Bogleheads.org

Cover the empty pool with a deck. One of my neighbors did this with his pool as he no longer wanted to use it. The cover is made with Trex and support lumber and sealed. My neighbor had his built and the contractor said his pool could be reclaimed at some future time as needed. See below for some li...

Maui Jim produces their own lenses of several types as shown on their web site. I got my wrap around custom sun glasses 2 years ago. Yes they are expensive but worth every penny. They are just clearer and better fitting and much better than ordinarly sun glasses. These glasses are my 10th or so pair...

Thanks for getting the site back up. I see the PMs were also lost after 5/19 so any data or messages sent after that date should be resent..

Bill

Dix. I second Ryuns comment about Sequoia being gorgeous but a long haul from Yosemite. Distances in the Sierra are hard to figure as the roads are very windy and narrow and can be traffic clogged in the summer. They will wear the driver out in 2 hours from turning. Figure going into Yosemite from I...

I did not say the cheapest. Yes a regular bike is cheaper but a electric bike is "faster". Please read the article. The guys main point is the time cost of money. In some cases the car is slightly faster than a bike in actual drive time. BUT if you add back in the time that you have to spe...

I like the Beacon Bar and Grille at Camp Richardson west of South Lake Tahoe. It is a great place to eat lunch and listen to good music and sit on the beach. They have live bands almost every afternoon so be prepared for the California beach scene. After lunch have a Rum Runner and dance a little an...

I'm having the same problem with Yahoo Finance charts and some other stuff when viewing pictures. Explorer wants some sort of Flash update but then never loads it properly and when I go to Adobe all updates are current. So what gives???

BIll

Come on guys, if you are going to dream about muscle cars do it BIG with smoking cars like the 1970 Chevelle SS with 454 LS6 Corvette engine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Chevelle or maybe a 1970 Pontiac GTO 455HO in Here Come the Judge orange. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_gto or m...

Now if you guys really did your homework you would all see that a "electric bike" is the fastest way to get to work and the cheapest..... See here.

http://www.evworld.com/urban.cfm?newsid=38

Bill

You need both a trust and will if you have any assets over $100K or so. Title everything you own like cars and homes and non-ira investment accounts and checking accounts in the name of the trust. Set up the trust as a revocable with you and your wife as co-trustees. Make the trust the beneficiary o...

This may be the toughest time of year if you are going anywhere around July 4th. All of the Sierra is loaded with people from all over. You should make reservations NOW if you want to stay in a motel anywhere near Yosemite. If you can get reservations stay in the park as that is the best place to se...

I did TLHing one year in my play account and sold an oil stock that was down. I bought another stock to replace it to tide me over until the next year. Well about a month after I sold the stock the company was bought out by some foreign company at 30% or so premium over the market price so the stock...

Some things I learned from my kids years in college. Colleges will not give you any significant money for merit scholarships if you can afford to send you kids on your money. They may give you a slight tuition reduction but not much. Smart kids in high school may have issues in a big college honors ...

Briki, Sorry but that is not what happened with this guy at all IMO. He would gladly have paid ebay if the auction had worked like a auction and allowed people to bid up the price instead of the sniping stuff and a few low bids at the end. His highest bid on ebay was like $3200 from some dealer. And...

Briki and others, The piano I wanted did have a reserve price posted and a phone number. BUT the reserve price the seller wanted was crazy IMO as it was like $10K for a used item that sold for maybe $12K to $15K new. A fair price was around $4K to $7K but the seller had not reconciled himself to tak...

Bert. Maybe I did not explain my self well enough how I preceive ebay truncated auctions. With high price items there are things that are a long ways away from your home and thus lots of shipping costs and issues with quality risk to consider in your bidding. Thus lots of low ball sales. Plus with e...

Boy I love all you snipers on ebay. By sniping you totally destroy the "auction' price finding mechanism (at least on big items) that is the whole purpose of a auction, to find the best price that an item will sell for. Some of my friends say this happens all the time. Two have bought used BMWs...

Interesting that the Republic is trying to charge so much versus other local papers. That seems to me they don't understand elastic pricing models. Oh well but not surprising versus the average quality of the rest of the paper. While I agree everyone including me should support thier local papers an...

Well the NY Times electronic version may be worth $10/ month but the Arizona Republic web site is NOT and never will be. It very seldom does any in depth reporting and quite a few stories are just poorly written with a lot of important info just missing. Plus a good 50% of the paper is direct lifts ...

The Phoenix newspaper (Arizona Republic) where I live is trying to institute a pay access system for digital readers if you look at more than 19 articles per month. They are demanding a full automatic deduction be setup and monthly payments of $9.99 for on line only access. The paper is the only loc...

I did the startup thing way back in the early 1970s. I was young and strong and smart and had a lot of knowledge in semiconducters. I had startup opportunities at Intel, EMC, Motorola, National Semi and Micron Technology to name a few. I was looking for a homerun. I worked for a few of these early i...

Most of the MLPs are very heavy into tax deferment and all kinds of tricks to defer taxes. This makes some of them questionable in IRA accounts or as long term holdings IMO. But I also think they are great investments and I do own a bunch of KMP. However I am now worried about how the dividends will...

This is no big thing over the long haul IMO. Many people really never rebalance (or rebalance very little) for their entire investment lifetime. They just change where they invest new money during the accumulation phase by buying different things each year to slightly change their allocation. Then d...

The first point you made is great but all you guys are missing EVEN BIGGER DISASTER IN TREASURIES GOING ON RIGHT NOW. Look at how fast the Treasury fund and the Total Bond fund are falling behind the corporate fund. That gap started in 2011 when the gov't reduced treasury rates way below market pric...

I acted as the executor of both my parent's estate. I did my dad's first to help my mom. Then I did hers later. I am the youngest but was the only local person. The estate was small but did include some real estate and some cars and so forth. I did all the grunt work for free and divided the proceed...

This is terrible idea IMO. You will create a bounty of money for the bankers and lawyers and CPAs to feed off your money for years. See below for the links. All kinds of data show that a administrator costs an estate a bundle. Here in Arizona the costs are 20% to 100% of the estate value. And in man...

It is not tacky but it may not be very practical for a young couple. They probably don't have a place to store it or keep it and it may get stolen if left out on a table. But it is still a good gift and your nephew may be very thrifty and want to keep the coin and put it away for safe keeping long t...

The Iphone 3GS is free at ATT and probably also free at Verizon with a contract. It is great smart phone and very easy to use. My wife and daughter both have these and they work great. It is small and much lighter than most other phones and fits easily in a front pocket versus the larger Galaxy phon...

Kid Ages 3-14ish. We went to Mission Bay or Pacific Beach in San Diego and stayed in condos almost on the water every summer for a week. We took the kids swimming every day on the beach and built sand castles and watched them boogie board and then went back to the room for swimming in the pool and f...

Yes. I signed up for cable internet and tv and phone to save money for six months. It is a OK deal. We do not need the phone as we have two cell phones we use exclusively. Well the phone number they assigned us is a mess. It was owned by two previous people who get TONS of calls. This new phone ring...

Are you doing a 1031 with some of the money into some sort of annuity to save taxes and provide you a good base income? If so please tell us the details. Yes I like commercial real estate as a investment vehicle IF a person has large outside income that needs some tax sheltering. But there are risks...

Your life would be much simpler if the company you worked for paid you out of the division and state that you now live in. I would ask your company to make this change and move you to the payroll of the new state. This makes it firm that your company considers you a employee of the new state. Withou...

Families and locations may be driven by genes IMO. Some families are wanderers by nature, some are not. My wife's family is almost all in one area in the midwest within 200 miles of each other. She went to see almost all her cousins in one week last fall. Now my family are all wanderers. I have rela...

And as I pointed out a $62K emergency fund with a $300K+ income is dramatically too small. With your expenses and liabilities you should have at least $200K is cash or stocks available to use and not have to borrow a penny or have to raid your retirement accounts. Things happen in life that are very...

1. I would keep the rental as long as one of you has the time to track your tenet and do proper upkeep on it. Make sure you keep expenses for that property separate from you home. The big issue I see with the rental home is appreciation. Has it appreciated a lot while you were using it as a home? If...

I live in Arizona in the desert. I do not have flood coverage. Many years ago it rained and my neighbors had put in block fences to surrround their yards. These fences partially blocked the "sheeting action" of the desert and turned my back yard into a small stream. I had 5-10 inches of wa...

I would not put in a jetted tub unless you or your wife are dedicated tub bath people. I have a jeted tub that has been used maybe 3 times in 4 years. And without frequent use the water from the heater smells for a while when you first turn it on. But if you do buy one, make sure you locate the on/o...

Well BFG. From my experience it is really fun to bump hinnies. Maybe not 100% of the time but regularly! :D :D Back. I visited Wellington for a week back in 1998 for work. It is a great place and so green and clean. Great air and water and a very pretty city. I thought it was very similar to San Fra...

BFG and other who are going to throw away those old album covers. Think first. The bulk of the value in old vinyl records is in the record covers and extra paper inside. Old Elvis 45 records are worth $400 if you have the covers. Same for Beatles White albums. The vinyl is not worth much by itself. ...

Finding and marrying a good women and staying married thru thick and thin for 44 years and counting. Oh yea and we both still live below our means.

Bill

About that antique furniture some want to keep. My son has a guest bedroom that is nice to look at but terrible to stay in. The bed is ciirca 1880 and about 5 feet 5 inches long with a hard mattress. None of his guests stay long and maybe that is good...

Bill

Doc there are all kinds of things that effect the price of rental real estate, things like rent rolls, lease terms, property location, ballon terms, codicils on how property is managed and so forth. In most cases commercial property does not get the extremely low interest rates available to home own...

BFG and Others. What did you do with all the old pictures after digitizing? We still have all the old pictures and now we have too many digital copies as well. We are more safe from disasters but??? The other thing we have learned with digital stuff is our computers are not "synced". I hav...

I also wanted to concur with the digitize thing. Having a complete set of your old pictures on a disk drive at the bank safety deposit box is the only real protection from fire. We did part of this 4 years or so ago by doing the scanning ourselves. We still have tons of pictures on paper. I would se...

From your post I think you have worse issues than just downsizing to address. You want to move a 1/2 world away from your kids. I am not sure you will be happy if you do this without some plan to return to see your kids often. I am not sure if your kids will be happy if you do this. Yes you can down...

A lot of young people today have figured out "working at a job" is not really fun for them and have found new ways to make a living. I know two who do about as well as this guy and are sort of retired. One is a single young woman who basicallys started a gossip blog in college. She made so...

For my daughter. I don't know. She just asked me a week ago or so for advice on her 401K fund selections. But there was one good index fund that said 0.3% expense ratio but said Cl A in some of the notes so now we are asking for more detail. Again most likely hidden fees. But TBD.

Bill

Is this video implying that many 401K have big extra expense fees added on and taken out in addition to the Mutual Fund fees athey publish? Are the 401K group managers adding 1% or so fees on top of the mutual fund fees they publish?

Where would one look to find these extra fees?

Thanks
Bill

Have you figured out what type of car you want? If not I suggest you spend several hours surfing and reading the internet about cars. See below for Edmunds and Autotrader, two web sites that have lots of car buying info and prices and reviews. All the info on these sites is free. Consumer Reports is...

When my wife and I worked some of the best money we spent was a good house keeper who deep cleaned every two weeks. Everyone loved the clean house and we had time on Saturdays to have fun and do things with the kids..... Now we are retired and we clean our own house. No big deal... Now we go to free...