Bogleheads.org

livesoft wrote:They are annualized.

Great, thanks for the quick response. Makes me feel better about my 5-year performance.

Is the Personal Rate of Return that Vanguard gives you annualized? For instance, Vanguard gives me something like: 5-year personal rate of return: 5% 3-year personal rate of return: 4% 1-year personal rate of return: 10% Are the 3 and 5-year numbers annualized or does it mean I've only made 5% total...

I'm also using this on Mac (10.5.8) and I have Firefox 4.0.1.

Does anyone use Firefox with Alliant? I am getting the following error when I try and use estatements: This Connection is Untrusted You have asked Firefox to connect securely to estatements.alliantcreditunion.com, but we can't confirm that your connection is secure. Normally, when you try to connect...

Ah, thanks for the information. I had been looking to move my emergency fund elsewhere and I had been hoping I'd be able to downsize the number of logins I needed.

I was wondering if the login system is the same for capital one credit cards and their savings account? Just trying to reduce the number of websites I have to login to.

I'm not a doctor, but I read Mountains Beyond Mountains (about Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health) and thought it was amazing.

I was just trying to understand if bonds could provide a higher return than the savings accounts in this current environment. With the current rates it doesn't seem that bonds offer any advantage over the savings accounts. How about an ultrashort bond fund such as SIGVX? While it does not come with...

It's also possible that savings accounts will fall further in yield. With interest rates close to what they are now, we've seen savings accounts fall from the 3% range to (at most) just over 1%, so it's certainly possible that they'll fall further. To what extent it's worth chasing yields from one ...

In rough order of desirability/ increasing risk: - CDs, within FDIC limits, where they pose attractive interest rates in a 'ladder' up to your need for cash (eg 6m, 1 year, 2 year) or with a cashable right-- beware risky banks paying high interest rates and cashable CDs that are not (you have to re...

Yeah, conceptually it seems like you're buying slightly longer time-frame investments (on the 2-year timescale) as opposed to the shorter term. But at least at the end of each year you haven't lost any money, if the performance chart is right for VBISX. I'll probably wait on it a while more before m...

Is 2003-2007 a reasonable period to look at if I want to see how short-term bond funds worked in a rising interest rate environment? I'm comparing http://www.pfstuff.com/savings/ with the total return of https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundId=0132&FundIntExt=INT#hist=tab%3A1a to ...

I looked at my VFWIX account and I'll definitely have to pay short-term capital gains tax if I made the switch. I've only been investing in the taxable version for a little over a year, and buying regularly every few months. I originally bought into VFWIX because of the arguments I read here about u...

Darn. If I had known, I would have just bought Total International in the taxable account last year instead of VFWIX! :) Now there are some sort of tax implications for exchanging into Total International, so I guess the question is do I keep buying VFWIX, or start directing new contributions to VGT...

Landy, that's what I was getting at. We're all investing for retirement, but if it's so far away, the infinite uncertainties mean that a rule of thumb like age in bonds - 10 is probably about as accurate as you can get.

Thank you for all the replies. Adrian, My portfolio is basically total stock market, total international, and total bond market. At some point I plan on doing the 50/50 total bond market / tips thing. In the big crash of 2008-2009 I stayed at 90/10. I rebalanced twice by selling bonds and buying sto...

I've got an asset allocation of about 90/10 right now, and I'd like to switch to age-10 in bonds, so 80/20. How should I manage this transition? Should I essentially just buy 100% bonds until I get to 80/20? Should I move in a slow fashion? I.e. next year, go to 87/13, then 84/16, 81/19, etc until I...

For retirement savings, the advice is usually to have an asset allocation that is weighted towards stocks, so a guideline like age in bonds is suggested. For intermediate term goals, where you're not quite sure when you'll need it (college for your kids - if you have any, a house), you want somethin...

I would look at:
http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/783099/

I wasn't planning on making a checking account, I just was trying to figure out how it differed. I didn't realize the recordkeeping implications of selling shares of bond funds. I was trying figuring out how liquid it would be, since I had read that short-term bond funds and money market funds aren'...

I was thinking about this today and I realized I don't know how this works. Maybe this is an obvious question, if so hopefully someone can point me to the answer. If I buy one unit of stock for $100, and sell it when it gets to $200, my capital gains is $100, and I pay some tax on $200-$100 = $100, ...

Thanks for all the suggestions. The 60/40 plan sounds interesting, but perhaps a little more complicated that what I had wanted. :) I was considering some version of putting the 'house money' into perhaps Target Retirement Income (if I was feeling ambitious), or perhaps one of the short-term bond fu...

I noticed recently that my emergency fund is about equal to 12 months of expenses, which is sitting in an online savings account earning 1.5%. I've also maxed out my 401k (don't qualify for a Roth IRA). I'm trying to decide what I should do now with the new money I have coming in. My retirement allo...

When you say Basic has all the forms, does that mean Deluxe/Premier have no benefit? Does basic have a wizard / question & answer dialog that helps you fill out that form or is that limited to Deluxe/Premier?

I haven't followed Alliant's rate history very closely, but I do know that I had thought about switching to Schwab High Yield Savings, which used to be somewhere around 2% and then it dropped to 1%. Similarly, I think American Express Savings was at 2% and now it's down to 1.5%. So I'm just wonderin...

The other thing I wonder about is how can Alliant provide such good interest rates on savings? The difference between ING Direct and Alliant is only .7%, which works out to $70 per $10,000 you have to save. According to the fatwallet thread: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/783099/ Alliant is...

I've been an alliant member for 10 months, and I just moved $13,000 in one day from Alliant via push to wells trade for nondeductible iras and some taxible investing. It went through no prob. So you initiated from Alliant savings, not checking? The last I read there was definitely a 10k/day limit f...

The one thing stopping me is the ACH limit of 10K/day. That, combined with the limit of 6 transfers in a month means there's a limit to how much money I can ACH in one month. It's just a psychological thing, I know, but it makes me feel my money is less accessible. The 10K limit is for Alliant init...

The one thing stopping me is the ACH limit of 10K/day. That, combined with the limit of 6 transfers in a month means there's a limit to how much money I can ACH in one month. It's just a psychological thing, I know, but it makes me feel my money is less accessible. checks? (transfer to checking fir...

The one thing stopping me is the ACH limit of 10K/day. That, combined with the limit of 6 transfers in a month means there's a limit to how much money I can ACH in one month.

It's just a psychological thing, I know, but it makes me feel my money is less accessible.

You may want to further clarify your goals in order to chose an appropriate investment. How much do you have to put away? Will you be contributing to the fund on a regular basis? How much do you need for a down payment and when will you likely need it? How much risk are you willing to take with thi...

I'm 30, and have a good job. I'm able to max out my 401k; currently at 90/10 Stocks/Bonds, and will start adjusting that by +2% bonds every year until I catch up to Bonds=Age. I also have about 12 months of expenses in an emergency fund in an online savings account. Now that I've filled out the imme...

Just another point to consider on charities is http://www.givewell.net which also tries to rate charities based on effectiveness. It's an alternate point of view from Charity Navigator and I've found their ideas useful in evaluating charities.

I have some company stock vesting soon. I know you're supposed to treat vesting as getting a large lump sum of cash. I had been planning to sell it all and put it into some index funds according to my asset allocation plan. However, I realized I'll probably be trying to buy a house in 5 years or so ...

From what a Schwab rep told me, you can setup their Moneylink system which will allow you to transfer money from your brokerage account to your savings/checking account; thus allowing you use their local brokerages branches almost like a bank, atleast for what Kramer has described above. I'm pretty...

My emergency savings is in ING. I've been thinking about splitting half of my emergency savings into a cd ladder, but I don't know what the duration should be. I guess ideally you want a CD maturing every month or so, but with each CD a minimum of 1000, it seems that using 5-year cds would require 6...

I have a question. My parents have a variable universal life insurance policy that is invested in some really terrible mutual funds. The account value is very low < 10K; the surrender value is almost negligible < 2K. The death benefit is 225K. My understanding is that life insurance is really meant ...

Also the money market has an expense ratio of .2 (or so), which reduces it again to the online savings.

I've stuck with ING direct for a few years, and to my knowledge they've almost always been ahead of prime money market. I'd like to see a chart that compared the two, however.

My parents are getting to the retirement age and have asked me for advice. Reading bogleheads over the last few years, I have a pretty good idea of asset allocation, but don't know much else about living trusts, wills, proper ways of using social security, managing distributions from taxable/401k/ir...

When you buy a big ticket item with a debit card and then you return it, my experience has been they will try and give you the money in cash - and I never want to carry that large sum of cash on me. A credit card just gets credited.

Anyone have links to studies/news stories about houses as investments? I've been getting a similar pitch and would like to find some more authoritative reasons why it would (or would not be) a good idea.

bob90245 wrote:

Mel Lindauer wrote:Getting correct information twice is a whole lot better than not getting it at all, Bob.

And must be even better getting correct information three times!

Thanks! I looked at the table too hastily - glad there are so many sharp eyes around

.....on SWR...... one of the things not often mentioned on this forum when discussing the 4%-SWR for 30 years is...." the portfolio asset allocation" it is based on: the Trinity study is often mentioned, and it is a good reference , but i'm looking at it now...and viewing table-3 (adj.for...

90/10 here, looks like will need to sell off some bonds today or Monday.

I started out tilting, but I realized the temptation to adjust was too much for me, so I've gone back to the simple Taylor portfolio. I think once I have a more significant amount of money invested, I'll revisit the issue and adopt some kind of Swensen/Bernstein/Coffeehouse portfolio, but that won't...

I would say if you think the markets are prone to bubbles, simply hold a higher percent of bonds, so when the bubble inevitably bursts, you pick up things on the cheap.

I happened to sell bonds last week as they were out of my rebalancing bands, buying Total International, and am pleased to see that it is now higher than when I bought it.

It may, of course, drop tomorrow.

The news is reporting:

"PARIS — European financial and political leaders agreed late Sunday to a plan that would inject billions of euros into their banks in a bid to restore confidence to the teetering financial system."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/busin ... pe.html?hp

IMO, most inflation sensitive, future consumption oriented investment portfolios should still opt for a balance of global equity risks diluted with short term, high quality fixed. thats all for me. sh Thanks for the summary - I'll certainly think about adjusting my fixed-income portfolio going forw...

bullie1976 wrote:
Why go to the trouble of moving the acct? Fidelity offers tons of funds to pick that are similar to Vanguard. Buy Vanguard etf's through Fidelity if you want to stick with the 'Vanguard' name.

I also would prefer having mutual funds, as it runs itself a little easier than etfs.