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I wonder how the investor comes to ignore all the bad news with the economy, gold prices and reasons for it, politicians arguing on tv, and now hearings on the Benghazi incident all bringing up emotions in the investor`s psyche to force the investor to make a move and ruin a well thought out financ...

NightOwl wrote:Pasting Excel Table Test

Code: Select all
A B C 34 56 64 34 56 64 34 56 64 34 56 64 34 56 64

Text here.

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Pasting Excel Table Test

Code: Select all: A B C 34 56 64 34 56 64 34 56 64 34 56 64 34 56 64

Text here.

No magic ceiling for me -- I currently pay .25% for VSS, so I'm willing to pay that much. All of my other funds have ERs less than or equal to .10%.

But if Vanguard put out an International Small Value fund that were more expensive than .25%, I'd strongly consider adding it.

NightOwl

Ah, this brings back memories. Not particularly happy memories, but memories nonetheless. In what seems now like another life, while I was in graduate school I had a temp job working 6 pm to 4 am helping investment banking analysts prepare their pitchbooks -- that tells you how long ago this was, be...

nisiprius wrote:
“Mutual funds are the propeller plane,” writes Mr. Scaramucci in his primer, “while hedge funds are the fighter jets.”

Really expensive and prone to breaking down?

NightOwl

.11%, and that's with a healthy small value tilt in my Roth and half of my international in small (VSS). I have both Vanguard and Fidelity funds.

NightOwl

I guess I'll post my usual reply: do you guys know a bunch of other people in real life who index? I don't. I'm the only person I know who owns mutual funds as opposed to single stocks. I routinely get made fun of for owning any bonds at all -- don't I know that they are guaranteed to return less th...

Hi all, I'm an infrequent poster here at Bogleheads (though a daily reader), so I may not be the best person to post this, but I noticed tonight that grabiner is rapidly approaching 10,000 posts (at 9,995 as I write). I hasten to add that these are (or will be!) 10,000 detailed, rigorous, thoughtful...

I like that the moderators add the additional information to the thread titles to help us know which threads we should check out and which we might want to skip. I agree wholeheartedly. I've gotten used to skipping over the threads titled "Bonds" or "Help!" or "Advice"...

I can prove that today's market is a stock picker's market. In the Bogleheads Hedge Fund contest ( http://libra-investments.com/hf/bh.html ), participant "Mudpuppy" has picked a stock that is up 142.1% for the year. That was a good one to pick. Mudpuppy is handily beating the benchmark (VT...

My best financial move has been to work very hard for about a decade to get really good at my job.

NightOwl

In short: no, other than you have a higher housing cost than I'd be comfortable with but that isn't necessarily bad if the housing costs in the geographical location you reside demands that - places I can think of off the bat - San Francisco or the Northeast. My rough analysis: you sit squarely in ...

Pittsurgh, It's a place that has moved from one crisis to another and done it poorly. The political situation is corrupt at best (chief of police & mayor under FBi investigation) no creativity on solving problems (single party town for nearly 100 years). The 2nd largest healthcare system is ban...

Hoping for some help from any bogleheads familiar with the Pittsburgh, Pa.area. Both my daughter and soon to be son in law will be working in down town Pittsburgh. They are in the process of apartment / housing shopping. Their prioritized search would be safety, ease of transportation to down town,...

Hi gkaplan,

Thank you for this encouraging post. Excellent work.

Congratulations,
NightOwl

The article doesn't say much about the work involved in retaining current clients. As someone who spends a significant portion of his professional life holding clients' hands as they obsess over meaningless fluctuations in data over a long term process, I can tell you that it ain't fun. And it's got...

Also for 70 people, Fidelity will almost certainly directly take you on as a 401K client, and it is not that expensive. Agreed. My employer chose a Fidelity 401k when my company employed about 70 people, and it runs very smoothly at a low cost. I use the Spartan funds inside my 401k as the core of ...

Given all of the info above, any thoughts on whether we should pay off or not pay off the loan? I don't have anything to say on the question of "should" (assuming you are maxing all available tax-advantaged space and maintaining liquidity), but I can tell you that I recently chose to pay ...

One thing that's important to recognize is that "staying the course" is inherently quiet -- rarely does anyone feel the need to post "Hey guys, I'm still staying the course!" "Yup, I still have the 35% international that I started with!" "Yup, still 100% total bond...

How do I tell my wife of 30 plus years, she can no longer pay the bills. I was examining the quicken reports she generated for tax season. I noticed that some doctors I saw monthly quit appearing in September and other problems. While my wife was out of town visiting our child, I duplicated the dat...

Rannumgen Capital is back.

Longs:
BBBY (Bed, Bath, and Beyond)
TEX (Terex Corp)

Shorts:
RAIL (Freightcar America)
CTGX (Computer Task Group)

NightOwl

1492.92

Have you had a favorable experience with a bank or a credit union when someone stole your money? Please share your story here. I would like to know which kinds of institutions may be more likely to protect a depositor when fraud occurs. I will share a recent experience, and you can tell me whether ...

I pay over $750 per month (pre-tax) for health insurance, and that's just for me. Co-workers on the family plan pay over $2,000 per month. I don't know what will happen with premiums, but I believe that over the course of the next year the portion that my employer pays will go up and the portion tha...

It's "Gangnam" with an 'n'. "Oppan Gangnam style." [Fixed, thanks. --admin LadyGeek]

The dude in the neon yellow suit rocks.

NightOwl

Do you take into account your emergency fund when you calculate your AA? I track my EF as part of my net worth, but I don't include it in my AA. I enjoy mentally speculating about portfolio doublings using a rough Rule of 72, and I know that my EF (mostly in I bonds) won't participate in portfolio ...

How many Bogleheads invest in only one bond fund in total or in each account (i.e. Total Bond in tax advantaged and Tax Exempt in taxable - due to space limitations or other considerations)? I invest in only one bond fund -- FBIDX (Fidelity Spartan U.S. Bond Index) in my 401k. When I started invest...

Say you have two loans: Student loans - 2.0% after tax rate, fixed, 7 years left Home Mortgage - 2.3% after tax rate, fixed, 30 years left How about transcending the either/or and going half and half? Half of available money goes to loans, half to taxable. It's a strategy that is by definition not ...

None that I know of and I all of mine are with Treasury Direct. Be prepared for a blizzard of posts telling you of all the problems they have had with Treasury Direct. I've never had any in several years of use. John I haven't had any issues either. That said, I'm glad that I was able to purchase s...

25% FBIDX (Fidelity Spartan US Bond Index) in my 401k. Boooorriiinnnnng.

I own I Bonds but they serve as a tier of my EF, so I don't consider them part of my portfolio.

NightOwl

Lot attendant at a car dealership -- minimum wage summer job. 100+ degree weather, inside a car scrubbing floor mats with some kind of toxic cleaning solution. All day long climbing into cars that had been baking in the sun for hours and then driving them around the lot. That was a long summer! I su...

how about if one has a pension and SS? Will they still place you into a medicaid type place? Did not know there were medicaid only nursing homes? Is the care really substandard there? I am using the phrase "medicaid homes" to refer to nursing homes / care facilities that accept Medicaid. ...

Medicaid will kick in, but the quality of care provided by Medicaid is not particularly high. To encourage my mother to purchase LTC insurance a few years ago, I agreed to pay half of her premiums -- let's face it, the insurance protects my assets too. I don't know how I would react to seeing her in...

I still don't know why I'm not in last place. In part because Rannumgen Capital still seems to be experiencing problems with its selection methodology. Last year we realized that we needed to choose the shorts before the longs. This year we are learning that we need to go short, long, short, long. ...

1) if everyone herds to the same investing strategy, that is how bubbles appear What if everyone blindly decides to move to Colorado? It would cause major problems, to be sure -- a housing bubble in Colorado, for one -- but I wouldn't worry about that happening. For one thing, the more people move ...

Another potential reason: summer is the slow season at most jobs, so retiring in June makes it easier to avoid retiring in the middle of a major work crunch and to hand over all of one's projects to others. It's tempting to say "but retiring during a work crunch is the very BEST time to retire,...

From the Grantham article:

Returns over the next seven years will likely be ho-hum. On a global portfolio, that means maybe 4% after inflation, compared with 6.1% historically.

Uh, 4% real is ho-hum? Bring on ho-hum, then, I'm good.

NightOwl

I have a job that I won't be able to do much past age 55, so I'd better have enough money by then to retire or to switch to a different (almost certainly lower-paying) job. I also didn't save money until I was about 35 years old, so I really have no choice but to save a very high % of income. NightOwl

Day9 wrote:What are you doing to protect yourself from another 2008 collapse?

I am doing my job well so that I have money to invest under all market conditions.

NightOwl

On the evidence so far, Bogleheads are honest. Perhaps too honest for Wall Street. It is not possible to answer the questions honestly and get six out of six. "Ruan Spargo" is fictional. Nobody fell for it. The rest of the list is as stated by Weidner. Checking for "paragons" of...

Hmmm... I've eaten at The Breslin several times, yet I only got 4 out of 6 -- I'm underperforming expectations. I missed on Adoboli and Spargo.

NightOwl

Edit: 6 total, not 5.

All the advice I see out there, whether rooted in general life or finances, says you need to emphasize "experiences" over "things" when spending money. For me, it's not really a matter of choosing to emphasize experiences -- I'm just a person who doesn't much like things. Gettin...

I sure did. I have basically the exact portfolio suggested to me over three years ago when I was a new Boglehead by people like YDNAL, Shireman, retiredjg, Alex Frakt, and others. I appreciate their advice to this day -- I can't tell you how much time and money it's saved me. I plan to maintain this...

am wrote:Poll meant for monthly savings regardless of frequency of pay period. Also, since most other polls are in %, would like to see the raw numbers.

Maybe edit the poll title? People tend to reply to polls without reading the comments.

NightOwl

The results will be heavily influenced by how often people are paid (I'm paid once a month, but many people I know are paid weekly or twice a month). Also, people usually ask these questions in percentage terms -- it's hard to tell if saving $500 per paycheck is impressive or paltry unless you know ...

I'm in category 1 for now, but when I borrow money to "purchase" a home in the next few years I will probably drop to category 4.

Edited to add: I will consider it a positive step toward achieving my financial goals when I move from category 1 to category 4 as described above.

NightOwl

There is much in health care that is quite optional, I assure you. I don't understand this comment, at least in my own circumstances. I've never had any procedure or test done that was unnecessary. Are you referring to tests ordered to CYA or unwarranted colonscopies and other procedures done on nu...

ATM or in the bank? Receipt? I have receipt, I made deposits at the branch. cash and paycheck. I strongly suspect that we have reached the point where human tellers are far likelier to mess up a deposit than ATMs are. Ed 2, as you probably know, you can deposit checks at a Chase ATM without filling...

Remember student loans also act as life insurance - they don't need to be repaid if you die. This is certainly true. But if instead of dying, you get very sick and are bankrupted by medical expenses, the $250k is a huge anchor that cannot, under most circumstances, be discharged in bankruptcy. Sure...

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