What region of the country? Snowy? Is AWD something you might be after? I'm rather partial to Subaru cars at the moment, though their biggest advancements in fuel efficiency appear to have arrived with the 2012 models. It looks like they're reasonably good at retaining value. My mother's 1992 Subaru...

"Newsletter writers don't know anything that isn't already reflected in the prices of securities. If newsletter writers did have a knack for unearthing information that no one else typically knew, they'd be be too busy investing their own money and making millions off their predictions to waste...

Barry Barnitz posted this link in another thread:
The Case for Indexing

Going through that quick, it looks like it's got some relevant information.

I'm relatively new to this investing stuff as well, but I will back up pjstack's post. In my opinion your monitoring should be simply for curiosity, not for action. Your Roth IRA is a longterm investment. Don't fret much about the daily fluctuations in your fund's price. Trying to "fiddle with ...