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I had tried hard not to modify my IPS stated 50% intermediate treasuries and 50% TIPS for fixed income (I'm about 65% equities, 35% FI - cnsistent with 100-age). But I just couldn't do it. So I dumped about a quarter of my TIPS in my taxable account and bought I-bonds to make up for that amount over...

ugh I goofed
clicked 10%
it is 50% of my bonds 13% of my total portfolio
sorry for the oops

Actually the loss is real factoring in transaction costs and the of course the rent vs buy calculation , that money could have been spent and saved, or even grown, elsewhere of course hindsight is 20/20, but the bottom line for those of us who got buried from 2006-now is that yes, we lost quite a bi...

I'm probably down about 200k, maybe more, since the purchase in 2006. I've got about 250k in the condo, so I'm not underwater, but it sure hurts! That said, we have no reason to move right now, so I can swallow the sunk loss pretty easily. Since my crystal ball is cloudy, and transaction costs are f...

Remember, too, that if we were to experience a deflationary period, even the 0% I Bonds would have a positive real return . The larger the deflation number, the higher the 0% I Bond's real return would be. true, though with truly severe deflation, cash would beat 0% nominal I-bonds as it is even mo...

liberal ^ 2

we spend way too little on food in the U.S.
the consequences are everywhere

3 of my 15 investing years

I added CCFs in January and March of 2009.

Before that I was on autopilot since 2006.

Before 2006 my course was changing every few months - ugliness was the predictable result!

This was a very nice year for credit cards :sharebeer Chase AARP was the big one though I did less than I thought with it: total household spend on this card (all during 5% CB promo): $55k - much of it wasn't actual spending - paid taxes online plus a few other cash equivalent purchases Cash Back = ...

I wish this was phrased as a % of net worth

e.g., my $100 bet is thankfully a negligible % of my net worth

OTOH, as a college student I would never have made this bet

I have to treat this as a real-world situation. Otherwise it's like asking what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable, object, etc. In a sense I'm not sure you can truly preflight your reactions to a situation you're unlikely to encountered. There are basically three possibilities. ...

Great thread, lots of good discussion, yet reading through the entire thread, I couldn't find the one part of the story that continues to puzzle me... In 2008, when Fannie and Freddie were nationalized (conservatorship) I immediately thought to myself: 'wow, this is really bad and worse than I thoug...

Who is better off? Person A: $2M portfolio, $500K mortgage Person B: $1.5M portfolio, no mortgage Mathematically, I'm sure some will say they are equal. But not everything in life is about money for most people (although we do get a few posts on this board showing that for a minority of people ever...

Not sure whether to post here or to start another thread, but I'm trying to figure out my best course of action with regards to my Roth IRA's - specifically whether to recharacterize or not. Here is my situation. Tax Status - Married Filing Jointly Top Federal Tax Bracket: 33% (excluding income due ...

I'm not sure why, time after time, people point to Greece's GDP as somehow the key piece of information in this whole issue. Everyone knows that Greece's GDP is tiny in the relative scheme of things. If Greece wasn't part of the Euro, this would be a non event. Period. Except, Greece is part of the ...

I prefer the second great contraction (Rogoff). It is the second balance sheet recession in the 1900's. The first one was pretty grim. It required a highly inflationary world war to get us out of it. Japan is still stuck in their balance sheet recession. So I was forced to pick a modern day depressi...

I guess I'm doing this a bit for myself but also to make this comparison readily available for us slice and dicers. Since Fidelity has no commission ETFs (of course Bid-Ask spread is an issues, as is premium/discount to NAV), I wanted to compare the new offerings to the (roughly ) equivalent no comm...

My poll answer was wrong

I picked 40-50% but if I do this the right way: Total of all taxes/ total of all ncome (if you just look at AGI on your tax return this will likely be wrong due to the 401k contribution - need to look at Medicare wages of course), it comes out at almost exactly 33%...

I believe PE 10 and valuations do matter. The problem is, I don't know how much, and when that 'mattering' will come into play. The relationship is well known, and very noisy. I think of it as just another example of risk, which is to say, the expected return of equities at a P/E of 10 is higher tha...

Unless the market goes down to 3.125% no cost. Then your $2500 goes up in smoke.. no cost refi's are one of the few free lunches out there that puts all the interest rate risk on the lender.. I agree. I always do the no cost refinances. It is kind of wild that the lenders are happy to just look at ...

here are my favorite resources: 1.) fatwallet finance forum mega thread: http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/788032/ 2.) box home loans certain states only 3.) firstib 4.) penfed (though not lately) CU 5.) zillow mortgage finder 6.) google mortgage advisor I only do no cost refis, and it does ta...

well, I don't own any gold investments, and don't plan on buying any either (full disclosure: I own a CCF fund through PIMCO, but it seems largely driven by oil...). we have a smattering of gold jewelry we never wear, and i have thought of selling it, but considering it was for births, weddings, etc...

rebalanced into my small caps from my intermediate treasuries, finally hit my emerging markets rebalancing band Friday, put one half in Friday, another in today, and I'm still down 15+% on that new buy! rebalanced into my CCF last Friday, getting killed on that as well! oh well, long term investor, ...

4.) While default (strategic) is usually not a consideration for most with significant equity, under dire enough circumstances (earthquake happens, owner is without earthquake insurance, non recourse state = California!), the mortgage holder has the option of defaulting. As a buyer of bonds you are...

1.) liquidity matters for individuals with (somewhat) limited financial resources and obligations (expenses) over a finite time horizon- paying down a mortgage and buying a bond are thus not equal 2.) taxes matter - covered in detail above 3.) IF I purchased MBS in lieu of paying down my mortgage, t...

Manbaerpig wrote:why not use Ibonds?


to quote the character Bull in "Night Court", when he was asked why he carried so much cash on him at all times... "... because banks get ROBBED, you know?!!"

my 'long term' emergency fund is in I-bonds

better than cash

You have to subscribe to my newsletter to get the answer to that. Without that subscription, this is IPS 'system' cannot be validated. Certainly no horrible sin in a +2% or -2% change in AA but no great benefit either. Let's say equities drop by 5% in one day. For a portfolio of $1 million, of whic...

unless you like giving out interest free loans
or if you underpaid so much that you faced a penalty

owing taxes = good

refund = bad

I wonder if those who feel no moral obligation to "big banks" feel differently about creating economic instability to our country as a whole. The last figure I saw stated 23% of all mortgage-holders are underwater and I shudder to think of the ramifications if they all decided to strategi...

Although I was one who argued that walking away from a mortgage is not the same as violating the golden rule, I have to admit that hearing the specifics of the OP's situation irks me more than I expected. The home was purchased for over $1 million, doesn't represent an enormous part of his net wort...

If the original poster wants to declare bankruptcy, and relieve himself of the burden of his overpriced home, I think the only things that would stop him is the means test that, by his own words, he probably wouldn't be able to pass (as his assets are large). mortgage debt, while non recourse in so...

I happen to like this concept better (especially since I'm an accumulator). I found this at my money blog (the blogger posts here but I believe anonymously) http://www.mymoneyblog.com/what-is-a-safe-savings-rate-how-about-16-62.html#comments Now saving 16-17% of your salary, inflation adjusted, is n...

I am curious as to what people actually mean when they say they would walk away given that they have the ability to pay. [Note that unlike rent which is normally pay in advance, mortgages are typically pay in arrears (you borrow the money and pay the interest due at the end of the month of borrowin...

Thank you all for the lively thread. Let's please stop talking about people's daughters...we're better than that. Here is more detail on my particular case. What would you do? *Age 39 *Bought house in 2006 for $1.1 million with 20% down *Current value about $675k. I owe about $850k. (I wouldn't con...

Since I don't have earthquake insurance, and since my remaining mortgage debt is about the same as my net worth, I probably would only walk away in the event of an earthquake that left my home uninhabitable and essentially worthless. Why? Well, I wouldn't feel great about it, but I have a family to ...

funny, my CCF has been my best perofrming asset class over the time period since I have owned it (I bought in two chunks, Jan 2009, then April 2009) I only have a 5% exposure to it, and I don't pretend to know if it will do everything it is supposed to do, but it hasn't hurt my returns relative to w...

I'll be in line, just like I am every two weeks.

What happens to this type of portfolio if interest goes up 1 or 2%? Paul Of course it depends on the bond duration in the portfolio (if we are talking about nominal rates, not real rates, and nominal bonds, not TIPS). But, I would counter with the fact that even with a 1-2% rise in nominal rates, a...

In the end I suppose the solution is simple: If you don't trust TIPS, don't buy them. That would be grand. I'm willing to take my chances on the newly cheap ones that no one wants :) for the record, 100% anything is generally a fool's bet... but if I had to go all in on one investment, and all I ne...

thanks for the update I was surprised to see that the equity heavy portfolio did worse in 2010, and only slightly better in 2009. On net, since the onset of the financial crisis the tilted fat-tail minimizing portfolio had a shallower loss (not surprising) and a more robust recovery (very?) - surpri...

the more poeople who believe the OP's statement(s), the cheaper TIPS will get. If TIPS went to 5% real (above CPI-U), my guess is there would be more than just a few deep pocketed buyers. That's the only proof of the 'guarantee' that I need. Death and taxes. Those are guarantees in the U.S. All else...

I came to the same conclusion a year ago. I also tax loss harvested at the same time (I had a small loss on the sale of the fund). I took the early exit hit, then switched to a blend of other intl ETFs which better suited my desired exposure to small and EM, and still came out ahead (after factoring...

getting a mortgage is actually market timing and it is a big all of a sudden shift in assets (if the mortgage is large) is shifting from a 30 year to a 15 year because of improved liquidity, better rates, and a smaller mortgage balance (creating a situation where the monthly payment on a 15 year is ...

I was looking at my investment spreadsheet today and saw a note I had made on March 9, 2009, the low of the bear market. At that time my total loss from market high to market low was 58.75%. That was on a 75/25 portfolio. Sometimes it isn't a good idea to track stuff like that too carefully. The be...

Nto sure I understand why you wouldn't just buy the ETF (or convert as ntoed above)... I assume the buy fees are to push investors towards the ETFs 1) Relatively small holding-so fees and expenses are relatively small dollar-wise 2) I don't need any of the benefits of ETFs-aside from avoiding the h...

Nto sure I understand why you wouldn't just buy the ETF (or convert as ntoed above)...

I assume the buy fees are to push investors towards the ETFs

Also after 17 years a real yield of 1.90 vs 1.96 results in a 37.7% total yield at the end of 17 years vs 39.0% total real yield at the end of 17 years. On 10000 that is 230 inflation adjusted dollars of difference between the two bonds assuming ytm is actually realized. 39.0% - 37.7% = 1.3% x $10,...

Also after 17 years a real yield of 1.90 vs 1.96 results in a 37.7% total yield at the end of 17 years vs 39.0% total real yield at the end of 17 years.

On 10000 that is 230 inflation adjusted dollars of difference between the two bonds assuming ytm is actually realized.

IIRC at the height of the TIPS liquidation in 2008 I noted up to 25 bps between high and low inflation factor TIPS of similar maturity So if that is possible then while it is unlikely we could see that level of spreads develop again. Thus for me 6bps is not enough Perhaps 15 is but each investor nee...

Why is there all this excitement about the 30 with a yield about 2.25%? Hasn't anyone read the post about Larry's most recent blog or the blog itself? Summarizing, it still seems prudent to limit maturities to about 15 years or so, since absolute yields are still below levels that would make longer...

First for those interested my monthly update on TIPS was posted yesterday on my blog and I try to post it around the tenth of each month. Second, IMO there is an "irrational" aversion to buying bonds with an inflation factor, sort of the same thing that happens with municipals as investor...