Bogleheads.org

I completely fail to understand what advantage you supposedly gain from waiting until the last few seconds. I just bid the amount I am willing to pay at the time when I see the item... and forget about it until the auction has finished. Ok, here's why. Say there is an item for which I am willing to...

Follow up for the benefit of anyone else that comes looking in the future: EnTitle Direct undercut every other quote I got from local (B\W Corridor) title companies by at least $450 when including the insurance premiums and all settlement fees. In several cases they were more than $600 cheaper. Howe...

I spent $3800 on hers in 2010. At the time that was about 3 weeks' gross salary. The central stone isn't real (cubic zirconia), but it has a few dozen much smaller high-quality diamonds inlaid about the band and was part of a designed matching pair (engagement ring\wedding band) so we were able to q...

I would make sure you have documented any damage prior to moving in-including countertops, floors walls, etc. Take dated pictures, put copies with your lease and notify your landlord. In college towns they pretty much keep the damage deposit as a matter of principal, it didn't matter if you left th...

Anyone here have any past experiences they wish to share about Entitle Direct? I'm shopping for title insurance on our first home purchase right now, and they quoted my substantially under what the local companies have. In a very small sample size, I've seen\heard things on both ends of the spectrum...

You may want to retitle this to be a "renovation loan" or something since I thought you were commenting on the size of the loan and had to google to figure out what you were talking about. Anyone that can't identify what a 203k loan is obviously isn't going to have much (or more likely, a...

The wife and I are looking to buy a new home, and are currently looking at a property that has everything we want, except what it doesn't. The home was recently renovated and is being flipped by a local contracting company, and they did an incredibly good job with it - gorgeous new kitchen and bathr...

Thanks for all the replies. I live in literally the only state in the entire country where FIB won't do first-home purchase loans, and my initial communications with PenFed have been kind of off-putting, so I'm probably going to stick with PNC, NASA FCU, National Mortgage Alliance, and another Zillo...

My wife and I are about to begin the process of finding and purchasing our first house, and as such are starting to schedule appointments with lenders to discuss rates, terms, and pre-approval on mortgages. Right now I'm planning on looking at PNC (our primary bank), NASA FCU, and possibly PenFed. I...

I actually was just trying to delete this topic because I already found where *I* screwed up, and can't now that you replied haha. I copied something wrong from one of our W-2s into the iFile system and it threw all the math off, and then I used that same figure when doing the pen-and-paper work. A ...

So, in the process of doing my taxes using Turbo Tax, I double-checked its calculations for my state return against the official iFile system for Maryland, and TurboTax is overestimating my total state\local taxes owed for the year by like $2400. I triple-checked this by going and working through th...

If where you're going has one in the area, the best place to exchange money in Canada is a casino. They charge no fees, because they want you to gamble and spend money.

The college elitism backed by factual exaggerations and apples-to-oranges comparisons in this thread is literally nauseating. And as a graduate, I also take personal umbrage with the frequency that people try to use Penn State as the "rag-tag state school" comparison, when the numbers say ...

Alan S. wrote:...

That was more along the lines of what I was asking for. Nothing we were planning on taking out would count as anything other than contributions, then, no earnings will be touched. Thanks!

The Roths were, in fact, opened with the intent that they would be used to fund a home purchase. We are funding retirement savings separately and primarily through our 401ks at work, as they are decidedly not awful. The money that was used to open my wife's Roth IRA was rolled over from her 401k at ...

He's slightly below average salary-wise for his experience and a PE is normally good for 5-10%. Targeting the low 70s wouldn't be patently offensive to a potential employer.

It would be easier to say if that's a reasonable salary target if you specified what he's making now. Where he lives makes a substantial difference as well, $80K in Nebraska is not the same as $80K on the California coast.

So, my wife and I are looking at purchasing our first home this coming summer, and had been planning on each withdrawing $10K from our Roth IRAs to put towards the down payment. I think I've covered my bases as far as making sure everything should be kosher tax and penalty wise, but I figured I'd as...

We Can Build You by Philip K. Dick.

I was pondering this very thing today. Should I stop funding my 401(k) and apply the funds to pay down the mortgage with an eye to paying it off when I retire in 2-3 years? My preliminary conclusion is to keep funding the tax deferred stuff since you only have a limited number of opportunities to d...

$58K in 2010 = $61K now in 2012.

In my third week of doing Rippetoe's Starting Strength with my buddies. Getting my form ironed out and keep adding weight. Tried working out on and off for a long time. This has been the most progressive and enjoyable. I just started Rippetoe's Starting Strength program. I like how it focuses on th...

The summer after my freshman year at college I worked groundskeeping\construction\maintenance for a summer camp in my area. It was a minimum-wage position, and I was basically treated like slave labor by the camp owner\managers with not a shred of decency, respect, or care for my well-being. In retr...

I agree with the people that have mentioned Rippetoe's Starting Strength. It is THE baseline building workout routine for people that are out of shape or don't exercise often. I disagree with the guy who said it overemphasizes squats; it's pretty much impossible to overemphasize squats, as they're a...

Sitting around an open fire in the evening, especially on a cool night, is one of the greatest simple pleasures there is in life.

I'm kind in disbelief at some of the responses in this topic as far as overreacting to the smoke from them and whatnot. How does one not enjoy the smell of a wood fire?

It really depends on what you'd like to do in your future. If you see yourself moving into more of a non-technical management role down the line, then the MBA is probably the best choice. If you'd like to stay strictly technical (be it pure engineering or leading a technical team), then the MS in yo...

-Dinner at the CN Tower, though I heard that one can go for breakfast. Is that true? How is the food there or is one just going for the atmosphere? Thinking of going either on a Sunday or Monday night The food is excellent, prices are ridiculous - think $40-$50 Canadian for entrees you'd probably p...

yobria wrote:Computers trading with each other don't affect the intrinsic value of a company, so why worry?

Because they DO affect the perceived\effective value, which has tangible and tangential effects. HFTs blow.

Hockey Hall of Fame and dinner at the CN Tower (pricy but amazing). Both are downtown and within walking distance of each other.

Hijack topic: I wonder how much people are really finding the value of video-documentation of their weddings. I could see how a set of great pics can give you a feel-good to share right then (which is why the photographer may have high-pressure sales packages), or to look at many years later. But I...

One thing to consider is that at least as far as the availability of government loans and whatnot, the caps on what you can receive per year are much higher for juniors\seniors than they are for freshmen\sophomores.

Default User BR wrote:

MattE wrote:Finished Hyperion, moving on to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein.

Is this the first time for TMiaHM, or a reread?


Brian

First time, but I've read most of his other works.

If you want videography and happen to personally know someone that's good or at least capable of editing, you can save yourself a lot of money by negotiating with the videographer for footage-only services. You can get just the raw footage for 30% of what a "full package" including editing...

Finished Hyperion, moving on to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein.

100%-ish. My first car is to date still my only car, and I bought it with savings just after my sophomore year of college for $3900 when my only income was from my summer job.

In short, some people are perfectly happy with a miserly wedding and a very small group of guests. More power to them. And some people spend on a wedding what the rest of us would spend on a home down payment. If they can afford it and it's what they want, more power to them as well. But that's how...

MattE, This is what I got from your post: if you spend a lot of money, weddings are expensive. It's kind of like saying cars are expensive and then showing as proof that you just spent $500,000 on a Rolls Royce. And just because you can get by driving $300 hoopties recovered from the scrap yard and...

I'm 23, and hence don't have anywhere even remotely close to the level of funds I'd need to not\barely work for the next 6-7 decades and not live like a pauper. If I suddenly came into a huge windfall, I'd retire tomorrow without thinking about it twice. I've got enough widely varied interests that ...

...$6.5k for the wedding bands? Did that include her engagement ring? Man, I live on a totally different planet. Her engagement ring was $2500 separate from that, and doesn't even have a real center diamond. Her wedding ring was about $3000, and mine was $3500. Jewelery is stupidly expensive and th...

...$6.5k for the wedding bands? Did that include her engagement ring? Man, I live on a totally different planet. Her engagement ring was $2500 separate from that, and doesn't even have a real center diamond. Her wedding ring was about $3000, and mine was $3500. Jewelery is stupidly expensive and th...

It's pretty easy to rack up wedding costs in the 10s of thousands of dollars even with small-to-medium-sized weddings if you don't DIY the entire thing, i.e., having a ceremony at a nice location, a catered reception, keepsake worthy invitations, wedding bands that aren't pewter or onyx, etc. I thou...

I'm always kind of amused by the large generational disconnect on this forum when it comes to anything involving the Internet.

Just finished Atlas Shrugged. I don't know if anyone else here would read xkcd, but the alt text on Monday's perfectly summed up my feelings on Rand: "I had a hard time with Ayn Rand, because I found myself enthusiastically agreeing with the first 90% of every sentence, but getting lost at 'th...

Zero, discounting the money I spend subsidizing my mother's bills. I'll consider it once I've assured myself that my wife and I will never need it.

I'm not sure how you could live to regret making your computer more secure against browser vulnerabilities. This whole topic reeks of Let Me Google That For You.

Aside from sports team-related things, my few legitimate "bucket list" type items are: 1) To become an Adirondack 46er (I've already knocked off about a dozen) 2) To hike the Appalachian Trail in its entirety on one trip 3) Spend an appreciable amount of time in Alaska [Wife is staunchly o...

I graduated with an aerospace engineering degree from Penn State several years ago. My senior year, I looked at both graduate school opportunities and getting a "real job." I could've done either. With my PSU undergrad degree, I got into Michigan, Purdue, PSU, Cornell, UT-Austin (best grad...

Can't say. I haven't done anything that was back-breaking, gratuitously stupid, or over an extended period of time because I didn't have the luxury of doing so and never had much money to make mistakes with till recently, anyway (moved out and became estranged from my family right after I graduated ...

Short vacations, I suppose? My wife and I don't get enough vacation days to really make our trip spending as efficient as it could be (i.e., fixed costs like plane tickets exist no matter how long you go for and generally constitute the majority of the expenses), but instead of reducing the number o...

Why not just use the kindle cloud reader? Read books in any web browser with no kindle device required. For the same reasons I mentioned above. The Kindle is more portable than a laptop, still smaller and far cheaper than a tablet, and has a battery life that is literally two orders of magnitude gr...