Bogleheads.org

gkaplan wrote:What happens if you forget the password to the service that manages your passwords so you won't forget them?

Don't worry, you just give them your first pet's name and they will let you in

I have to admit that I didn't know it ignored case. Seems like a good password is one that needs to be written down or you will forget it. Is there a thread on that KeepAss or whatever it is called? Seems like protecting all your passwords online and protected with one password is kind of strange bu...

Let's see, if your password is weak isn't it because you chose to create a weak password? Wrong. Read the thread. You can use capital letters and they will be ignored. You can login with the lowercase equivalent. Still with 26 lower case+10 digits+31 symbols you have 2x10^18 possibilities. I tried ...

Let's see, if your password is weak isn't it because you chose to create a weak password?

There is another angle to the meaning of the phrase that nobody has mentioned. It is very important to know the reason for good returns and if they are indicative of what you can expect for the future. An example would be a long term government bond fund like Vanguard's EDV which is a long term STRI...

Livesoft , can't talk, going skiing again

Thanks jbk, that could have been me as most people here tell us to "TLH", not "TLH and save the difference." The results are kind of strange as they don't seem to match up with the comments. I guess it is believed if you don't change your spending habits you are investing - a con...

I'm not sure where you are going with this swaption, but in my experience a lot of people don't realize TLH by itself will reduce the value of your portfolio because it increases the amount of taxes you owe. It just isn't something that is immediately obvious so every few years I pop in and annoy li...

Rob, Your point is simply not valid. Implicit in the discussion of any issue here is the assumption of "all else being equal" which one would assume includes spending. Your comment could just as easily be said about someone that spends 0.25% to lower their mortgage rate by 2.00% per annum...

My coworker whom claims he drove manual VWs his whole life pulled in to work a few months ago in CRV. He told me his Jetta was the last straw. He loves the brand and their cars but the poor reliability turned him to Honda. This year's JD Power survey says it all pretty much sums it up for VW. http:...

Andy, what is this pre-retirement enjoyment you speak of? This isn't the petrocelliheads, it's the bogleheads. We start celebratory threads when an expense ratio drops from 0.1% to 0.08%, saving us $500 per year (for every $2.5 million invested). If that isn't living it up, what is? :mrgreen: Seriou...

Andy, if you aren't investing the extra $1000 saved you ARE NOT doing tax arbitrage. You are just spending $1000 and then increasing the amount of capital gains taxes you'll eventually pay because you lowered the basis. Based on the conversations I have had here I'd say most people didn't realize t...

I'm not sure how the $3000 loss now vs later factors in. If you don't invest the savings it won't make a difference in how much money you have in retirement. Rob: with all due respect, you are ignoring two aspects that are very important or most people here. First is the time value of money and sec...

I came from a V8 and bought a VW Golf TDI. Great acceleration, you can turn on a dime, the automatic shifts perfectly and I am getting 40mpg in about a 50/50 mix of city/hiway driving (when I drove from LA to SF on freeway I was getting almost 50). VW diesels have an above average reliability. All ...

Rob - your posts have been helpful and I thank you for them. I am not persuaded by your argument, especially for the reasons others have pointed out (most Bogleheads will save/invest that extra $1000 per year; many will carry losses into retirement to offset recognized gains; many will leave taxabl...

Rob: Livesoft has documented the tremendous benefit that TLH can bring. In your first objection, you suggest that a person's budgeting habits may result in no real advantage. I disagree, even if you assume the guy saves a fixed dollar amount each year, and spends everything else. His $3,000 deducti...

I was really skeptical but I got outvoted (wife+2kids) and bought a 2004 Prius. So far I'm mostly happy. I was surprised that it was a better buy than Accords and similar cars (on the private market anyway - I calculated the cost/mile left assuming the car would die at 200k-250k miles). The engine/m...

Actually, the Fiscal Cliff tax bill says differently. The 0% rate still applies. And there is a difference between income, adjusted gross income, taxable income, etc. I think assuming a 0% capital gains tax to make your financial plan successful is less likely to work than requiring the early death...

Can you rerun that with the correct numbers? Where do you live where you can realize $90k in gains (wrong amount btw) at 0% tax? Anyway, if the TLH didn't take place you would have even less gains so TLH didn't help. I did make a mistake in forgetting you were carrying this over into retirement. In...

Can you rerun that with the correct numbers? Where do you live where you can realize $90k in gains (wrong amount btw) at 0% tax? Anyway, if the TLH didn't take place you would have even less gains so TLH didn't help. I did make a mistake in forgetting you were carrying this over into retirement. In ...

I'm gonna use your suggestion and die beforehand. Before then, I will be living off of SS and Roth IRA assets. And before that, I will be using up carryover losses. I prefer a financial plan whose success doesn't require that the participant die :) Your scenarios aren't very realistic for most peop...

If you're light on cash, will a margin account at VBS let you buy new stocks without waiting 3 days for settlement? I have margin on my taxable brokerage accounts (not at VBS). I don't actually carry a margin balance, but it sure makes trading easier. I know some are worried about the bogeyman of t...

We've been through this before livesoft... Until folks learn that unrealized cap gains are not taxed, return of capital is not taxed, and long-term capital gains are taxed at a rate as low as 0%, we will have to keep reminding folks. The idea of making sure to invest the tax savings is a nice addit...

If one harvests more than $3000 in losses, then there are additional benefits. Let me give a big one: Suppose I have TLH'd $300,000 in losses and over the following 10 years I sell nothing else. Each year, I deduct $3,000 from my AGI so at the end of 10 years, I still have $270,000 in carryover los...

Investment return = P*(1+r)^N/2^D where P is the amount invested, r is the rate of return, N is the number of years, and D is the number of divorces.

Call_Me_Op wrote:I have heard that you should always ensure that your brokerage account is "in your name." Is there a clearer (or more explicit) definition of what this means?

I guess you could put it in my name. I'm not sure what you are thinking...

Anyone have experience with duplexes versus single family houses? Generally: Single family homes attract the best tenants, but offer the least return for your money. Duplexes are the "sweet spot" with good tenants, and better return than SFHs. The income from 3-plexes and more etc is even...

Let put some numbers to my last point. Suppose you have a $100k portfolio and you come up with some magic mix of high volatility assets that predicts your average annual return will increase by 0.3% compared to a normal portfolio. That is actually on the high side of what you can get on paper and wo...

Think I'm getting it. You're reducing volatility drag on the portfolio. exactly Obviously I'm still trying to get my head around it. One thing to keep in mind is that these additions just position you better at the start. They don't change the way assets interact. A zero return asset (say 0.8 when ...

steve_14 wrote:Whether you hold 1 or 20 assets with a 0% (geometric, actual) single period return, your expected return in the next period is $0.

Not sure what you are saying 'cuz one man's expected return is another man's average return, etc, but I think the math I just presented shows this isn't true.

I'm not formally trained in this area, I'm going by my mathematical instincts. But I do know that if you have two assets of type B that are not perfectly correlated then a rebalanced combination of them will have positive (geometric expected) return. Been hesitant to join in, but wth, I'll add a bi...

Tuxx wrote:You probably have earned over $2M and have less than $500K in assets.

Do I need to say more?

Actually, less would have been preferable. FWIW, you forgot to include his paid-off house. I'd say he's doing far better than most.

555 wrote:

RobG wrote:"I prefer the slice-and-dice approach. One quarter state school, one quarter IVY, one quarter community college and then 25% of any degree you can get over the internet."

Domestic bias. How about some international/

Get an international girlfriend if you want to study a broad.

I prefer the slice-and-dice approach. One quarter state school, one quarter IVY, one quarter community college and then 25% of any degree you can get over the internet.

I had to make sure that wasn't me posting since I'm 45 and have similar numbers. $17,000 is 3% of your current investments and you can lose that in a bad day, 10x that in a bad year... It makes you wonder if it is worth it to dribble in more money... but the year I made $140k I saved $70k! So it can...

Mandelbrot misses his own point. It goes to the question: Is time actually on our side? This is the big one for Bogleheads. Time does not reduce risk. With time, the magnitude of potential loss grows even as the probability of a large loss diminishes. Bobcat2 has posted some articles on this. Yes, ...

Mel Lindauer wrote:Actually, the I Bond limit was raised to $10k per SS#, so, between you, your wife and your trust(s), you could purchase at least $30k per year (more if you have more than one trust).

Does this mean that I could by $10k for myself, my wife, and my two kids for $40k total?

One CPA even forgot to file my return. Anyone having their return done by others should do the mailing themselves (if filing a paper return) or demand a copy of the ACK if the preparer is e-filing. You should always have proof that you filed on time (assuming you did). yes, double check everything....

I started doing my own taxes in the early 80s when Money Magazine would run a tax scenario every year and have 50 tax experts, CPAs, etc. work the taxes and they would come up with 50 different answers. I figured I could come up with a different answer on my own without paying anyone. Two of the la...

I'm curious, is the intent to keep you from transferring data outside the plant, or to keep you from wasting company time on personal stuff? Either way, an iPhone might violate the spirit of the rule and get you into trouble.

magician wrote:

Valuethinker wrote:I forget which one invented mean-variance analysis (Markowitz) . . . .

I'm pretty sure that it was invented by . . . Harry Markowitz.

I was taking a class on solving sparse matrices and up pops Harry Markowtz's name.

No, I don't think that will work either. I found the best way to reduce taxes is to max out a Solo 401k. Are you doing that? Are you in a Roth solo 401k or regular solo 401k? And why? Do you have this setup with vanguard? Thanks!! Bear in mind you can't have any employees if you have a solo 401(k)....

From an investment point of view, this isn't a very good investment. I'd suggest selling it and using the money to buy better rentals, or refinancing alot and using that money to buy better rentals. The valuation on the property is too high to make it a good investment. You could buy an apartment b...

Simple, it's an asset but not an investment asset because you cannot do things with it that you can do with investments, like rebalance and tax loss harvest You can't do that with the loan against the house either, but it is considered a negative bond, nor do you need to rebalance your whole portfo...

Rent "Office Space." Better yet, get netflix online and watch it for "free."

I forgot to mention one very important thing: don't burn any bridges. You never know when they will come in handy. If you have burned them you have gained nothing working for them. Also, it is business, not personal. Believe it or not, the person who had me leave a company moved to another company a...

Furthermore, it is better to quit than to be laid off or fired -- that is advice I got from a manager with 50 years experience, and terminating him one way or another is the obvious what they are doing. If someone asked the OP why he quit he could/should tell them his position was eliminated after ...

You don't want to be looking for a job when you can't sleep because of your current job either. Where did the OP write that? Furthermore, it is better to quit than to be laid off or fired - How so? If someone asked the OP why he quit he could/should tell them his position was eliminated after the c...

Hostile and extremely uncomfortable now? What about the discomfort of being out-of-a-job? Propective employers will ask why you quit your last job and you will say because they didn't treat you right and you were "extremely uncomfortable". That answer won't go over well. Clearly he should...

I know firsthand how stressful this sort of stuff can be, but since you have a year+ of expenses in an account don't let the worry about unemployment payments override your need to get out of that environment. Unemployment payments aren't all that much anyway and not worth getting fired over. I've b...