Bogleheads.org

I have the streaming only service and get excellent value out of it for less than $9/month. It is a prime source for TV shows and foreign movies. I stream it using a Blu-Ray DVD player I bought for $65 or so, so it plays right to the TV. I on rare occasions have watched on my iPhone when I'm hooked ...

We can think of "Stay the Course" as more of a beacon to guide us, or as a state of mind, rather than some rigid, unbreakable rule. To me, "staying the course" means I don't jump in and out of funds to chase performance, it means that I don't panic and sell funds when they're dow...

I read The Investment Answer by Dan Goldie and Gordon Murray and was like, "Okay, this sounds good," and read one of Jack Bogle's books next and then made the switch immediately.

It depends on what the rest of your portfolio looks like and what your asset allocation is. This article on the wiki helped me when I was struggling with this same type of question: http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Principl ... _Placement

I'm a proponent of considering Roth contributions to be emergency funds. The main reason for this is that once we miss the opportunity to put money into that taxable space, the opportunity is gone. But there are a few caveats. First, in my mind, there are emergency funds, and then there are EMERGENC...

There are fewer and fewer opportunities to thank our WWII veterans. It was nice you seized the moment.

The whole correlation/causation debate probably could have been avoided here if the title of the post more accurately reflected the contents of the article. The post title says "Home Ownership May Actually Cause Unemployment," when the article not only does not say so, but explicity ackno...

The whole correlation/causation debate probably could have been avoided here if the title of the post more accurately reflected the contents of the article. The post title says "Home Ownership May Actually Cause Unemployment," when the article not only does not say so, but explicity acknow...

I'm just saying if you're utterly nervewracked, you might not want to immerse yourself in market discussion and market news constantly. The likelihood that an event occurs where you MUST rebalance your portfolio RIGHT NOW seems really slim. I don't even know if such an event exists, really? I think ...

I'm finding it utterly nerve-wracking. I actually think I like bear markets better. You might consider checking in on the market only once every 3-4 months or so to see if it's time to rebalance. The market will go up sometimes and the market will go down sometimes--one of the benefits of having an...

Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith, which really instilled in me an early love for reading. This is from a year or so ago but YES! My love of reading originated (as best I remember at least) with Civil War and WWII history. Like, legitimate history texts. I basically read my local library out of thes...

Six books that have changed my life: 1. How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. This changed my whole approach to dealing with difficult situations and difficult people. 2. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. The "big rocks" parable is one I think ...

I might be going against the grain a little here. My perspective is that you should prioritize investing in tax-advantaged accounts as much as possible, both because of the awesome advantage that compounding will later reap and because once tax-advantaged space is passed up on, you can't get it back...

tc101 wrote: I know that in theory I should stick with my plan and just forget about it, but this is effecting me emotionally.

This is exactly why you have a plan--for moments just like this.

7, because our 401(k) options don't include total stock market, total bond, or total int'l, so we have to sort of cobble together market coverage from the options we have, and there's a trickle down effect through the rest of our holdings.

I have a Sole treadmill and have been very happy with it. I bought it from Amazon and was pleased with them also. +1 We have a Sole and it's excellent. We got a very, very good deal at Sears, so I would keep Sears in mind for this. We opened a Sears card and saved an additional %, plus there was so...

Former Triple Play subscriber, have gradually moved to internet-only (first ditching the landline, then ditching cable). Very satisfied not having Triple Play anymore. Allows me to invest at least $100/mo extra.

Yeah, I read "use" pretty narrowly. Obviously I *look* at what the performance was, because if a fund purports to track a particular index but in fact varies considerably, I wouldn't buy that fund. But my approach is more like, "that index represents part of the market that I want to ...

We don't have an explicit efund so much as we just have more money in our checking account than we need to meet each month's expenses. The overage amount works out to about 3-4 months worth of actual expenditures--the things that we would still spend money on were we to both lose our jobs. We can (a...

Yes, this is market timing. This is exactly what it is. On the other hand, if what you're going to do is put as much into your 401k, etc every year as you can, and in so doing you wind up putting in more in the May/Oct part of the year than in other parts, and this seems to be not too much trouble f...

I'd consider the opportunity cost of investing the money into the rental property instead of somewhere else, the fact that the rental property ties up your entire $30,000 into an illiquid investment, the fact that investing so much money into one asset carries risk not proportionate to the gains you...

I'm a Netflix streaming only subscriber. I have a Sony Blu-Ray DVD player that has a Netflix application. You turn on the DVD player, and either navigate to the Netflix app by scrolling down about 3 spots with the remote, or you just press the red "Netflix" button on the remote. I usually ...

As long as you're buying in accordance with your asset allocation, it's always a good time to buy.

I don't think it's so much "dismissing" housing as an investment as recognizing that a residence as an asset is so different in kind from other investment assets that it makes a lot of sense to think of the decision to purchase a home as being mostly about "paying for a place to live&...

If you never retire, you could have full financial security and would be able to help a lot more people who didn't plan well. You could live vicariously through their adventures knowing that the toys and vacations they purchase instead of saving were put to good use. I was being oblique, so I'll ma...

I don't quite follow the analysis here either, but wanted to chime in with three things you may not be considering: (1) the "tax benefit" of home ownership is always, always, always overstated by people in these analyses. Yes, if you itemize your deductions you get to deduct mortgage inter...

I see a "wealth tax" being instituted - to pay for those who were out partying and claimed ignorance. I see this too, and it's my plan to become wealthy enough that I can complain (should I even want to; complaining about it is kind of pointless) about subsidizing the retirements of my ge...

Whether it's too picky or not simply depends on how many are on the market that come close to meeting your criteria. When we shopped for a home, we had a long list of criteria, too, and I suppose it might have seemed really picky if I had listed them all out. You describe certain criteria as "e...

I think the advice to call back if you don't get what you want the first time is spot on. I've had three varying experiences with Comcast. 1. I tried the approach of saying, "Hey, I like your service and I would really love to have it, except it's just not in my budget anymore. Before I cancel ...

There is no normal market. Or, put another way, every market is normal.

I agree on the clouds. We moved to Seattle from Pittsburgh and people loved to say, "You better love cloudy days!" and inside I just thought, "Big deal, I'm coming from Pittsburgh." One thing about the Pittsburgh weather that is a real positive is that you have four distinct seas...

I'm not aware of the posts about tax consequences of cashing out of your life insurance policy, sorry--but I do know there have been a lot of threads about the general "life insurance" decision, so you may find some resources there. Regarding my comment about bonds, I don't mean to say tha...

If you don't have a partner or kids you don't really need life insurance right now, IMO. So if you can convert that policy into cash, I'd think about doing that. There are some people here who understand life insurance policies way better than I do, though, so maybe you'll get other advice, but my f...

If you're having trouble saying no, you can tell them, "I love you, and this is also a business decision for me. From a business decision standpoint, this doesn't make sense for me. I look at this just the way the bank does, and I'm saying no for the same reasons." If their answer to you i...

The possible downsides to this far outweigh the possible upsides. If your parents want a new home, they can sell the one they have instead of renting it out, or they can buy a new home that fits within their current budget.

My opinion is that the answer to this question depends basically on what every variety of this question depends on, which is a rigorous assessment of what your retirement expenses are likely to be. This is a question that depends on only a few variables: (1) how much income you'll have, (2) how much...

Is this anything like the Triple Dog Dare?

I lived in Pittsburgh from 1995 to 2001 and loved it. If I were to move back I'd return to Squirrel Hill. The neighborhood was highly walkable, had easy access to bus routes into and out of downtown, was between Frick Park and Schenley Park, and was close to Carnegie Mellon and Pitt. It was also jus...

OP, I'd perform a thought experiment. Try to imagine if you'd ask yourself the same question if it were 2008/2009. I'm guessing you wouldn't, because you would view this decision in the context of what was going on in the market: equities plummeting. Now that they're soaring, it seems hard to imagin...

Thanks for your feedback. I understand better. I assume that if someone brought you a will prepared by another attorney using a different software template, it would still take you the same amount of time to review it. Are there many different will making software available to attorneys? The genera...

Do lawyers not use template based software as well in order to insert all the "gobbledygook"? Yes. At least, I did. There are probably lawyers who completely write their own wills from scratch and use their own language as a template for other wills. I wasn't one of those. And, of course,...

I am a lawyer who, at the beginning of my legal career, prepared hundreds of wills, some trusts, and other estate planning documents for military members, retirees, and their families. These wills and trusts were for what I would consider "simple" estate plans--not much in the way of asset...

The Wire The Shield The Sopranos Foyle's War The Simpsons (pre 1999) Sherlock Justified Breaking Bad The Walking Dead Twin Peaks Boardwalk Empire Homeland Mini-series: Band of Brothers State of Play War and Remberance Other series which I've enjoyed but haven't measured up to the first list: 24 Pris...

Isn't your MAGI going to be below the income threshold so that you can contribute to a Roth without doing a backdoor? It's MAGI that counts for the Roth, not your gross.

With my financial situation and income, when would you recommend would be a good time to invest in a house? When you know exactly where you want to live and you're ready to stay there for many years. Should I be looking to invest in something else right now? Yes. Max out your 401k and Roth and work...

If you don't buy the condo, you can put that money into other things instead, so bear in mind that one cost of spending money on the condo is the opportunity cost of passing up on other options. For example, if I understand you correctly, you're carrying $60k in debt and do not fully fund your 401k ...

I think it's always nice to meet with people who have something in common. Have coffee, have a drink, say hi, whatever. I can't really imagine talking a whole lot about investing, but if people were ever motivated to take things further than just a friendly get together and meet other friendly peopl...

Also endorsing the idea of buying a Miata which should give you a huge amount of what you want for a fraction of the price. I own a Miata and think it's fantastic. If what you're in love with is the *idea* of owning a Porsche, then don't bother with the Miata. But if it's more about the experience o...

This is how we have ours set up too and we have the same issue.

I think you should decide if this is a dealbreaker for you. If it's a dealbreaker, end the relationship. If it's not a dealbreaker, learn to live with it. Her cultural and family values are different than yours, and attempting to impose your western values on her Asian-Pacific family values is going...