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I think it's worth citing what Volpert actually says in that interview: Ken Volpert: So we're moving the allocation from our TIPS [Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities] Fund in the target retirement portfolios to a new index fund that was created that's a zero- to five-year short-term TIPS [Vangu...

#Cruncher, I don't really follow the complicated points you're making. Are you suggesting that my very general claim that VTIP is a short-term fund and VIPSX is an intermediate-term fund is not an appropriate way to compare or characterize them? Vanguard themselves charaterizes the average weighted ...

I keep thinking about this, for anyone still interested. Really, what Lending Club does is no more peer-to-peer than buying an individual treasury bond or muni or bond of any sort. In those cases, there is a direct one to one relationship between the invester and the debt-issuer (borrower). In fact,...

VTIP is better if you want a shorter duration tips fund. The VIPSX is better if you want longer duration. Simply a matter of preference and need. Yes, both funds provide the same type of inflation protection, so they are not really distinguishable on that account. The way to think about the differe...

Yeah, I was thinking about it more and I think if Vanguard was structured the way Lending Club is, where one doesn't really own the underlying assets and Vanguard could tap those assets to solve its own potential insolvency problems, I would not want to have my investements at Vanguard, even given i...

Yes, there are supposed to be the backup services. But from reading around and looking at other comments on the prospectus by interested investors posting online, it sounds like people think it's very unclear how or whether the backup service scenario would work. For one thing, as I mention above, L...

Putting aside debates above about the risk of the Lending Club loans themselves (of the borrowers defaulting), I was just reading around more about Lending Club and found that apparently one of the common concerns investors have regards what happens if Lending Club itself goes bankrupt. If I'm getti...

I'm not sure exactly where you're expecting or hoping this conversation to go at this point. Would you like it to end with me saying, "Holy Crap! You're right! WTH am I doing? I'd better sell off all my notes tomorrow!" I'm not really interested in a conversation about you or me, so let's...

Yes, but it's the same scenario where all your stocks and treasuries go to zero. I mean, let's look at what these investments fundamentally are. A share of stock is a portion of ownership of a company. It can go to zero. A P2P Loan is an unsecured loan to an individual. It can certainly go to zero ...

So, for what it's worth, I searched around a bit and found this Wall Street Journal article from a month ago discussing the risks of Lending Club and the fact that there are already a lot of professional investors in Lending Club. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230458770457733380120173...

I agree with almost everything you've said and have participated in your referenced discussions for years. What I don't agree with, however, is that P2P Lending is somehow the same asset class as the bonds used in the studies you referenced and the discussions previously had on this forum. Is it re...

What I said was "equity-like" risk, not that there are actual equities involved. By that I mean with Lending Club you are taking on risk of losses and volatility that are more like what one experiences with equities than with the usual fixed incomes parts of a portfolio. Normally the purpo...

I heard about Lending Club today on the radio and thought there's not such thing as a free lunch. If people are earning better returns in Lending Club, than they can through more typical fixed income investements, it's because there is more risk. In this case, the risk of default is probably much hi...

Just realized that my caps / non-caps alpha numeric password on Vanguard didn't matter. What I mean is Vanguard doesn't recognize if the digit is a cap or not. All this time I've been entering my cap / non-cap password thinking I had a pretty good password. :oops: Yeah, it's super annoying. What do...

What I am saying is that people have the ability to specify a 10 character - semi-strong form password (letters, numbers, and characters). If they do not take advantage of that ability - it's not Vanguards fault. Just because someone (or some company) owns the security infrastructure - it does not ...

So, your saying their is a large, unmet demand for passwords exceeding 10 characters? And, demand for those 10 characters to accommodate more than letters, numbers, and characters? Let alone demand for Vanguard to enforce such passwords? I'm sorry, but I simply don't believe there is a large market...

One way that people can effectively create two factor authentication for themselves, on their Vanguard and other accounts, is to use a password manager like LastPass or KeePass, which will work with YubiKey if you also sign up for their service. This means that your password manager will not enter ...

I've been reading this thread but just discovered something about Vanguard's security that, to me, is far worse than 10 or 12 character passwords (particularly since in reality the number of consumers who will actually choose a 13+ character password is quite small): you can hijack a Vanguard accou...

But I think it does give a sense of how much more of a free for all online security is than people seem to be willing to believe. I think to really demonstrate whether it was a serious problem or not, you would need to show the total dollar amount of fraud as well as fraud as a percentage of assets...

Yes, I agree that the small businesses are like the canary in the coal mine. So are the very different type of attacks on large corporations mentioned in the NY Times article I link to above. Part of the reason I linked to the study in my last post, however, was because it explained that even when f...

I was trying to search around and find more information about what sort of online fraud is actually happening. It's a little tricky because all sorts of other things come up about securities fraud, embezzlement, and other types of activities. But I did find a company that works with online banking f...

I'll admit a billion is somewhat arbitrary, but the fraud just has to be large enough for the FBI to make the case a priority and reverse the transactions. I'm sure you can get to that point well short of a billion dollars. I don't really understand your point about credit cards. If credit card fra...

Man, my parents had a 77' Volare, which they bought new, and it was the worst car they ever had. In fact, I thought it was famous for being a crappy car? In the first couple years of ownership (after which they got rid of it) it had to have the carburetor replaced, a bunch of other basic engine elem...

Glad you found my comment interesting. It's a thought that was won arduously through looking and looking for places that would better suit my needs or finances and never finding anything that was even close. I guess you could say I've been defeated by my own desires. I am unwilling to accept the loc...

I don't have an opinion about all the ins and outs of this choice, but if you do decide to buy something other than the BMW, this is a good site for reliability statistics (much better than Consumer Reports or J.D. Power): http://www.truedelta.com/ They are trying to do something much more scientifi...

I used to live in a 370 sq ft apartment. It was fine, in terms of space. Mounting shelves high up on the walls, instead of having free standing shelves and furniture is a great way to save floor space and still have a decent amount of storage. I made the shelves myself, so they had a nice custom fit...

Let's assume the worst case: Vanguard loses a billion dollars in a year. Note that vastly exceeds any documented computer fraud anywhere. Spread over Vanguard's AUM, that adds about 5 basis points to that year's expense ratio, which isn't great news, but most investors wouldn't even notice the diff...

If you're so upset by Vanguard's policy, why not use another financial institution, instead of continually and constantly complaining here? I like Vanguard as an institution. I don't reduce it to it's security protocols. No one out there is perfect. Vanguard has many advantages, as everyone here kn...

But isn't it also ridiculous to complain about something that is already in the process of being changed (well, apparently q3 2013)? Paul Vanguard will still place an arbitrary twenty character limit on password length (a limit which this forum itself does not have). Vanguard still will not offer t...

There is nothing that is preventing the user from using a more secure password. Even if Vanguard doesn't enforce - "strong" passwords - users can still use them. Well, Vanguard's system is currently case insensitive, only recently started accepting special characters (although nothing on ...

That's an interesting article. Thanks for the link.

I don't see why creating the conditions for weaseling out of reimbursing someone implies that there must be a law or regulation requiring reimbursement. Even without a law or regulation, any financial institution could be held civilly liable if it could be shown that their system was designed to tol...

In my view, you should give priority to doing all the things that you need to do to keep your fraud reimbursement protection in force: At a minimum, in order for this protection to apply, you must take the following steps: Review your accounts regularly: Check your account frequently. Promptly and ...

I'm pretty sure that you can get the password reset by calling Vanguard and without answering a security question. If you think about it they really do need a way to do this. People will forget things, particularly if they give random answers to security questions or if they used two spaces instead...

You can re-set it with a security question, but your account is temporarily restricted from certain transactions, just as it is when you change your address. (And that is a second protection; someone who breaks into your account can change your address, but cannot then send a check to that new addr...

This is not as much of an issue at Vanguard as at most other places, because your security question does not give the same level of access as a password. Vanguard uses the questions for additional security; when I logged onto my Vanguard account from my mother's computer, Vanguard required a securi...

Also, do not discount the GPU cracking rig due to its number of graphics cards and electrical consumption. A similar cracking rate could be achieved by distributing the workload amongst many smaller GPU cracking rigs. The crowdsourcing of password cracking is not to be discounted. It is not very ex...

I just updated my password to contain 12 characters (the max allowed by VG). According to this site http://howsecureismypassword.net/ it would take 2 thousand years to crack my password. I'm feeling pretty confident now :-) I just went to the Vanguard site and I was still limited to 10 characters. ...

Different tests give different results. Five years ago password crackers did a few million passwords per second. Now they do over a billion. Super computers (go after banks, not us, can do hundreds of billions per second). Here are some stricter password testers. http://rumkin.com/tools/password/pa...

I just updated my password to contain 12 characters (the max allowed by VG). According to this site http://howsecureismypassword.net/ it would take 2 thousand years to crack my password. I'm feeling pretty confident now :-) There's a lot of debate about how to properly measure password strength. Yo...

I'm completely willing to believe that there are technical reasons why these limitations exist. And I believe some possibilities have been discussed in other threads in this forum on the topic, by people more knowledgeable about the technology. For example, there may be some backend system that's fu...

Strangely, I just spoke with a Vanguard customer service peson and he said he'd heard nothing about future changes to the password rules and that you cannot currently use special characters. There's also nothing in the security settings on the website that indicate the change to allow special chacte...

Man, it's about time. But twenty characters? Really? Why does Vanguard persist in putting artificial limits on the strength of passwords people can use? Allowing longer passwords does not preclude anyone from user a shorter crappier password if they want to. And as LadyGeek points out above, even th...

Of course, Zvi Brodie famously recommends 100% TIPS portfolios, And then he recommends you can't afford to retire so you should plan on working longer and a lower standard of living in retirement. Yes, you can give up the upside potential of equity investments for a much more certain outcome. In my...

My own point of view is that TIPS are good at all ages, and to be perfectly frank I don't quite understand why I, or anyone else, isn't 100% TIPS in fixed income. But since I don't like to stray too far out of the most-beaten path, and because 100% of anything is the mark of the fanatic, I've never...

Just came across this article from Bernstein. I see the logic of the take money off the table if you've hit your number policy. But I do wonder how many people it really applies to. How many people really manage to save 20 to 25 times their yearly expenses by retirement age? I suspect a lot of peopl...

tc101, I agree with others that you need to think about all of your assets together as one portfolio and come up with an overall asset allocation that suits your needs. It makes little sense to do otherwise. And in the end, you will be subject to the performance of all of your assets as a whole, any...

I seem to have touched a nerve. I assure you that was not my intent. Please understand that while you may do things in a much better way than others, the OP was simply trying to get information. The earlier post that wherein you stated "most questions have already been asked in these forums, i...

I asked this question a couple years ago and got several replies. As usual, most questions have already been asked in these forums, if one does a simple search While that may be, several years ago, the answers may have been different. If posts about the same subject were not allowed, this would be ...

Is our message not getting across? No our message is not getting across. Even amongst friends and relativesl, I've discovered no one wants unsolicited investing advice. And if you don't know better, talking about unsystematic risk and systematic risk, and correlations, etc., just sounds like anothe...