Bogleheads.org

You don't have kids yet but you have 529 plan(s)? Yes the NY plan is excellent and as NY residents you should open plans there. If the 529's are in your own names as beneficiaries you may have gift tax implications when you switch to your kid's name when they are born. I would give serious thought t...

Seems crystal clear to me. They say the 0.12% annual rate will first be converted to a monthly rate then applied at the end of each month.

As for the childcare FSA - i believe you can either use that or take the child tax credit, but not both. But don't quote me on that.. Wrong. You can't take a childcare tax credit for amounts reimbursed from an FSA, just like you can't take medical expense deductions for medical expenses paid from a...

First of all, Yellowstone NP is huge. We were there for (iirc) 4 or 5 nights and the park is set up like a giant figure 8. I figured, let's book a cabin near the center on Lake Yellowstone then drive to the sights. That way we won't have to pack/unpack every day. Did not work well. It takes a full d...

If I reallocated to a 60/40 split with something like this, would it be considered a good simple 3 fund portfolio? Vanguard institutional index 42% Vanguard total international. 18% Pimco total return 40% Yes. Looks perfect. Well diversified, simple, and lower cost than what you have now. Are you s...

You've already proven once that you cant predict near term market movements. And he's afraid he'll prove it again when he buys in right before the market corrects 10-20%. He's the type of investor that the market prays on. While he waits, the market goes up and down, but only a little, but each wee...

Checked award availability IAD-VIE for July and it is very available throughout the month for 1 pax.

Coach RT for 60K miles and $149 in taxes.

Works out to ($2000-$149)/60,000 = 3.1 cpm (cents per mile)

A good redemption opportunity imho

My wife and I both graduated from Penn State. We're doing pretty well for ourselves and would have no problem sending our two kids to a State U at a much lower cost than an expensive private school. Just a note that Penn State is one of the most expensive state colleges/universities. Correction - i...

Yes. If they are not material, what you are doing is fine (say single digit % as percent of total portfolio) If they are material, say 10-30% of portfolio value, I would count them as mid cap stocks in my portfolio and adjust the rest of my portfolio accordingly. That is what I did when I had NSO's ...

In addition to the rule of thumb in the wiki, I would look at my family and overall access to tax deferred space. If you already have massive amounts of pretax savings, I wouldn't bend over backwards to participate. Likewise if husband can max out a great plan at low cost, forget wife's plan. If one...

Going to the volleyball tourney? Good luck getting a spot in Yosemite at this late date. We booked 2 months in advance for an April visit and the only availability was Ahwahnee or Curry Village tent cabin. Extreme high end $400 a nite or $60 a nite. You will be lucky to find any availability at all....

investingdad, if you get over to Munich area please visit the Weihenstephan brauerei. It is the oldest active brewery in the world, founded in 1040! It is in the town of Freising near MUC airport. It also has a wonderful biergarten with excellent food as well as gardens and hiking trails. I took my ...

I suspect the $7k in LT capital gain will count towards reaching the 28% threshold. Even though it is taxed at 15%, it adds to your AGI and I believe it would push you over into the 33% bracket. I am not 100% positive on this, so I would run the numbers through TurboTax or calculate it by hand if I...

Yes you only owe taxes on the appreciation of shares (which were RSU's) since they were awarded. Your mistake was not selling them the day they vested and buying TSM with the proceeds. Thus avoiding excessive concentration in employer stock and putting yourself into a diversified equity fund that yo...

25x expenses, LESS SS and DB pension. At desired retirement age.

RSU's should be sold the day they vest. Period. NSO's - no way I would execute before year 5. After that I look at remaining time value as a fraction of Black & Scholes value - when it gets below about 20% I look to exercise & sell (cashless exercise). As another poster has pointed out - it ...

PA does not tax pensions or IRA/401(k) withdrawals.

In addition the income tax rate of 3.07% is quite low but it is a very flat tax, taxing pretty much everything except retirement income.

I would never base my decision on where to live in retirement on taxes alone.

What will you do when you retire? Do you have sufficient hobbies / interests that you will be busy and fulfilled?

Well for those of you who missed it this was an epic meeting. I lost count of attendees (they just kept coming in!) but I believe we had 14 attendees which certainly qualifies as the biggest group since I took the helm. The agenda was covered as published, with some lively side discussions on dement...

Vanguard takes 2% as a broker fee to connect you with an annuity seller. The seller obviously takes a spread over Treasuries. You could probably consult some actuarial tables and figure it out if you are that interested. I have heard the margins are low as it is a very competitive market and easy to...

It is called "rebalancing" and most of us practice it.

This happened to me because I used a "screen scraper" (Fido Full View) and changed my password at Vanguard but forgot to update Full View. FV tried to log into my Vanguard account using out of date pwd.

I usually stay at the Marriott Copley. Where the Craigslist killer struck.

May I ask, does this performance graph take into account annual expenses? My advisor says after expenses this fund (along with 3 others he's recommending) outperforms the S&P. You got the tense of the verb wrong - it outperformed in the past. As others have pointed out, it is the wrong index. A...

Yep covered. Definition is contributions made to a DC plan or benefit accrued in a DB plan.

I see no justification to deviate from global market capitalization if one believes in broad diversification. The cost of international investing is comparable (now) to US investing, and the currency risk can be thought-of as currency diversification. The US is now only about 30% of world market ca...

There is one (very) small downside to this approach. You have to fill out Form 8283.

But it is a good approach and one I use.

I would echo the posters who said you need to study up how start ups work and the effect of dilution with each funding round.

About 10% of start ups are successful in that they make big money for the VC's.

Fewer make big money for the founders.

Fewer still for the rank and file employee.

The math is straightforward. Vanguard Total bond is 10 bps. Your bond fund is 55 bps. When your fixed income balance is such that the savings from paying (10+26 bps) vs 55 bps more than covers the annual fee, it is worthwhile. The annual fee does seem to make it not a great deal. SMA = Self Managed ...

$300 rt is not that bad. If you want to save a few bucks look at FLL it is usually the cheapest destination in South FL.

Furthermore the issue usually continues to trade on the "pink sheets" (with a 5 letter ticker). Best to sell it for a penny a share before it is delisted. I did this with several stocks before I swore off individual stocks.

This is the classical problem with market timing. Hope you have learned a lesson. I suggest taking the time to write an Investment Policy Statement(IPS). Then implement it and stick to it. Very Very good advice. Then when you feel the urge to tinker, go back and look at your IPS. I often get the ur...

Actually, you should have added another option...some people overweighed equity. If I were not a Boglehead and did not have a family depending on me, I probably would have broke my AA and been more aggressive. But with a family that would have been reckless. As it is, I stayed the course. I bought ...

About a third.

Why not split the difference? Half in each. Minimize regrets.

If they are of modest means I would go with option 4 to lay off the longevity risk.

There is a lot to be said for the peace of mind that this approach brings to the table.

Thanks for the quick response and the advice. DCA is exactly how the money got invested in the 1st place! I forgot about that. I like to use the following funds in my IRA: VOO (sp500 index etf) VO. (mid cap index) VB. (small cap index) VEU (large cap international) VSS. (small cap international) VN...

There are more issues than just costs. The PA plan offers pretty low fees, but not the lowest. If you live in PA, there are a few considerations that could make the PA plan more appealing despite not having the lowest fees: 1. PA state financial aid protection. Assets in the PA 529 are not used to ...

Thank you. I did have a look at DODIX and thought, "not bad". Given the choices, what would you think of VIFSX 60% VSISX 20% DODIX 20% This afternoon we spent some time looking at VIFSX, seeing that it is Apple, Exxon, IBM, and other large companies. Keith Now you're talking. Very sensibl...

I believe the author early retired and is living on a sailboat. I don't think it will be updated. Additionally, I believe I found a bug and reported it on earlyretirement.org but it was never fixed. FIDO RIP, otoh, is updated with each change in the tax laws and DOES take taxes and RMD's into accoun...

There are two choices - you can buy through a company like Vanguard which tells you about the fee, or a company that does not. In any case, what you are comparing is the periodic income you are getting which is AFTER the fee. So the fee is immaterial. What matters is the monthly (or quarterly or ann...

I live in PA. Right now I find the NY plan to be the best choice. Utah a close second.

Another thing to note is while the returns are net of fees, they are not net of taxes. If held in a taxable account, a lot of actively managed funds throw off huge cap gains every year leading to a lot of tax liability. And looking at past returns is an extremely poor method of choosing funds. Altho...

Do you have children? Do you plan to have children? Would the loss of your wife and the associated income be a financial hardship for you? My guess is you need term life and your wife does not. The purpose of life insurance is to replace lost income, and is only needed if that loss would cause finan...

OK here is our agenda:

"Lessons Learned after 2.5 years of Retirement" - led by dickenjb

"Efficient Frontier for Retirement Income" - led by wade

Suggestions for topics for future meetings - all

Looking forward to our meeting May 11th.

livesoft is correct, FIREcalc does not account for taxes. FIREcalc is interesting as a quick and dirty approximation of "am I on track to retire". It also puts out some pretty charts that drive home the impact of "sequence of return" risk. However, it has not been maintained for...

As the coordinator for the Philadelphia Bogleheads chapter, I am grateful that grabiner makes the drive from central NJ to our Philadelphia chapter meetings where he also adds a great deal to our discussion group.

This should be easy to code in Excel. Just make columns for start balance, deposits, match, earnings, end balance. You can deflate the end balance by whatever factor you choose, say 1.03^30 for 30 years of 3% inflation. Or make it easy on yourself and do everything in real dollars and assume a real ...

My strategy was to invest many years ago in the Utah plan. Those two plans have sizeable gains. In 2012 I started new plans for both kids in the NY plan. Put it 100% in TBM. At a coupon of 1.5%, this potentially "extra" money won't earn much. You need fixed income somewhere in your portfol...

While you are thinking about things, I would advise you to avoid individual stocks. You are going to be a very busy person and will not have time to follow them. Just open a Roth IRA at Vanguard and buy a Target Retirement fund to get started. When you have your 403(b) literature and can post your c...