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Hi Dan: In answer to your question, I can only tell you why I exchanged our long held, Vanguard intermediate-term TIPS fund to the new short-term TIPS fund: * I think the decision whether to own a short-term TIPS fund vs the original intermediate term-TIPS is similiar to the decision whether to own...

There is currently a 0.25% purchase fee on the Short Term Inflation-protected Index Fund (VTAPX Admiral Shares or VTIPX Investor Shares). This means if one purchases $100,000 the number of shares actually purchased will be reduced by $250 ($100,000 X .0025 = $250). During the last couple of days I'v...

So, taking that at face value... that would point to... --VTIPX for the portion you expect to draw on in the near term, say the next four years or so, --VIPSX for the portion you will be drawing on later. Excellent point nisiprius. One consideration as a retired person required to take IRS Required...

Thanks for your comments dbr. What really made me look at this comparison was the fact that Vanguard has announced they are replacing the intermediate inflation-protected fund with the short term inflation-protected index fund in the retirement accounts. With interest rates so low I admit this looks...

Thanks ObliviousInvestor - very interesting study - Art

I have held a significant proportion of my fixed income in the medium term (duration 8.6 years) Inflation-protected Bond Fund (AVIPX) for several years. As interest rates have fallen this intermediate bond fund has averaged a very good yield (since conception in 2000 the yield has averaged 7.36%). S...

I would attend. - Art

We use an Android application on our Android T-Mobile phones for auto navigation for short trips. Since the application announces all turns and lane changes it's unnecessary to look down at the phone to follow the instructions. For longer trips we still use the Garmin because it warns of traffic jam...

I've just taken my fourth RMD. I use some of my the proceeds to pay for vacations and, infrequently, a new car. Since we want to leave our children as much of our estate as we can, we are slowly migrating equities out of the IRA, leaving fixed income in the IRA for tax purposes, and reinvesting the ...

I have a passive portfolio modeled after the Vanguard Retirement Income allocation - 30% equities / 70% fixed income. Every year I think to check I find that my portfolio minus expenses beats the average hedge fund. For 2012, my portfolio returned 6.1% versus the average hedge fund's 5.5%. I think o...

However, my lwife had inhertied a farm in Oklahoma and unless we immediately transferred owneeship to our children the only practical way to arrange the transfer of this property after our deaths was through a trust. Oklahoma allows beneficiary deeds. Would that not have served? Brian I was told th...

No one should ever not have a will to make clear exactly what is to happen and who is to manage what happens (the executor). Whether one needs trusts or other devices is a different question. In many cases assets can be passed down by beneficiary procedures, which are essentially required anyway fo...

In the discussion of adding international bonds to Vanguard Target Retirement Funds and Vanguard Life Strategy Funds an additional change was mentioned for the Target Retirement Funds. Vanguard Target Retirement Funds will undergo a few additional changes. Vanguard Short-Term Inflation-Protected Sec...

I have been a passive investor for more than 10 year now and I'm 72 years old. Following the age in bonds rule of thumb I have split my retirement portfolio 30% equities and 70% fixed income. I rebalance to the planned proportions once a year. Through discussions with another Boglehead, I reviewed t...

Since I'm 72 years old, I based my allocation on the one used by the Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund (VTINX). Their allocation is two-thirds U. S. and one-third International. In fact, after rounding for my convenience, my portfolio resembles this: 45% Vanguard Total Bond Index 20% Vanguard I...

Last May I discussed my portfolio with Mel Lindauer via a private message. Since I'm 72 years old and I expressed an interest in using the "age in bonds" rule of thumb, he suggested I look at the Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund (VTINX). I liked the allocation so much I basically cop...

I'm 72. When I asked him, Mel Lindauer suggested I look at the Vanguard Target Retirement Income mutual fund as a possible guide for someone my age that wanted to subscribe to the "age in bonds" approach for retirement. So my basic allocation is similar to that of the Vanguard Target Retir...

After a more careful review of the posts in this thread I think I may still be using the old interface but in case this information is useful to someone that wants to download transaction data I'll post it anyway. I download my mutual fund accounts and my brokerage accounts every morning and copy an...

I recieved the following email from Vanguard this morning. "Dear Mr.: Thank you for taking the time to contact us. Vanguard is aware the "stock markets outside the U.S." column in the international section on Portfolio Watch is not accurately reflecting the source (MSCI All Country Wo...

I imagine that PW has the world weights as of 2007 or some other time in the past and not as of June 2012. A 20% drop in the value of European equities would change a 52% to something much lower ... maybe even 42%. Vanguard Portfolio Watch states that the proportions are taken from: MSCI All World ...

I hold the following international index funds: Vanguard Total World Index ETF (VT) - 5% of my total portfolio Vanguard Total International Index ETF (VXUS) - 15% of my total portfolio I am attempting to use index funds to approximate market weightings of international equities. Art, Based on what ...

Thanks pkcrafter, I'll do that search next. But I think the current allocation comparison is so incorrect that I've sent the following second email to Vanguard. "According to the Vanguard site: The world region equity proportions for the VXUS ETF are: 41.9% Europe 24.9% Pacific 23.9% Emerging M...

I was surprised this morning to find a fairly severe mismatch indicated between my international index funds and the market weighting indicated by Vanguard's Portfolio Watch. I've already submitted the following message to Vanguard but I thought it might be a good idea to document the question here....

I trade very infrequently (once a year) and only to satisfy my IRS required minimum distributon and to re-balance my portfolio. In order to avoid the strange market phenomena that we saw a couple of years ago that affected some market orders, this is the method I use. If buying or selling, I watch t...

Thanks everyone for your clarifying answers. I don't really need to make a move right now but I think I better understand my options.

Since one can look at the fund holdings at the Vanguard web site, let me ask these questions: 1. What is the amount of US Treasuries that VCSH holds? 2. What is the amount of US Treasuries that VFSUX holds? 3. What are riskier: US Treasuries or Corporate bonds? Answers: 1. VCSH - .8% U. S. Treasuri...

Vanguard appears to have short, intermediate, and long investment grade admiral bond funds (VFSUX, VFIDX, and VWETX) while they appear to have short, intermediate, and long corporate ETFs (VCSH, VCIT, and VCLT). What are the differences in the holdings between investment grade bond funds and corpora...

We spend a portion on vacations each year and reinvest a portion in taxable equity index funds for now. Approximately 90% of the investments I am handling are in my IRA account so I'll be able to reinvest in equity funds for several more years (I'm 71 years old).

I am 71 and my wife is 70. We are in similar circumstances to you. The allocation scheme we are using for my portion of our portfolios is 62% fixed/38% equities allocated as follows: 2% Vanguard Money Market 24% Vanguard Total Bond Index Fund 24% Vanguard Intermediate Investment Grade Fund 12% Vangu...

Retired - age 71 Planned allocation Total Bond Index Fund - 24% Intermediate Investment Grade Bond Fund - 24% Inflation-protected Bond Fun - 12% Total Fixed income 60% Total Stock Market Index - 20% Total International Index - 20% Total Equities 40% Comment: Up until recently I had 70% fixed income/...

I traded in my 13 year old car with 140,000 miles on it and used cash from my IRS Required Minimum Distribution to buy a new car this year.

Kirkland (Costco's brand) of coffee!

I don't understand the $75 transfer fee. Is that a fee to transfer assets from Fidelity to Vanguard? The purchase or sale of ETFs through Vanguard is free except for the bid/ask difference when you purchase or sell. I always use limit orders so I know the maximum it will cost me to purchase or the m...

I also plan to investigate the Vanguard Total International Bond Index fund when it becomes available this year for a portion of my fixed income holdings since the international bond market is much larger than the U. S. bond market. I do not intend to use market weighting if I invest in the Vanguar...

I recently changed the equity portion of my portfolio IPS to more closely match world equity weightings. For now I am plan to allocate 50% of the equities to the U. S. and 50% of the equities to International. Probably due to the European financial crisis my international holdings were depressed in ...

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I'll be 72 early next year and retired. I'm more or less following the rule of thumb of having your age in fixed income so I only have 28% of my portfolio in equities equally split between VTI (Total Stock Market ETF) and VXUS (Total International ETF). The prospectus for VT (Global equity index fun...

I can't answer in real detail but I have owned VEU and still own VT, VTI, VXUS. My overall strategy is to spread my equity investments more or less equally among global opportunities. Even though these ETFs invest in the same regions of the world in many cases they often follow different indexes. VT...

To help me identify the possible components of the new Vanguard Total International Bond Index fund, I searched the Internet and found the following Loomis Sayles discussion of "Country Distribution by Market Value" for the worldwide bond market. It indicates that the U. S. constitutes 36....

IShould I worry about the dollar continuing to decline? Here's a chart of the dollar index, which measures the strength of the dollar against a basket of foreign currencies. Live chart http://i44.tinypic.com/2i1ehl0.jpg From 1984 to 1988 or so, the dollar index declined from 150 to 85, a drop of ab...

. The new Total International Bond Index is dollar hedged, so effect of currency should be minimal unless Vanguard has trouble doing the hedging. With such a large bond allocation, having some foreign bonds might be a good idea, but with all the current turmoil in the world, you might want to only ...

I will be 72 years old next year and I've been retired for 6 years. Up till now I've tried to use the rule of thumb that I should allocate my age in fixed income and that I should have a broadly diverse holding in equities. My present portfolio allocations are 28% equities and 72% fixed income as fo...

I would argue that TIPS would handle unexpected inflation very poorly. They should handle routine slow inflation decently though. Although this has the ring of recency, I have had good results with Vanguards TIPS mutual fund as a supplement to my Vanguard Total Bond mutual fund From the Vanguard si...

First of all I think your asset allocation is appropriate. If you want to think about tweaking it a little bit you could consider the following slight changes. Since you are 48 the rule of thumb we often use is to allocate age in bonds (you're already close) but I like the additional diversity of In...

I’m a couple of years older than you (71) and will take my third IRS Required Minimum Distribution (RMDS) next year. I hope to continue reinvesting a portion of it in taxable investments each year. My wife manages her own portfolio separately which consists of a “Coffee House Portfolio”, an investme...

About a decade ago my wife inherited some farmland in Oklahoma. She rents out the 80 acres for a wheat crop and has some other income from it (farm subsidies of various kinds, multi-year gas leases, etc). I continued to try and do our taxes myself for a couple of years after her inheritance but the ...

I went to the following Berkshire Hathaway Pension Estimator web site: http://www.brkdirect.com/spia/EZQUOTE.ASP I entered a birth date of 7/14/1961 (50 years old) and a desired monthly payout of $1,250 ($15,000 / 12). The answer for life contingent was: "Your investment of $266,686 will yield ...

When Vanguard announced free ETF trading, I decided to change my Vanguard equity funds to ETFs because I’m 71 years old and in the forced liquidation phase – IRS Required Minimum Distribution or RMDS phase. At the time the threshold for Admiral Status was 100K. As I re-invested less than 100K each y...

I believe your original "BAD POST" is at the following location:
http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=76426&mrr=1307974463

I am presently leaning toward world equity weightings myself for a couple of reasons but not necessarily the Total World Stock Market as the vehicle to accomplish that objective. I remember a decade or so ago that the U. S. equity weighting was 55% and it is now estimated at 42%. Of course the past ...