Bogleheads.org

I would have described the TIPS concept as being an investment that does not have inflation risk but does have risk to changes in real interest rate. One consequence of that is that assuming real interest rates are less volatile than nominal rates, then with this insurance one can take greater durat...

Vested: cash bonus, sell immediately. Unvested: anticipated cash bonus, which may or may not materialize. Exactly. In short RSU's are compensation collected when sold and a possible compensation until then. This has nothing to do with assets. The same thing is true of stock options. The complexitie...

I also was wondering about the issue you raise concerning the mutual fund fees. I will ask the CFP. If they are on top of the 1%, then I'm even less inclined to go with him. Right now, we are definitely liking the sound of a simple buy and hold strategy. The only issue is all at once or incremental...

Given the current market highs, my wife and I are extremely nervous about going all in at once. I know that timing the market is impossible, but I'm not sure we could sleep at night going all in at once. Thus we would prefer, for better or worse, to go in incrementally over 6-12 mos. I don't know w...

Yes, it is a good idea to recognize that the rate constant in an exponential can be a negative number. An interesting thing about this is that if a person's first exposure to such things was in looking at physical phenomena such as radioactive decay or damped oscillation, it is positive exponents t...

The above is good.

My experience is that it is extraordinarily difficult to find anyone who will not demand an AUM arrangement, so be prepared for that.

I'd like to question the idea, promoted famously by Zvi Bodie, and by Michael Zwecher, William Bernstein and others, that you should be very conservative when or until you hit some "number". Take the money off the table. The logic seems to go like this: You need some level of "floor&...

Can there be considered two parts to compound growth? Share price and number of shares. -If the share price goes up, say, 5% a year, that would be a form of compound growth, even if the number of shares remains constant (i.e. not reinvesting dividends). -If dividends are reinvested then the number ...

It's going to be very interesting to see the conversation when the stock market has its next downtrend.

FYI: Example of reinvesting dividends and compounding growth below :happy http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/bluechipstocks/a/Reinvesting-Your-Dividends-Vs-Not-Reinvesting-Your-Dividends.htm That's a good article. I think the most important part is that this is not really about dividends or about ...

One way to do the arithmetic is this: new portfolio value = old portfolio value + capital gain on investments + dividends and interest + contributions- withdrawals The dividends and interest part is closest to the concept of interest paid by a bank. Each share of stock or any bond will pay an amount...

Total return is the total of the change in net asset value plus dividends and capital gains distributed. Change in net asset value includes all the expenses involved in running the fund, expense ratio, trading costs, other costs or gains such as security lending, and so on. Yield can be either a dis...

About as safe as they come, I imagine. This is a very large company using State Street index funds, though I don't know the specifics of this Stable Value fund. Sure, you're right that a guaranteed 3.5% return isn't horrible, but this guy likely has quite a few years left in him and I doubt the 3.5...

I think you need to decided what you are trying to do -- in specific enough terms that you can implement an action: 1. You said you wanted to make some money. You did. Game over. Sell the stock. 2. You want to eventually make as much money as possible but not lose any. You could sell the stock (on a...

Ok - so i've been reading Bogleheads Guide to investing. Boy, wish I knew this stuff years ago. Oh well can't change the past! So now that I have a tiny bit more knowledge I have a couple of questions I didn't find answers for in the book. If its there, I missed it. What are the best Vanguard Bond ...

I think 80% stocks is too much this close to retirement. Your judgement and preference can disagree. To me it has never made sense to pay taxes to put money in a Roth at 1/3 of the money lost upfront. These would not seem to have any point and you should not pay these costs: 5.2% Fidelity Growth Com...

I would run your scenario through some of the retirement planners such as: http://www.retirementoptimizer.com/ http://www.i-orp.com/ https://www.fidelity.com/calculators-tools/retirement-income-planner http://www.esplanner.com/ http://www.firecalc.com/ Projecting retirement success may be more compl...

(1) How to assess the risk level of my current portfolio (50 %big-cap stocks) if all stocks I own are large, multinational companies. It seems that these stocks would be lower risk, lower standard deviation part of the stock market. I understand that they certainly are not immune and would have mar...

I'm sorry for the poor question...nerves. What I was trying to get at is....Would it be better to sell all shares all at once or slowly over time? Also, since I'm in lower tax bracket, would a Target Retirement or LifeStrategy Fund be OK in this taxable account, since I like the automatic rebalanci...

I am a passive, bogleheads style investor, but must say there are definite uses of a FA, but the industry does not seem to be willing to change and provide the services people actually need. Advisors would be useful for: helping one develop an asset allocation in accordance to their risks, TLH, tax...

I think a little more information would be helpful. First off, by my calculations you've only provided 92% of your total portfolio. As far as determining how to rebalance I think you need to determine what your desired asset allocation is for your retirement. Then look at where you are to see where...

"Killed" and "clobbered" are not very useful ways to discuss what might happen to an investment.

4% guaranteed on cash is certainly not cash. Do you know what it really is?

Hi, In response to the Frontline episode, I wrote letters to the University System of Maryland asking for a discount vendor, specifically requesting Vanguard. I received a prompt call from one of the managers of the whole program who advised that they sought Vanguard as a vender, and never got a re...

2. Believe it or not, there's some evidence that a "bonds first" approach is more likely to prevent running out of money in retirement. http://www.fpanet.org/ToolsResources/ArticlesBooksChecklists/Articles/Retirement/WithdrawingfromRetirementPortfolio/ . The idea is that by waiting as lon...

2008 was a great year to TLH and accumulate capital losses while staying fully invested. I locked in those losses and swapped into similar but not identical funds (S&P500 for Russell 1000 for instance). I ended up with a huge amount of capital losses to offset future distributions. Finally in 2...

As mentioned most people would have a series of options expiring in successive years. Typically people exercise such option shortly before they expire, year after year. If the math works out that one particular year has lower or higher income one might squeeze around the timing to match. One example...

For me, that includes ST and IT bonds, mostly corporate. I know I will incur a capital loss whenever interest rates rise, but over long term should be ok unless interest rates really spike which appears doubtful considering tepid economy. If you hold the bond fund past the average duration, you wil...

My dumb question (and I am knew to investing so please bare with me) I know this would have been thought through in investment world but why there is no relation between fees and performance? In this environment I wish there were two parts to expense [1] fixed cost/expense [2] variable percentage b...

The problem with stable value funds is that underneath the hood the fund owns securities that fluctuate in value. It is a similar issue to the money market funds maintaining the share price at a buck. Most of the time the stable value is maintained with no problem but in a crisis there are no guara...

Example: It is February 2009 and one tax-loss harvests $500,000 in losses and invests in similar replacement funds to hold forever. Now in 2013, all their replacement funds have gained $500,000 or more, so it appears they have gained nothing. But the situation is more complex than that because of t...

Active funds that do a lot of trading have not only high ER's but also high trading costs, and if in taxable accounts, higher tax costs from realized gains distributions. Those two things are not reported in the ER. The whole cost should be tallied up. The other factor is that ER cost reduction is a...

Honestly I'd much prefer investing in individual dividend growth stocks in place of bonds right now, although I know most of you don't like that people sometimes use dividend stocks as replacements of bonds for yields. I already own shares of a couple companies (MCD, JNJ) in a taxable account. It i...

You can start here:

http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_Started

This site is pretty well organized to take you through the basics.

Note: You will probably not want the managed payout funds.

Honestly I'd much prefer investing in individual dividend growth stocks in place of bonds right now, although I know most of you don't like that people sometimes use dividend stocks as replacements of bonds for yields. I already own shares of a couple companies (MCD, JNJ) in a taxable account. It i...

Offhand 66% in equities has a higher expected return than 50% in equities. Did you mean the three fund to be 25/25/50?

In Excel 2003 you get 4.01% if you write XIRR(a2:a5,b2:b5) but if you include that first line XIRR(a1:a5,b1:b5) you get 0.

That is reasonable. Especially it is reasonable if only 5% of your bonds and much less than that of all your portfolio is in those two funds that you can just as well eliminate.

Bump on this thread. Would like udated comments on this thread. If you assume a person has 2 million investable assets at 6o years of age and wants to have a 30 equity/ 70 bond AA throughout retirement of 30 years, can they draw $ 75,000.00 a year, inflation adjusted? I can, and have, run Fircalc, ...

I agree. I don't know anywhere that anyone believes adding cash and/or bonds to 100% stocks actually increases the return. It is totally plausible that the risk is significantly reduced relative to the reduction in return by doing this. As a generalization you can't benefit from non-correlation unle...

No, that wasn't the question. The question was why not choose one or the other. Another other question was why choose both. If your answer is performance chasing, that doesn't explain why someone would own TRI. If your answer is simplicity, then explain what is being simplified? Simplified only wou...

" OK, so what is the explanation for using Wellesley instead of Large Value and Corporate Bond indices or funds ?" Simplicity. :happy Lev I think it is plausible that many people would choose such a fund exactly due to the simplicity of feeling that everything is taken care of. I still do...

There are many nuances to what is meant by the term "past performance." Within and among all those nuances are the explanations for the points you are raising. Whether or not any specific idea in investing is justified by past performance or foolish in relying on past performance depends o...

In the last couple of months I have read several threads that talk about the Vanguard Wellesley fund and Vanguards Target Retirement Income fund. Numerous times I have come across comments where people are putting their money in both funds. I've looked at the performance of both funds in up market ...

I assume you are a victim of working for a smallish company that does not have the clout or perhaps the managerial capability and will to provide a cost effective 401K plan (Yes, this is a failure to execute by management). Your costs all in should not exceed an average of perhaps 0.10% for index fu...

For some people buying an EE bond may make sense but don't expect Vanguard or any other brokerage or mutual fund company to recommend it. They are not going to recommend products that they don't offer or offer but don't make money on. Do you have evidence of this for Vanguard? It would be a questio...

In the last couple of months I have read several threads that talk about the Vanguard Wellesley fund and Vanguards Target Retirement Income fund. Numerous times I have come across comments where people are putting their money in both funds. I've looked at the performance of both funds in up market ...

I buy and sell, when it is necessary to buy and sell, to maintain my AA within its appropriate bands. So do I. But what I am saying is beyond a standard buy/sell to steady our AAs. My question is the value (for retirees) of attempting to take advantage of an extended market downturn by basically ab...

The interpretation is that the mid-cap value asset class is not what is represented by the S&P 500 which holds 5% in mid cap value and 14% in midcap altogether. Your fund holds 23% in mid cap value (it is hardly a mid cap value fund at all) and 63% in mid cap. You can go here to see these things...

All my accounts at Vanguard are 100% equity. They keep telling me I am nuts at age 63. I keep trying to tell them I have a bunch of those 3.0% to 3.6% things called I-Bonds which accounts for about 40% of my total. We seem to have a failure to communicate. :oops: Why are you even having a conversat...

beagler Elderly retirees who don't have a long time horizon seem understandably drawn to stocks paying higher dividends One may understand why they do it while at same time understanding that it's just not rational, in fact thinking high div stocks are substitutes for safe bonds is irrational Larry...