Bogleheads.org

You will not know when times are more normal with bonds. Who knows what interest rates will do? We could be within a tight range for years or not. Meanwhile, you will be taking more risk than you want. Remember how 2008-2009 felt? Playing devils advocate here since I do not like investment grade bon...

Thanks tried searching but could not find anything for Fidelity. So 80 S&P 500 and 20 extended market is total market.

How about large developed and emerging markets? Do not have foreign small at Fidelity.

Can someone correct me if I am wrong. This fund follows an index to invest in commodity futures. So proportions of commodities it invests in are fairly constant. It uses active management to select months to roll contracts to avoid common problems? Uses active management to invest collateral which c...

Do not agree that adding less less than 5 percent is not worth it. It may increase returns by .1 percent or more and over 30 years that can add up to a lot of extra momey. Also, nothing wrong with having 5 percent of portfolio in speculative assets like precious metals, commodities, em bonds, fronti...

Limited choices in 401k.

What percent of Fidelity S&P 500 and extended market would make total market?

How about Spartan int. index (foreign large cap) and EM?

Thanks.

Tough to stay the course with bonds when you know you will lose money, especially in real terms. And as far as helping to stay the course being 60/40 vs 70/40 etc. this is not going to make a big difference for me. When the big bear comes, the value of my portfolio will plummet thousands either way....

The day fed increases rates, or decrease in bond purchases, there will be a huge sell off but much of this will be priced in the days preceeding this. Then investors will accept reality and we will be back on track to new highs. Stay the course. Perhaps 5% of portfolio with speculative plays.

This fund has always been a black box. Could never figure out holdings or investment strategy.

Any 3 fund investors spice things up a bit with a small amount (<5 %) of gold or silver? If so, why do you include it?

So after much thought, reading the Vanguard white paper, and discussions here I decided to take the plunge and invest 30% of bonds in tot. int. bond index and 10% in emerging bonds. The future will likely not be like the past and a lot of what we know depends on a different history. I do not think t...

Not using home equity in net worth calculations is wrong.

One more thought. The very fact that Vanguard took so long to roll out this fund, makes me think it is not considered very important from a portfolio construction point of view. It has been what about 35+ years and now they offer it? Seems like they are trying to capture some more investment dollars...

What did a similar fund do during previous bears?

So most think not necessary (int.bonds). Seems to me like at this time, it offers little diversification, little in the way of higher potential returns (except for EM bonds), and potentially higher risk where you do not want it.

Agree. Investing is boring when you are doing it right. I always have the urge to tinker with my portfolio but for the last 3 years or so have resisted. I changed my allocation after paying off my mortgage to more aggressive 80/20. Right now, I am debating whether to add int. bond to my 3 funder. Le...

What is the yield on these funds?

What % of total bond, tot int and em bond funds would represent world capitilization? Now have 100% total bond but am thinking of adding at least int bond. Seems like EM bond is more like adding equities but with lower return.

Currently am a 3 fund investor (total stock, tot. Intern. And total bond). With the total int. bond fund now available is it worth adding in say 20-40 percent of bonds? I use bonds for safety and for rebalancing when equities drop. Seems to me like tot. Int would be at least redundant adding unneces...

Seems like flipping a coin every month would be more predictive. I think that beyond our stock exposure, cost, and savings rate, most other things are out of our control. Better to set it, and forget it.

"If you have LOTS of money then 100% stocks is OK since if $10 million falls in paper value by 50%, you still have $5 million to live on while stocks recover..."

But if you have 10 million than you do not need to take risk anymore.

"What is the alternative? Not investing? How is that better?" Spend! Better than getting negative real returns from bonds- think will get more from the money by spending it. Stock market has been artificially rising due to fed policies. Ironically, when the economy is finally stronger, the...

Are there any low cost options available that avoid problems with rolling contracts over?

I payed my house off with taxable total market and international at about Dow 14000 and had about 40k of taxable long term gains. That being said, I am still very happy with the decision. Had the market tanked and lost the opportunity to pay off my house (mortgage was about 350k) I would have felt m...

You can either join the big organization now or join the PP, put in sweat equity, and than become an employee in a few years along with your former partners when they sell their practice to the big organization.

With a guaranteed renewable an non cancellable contract (which I assume that you have), nothing can be changed in your contract. However, keep in mind that your "occupation" is not your occupation at time of application. Your occupation is the occupation at time of claim. Therefore, depen...

Given the poor outlook for reimbursement due to the ACA you are probably better off in Academics. Universities and the government are the few jobs where you can get paid a lo of money for not doing much work. The private sector responds to economic reality. The government and Academia are immune to...

I have a modified own occ. (physician) from Standard and Principal (principal about 75% of payment). Say i become unemployed for some time. During this time, does the definition of disability change? Does the policy become less valuable?

How about long term unemployment without any special circumstances for someone under 50 say?

Is the preference after emergency fund to use:

1. Taxable stocks

2. 529

3. IRAs/401ks

4. HSA

5. Home equity line of credit (probably can not get when unemployed)

6. Credit cards?

If much of the reason for holding bonds is to make sure we do not sell at market lows, than it would be cheaper to just develop discipline or let someone else manage your money. Especially now when bonds have a negative real return.

If we are in the accumulation phase, than we will continue to buy more shares during bear markets even as the rest of our portfolio drops. You only buy with new money? The advantage to having bonds is that you can buy stocks on the cheap during a bear market. On the other hand, with no bonds you do...

Well considering were at 14000 in 2007, not so good especially when you factor inflation. But no one promised anything as far as returns.

Some thoughts. We all live by the notion that the market will go up in the long run otherwise we would not invest. So 100% equities will give us the highest return. Having 20% bonds will not lessen the pain of a big bear for me. Since we are all bogleheads and are all disciplined, we will not touch ...

Are not commodity futures and precious metals near recent lows?

Guess a bond fund is still better than putting it under the mattress? That will however lower the volatility of the portfolio even more and provide safety assuming you live in a good neighberhood and have fire alarms.

Thanks that helped. Bottom line is that REITS seem terribly overvalued by historic measures.

Where does this fund stand? How about yield?

How about the direxion triple leverage etfs? But if I remember, these are only good for one trading session. Not buy and hold if you think market is going down over the next couple of months.

Anyone use exotic ETFs, options, etc?

University typically covers during training. Not sure it is worth insuring your low salary on your own. If you develop some condition now I do not think they will let you get an attending policy without paying a ton. I waited until I finished residency and than continued my university policy at a di...

It takes 5 years to get vested in Illinois. I worked for Illinois in training and have not worked for them in 7 years. I have a cash balance that grows every year until retirement which is about 25 years away. I could take the cash balance and roll it over into an IRA and get 2X the cash balance. Bu...

Would be nice to have 1-2% of portfolio in lottery tickets that let me play every day until investment either went to 0 or by some luck grew 10000% and made a big difference.

Now that I have looked at quoted for joint life inflation indexed SPIA, I can see just how valuable it is in its current state. I would get a joint life 3% cola annuity at 62 paying about 1800. According to Principal quote this is worth around 700k. My cash balance will not be close to that by that ...

As above. Want to swing for the fences with a tiny percentage of my portfolio.

Can you buy an annuity with IRA money? If you buy with post tax dollars is the income tax free?

But you can die broke if the insurance company goes under.

How does an annuity have a higher withdrawal rate ? Does not a 1 mil annuity right now get you less than 4% even at 65?

Also stinks if you buy it and than die 2 years later! Guess it will not matter.

Don't decide now. The legislation hasn't passed both houses, is not signed by the Governor, and may change yet (or not even pass at all), and what emerges at the end may still be a very generous pension system. Don't decide now. Many pension systems don't have COLAs. I will wait but it seems certai...

Yes 67 is FRA for me. Close to 4k/month is equivalent to 1 mil portfolio so pretty happy about that. Now if they start doing means testing... Better start spending everything so I can actually get this money.

So if my benefit is $2610 at 67, our total income should be $3915? If she has a small benefit will that be added to the $3915?

Says on my statement that if I die this year my spouse is entitled to $2153 per year at full retirement age. How about if we are both alive at full retirement age, how much will she get if anything assuming she does not have a significant work history?