Bogleheads.org

Hobbicolors for Canon printers: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=hobbicolors&_sacat=See-All-Categories I eventually decided refilling was too much of a hassle, so I got a Brother printer and use cheap generic cartridges from Amazon, like others have ...

Yep, buy Quicken. The software doesn't change much from year to year, though, so rather than paying full price for the 2012 version, I'd buy the 2011 version for $11. Several sellers on eBay have it for around that price. For instance, http://www.ebay.com/itm/Quicken-Premier-2011-BRAND-NEW-/13061503...

Colorado's CollegeInvest 529 program offers an option called the Stable Value Plus fund (http://www.collegeinvest.org/collegeinvest-savings-plans/stable-value-plus-plan/). Annual return net of fees is around 3%, which looks pretty good. And Colorado is one of the few states that offer an unlimited t...

I generally get a lot of value out of reading Grantham's letters, but this latest one (available at http://www.gmo.com/websitecontent/JGLetter_ShortestLetterEver_3Q11.pdf) is a bit of a mishmash. Yes, he included the graph that Fortune picked up on, showing that if the resolution of the most recent ...

It's the ex-dividend date that matters. That's the day the mutual fund (or stock) gets repriced to account for the dividend. If you buy on or after the ex-dividend date, you don't get the dividend, because you paid the lower (ex-dividend) price. A recent example that I was just looking into is the F...

Couple of tips: I like the SanDisk Sansa MP3 players a lot. You can often get refurbished ones on newegg.com or buy.com for not much money. I have an m250 ($15), Clip ($15), and Fuze ($30). For the car (an 11-year-old car without a connection for an MP3 player), I use this gadget: http://www.dealext...

The free trial is a front-page deal on Slickdeals right now:

http://slickdeals.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1777176

Current deal works even for people who have had Prime before.

I like Prime, although not enough to pay $79 a year for it.

As an example of how much non-regulated tuition has cost the Texas Tomorrow Fund, a family purchasing 120 credit hours for a child's entrance to a public college in 2004 paid a total of $10,000 -- or about $83 per credit hour. Is this right? $10K for 120 credit hours -- four years of tuition? What ...

Pretty great deal at Staples on a Compaq laptop this week. Intel dual-core T4200, 3GB RAM, Vista Home Premium, 15.6" screen. $320 after $30 rebate. Lots of details in this discussion here: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?t=1446999 . Doesn't have HDMI output and doesn't have a webcam...

Great way to use miles that you won't use any other way. Local newspaper subscriptions are also an option with some airlines' programs -- usually just an intro offer, for new subscribers only. The $2 subscriptions that they offer you are a sweet deal, too. But yeah, they auto-renew and charge you an...

In addition to fatwallet, I look here: http://bankdeals.blogspot.com

Some of the best deals around right now are installment savings accounts, mostly (all?) from Korean-American banks.

I just applied for <a href="https://www.citicards.com/cards/wv/cardDetail.do?screenID=927">Citi Platinum American Express</a> to replace my Chase card. 5 ThankYou points for every $1 spent at grocery stores, gas stations, drugstores. 3 ThankYou points on everything else for the first 2 years. No ann...

+1 for MagicJack. I just switched a week ago -- call quality and reliability are great so far. I had an old computer lying around that I now dedicate to MagicJack -- so my "home phone" is really a computer + a cordless phone. I previously had just a cell phone at $40 a month and no home ph...

I'd hazard a guess that Dividend Growth and Dividend Appreciation Index are two of Vanguard's most-misunderstood funds. Consider their yields vs. that of the S&P 500 (SEC yield, which I retrieved from Vanguard's website just a few minutes ago): Dividend Growth: 2.57% Dividend Appreciation Index:...

Something seems fishy. If you had a place to store it, you could buy crude on the spot market for $35 and simultaneously sell a CLZ09 for $45, locking in a 25% gain. I can't imagine it costs anywhere near $10 to store it for a year, and the foregone interest on the money is close to 0%. Yes, exactl...

2) Is it easy to move money in and out electronically- the bankdeals blogspot mentioned something about $10,000 daily limits and 6 transaction limit a month, which seems a bit of a pain. I have an Alliant savings account, and yes, the six-transfer / $10K limit is a bit of a pain. One mitigating fac...

GMO had expected 7 year real returns for REITs at 7% as of Oct 31, they are down about 15% since then. So I'd guess that'd put them at about 9% real, according to GMO's methodology. I use GMO's forecasts as a major input to my investing decisions, too. Let me try to update these numbers based on to...

When a fund company compares the performance of a balanced fund (target-date retirement fund or similar) to a benchmark, do they assume any rebalancing in the benchmark? If not, you would expect many of these funds to underperform their benchmarks this year, right? For instance, Vanguard's target-da...

I'm not an expert, but my wife and I have been accumulating TIPS in our retirement accounts for the past 2-3 weeks, so I'll give my opinion based on somewhat limited experience. The choice between a 2016 maturity and 2028 really depends on your individual needs. We've been investing in the 2026-2028...

Yes, I'm quoting the actual auction issue (4/15/2013) in the secondary market at bloomberg.com. That real yield is now quoted as down to 2.42% real. OK, I give -- why would people pay such a big premium for the actual auction issue, vs. other issues with similar maturities? I searched through old p...

Looking at Fidelity's website (since Vanguard's website doesn't let us see TIPS anymore), I see some oddness in the five-year TIPS yields. April 2013: Bid yield 2.50%, ask yield 2.35% (inflation factor 1.04) This is probably the one you're quoting, right Mel? But then look at the TIPS with the close...

So if you have a 4% nominal and 3% real it might be that you have a 2% inflation expected and a 1% risk premium for unexpected inflation. Right now with the amount of liquidity being pumped into the market the risk premium for UNEXPECTED inflation may be rising dramatically. 3% real return plus 2% ...

Vanguard Dividend Growth is a similar fund that's also worth considering. Expense ratio of 0.38%, yield of 2.06%. Strategy, from Vanguard's website: The fund invests primarily in stocks that tend to offer current dividends. The fund focuses on high-quality companies that have prospects for long-term...

Given its financials exposure, DVY would emphatically not be a quality fund. In his latest quarterly commentary, "The Minsky Meltdown and the Trouble with Quantery," Grantham discusses financials, in the context of a broader discussion about why quant models are imperfect: at long and unpr...

Morningstar posted a blurb on mutual funds bitten by the Bear Stearns collapse: http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=231936 Barrow's Windsor II was the first fund mentioned. As of 12/31, Windsor II owned 6.7% of Bear Stearns' shares, but that only represented 1.4% of fund assets.

On Vanguard's website, they let you compare price and yield history for two funds. Here's how you do it... 1. Go here: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/tools/pricehistorysearch 2. Select Tax-Exempt Money Mkt 3. Select "Daily Price History" 4. Enter a date range 5. Click "Get His...

Be careful of its ifinancials exposure. Most dividend funds have a lot of financials. Citigroup was a high yielder with a long and good dividend history, as of 6 months ago. Thanks for the caution. From the most recent semiannual report: The fund’s below-average weighting in financials was the main...

OK, just one more comment... "Based on our judgment, Jeremy Grantham's forecast accuracy rate is 27%, which is very poor. . . ." "In summary, Jeremy Grantham has a very poor track record for predicting U.S. stock market behavior. His forecast sample size is very small, as is our confi...

One final post on the topic of quality... Among Vanguard funds, the one that I've found that most closely approximates GMO's definition of quality is Dividend Growth (VDIGX). Vanguard's website has this to say about the fund's strategy: The fund invests primarily in stocks that tend to offer current...

It's not reasonable to take the bet that if in 15 years they have not shown added value because of some special ability to nail down "quality" that it's going to start this year or next year or..... So taking your data, Jensen has underperformed TSM by 1.48% a year since 1992. Over 15 yea...

Interesting discussion. I've followed GMO's recommendations for several years now, so I'll weigh in with a few of my thoughts. Generally, their definition of "high quality" stocks are those with a wide moat, high returns on equity, good growth rates, low or no debt and good free cash flow....