Bogleheads.org

For those who were worried about funding their kids college savings or even thinking about doing so, read this: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dear-class-of-13-youve-been-scammed-2013-05-17 The first real article that talks about the realities of today, as opposed to the usual drivel we've been a...

Unlike most everybody else here, I don't necessarily feel that a moderate amount of leverage spells certain doom. My criterion for "moderate" is that one's portfolio should be able to make it through a repeat of the 2007-2012 period without blowing up, even if you don't take bold and corre...

At the end of the day, just say "No to Minivans!" :D Umm, why? Maybe because even for the best vans, driving them just isn't any fun: "Minivans on the road today are all very similar with regard to performance and handling in that they offer solid acceleration, but that's all the cre...

I may have some temporary, but substantial expenses over the next couple of years, and am wondering what firms will provide a line of credit against my Vanguard investment portfolio. I'm NOT looking for a margin account, since these typically have high rates, result in your own securities being len...

Has it ever happened to anybody to make a request for a special dish preparation and have the request denied? Victoria I once saw a waitress in a nice restaurant in the Geneva countryside decline a customers request to have their steak "well done" - she claimed the cook would kill her if ...

BMWs are money pits. Mdx are gas thirsty and require premium. I'd go highlander. We bought an X5 35i two years ago. Other than filling up every other week, total cost has been 0 and the car hasn't seen a dealership since we drove off the lot in 2011. Not even for the free maintenance program? No, n...

BMWs are money pits. Mdx are gas thirsty and require premium. I'd go highlander. We bought an X5 35i two years ago. Other than filling up every other week, total cost has been 0 and the car hasn't seen a dealership since we drove off the lot in 2011. Not even for the free maintenance program? No, n...

I owned two 3 series BMWs previously, which provided a hassle free total of 100000 miles (both of them bought used). Ummmm...I'm not sure whether your statement should be interpreted as being a good thing or a bad thing. One (a 320) was bought for $1200 with 180000km. 4 years and about 110000km lat...

BMWs are money pits. Mdx are gas thirsty and require premium. I'd go highlander. We bought an X5 35i two years ago. Other than filling up every other week, total cost has been 0 and the car hasn't seen a dealership since we drove off the lot in 2011. Unlike a Highlander, the X5 is also fun to drive...

I don't understand why unproductive sloth should be celebrated. There is no reason for a 30 year old to retire. I suspect the only way you could type such a thing with a straight face is assuming a rigid definition of retirement where you stop any sort of productive activities and sail off into the...

I'd never thought of a signature, but at least in recent times, I haven't been able to return a car without it being checked over, so I'm assuming the agent wouldn't give me a receipt without having me sign a separate agreement acknowledging damages first. I guess I'd always assumed that it would b...

I am a little mystified. How did you book the reservation? How can they force you to take insurance? By not handing over the keys to you, if you don't accept their insurance? A simple google search will bring up numerous cases where surprise insurance charges spoiled the good deals people thought t...

Amex offers insurance for $25 per rental and it is primary. I use Avis and Hertz and have been very pleased. Maybe not the absoulte cheapest but no dirty dealing. Always put your flight number in the res. But you know that now. The really cheap car rental places will NOT accept the Amex insurance, ...

Does the BMW have ESP (DSC in BMW-speak)? If yes, lift-off or power oversteer will not be an issue, and the car should be perfectly fine (I assume you'll trust your daughters promise not to switch DSC off...). I test drove a DSC equipped 328 in 1999. You could just stomp on the throttle mid-corner o...

Consider a weekend rental (only available in some cities). By Monday morning, you will have it out of your system. The fantasy is better than the reality. I would second that suggestion, but change it a little bit: Fly to Germany, rent a 911 from Avis for a few days (208 Euro/day), and see what you...

You deserve a fun car, but why buy new? Expensive sports card depreciate like a brick. What sports car are you looking at? Bet you can find one a few years old for half the price or less. It is a 911 carrera 4s, 2011, 5k miles. yes, used. new is 115k-125k! This is not what you asked for, but I thin...

Well I don't think my strategy is that different. I BUY monthly HOLD until the stock drops beyond my comfort zone and RE-BALANCE by selling high and buying low (assuming the stock that looses 2% will keep losing until another month when I will rebuy it at lower price) Looking at SPY since its incep...

You can get a very nice watch that has all the same functionality and the same look as a Rolex for $400... Overpaying by 20x just for brand name is a personal choice, but I completely understand why the OP has a problem over-spending on a purchase. He didn't get rich wasting money in the past. Very...

The question I would ask myself is "in 5 years from now, how will I feel about owning it?" In other words, it may be exciting when you first buy it and part of the allure is the you don't currently own it. But how do you think you will feel about it in 5 years? Will it be just another wat...

First, our investigations thus far have brought up some concerns about car rentals. For those who have rented cars in Israel, has your credit card coverage been sufficient? Have you purchased additional coverage through the car rental agency? For that matter, is there a recommended car rental agenc...

Also for rental cars using european sites (e.g. avis.de or avis.ch) you tend to have CDW included in the rates and in total it is less expensive then using the US sites and adding insurance (avis.com etc.). You can also save money by renting off airport (take the train into town) and drop the renta...

Again, thanks for all the wonderful advice. I'm trying to soak it all in. Here's where I'm becoming extremely frustrated. I would love to fly 'open-jaw' to keep from essentially having to double back around to fly back home from the same city I flew into. However, comparing one way to round trip fl...

I only spent a week in Israel, and I'm generally not a well-organized tourist. My general sense of safety also has a somewhat negative correlation with the number of drawn sub-machine guns I see. In the end, except for getting ripped off by AVIS for my car rental and being double-charged by the hote...

- Perhaps more importantly, college in 10 years is likely to look entirely different from now. Essentially all top schools are now experimenting with online delivery of course content, in various forms. And when I went to college, they were all experimenting with TV broadcast classes (e.g. the ITV ...

I've been looking into this a little - Apparently it's the real deal - of course they could change the law in the future. A 1+ year extended hiatus in PR could be quite beneficicial to many of us I expect. Now - gotta start learning Spanish. I don't know about the PR tax haven status, but I had a h...

Two comments: - If the OPs kid was to go to e.g. MIT in 2013, costs could vary from $0 to $60k/year, depending on personal circumstances. Taking a college "list price" and extrapolating 10 years in the future is an exercise in futility. - Perhaps more importantly, college in 10 years is li...

I am all about making conservative estimates but I think sometimes we go overboard here. The OP has more than $3.5 million for retirement, which is WAY higher than the overwhelming majority of people will ever have. I am fairly certain that they will be able to adjust their spending in a down marke...

I am always surprised in these threads how many plan to have multiple millions (over $2 mil) by 40. By my math even saving $50,000 a year starting at 22 (no easy feat) and earning 7% a year won't get you there by 40 assuming you start with $0. Perhaps we have an inordinate number of NYC investment ...

http://bit.ly/XyYxPu

Park Me Right seems to be what you are looking for.

We plan to move to Taiwan upon retirement and live out the rest of our lives there. I know Taiwan is not a place people think of for retirement but it's my wife's home country so obtaining residency for me is easy and the national healthcare system is very good. I assume you checked whether the nat...

For example assume that you had a $100K portfolio and $10K margin loan and you managed to get an optimistic 10% return on it. That would be an extra $1,000 but you would pay $700 in margin interest for a net gain of $300. Current IB margin rates are 1.64% or lower (!). http://www.interactivebrokers...

Between artificially low interest rates, federal mortgage programs and numerous direct and indirect subsidies, I wouldn't be surprised if home values were at least 50% overvalued nearly everywhere. However, only interest rates wil change. JT You could make the same argument with almost any other pr...

Blind tests

I'd like to argue that the amount we choose to invest is arbitrary. If we choose to invest $1000 ($800 stocks, $200 bonds), why not $1001, or why not $2000? Usually the answer is that we don't have more to invest, but what if you did? If you buy VTI and VXUS, for example, the amount of risk you cho...

Two more new things that are impacting the Millenials negatively: 1. Media is more pervasive and distracting than ever before. It's no secret that we have the highest rates of ADD / ADHD ever seen. How can educators possibly expect to compete with new HD gaming/media? Teaching techniques are stagna...

CAR - I bought a (top of the then current line) 3 series BMW in 2000 for $33K. That car today is $55K. No inflation? Really? 4 of the biggest ticket items in my world have doubled, or nearly doubled, in a decade. Base price for a 2000 BMW 328i was $33970. Base price for a bigger, safer, massively f...

Late 20's - I was a postdoc. Salary more than doubled compared to my PhD student days. Consequently, I more than doubled spending as well, carefully keeping net worth a little below $0k. Didn't buy my first stocks/bonds/mutual funds until mid-30's...

Saving for what? Does that assume Social Security? Does that assume a Defined Benefit pension? Can you post a link to the article? Keith Searching for "Wade Pfau 16.6%" leads to his original article: http://www.fpanet.org/journal/CurrentIssue/TableofContents/SafeSavingsRates/ The benchmar...

Thanks Kyle. I will have to look into this. I can't imagine taking in much more than $80k while living abroad, so this may be a fix for me. The actual number for 2013 is $97600 (http://www.irs.gov/uac/2013-Inflation-Adjustments-to-Various-Tax-Benefits). In addition, one would need to look at the Fo...

- none of us have any major health issues or recurring health expenses other than regular check-ups That is true for many people/families, until it suddenly isn't. One of my kids, entirely out of the blue, develop a health condition that has required $5k in prescription drugs per month over the las...

Another reply typed on an iPad mini! I got mine two months ago and find it quite perfect for what I want. It's a quality device, with great battery life and great portability. I like the smaller form factor much better than my 10" 1st gen iPad, which I stopped carrying on travel after getting a...

As others have pointed out you cannot escape US taxes without relinquishing US citizenship and the scope for evasion is much less than it once was-- the Swiss will not cooperate in your efforts. In fact, if you're just a bum with a US passport, they won't even give you a bank account (personal expe...

Given that your future income is going to be far above the foreign earned income tax credit limit, I don't see how the low swiss taxes and lack of capital gains tax (for residents) would help you, unless you either give up your US citizenship (which you don't want to) or cheat on your taxes (which s...

In the last few years I have flown > 100k miles per year, mostly US-Europe and US-Asia. Between upgrades and some mis-priced promotions ($2k for Cathay-Pacific business class FRA-HKG roundtrip!?!), a good fraction of that were business class flights. When I have a business class trip coming up, I ac...

One piece of advice: Staying in the historic center and rental cars don't mix....

sscritic: they're inter-connected, whether you say it's this part of your balance sheet or that. What do you intend on cutting on back on in 2013, if you are? If not, why not? (i.e., pay increase, expected dividends (watch Congress on that ...), increase due loan pay-offs, etc.) We refinanced our m...

How are you planning to get around? Rental car, train, bus? A little more information would be helpful. Split->Budapest->Krakow-Prague->Split is ~2800km. Do-able, depending on how much one likes driving. Vienna would be on the way... Without much effort to keep costs down, $300-500 per day (for a co...

However, unless you think total bond market is going to plummet >50%, I don't see how this is THAT risky. If you do believe that total bond market is going to go down > 50%, then maybe we should be worrying about buying bullets and moving out of the US, because that way lies certain doom for this c...

The way I think about it is to consider best/worst case scenario. The best case scenario, you borrow at about 1.5% and BND returns only 5.5% (instead of the >6% it has been). You pocked 4% on your money borrowed money. Worst case scenario is a 2008 situation. BND drops 10% yields drop to 1.5%. Reme...

Target exposure (rebalanced monthly w/ new money): Cash: 3% Gold: 7% Fixed income: 40% (split 66/33 US vs foreign; mostly active funds) Equity: 80% (split 50/50 US vs international; mostly index funds w/ some small/value tilt) Rationale: I like round numbers and shiny things 130% is quite round, bu...