Bogleheads.org

Unless you have a complex situation and/or MILLIONS to deal with, the best answer could easily be to stay on this forum and learn what you need to know to do it yourself...

Yes, it is a good idea to recognize that the rate constant in an exponential can be a negative number. An interesting thing about this is that if a person's first exposure to such things was in looking at physical phenomena such as radioactive decay or damped oscillation, it is positive exponents t...

Would be amusing to compare the VG total bond fund return for each of the last 10 years as well.
Not sure if that can easily be done at M*...

Open a Vanguard account online today. Move all your money back into their mutual funds by next week, but in an age-appropriate AA, no more than 80% in stocks if you're in your 20's, less if you're older. What is your age and approximate dollar amount you'll be investing? And do you have an employer ...

Can there be considered two parts to compound growth? Share price and number of shares. -If the share price goes up, say, 5% a year, that would be a form of compound growth, even if the number of shares remains constant (i.e. not reinvesting dividends). -If dividends are reinvested then the number ...

...If this is the case, I will hold at 50/50. This may be excessively conservative for some, but I am comfortable with the plan. A 50/50 AA is excessively conservative for a retiree? No way. It's an excellent AA provided you have enough assets to weather the ups and downs. I'd call it slightly aggr...

I'd like to question the idea, promoted famously by Zvi Bodie, and by Michael Zwecher, William Bernstein and others, that you should be very conservative when or until you hit some "number". Take the money off the table. The logic seems to go like this: You need some level of "floor&...

Strictly speaking, Compound Interest refers only to bank accounts and CDs, and Money Market funds. But sadly, one almost always loses money in real terms when "investing" in these products, due to INFLATION. Stock and Bond funds don't pay interest and don't really "compound" eith...

...Later thought: In order to make a mess, he probably needs a lawyer. Can he afford to hire one if he has little access to funds? Would the court require the sister to pay for his lawyer? Based on decades of zero legal experience in this area, I would say that if Jane hires a lawyer to represent h...

Please stay on-topic, which is how to file for divorce. Update: This thread is now in the Personal Finance (Not Investing) forum (legal issue). Based on my own experience, it's better if you can file pro se, representing selves, in a mediated divorce, no lawyers in court. But there has to be COOPER...

It's funny to see how automatically new, as well as some of the more experienced posters, simply assume that they will easily stay the course for 40+ years. I'd like to see some kind of study showing how often people really make changes to their portfolio. I'm definitely in favor of nisiprius' sugg...

Looks to me like she knows what's she's doing. How's your portfolio look? BTW, 60/40 is more in the moderate category. Brian For someone age 70, I'm not sure I'd agree about the 60/40 being moderate. But given that she has no pressing need to spend any of those funds, that changes things a bit...

Doesn't seem aggressive to me. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. A burning question though: How did she end up with this portfolio? Who decided this would be the portfolio? I doubt it is luck or happenstance. Good burning question, yes. Might make sense to simplify this portfolio a bit, but if she d...

Curly, Sounds like you put in a reasonable effort to make things work. I have always had a problem with the concept of a vow that can be broken. Maybe the vow should be removed from the ceremony, so that it is clear to everyone involved the marriage is really a legal contract subject to various ter...

More importantly, enret, what is your Asset Allocation?
Retired folks aren't usually more than 50% in equities.
What will you put the non-equity $$$ into? Bonds or CDs?

Op, KEEP OUT OF THIS. The coworker made a significant portfolio maneuver with the advice or blessing of his/her adviser. If you offer any advice and it goes wrong, this will not be good or at least any postives will not be much. If your advice is good, it will be forgotten. Let him/her work with hi...

Five Scoop wrote:I found that online resources report federal tax on lottery winnings is 25%. State taxes vary, California is 0%.

States vary, yes, but the IRS goes up to 39.6% tax bracket for large winnings.
The 25% withholding has little to do with the eventual amount owed....

OP is betting on reversion to the mean if he does this.
Not sure this is a good bet...

duplicate deleted.

"Pretending" that excess $$ that you took out of tax-shelter two years ago that's still sitting in your checking account unspent is different is just playing mental games with the taxman... To be honest I don't quite understand what you meant by this. Folks with no pension but with $2M in...

The general concept is if the marginal tax rate is the same right now and gong forward, it would be beneficial to convert, provided you have money outside of retirement accounts to pay taxes , as conversion means you can put more value in retirement accounts. This is actually NOT a prerequisite for...

Do a comparison on what's going to happen once you hit age 70 and start RMDs.
The RMDs will be taxed at your marginal rate (and/or ABOVE) and the residual amount, if reinvested, will be all in taxable.
Decide if that's what you want; otherwise do something about it...

My last work day was March 8.
41 years was enough.
It wasn't incredibly easy but I'm making the best of it...

THIRD SITUATION Now consider a situation that can NOT be done in a single transaction: Two funds (A and B) are over allocated and two are under allocated. Here is what you would LIKE to do, but VG won't let you: Sell A and B and use the resulting cash to Buy C and D It isn't pretty, but you should ...

Pardon my impertinence, but so far not a single response has actually answered the OP's question. I'd like the answer as well, as I don't want to figure it out on my own. Let's keep it simple. When I log into my VG account, off to the right are two pie charts showing my equities, bonds and cash. If...

As regards those goals as a function of age, would be good to get AHEAD of them to the extent reasonably possible.
This implies saving a larger % of your income than average.
This is how people are ABLE to retire at age 50 sometimes, whether they choose to or not...

Take it from us: it's extremely simple. An average middle school student could figure it out and be done in 10 minutes. Oh yeah... prove it! :) I am serious. If I have this hesitation, I am sure many others have it as well. This is where the wiki is very useful. It is full of answers, but not this ...

Since you say you have a psychological issue with rebalancing, I'd recommend you consider moving smaller amounts, possibly more often. I've been moving 1% portfolio increments as needed and have done well with that. This means for a $500K total, move just $5K at a time to get you from just over a re...

Why don't you wait until you open the account and see what tools are available? Because I realize that rebalancing has been a hindrance in my investment decisions. The unknown level of difficulty has a psycological effect that causes me to hesitate. Seeing how it is done would allow me to feel more...

Use new monthly contribs to "rebalance" if possible. Otherwise, it's simple to do on your VG personal account page. Each investment you own has a Buy | Sell | Exch option you can select. So just click on Exch for your stock fund and tell it to move $4500 (for instance) into your bond fund,...

I'm single also, age 63. Answer depends on your health and how much you have in your nest egg, especially tax-sheltered. I'm taking an additional $3K per month out of my 403(b) in lieu of Social Security, which I plan to start at age 70. They call this buying an annuity, one with a COLA even. It see...

livesoft wrote:Nice first post, so Welcome to the forum!

Yes, you are crazy.

Crazy, correct.
You sold all your BOND mutual funds as well?
Being up 50K is small change.
What if you were up 500K?
No, wait, you'll never know now...

flipflopliving wrote:FWIW most RV fulltimers pick SD or TX as their state of domicile for tax reasons.

I think it used to be NV; why the change?

I buy and sell, when it is necessary to buy and sell, to maintain my AA within its appropriate bands. So do I. But what I am saying is beyond a standard buy/sell to steady our AAs. My question is the value (for retirees) of attempting to take advantage of an extended market downturn by basically ab...

I'm a new retiree this year, presently targetted at 50% equitiies but a bit above that due to Mr. Market. I just SOLD a percent of equities and moved it to bonds. And yes, if Mr. Market gets my equity percentage down below 45%, I plan to buy more... Ah-ha! Your response Mr.Wizard seems to lend some...

I'm a new retiree this year, presently targetted at 50% equitiies but a bit above that due to Mr. Market.
I just SOLD a percent of equities and moved it to bonds.
And yes, if Mr. Market gets my equity percentage down below 45%, I plan to buy more...

Someone already had my preferred user name on the site that services my MasterCard account. So I took the same name followed by a numeral. But sometimes I forget and try logging in without the numeral. What's funny is: my preferred user name has been disabled now for a couple years, so I guess it go...

No need to make the mods cranky, I agree. I presented a really simple example for Bruce to elaborate on earlier today: http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=115938#p1690882 Thus far, he seems to have ignored my request to enlighten us on his concept with a simple example. So I gue...

I'll pulled the cord and invested 62K in VTIAX today, after waiting a while for it to go down 2 days in row...sick of waiting for that to happen. Looks like it will be down about 1% today, good enough for a 10-20 year investment horizon. Sh*t or get off the pot, as they say. Well that's nice, but y...

coincident with various milestones or market highs, an investor could find himself suddenly needing to take less risk than anticipated. So that could trigger a change in asset allocation, even if a rebalancing band hasn't been hit, without violating fundamental Boglehead principles. This has been d...

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...

Let's say an investor has $100,000, half in stocks and half in bonds: $50k stocks $50k bonds Over a short period of time, stocks go up 50%, and bonds don't change, and all new contributions go to bonds, leaving the investor: $75k stocks $75k bonds Is his risk higher, lower, or the same compared to ...

Let's give Bruce a SIMPLE case of a risk-averse retiree and see what his system comes up with for maximal available spending. Our retiree is male, age 65, with a monthly SS check of $2000 presently and with $1,000,000 in laddered CD's at PenFed. No stocks, bonds, or other investments. He rents a 1 B...

I agree with Landy's comments on flexibility in retirement spending. I do a fair amount of recreational travel and my decisions on where to go and how long to stay have always been connected with the current reality of my finances. This will be increasingly true now that I'm retired since I don't ha...

Better way to do it is probably along the lines of having a larger nest egg with a higher percentage of discretionary expenditures, so you can "hunker down" for a year or two if conditions demand. So if you can survive on $60K per year and that $120K simply allows more extravagance, you sh...

It gives me comfort to see how scared/distrustful of the rally people are. We've still got some ways to go, hopefully. No reason to be either of the above. Valuations aren't all that high; we're not in a bubble. Just need to manage your risk by keeping your equity exposure under control. I find it ...

There's always a fringe element predicting some sort of economic collapse along with a survivalist plan for coping with it.
This is probably a lockable thread, but I wasn't interested in watching that silly video...

My target is 1/3 international, of my total stock allocation.
International is more VOLATILE than domestic, so pay attention to rebalancing here...

And I'm saying that perhaps momentum will carry things to an out-of-band rebalancing point. I wonder if some folks are just rebalancing out of equities because things are at an all-time high (according to media reports) and not because they have reached a rebalancing point according to their IPS. I...

Having never participated in a bull market before now, this is an unfamiliar feeling. Various personal financial milestones, round numbers, whatever, they scream into the rear-view mirror every way I turn. Threads pop up about rebalancing with charitable donations, what happens if you hit your numb...