Bogleheads.org

Hi Victoria, How important is the price vs. the convenience vs. the airline? I looked at Orbitz just now using 20 - 27 July and economy class. Here's what I found: The least expensive one-stop is Aeroflot at $1432, through Moscow, using Boeing and Airbus equipment. United, through Frankfurt, shows $...

noahw wrote:Financially I can retire today. (62)
Emotionally I'm not sure I can.
I help people and it's gratifying that I can, so it's hard to go to pasture.
Any thoughts on overcoming my mental state?
Noah

If continuing your career is a desirable lifestyle choice there is nothing to overcome.
PJW

Zacharay Karabell has a Reuters column published today on exactly this topic: The United States has a problem: rapidly rising student debt. It also has a solution: online education. The primary reason for spiraling student debt is the soaring costs of a college education at a physical college. Onlin...

Google announced today that they are investing $125 million for a ~7% equity stake in Lending Club, valuing the company at $1.55 billion. Does this give you more confidence in lending to Lending Club? ... No. Neither does it decrease my confidence. If Google thought making the loans was better than...

I suspect the problem is not with the seniors, or with the report, but with the article. I've added the emphases: The Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonprofit research group, said May 15 that 48 percent of people who were aged 61 to 70 and in the bottom half of the income distribution withdr...

I hope I am doing this right. My broker is Charles Schwab. I recently got some good advice from them as to revising my portfolio allocation. But my present portfolio is returning 10.13% year to date (1/1/13 - 5/16/13). Perhaps because of the present bull market? I would hate to change my present al...

Hi SoMo, First of all, welcome to the forum! If you and your mother would like to take the money from maturing treasuries and reinvest using Treasury Direct, then I think that is a reasonable thing to do, and your running interference for her with the Merrill Lynch broker sounds like a plan. Beyond ...

I'm switching to Gmail for personal email. My work recently switched to corporate Gmail and I'd prefer to use the same system for work and personal. For personal my full name happens to be available as FirstName.Lastname@gmail.com Good or bad idea? I also plan to retire in a few years and I'll prob...

I I have a suggestion: encourage Vanguard to do screen shots for you, I have thought of this too, I think it is a good idea. I deleted because I saw your edit. Hi Stan Dup, I realize you were asking about how to rebalance online, and if there was a demo you can watch. I don't know that there is one...

I agree with G-Money's points, and would like to add one of my own. The range of durations in Total Bond means that it is not as exposed to non-parallel changes in the yield curve. If the whole curve goes up or down without changing shape, that didn't buy much. If its shape changes sharply Total Bon...

What kind of a duration do you want? You can hardly go wrong with Vanguard's NY muni fund. It's classified as a long-term fund, but has a current duration of about 6 years. Do you want a fund with a longer duration, or a shorter duration? High quality, or lower quality with higher yield (and higher...

As far as I know, Vanguard doesn't offer a triple tax free NY fund. It's fund is not exempt from NYC taxes. Not sure about the others. From New York State's website (emphasis added): Bonds issued by New York State and its Public Authorities are debt obligations, the proceeds of which are used to bu...

From the same page, Vanguard's risk/return scale number is 5, the highest. Kowabunga! REALLY? That is STUNNING. Yep, really. ... Vanguard is saying that this bond fund is not only riskier than Total Bond (2 on the scale) or High-Yield Corporate (3)... they are saying it is riskier than Total Stock ...

Is not a "purchase fee" another name for "load"? No, Vanguard's purchase fees go directly into the fund to benefit all share holders, not so with loads. Every addition purchase by new investors helps the existing investors. What you've said is good, SpringMan. I like to think of...

Thanks Sheepdog. I might invest in the ETF if the bid/ask spread is not too great, but I would not pay the .75% purchase fee on the fund. I read a recent Economist article on emerging market govt debt. They said it might not be as risky as most people think, and might be a good investment. When they...

G-Money wrote:I posted Vanguard's response here: viewtopic.php?p=1691990#p1691990

It's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

Serves me right for defending them.
PJW

I have been a lifelong renter. Except for one year, I have never carried renter insurance. I guess you can say I self-insure. Alternatively, you took unnecessary risk but the risk has not materialized (yet). Victoria If I may engage in level-two thinking as Larry espouses: unless one has virtually ...

I've rented housing nine times in six municipalities in four states. Laws and customs were different everywhere. In one state the landlord kept my entire security deposit without saying why and I had no recourse. In another, one tried and all I had to do was write him a letter mentioning the relevan...

Buy 200 shares of xyz today at $10. Sell 100 shares tomorrow at $8. Do I have a STCL of $200 or 100 shares of xyz at $12? This could be a nightmare for those of us who are trying to use a short term bond fund instead of a MM fund. I had a similar type occurrence at Vg several weeks ago except I bou...

PJW, I'm not sure I follow you. The NAV on 5/2/13 was $14.52. The NAV on 5/3/13 was virtually unchanged, $14.42. The fund has had plenty of swings of that magnitude with barely any change in the SEC yield. For example, from 8/10/12 to 8/16/12, the NAV of VIPSX dropped $0.20 without any change in th...

... I can't explain the change on Vanguard's website, but I am reluctant to trust it. Skepticism is healthy. In this case perhaps the combination of weekly SEC yield accounting along with the net asset value change in the prior five trading days of -1.18% can explain Vanguard's assertion. E — BASED...

I should have added to my list of ER drivers the constraints imposed by your employer. But that's just another source of incomparability. Great Point, Great Penguin [= L. genus Gr. Aptenodytes ]. I benefited from a 401(k) fee change adopted in the wake of the full disclosure law (although the fees ...

In the last crash I learned again what I had learned from a series of prior crashes; to wit:

The last crash is not a guide to the present crash.

PJW

[OT comments removed by admin LadyGeek]

Fair enough. I've removed the other comments.

PJW

The rate a central bank pays on member bank reserves, if variable, is a tool of monetary policy. The European Central Bank is trying to ease credit conditions by threatening to use it, for the purpose of stimulating lending and thereby the economy (no, I do not want to get into a Hayek / Keynes - st...

Mel Lindauer wrote:...
I'll bet that outside of the Bogleheads community, the number of folks who know about this "loophole" is probably miniscule.

I certainly learned about it here, and from you.

Thank you.

PJW

Just out of curiosity, could you tell us which Treasury Secretary signed each of the denominations? PJW Hank Paulsen signed the $1000's and the $200, Tim Geithner signed the $500 and the $50's. I hadn't noticed that. Interesting observation Shawcroft Thanks. The reason I asked is there's a conjectu...

Let me see if I can use another analogy, and ask whether the prior posters think it is apt. I have an [item I decided I'd prefer not to name] whose market value is at most a few hundred of dollars, but which I cannot imagine selling at any price. It came into my hands from its previous owner at no c...

Just out of curiosity, could you tell us which Treasury Secretary signed each of the denominations? PJW Hank Paulsen signed the $1000's and the $200, Tim Geithner signed the $500 and the $50's. I hadn't noticed that. Interesting observation Shawcroft Thanks. The reason I asked is there's a conjectu...

Since we've suddenly started to discuss "Fiddler on the Roof", then lets face the facts - money did not help much to Jewish families in tsarist Russia. Nobody was spared from pogroms. Neither money helped much in Hitler's Germany, where only 2 scenarios were possible: you could get a chan...

VictoriaF wrote:

Phineas J. Whoopee wrote:

VictoriaF wrote:Виктория

In context, shouldn't that be וויקטאָריאַ ?

פּדזשוו

It was in Russian, not Yiddish.

Victoria

Understood.

Sholem Aleichem wrote in Yiddish, hence my suggestion about context, but I'm very much appreciative you recognized the language!

PJW

magician wrote:As for your comment that for I-bonds there is no sensitivity to changes in interest rates, I disagree, but it's possibly a matter of semantics: there is a sensitivity: it happens to be zero.

Your statement is better than mine, and I'll gladly sign such a declaration.
PJW

"It's no disgrace to be poor, but it's no honor either." -- Sholem Aleichem (in translation; the Fiddler version is slightly different) All Tevya wanted to do was become a rich man. In his times, being rich meant having a heavy wife which has changed now. And yet the staircase going nowhe...

"It's no disgrace to be poor, but it's no honor either." -- Sholem Aleichem (in translation; the Fiddler version is slightly different) All Tevya wanted to do was become a rich man. In his times, being rich meant having a heavy wife which has changed now. And yet the staircase going nowhe...

To my colleagues: The "good news": I can report that filing a Form 8888 with an overpayment of $5,000 to your estimated Federal still permits (as of April 15, 2013) purchase of $5000 of I-Bonds. The "other news" The Treasury sent out the $5000 in about 13 different bonds !!........

"It's no disgrace to be poor, but it's no honor either."
-- Sholem Aleichem (in translation; the Fiddler version is slightly different)

market timer and swaption, mt: Thanks, I think you've added something to the conversation. Both: It sounds almost as if you're talking about a black-market price vs. an official price. That's interesting. There is indeed an I Bond ration, and mt, given the willingness of so many (including me) to in...

PJW, the lesson in commerce is much appreciated. I'm pretty sure my sarcasm detector just went off. For the record, I'm not much of a fan of eggs. For me, maybe I would pay 25 cents. You & me dig the same record in that regard. But of course you know that this single bid is about as relevant to...

The only source of increased value is the greater number of interest payments one gets by waiting, which unless you take them out are reinvested under the original terms thereby avoiding reinvestment risk. The decline in real interest rates hasn't increased the "value" of my 3.4% I Bonds?...

(The ideological sideshow is this: is there any reason why you need to consider anything other than the redemption value of I bonds? Is there some other concept of value that applies? The answer is: yes if and only if you know of some other way to get money in exchange for them and if you actually ...

Clearly nisiprius and company do not like models. If you do not like models you should not use them. However duration is also a model so you should not use it either. Epsilon Delta, When you say duration, what do you mean? Do you mean modified duration? That's the sensitivity of the price of the se...

MindBogler wrote:/panic

"We will not panic until I give the order to panic!"
[Crunching noises inside the submarine]
"What was that?"
"We hit the bottom of the ocean."
"PREPARE TO PANIC!" - Siegfried
-- Get Smart!

Grt2bOutdoors wrote:It's different this time. It's a new paradigm. It's a new wave.
...

Once I speculated,
Now I'm ruined.
Brother can you paradigm?

PJW

"A Shaolin monk does not sell himself for a handfull of rice."
-- Kung Fu (television show pilot)

I do not mean to advocate them, or even defend them, but it's worth noting Vanguard had the misfortune of starting them shortly before the recent financial crisis. Had the sequence of returns been otherwise opinions might be different.

PJW

What with the short-term market being a voting machine, the appropriate criterion for a high frequency trader is what everybody else will think a few milliseconds from now. Actually, because markets are forward-looking, it's what everybody else will think everybody else will think. Getting the news ...

Cut-Throat wrote:...
Everyone here hates Bonds currently....
...

This person does not speak for me.
PJW

... That said, the majority of engineers will just be well off. But that's true for the majority of all people Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor, at least no one worth speaking of. -- Douglas Adams PJW

... The Federal Reserve, our central bank, increases the money supply when they buy treasuries from the US Treasury. ... Hi Hazlitt, No third agreement between us yet I'm afraid. :( Although if absolutely unavoidable it can do so, the Fed does not buy treasuries directly from the US Treasury. It bu...

In your opinion, for a high school senior who's choosing a career path, which of the following requires the 1st most , the 2nd most , and the 3rd most : 1. Training or education 2. Luck or abnormally high IQ 3. Overall likelihood of getting rich A doctor, lawyer, investment banker, or something els...