Bogleheads.org

+1 to overthehills submission. depends on the state, but your agent knows, or at least someone at his company. i was involved in casualty claims investigations for 32 years. i am therefore ridiculously over-insured. insurance is a sort of modern curse, but if it's not there when you need it, well ....

it can be gotten around, but i pay, for the reasons stated by the OP. plus the wife of one of my best friends is an editor there, so it would be unseemly to poach. i've taken it at different times as paper, in l.a. it's a little pricey, but the real problem is i want to read every article, and it re...

to hell w/ roundup and the horse it rode in on. horrible poison. as it's beds: pull all weeds, dig up roots; vinegar solution (not salt, unless we're talking a driveway or something never to be planted again), but some use a little soap added in, can apply w/ old school watering can if area not too ...

i believe many of their cars are lease returns, usually well-maintained, as stated by the previous poster. it's the "telltale" mileage -- 30,000, for example. everybody makes money in the car game (except for the retail buyer, of course -- he or she gets to lay rubber and burn fuel, for a ...

i bought a vehicle there last year. no problems at all. as other posters have stated, they will sell you a car for about market price, and buy yours for the wholesale price. i think the difference is that they have employees who are real mechanics who inspect and recondition all their product, and t...

just finished "prague fatale," p. kerr. diff. title in european ed. i believe. have degree in european hist., love both kerr and alan furst. if you're not familiar w/ kerr's protagonist bernie gunther, and you like chandler, you can't miss. he's a detective w/ berlin's criminal police and ...

"Yep, at least half of fixed income in the SV fund, if not all."
+1

i own both (a little reit in a roth and an income property), and i think it's obvious that the two are vastly different. it's like owning a car vs. owning gm stock, to present a clunky simile. as far as reits diversifying a portfolio, my understanding / experience is that they can twist a little dif...

what happened to short term bond funds?

i guess the "Federal Thrift Savings Plan G Fund" is like a stable value fund run by the fed. employee retirement system?

i have a rental property and a little bit of a roth in a reit index. it's a long-haul thing ....

i have something pretty close in a roth at fido: - spartan s/t treas bd fid advantage class (fsbax) 15% - spartan extended mkt index fid adv class (fsevx) 10 - spartan real estate index fid adv class (fsrvx) 10 - sprtn total mkt indx fid advantage class (fstvx) 40 - fidelity inter bond (fthrx) 25

i believe bernstein's main point is that f.i. will "revert to the mean" eventually, and those in junk or longer bonds will take a haircut, while those who stayed short will be able to re-invest at the new higher rates. my question is, hasn't benanke announced that the fed will do its utmos...

grokster,

+1. those funds or bonds look great until the issuers are stressed; probably lots of defaults then.

have to be grateful uncle sam is trying to help john q public deal w/ such issues (ibonds, tips, now the floating rate treasuries this year).

i think wellesley's philosophy is solid, old school formula. i owned it for many years but don't now, as i've shortened my bond durations and don't have a place for it in my no-tax side. i hope to own it again after the fed gets out of their interest rate expedition.

i've done 3 our of 5 (fancy b.f.a., oh well, part of being a dad, and even the kids w/ j.d.'s can't get jobs; and, stock options). these things aren't really "dumb," just moves which can breed regret on hindsight. i've got other real worries. as far as #5, wish i'd put everything into l.t....

agree w/ keith that "diversification" is best policy. equities are gonna go up + down, nothing to be done. however , if one is concerned w/ bond prices dropping as interest rates rise, the only mutual funds i know about that supposedly follow rates up are money market and floating rate bon...

fwiw, i had the convertible fund at fidelity for some years, based on the supposed "downside protection." long story short, in my view overall, the fund underperformed / was disappointing (nor enough upside?). also fwiw, i'm a big fan of real basic index funds now. my view is that all the ...

my s.v.f. at fido has an expense ratio of .29, has since end of 2011. i'll watch for any change. funny how those two things are "backwards" between the two outfits. the main reason i have stayed in the fido 401k in retirement is the very low e.r.'s in my co. funds w/ fido -- .02% for total...

long story short, i acquired a rental property a couple of years ago and the tax returns are over my head. i retained a high-end cpa firm on the rec. of a friend who is a real estate investor, and have had two returns done. i'm definitely not wealthy, just ok, and just retired, doing a little consul...

i think the important issue is: when will you need to spend the bond fund monies? if the fund has a duration of 5 yrs. (as, say, vanguard's int. term calif. muni. fund), then you can ask yourself, if interest rates do rise, and the principal sinks, can you avoid spending the money in that account fo...

i can see that there is no consensus here -- for asset class, some say bonds, reits, others have microcaps in their roths; and, it seems taxes, while always relevant, should not be the driving force in roth choices. i guess anything goes ,,,,,

Just to throw some gasoline on this fire, why Wellesley rather than Managed Payout Growth & Distribution? :) wow! now we're talkin' .... but not everybody at vanguard is a m.p.f. fan. as the poster stated somewhere that the money had to last, and a legacy was not a concern, it has to be a spia,...

i don't even know the exact number, it depends on how you count 'em, as other posters have pointed out. but i do have a rule that limits to five the funds held in any one account - so, vanguard ira has five, fido 401k has five, etc. there is a little fudging going on as one of the five in an ira own...

my son is a 25-year-old musician, but a bright lad, Not to pick on you but I found your choice of words amusing. The implication being that musicians by nature are not very bright. Yes, I got quite a chuckle on that one also. Cookie well, in reality, he's classically trained, so not at all a numsku...

i think i agree w/ the posters who state that a personal involvement is needed - their name on an account. when i was 21, i inherited a little money from my grandparents. i considered all kinds of foolish ways to spend or invest it but managed to hold on to some of it, and eventually it went into a ...

well, i have the right, having served in the bar bands in the 70s. perhaps you haven't heard some of the classic musician tales: "what is a bass player w/o a girlfriend?" homeless "how do you know if the stage is level?" drool comes out of both sides of the drummer's mouth equall...

years ago during one of the bull fevers i had a physician friend who explained to me one day that he would no longer have to practice medicine, as he was successfully day trading. he'd gotten a t-1 line, new desktops and displays, the whole deal. then one day he lost $40k. when his wife fund out, he...

+1 drs85.

my plan is to be grateful i have anything which has a n.a.v. to potentially drop.

well, there could be many variations on the stories above. i had a bunch of iras from diff jobs and ended up at a place w/ a good 401k program. i worked w/ a cpa to convert the iras to a roth, as my tax situation etc. allowed. meanwhile i maxed out the 401k but had no funds for ira contributions. i ...

VictoriaF wrote:Some aspects of the human capital are more clear than others. For example, deciding about going to college after high school poses a trade-off between immediately getting a salary and building one's human capital.

Victoria

what if you get a b.f.a. in music?

fwiw, vanguard's broker one-yr. cd rate is presently 0.4% not too exciting, but remember that many of the outfits that pay high cd rates are in receivership or some flavor of bankruptcy. yes, it's fdic insured, but this could lead to hassles. i believe only the principal is insured, and the wonderfu...

thanks all. you'll be happy to know i gave the lad the little red book of common sense investing, which he stated he would read. now all he needs is something to invest .....

just reviewed performance - 2.88% annualized a/o 1-13. i believe they reset quarterly, so that may drop in april.

correct, a huge co. 401k. e.r. is .29.

The problem with many of the suggestions in this thread and other "boosting your fixed income return without adding risk" threads (EE Bonds, I Bonds, PenFed CDs), is that they are either impossible or very cumbersome to do in IRAs and 401ks. All of my retirement money (and I suspect that ...

"Value" is a euphemism, like "high-yield" in bonds. I learn from Justin Fox's excellent The Myth of the Rational Market that Benjamin Graham called his favorite investments "cigar butts." Well, they are good "value"--they have a meaningful amount of tobacco i...

i dunno, i have been around for awhile and managed to lose some dollars while deluded that i was somehow going to find an angle. my problem was always in the selling. it's a lot of work to properly manage a stock portfolio! then i was attracted to slice n dice. recently i thought small value was bri...

i'm "semiretired" (drawing a pension but doing the dreaded consulting too) and am in the middle of allocating my vast holdings, abt. 60-40 / bond/stock, the classic retiree spread. i don't have a lot of taxable, so only have a bit in ibonds. i did place some percentage of my vanguard f.i. ...

there are threads on this topic. stable value funds are creations of paper and ins. contracts aggregated to be low interest rate non-liquid stable money funds, not really "money market funds." they generally don't exist outside of 401k funds.

multiples of annual spenddown.

my son is a 25-year-old musician, but a bright lad, and he has shown some interest in money and investments recently. he has a b.f.a. but little or no background in economics or markets. he actually sat through a lengthy exposition of the index funds in which i have my roth ira invested. i am hoping...

i had a telephone conference w/ a vanguard cfp couple of weeks ago, and discussed the managed payout funds with him -- as i am in the distribution phase, i was at least curious. fwiw, without coming out and saying they're investment stinkholes, he strongly steered me away, making it clear that any p...

there have been a couple of threads on this in the last year or two. the bottom line is most investors do not include their pension in their a.a. however, there is a formula to do so, in which the pension is "annuitized" as a bond -- how much cash would generate that much income. i found i...

emerg. funds: adequate debt: mortgage, no other debt tax: 15% fed., 7% calif. age: 60, retired 4-12. proposed asset allocation: (six (or 7) funds + cd's, 50-50 stocks/bonds): stock 50% - Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VTSAX), 65% - Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fun...

age sixty, retired in april. i like 50/50, but not there yet. best to all, artie

hi, i recently asked a similar question about wellesley (generating retirement income in a roth). i rcvd. no responses to the question. what you get here is suggestions to use index funds. in this area ("help w/ personal investments"), you are directed to read the various directives to for...

i don't have a portfolio in mind and it's not a portfolio question -- just, as stated, a query re generating retirement income w/ a roth ira.

there have been multiple threads about the venerable wellesley income fund. any opinions out there as to the facility of placement of same in a roth, for the purpose of income generation in retirement? one feature of wellesley is that quarterly interest and dividends can be automtically withdrawn. w...

some investors believe the ownership of rental property would logically preclude the placement of reit's in one's investment portfolio. this may be a little bit simplistic, as a rental property or two and a reit are not the same thing. i can see both sides to this argument, but i think the two thing...