Bogleheads.org

FWIW,I took a partial SBP - about halfway between the min. and the max. If I could walk that dog back, I would opt for the full amount. Although my wife and I are in fine financial shape, if I knew she would have more SBP income if I predecease her, we would be able to spend more of our nest egg on ...

I'm no expert on this and I'll leave it to someone else to give a technical answer. But just thinking it through, I'm not sure that a savings bond has a duration. I understand the definition of duration as a measure of the sensitivity of a bond's underlying value to changes in interest rates. (With ...

Although I'm not doing RMDs, I have a similar situation in that I have been liquidating a portion of my taxable equity mutual funds in anticipation of a new home purchase. I thought about all the same things that you've mentioned. In the end, I decided to dollar-cost-average out of the fund, just as...

Thanks to those who responded. In the final analysis, I think I will probably end up fairly close to the 40% I currently have in equities - about 30% in Total Stock Market Index and about 10% in one of the total international indexes.

This is an asset allocation question. I'll give details below. I'm just interested in what other Bogleheads think is a reasonable asset allocation for a couple in our situation. Because I am dipping into our portfolio to buy a new primary house for cash in the near future, the current asset allocati...

I would certainly consider it, but the ER is currently in the 0.24% range. I think I'd still be more likely to build a CD ladder with rates what they currently are and with those expenses, though. That said, awesome product if the cost comes down significantly (say, below 0.10%?) I understand that ...

A "Financial Adviser" at my credit union reviewed my investments and recommended an assortment of mutual funds. All with an 8% front load. I did not bite. I got similar advice from (then) USPA-IRA (now First Command), an "investment advisor" company that targets military people....

Somewhat disappointed USAA* (of all banks, mind you) would not consider the amount requested.... I would suggest OP explore local banks or CUs. *We've been with USAA since I was commissioned, in 1970. Both kids are legacies. I'm happy to report, as Paul Harvey would have said, "the rest of the...

I am not familiar with loan-to-debt ratios. Do you mean loan to income? That's what I meant - typing faster than the brain was thinking. Do you belong to a Credit Union? I have found them to be more understanding than banks. Yes, and my first instinct was to use Navy Federal (my primary "bank&...

I just ran into a "gotcha" in the course of applying for a home equity line of credit. My wife and I are retired and have contracted to buy an "over 55" condo in another state. We will be putting our current house, which we own free and clear, on the market next week. The new hou...

The Dec/Jan issue of AARP Magazine has an article called "The Influentials - 50 over 50." It says. "We looked beyond the politicians and power brokers to find the people affecting your life - and your future." There is one category called "Watching Our Wallets." It list...

I'm in the process of applying for a HELOC. In connection with the application, the bank obviously ran my credit score which is a very good one. But the report includes "Key factors adversely affecting your credit score in the model" which are keyed to codes described on the back of the re...

Sure they do, only now they call me "Sir" and offer to help me get my walker into/out of the car. I was career military and was addressed as "sir" and addressed a lot of others as "sir." One day shortly after I retired, a young person held a door open for me; I said th...

Friar, I am not sure what the above quote with no response from you means, but: What it means is that I had typed in a response and sent it but must have inadvertently deleted the response before sending it. Sorry 'bout that. Also, haven't checked in for a few days, hence the delay in replying. The...

I've gotten more information on my initial question and I see that I did not understand my daughter's options completely. Here are the facts derived from a combination of a letter she has received from her former employer and my discussion with a very helpful woman from the pension office earlier t...

I've gotten more information on my initial question and I see that I did not understand my daughter's options completely. Here are the facts derived from a combination of a letter she has received from her former employer and my discussion with a very helpful woman from the pension office earlier to...

nedsaid wrote:Whoops, I am confused. Providence and friar1610 are the same person. Oh well.

Well, I guess you're not a Big East basketball fan. If you were, you would have immediately linked Providence and Friar in your mind.

If I were in your position, picking a Target Date Fund for your daughter is a good choice for now. Yes, the Freedom Funds don't have the best Fidelity funds and use too many funds. Despite their weaknesses, they are vastly better than what employees would pick for themselves. Fidelity is trying to ...

Just adding to what has already been said about Iowa. I used to live in MD which had their plans with T. Rowe Price, a good solid company but more expensive than VG. Also, MD had some sort of an annual fee to maintain the account. I did my research and came up with Iowa and made contributions to the...

Try http://www.403bwise.com and specifically: http://www.403bwise.com/participants/takeaction_choices.html Although I have not been to the above mentioned web site in a long time, it is very good. Here are my experiences with 401K's/403B's: - For a while I worked for a very small company which had ...

...when it comes to making 401K/403B investment decisions. My daughter's employer is going through open benefits season. She showed me the booklet outlining the investment choices with Fidelity for the 403B plan. I stopped counting the number of different funds they offer at 95 and there were four o...

I'm trying to advise my single, early 40's daughter on a course of action relative to her pension plan from a previous employer. I don't know too much about non-military pension plans although I'm pretty conversant with 401K's/403B's. Her situation: She's a nurse and worked for Hospital A for 10 yea...

z0r wrote:usaa wants more to insure me as a driver than state farm or geico. I check every couple years and it's been consistently higher. I'll switch as soon as they actually save me money.

But USAA gives you money back every year from your "Subscriber's Savings Account."

The NY Times has a Special Section with several articles this week Bulletproofing Your Finances which may interest readers of this thread. There is less hype in the articles so be prepared for some common sense. "Marketplace Money" on NPR has its entire show devoted to this subject this w...

There are some variable rate interest only loans available out there. Although you don't make any dent in the amount owed, they considerably lower the monthly payment. I would only use one if I knew I could pay it off within a short period. I'm considering one as a "bridge" between a house...

Big believer in CUs here. I'm a member of NFCU and PenFed. Used to be a member of Tower Federal Credit Union which serves folks who work for a certain Defense Agency at Ft. Meade MD as well as people in the contiguous counties who don't necessarily work there. All three are top-notch.

60 days You can distribute IRA funds and roll them back within 60 days if you have not done a similar distribution and rollover from that IRA account or to that IRA account from another IRA in the prior 12 months. Thank you. Maybe my memory is fuzzy and it was actuall 60 vs. 90 days with the 401K a...

A number of years ago I needed a wad of cash to complete the purchase of a house w/o a mortgage. The house I was moving out of was under contract but was not going to close until after I had to close on the new one. I scraped together the cash to buy the new one using several techniques. One of them...

I posted a similar question on another thread but since my question was not directly related to that thread, I got no responses. So I'll ask it here: For those who have some amount of inflation protection through inflation-adjusted pensions (SS, Federal pensions, military pensions, etc.) how great i...

If the majority of one's retirement income is inflation adjusted (military pension and SS), is there really much need to have a significant inflation-adjusted position in the fixed income portion of the port?

Disclosure: about 10% of my FI is I-bonds. No TIPS or TIPS funds.

There really is little or nothing any of us can do to protect ourselves from the market, other than maintain a reasonable asset allocation for our age and situation in life. I'm 60% fixed and 40% equities, and I'm sticking with it. I believe in keeping my eyes open to changes and other opinions, bu...

Problem solved. I had a misplaced checkmark in one of the boxes showing which accounts to include. Some time ago I had transferred some funds from a mixed stock-bond fund into all an all-bond fund. But I hadn't made that change on the accounts to display. Hence, I was getting an artificially high eq...

KyleAAA wrote:Did you plug your portfolio into Morningstar's x-ray? Try that. Morningstar is likely going to have better data than Vanguard for non-Vanguard funds.

No, I haven't done it on M*. But I don't have any non-VG funds.

mhc wrote:Where did you get your numbers for your spreadsheet?

From my account info on the VG web site. Their total dollar amount (for the entire port) was the same as what I came up with on the spread sheet.

This may have been discussed before. If anyone has links to previous discussions that would be fine. I've been getting ready to do some rebalancing and I decided to make my own Excel spreadsheet to compare to the VG web site. (I have all my assets on their web site - VG accounts {the only MFs I have...

Thanks to those who responded. I spent time today verifying with various financial institutions that our beneficiary info is up to date. I think I have a good handle on this now, thanks in no small part, to your answers.

I looked this up on the wiki but didn't see it specifically addressed. For accounts like IRAs and Variable Annuities (which have yet to begin annuitization) there is only a single account owner as these accounts can't be jointly owned. My wife and I each have several IRA accounts with VG and have na...

From the MOAA (Military Officers Association of America) web site: "The CPI rose 0.7 percent in August. With only one month left to report in the fiscal year, MOAA estimates the 2013 COLA will be somewhere between 1.2% and 1.7%." They are referring to military retirement pay but the COLA f...

There have been a number of interesting bond/bond fund discussions recently. Among the opinions expressed have been that Treasuries might be riskier than they once were and that it might be a good time to get into more corporates. I wonder if others have split the difference to any great degree. For...

Some people don't make quarterly estimated tax payments but choose to pay at the end of the year by directing withdrawals to go to the IRS. If that is your method of making tax payments it would be crucial to do so in a timely manner otherwise the penalty can be substantial. Ed This would only work...

My Vanguard account is claiming an almost 19% one year return. This on a portfolio that is 55% bonds. It is a little unnerving. Billyt If you don't mind sharing, I'd be really interested to know what bond funds you hold. I've been doing a slow rebalance to move about 5% from stocks to bonds. That's...

Ooops. I had not found this when I posted a link to the same article earlier today.

I ran across this column which "cherry picked" portions of a Post interview with Bill McNabb. (A longer version will be published in a future edition.) http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/value-added-at-vanguard-perks-are-rare-and-everyone-enlists-in-the-swiss-army/2012/09/23/fc...

I'm curious why most of the discussion of alternatives to Total Bond Market Index Fund has centered on Intermediate-Term Investment Grade rather than Intermediate-Term Bond Index . The rap against TBM seems to be that it might not contain enough corporates. So I suppose that balancing TBM with Int. ...

One thing you should consider is that you may not be able to qualify for a loan at the current rates if you are no longer employed. That may not be an issue for you, but it was for friends of ours. I ran into this once before (when I moved to my present house after having retired.) I was surprised ...

My wife and I had 403B funds in TIAA-CREF for a number of years. I think they are a solid company and generally competitive with Vanguard and Fidelity. We moved our plans to Vanguard solely to keep things under one roof. I would point out that the TIAA-CREF "Traditional" option is a good d...

I have a "cash back" credit card from NFCU. I have the lowest level PenFed card (no annual fee, no cash back) for the sole reason that it has no foreign exchange fee. I use it when I go overseas or on frequent trips to Canada (I live in Vermont and go to Montreal from time to time.)

There are undoubtedly lifestyle issues at work but trading *up* in your mid 60s in housing strikes me as, generally, not a great thing to do? Even trading sideways (given the costs of sale fees moving etc.) is a hard one. I have trouble with this thinking. If you're physically active and can afford...

My wife and I are strongly considering relocating from our present location to a new one. We are in our mid-60's and own our current house (house A) free and clear. . There are undoubtedly lifestyle issues at work but trading *up* in your mid 60s in housing strikes me as, generally, not a great thi...

surfer1 wrote:
What tax consequences did you mean? Withdrawing from an IRA or something to pay for the down-payment on the new home without selling the old one?

Actually, I don't think I'll have to tap any IRA money. But I would have to sell some mutual funds incurring capital gains.