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Hi all, I am 52 years old, actively working. Wife is also working. No plans to retire for at least 5 years. Two children under the age of 11. Current portfolio is entirely invested in Vanguard index funds. This is a large account and either one (or both) of us could comfortably retire today on under...

You buy these bonds from a broker such as Schwab or Vanguard. IT's a very easy process. You tell them which bonds you're interested in and they will tell you the "approximate" coupon rate that you will get. The exact rate is calculated a day or two later when all the sales are in. At that ...

It's slightly cumbersome because they have accounts "in-trust" and there is some paperwork and verification stuff that needs to take place to transfer it to Vanguard (or to open a new account there).

Vanguard does not seem to have an intermediate NY muni fund (long term only). I realize that I could get the national intermediate muni fund (VWITX) but would lose out a little on the state exempt advantages (although I'm not sure this would be a big deal). Or I could get some of the NY long term on...

I am investing some money for my elderly parents. They are retired and living off their income. They are in a fairly low tax bracket (but probably not the lowest) and live in New York (high state income taxes). The money is currently in cash in an Ameritrade account and they want to charge $50 every...

I'm not sure why everyone is giving him a hard time. I actually do exactly what he is proposing when I rebalance. For example, I know that my AA is asking for more international and more REITS. I also know that due to some retarded blip in European politics the international funds are suffering. The...

In 2009 Jeff Cohen-Merriman published a seminal article in which he compared the balance of risk and return on various asset allocations. The data,compiled from 1970 to 2008 showed various mixes of SP500 and T-bills and their accompanying annualized return, standard deviation, worst month, worst 12 ...

For many years I have had a significant amount of my assets in munis. I own both muni funds and individual muni bonds. I have always had about 70% of my munis in VWIUX which is a national fund holding interm munis and only 30% in VCADX (the CA fund). The reason for doing this was so as not to have a...

lan1h....... In your 1st two paragraphs you have set up a number of comparisons. For simplicity/clarity (hopefully) I will call them 1A/1B for par.1 and 2A/2B for par. 2. Questions/comments: par. 1: don't you need to have the same initial conditions....1B starting should have the 500K built-in CG b...

Likely, no. As a quick experiment, I setup two portfolios in a spreadsheet where I invested $100 10 years ago and made 6%/yr., all tax deferred. They are now worth ~$169. In portfolio A I sell it and harvest my gains, paying $17.24 in taxes (15% federal, 10% state). Both portfolios continue to grow...

We've had lots of discussions on tax-loss harvesting but this may be an opportune time to discuss tax-gain harvesting. Tax rates are likely to go up in 2013, especially for high income individuals. Projected tax increases in capital gains may be from 15% to 23%. This is, in effect, a 60% hike in the...

I'm also interested in your math. I'm in a similar situation in L.A. ie: I would like to buy a condo and to rent it out. I would prefer this than to sinking it into the market or into a low yielding park fund. However, the math doesn't seem to make sense. I currently own and rent a condo which I pur...

I have a question about this and apologize if it sounds muddled. I fully understand what Morgan is saying about what he is seeing around him. This is definitely not "business as usual" and people are suffering acutely. On the other hand it is rather odd that when one visits Europe (and I h...

If you want to invest without spending 15/trade, consider HSA Bank. If you keep $5k in the checking account, the rest can be invested fee-free through TD Ameritrade, which offers a good list of fee-free index ETFs. Since you might use portions of the HSA for healthcare costs, then it's not quite a ...

I'm trying hard to understand exactly how much I will be taxed during retirement. I don't intend to retire for another 10 years but for the purpose of simplicity I would like to use todays situation to extrapolate to the future. Currently I receive about 30K in tax-exempt interest from muni bonds an...

However, if the strongest country, for example Germany, exits, the remaining countries will be more homogeneous and their collective financial strength will be big enough to support the remaining Euro. This is probably a lest destabilizing route to disintegrate the Euro. Actually, a hybrid system h...

One thing that is not commonly mentioned is that the Eurozone experiment is not completely new. About 150 years ago the Austrian=Hungarian empire established a common currency within its sphere of 8-12 participating countries. This worked very well for 40 years until the end of WWI when the empire c...

Wow, you have a very generous plan. It's amazing but not surprising that all don't participate in your plan. I would keep it just as is if I were you and do your best to witness to your employees about the benefits. Maybe explain that it's not 30 year money, but that they would have a nice emergenc...

I am an employer of 7 and have been offering a 401K plan to my employees for the past several years. They can defer into this plan and they also receive a match of 4% and a year-end profit share of 5%. Hence, they get an additional 9% of their salaries in benefits from this plan. My personal benefit...

In 2008 I made the very good decision to place a large part of my portfolio into Calif munis. I bought the bonds directly at 5% and will be holding them until 2016. I also bought a big chunk of a muni bond fund. At the time there was a lot of hand wringing and worrying about whether or not states wo...

when I retire... I will still have to pay full income taxes when I withdraw it (which is quite a bit more than capital gains taxes). That's not a fair comparison. Without the deferral plan, you would be paying both income taxes now (at a higher rate than in retirement, likely) as well as capital ga...

I'm trying to figure out how much one would pay to defer money? For example, if you were offered a 10% fee to defer as much money as you wanted in a pension plan, would you do it? The reason why I ask is that I am considering a pension plan which would cost me about $10,000 but allows me to defer $1...

What happens if you did a lot of tax loss harvesting in 2008 and stockpiled a large amount of losses. In 2009 and 2010 your investments did very well but you didn't sell anything (so no capital gains). In 2011 you tax loss harvested more losses. Now you have losses accumulated from 2008 and 2011 but...

I've never been a big fan of keeping part of my AA in international index funds. However, several years ago I finally decided to put 20% of my investable equity assets into international index funds (partly due to my readings of this forum). The rationale was that this would help diversify my portfo...

Are you asking about rates or about offerings? BOND SALE PAR AMOUNT SALE DATE California State University Systemwide Revenue Bonds Series 2011A $245,000,000 September 14, 2011 2011-2012 Revenue Anticipation Notes $5,400,000,000 September 15, 2011 Various Purpose General Obligation Bonds $1,275,000,...

Any information available regarding the newest offering of muni bonds by CA? I would like to get a rough idea of the offering for the GO bonds. I bought some of these in 2008 and was awfully glad I did.

Here's another way of looking at it: 1. No tax deferred plan: I have $110K to invest each year. Since I am in the 45% fed/state bracket this leaves me $60,500 to invest every year. If I assume a return of 5% and do this every year for 10 years I will wind up with about $898000: At the end of 10 year...

He would pay 15% tax on the gains when he sells, plus tax on the dividends every year, so the total tax would be close to 25%. Try these numbers: Total return of 7.2% consisting of 2.2% dividends and 5.0% increase in NAV. Taxable Account: In year 1, the $82,500 grows to $86,625 and pays dividends o...

I was wondering how much people would "pay" to be able to defer a certain portion of their income from taxes? For example, would you pay a fee of $10,000 if you were able to defer $100,000 from taxes? The reason why I ask is that I have been given the option to move myself and my employees...

In neither case did I assume that he was spending the money. However, I do agree that for individuals who need to spend the money that they receive, the annuity may be a better deal. Then you've "got it." I plead guilty to assuming that this annuity was something that your dad was conside...

If you take your original $100K and put it into a very safe investment ie: AAA muni, CD, short term bond you could reasonable expect to make about 3% (I am talking historically). THis means that after 10 years (with very little risk) you wind up with $135,000. If you hold it for another 10 years yo...

If you take your original $100K and put it into a very safe investment ie: AAA muni, CD, short term bond you could reasonable expect to make about 3% (I am talking historically). THis means that after 10 years (with very little risk) you wind up with $135,000. If you hold it for another 10 years you...

I recently reviewed AARP's annuity offering for my father (age 85). The deal sounds attractive on first blush ie: you hand over $100,000 and they will pay you 10% a year until you die. If you die before you've recouped your original $100K, they will refund the difference to your spouse. For example,...

It should also be noted that when a company defaults on its debt it's no big deal. THere are many other companies out there and life goes on even with hundreds of companies declaring bankruptcy every month. However, if a state defaults on its debt obligation its future costs to borrow money will ris...

steve roy wrote:I recently went and bought a mess of California General Obligation bonds paying 5.9% for my taxable account. They were AA/A.

Just out of interest, what bonds did you buy? I also recently bought some CA GO bonds and the yield for 2020 was 4.65% (not anywhere close to 5.9%).

Am I the only one or do others find this to be absolutely crazy. A state defaulting on its obligations simply as a "negotiating tool" with pension plans? The ramnification on future ability to borrow money would be devastating. I assume that a move like that would make it extremely difficu...

if I lived in California, I would buy ultra-safe individual bonds: AAA-rated, pre-refunded, SLGS-backed. That way, you get the (substantial) state income tax exemption without taking on lots of added credit risk. Are AAA rated bonds neccessarily safer than A- state of Calif GO bonds? Yes, I underst...

I'm very surprised at the gloomy outlook on these threads. Granted that we are slowly recovering from a very serious recession. It will take years to sort out our unemployment issues not to mention our deficit, trade imbalance, unsustainable benefits etc. Europe is also having troubles of its own an...

Larry has been very direct. He favors holding only AAA and AA muni's. VG muni bond funds hold far too many lower rated bonds for his taste. Plus, he's detailed his rationale for holding individual issues. It should be noted, however, that Larry's criterion is almost impossible for any fund to meet ...

fwiw-I would not buy a Cal GO either. Would look for higher rating bonds. Well, this puts California residents in a bind. If you wouldn't invest in CA GO it means that you wouldn't invest in any CA bonds. We lose between 1-1.5% of tax equivalent yield by investing in bonds of other states. Since th...

FWIW-you broke one of my cardinal rules of bond buying, never buy a bond without at least 80% call protection, and better to have no call risk at all. Best wishes Larry Thanks Larry, Yes I was concerned about this but I figured that the callable option is more likely to hurt me if rates fall which ...

I just bought my CA state GO bond from Schwab's bond desk. I compared the prices at both Schwab and Vanguard and I realized that Vanguard would cost twice as much commission. I purchased a 2020 bond (callable in 2016) with a ytm of 4.65% and a price of 102.60. The commission at Vanguard was $2 per $...

Wagnerjb , just curious, why wouldn't you buy the National Intermediate for the 31 days (holding period)? That way, the yield/risk would be comparable. I ended up exchanging 25% of my LT as: 35% Florida, 35% Intermediate, and 30% Money Market. My rational is: Florida is longer duration than Nationa...

This question has popped up many times before but I think it bears revisiting. Naturally, those of us who live in N.Y. or CA (highly taxed states) will benefit from state specific muni funds as opposed to national muni funds. However, recently I've been going through the math and wondering if the ta...

I have a loss of about $30,000 in my California intermediate muni bond (VCAIX) fund. I intend to continue holding onto munis for a few more decades but would like to take this opportunity to TLH the loss. One option is to move it into the CA long term fund for a month and then move it back to the CA...

Thanks. So one can only fully harvest a loss from shares that were held at least 6 months. Good thing Vanguard supports specific tax lot identification for their mutual funds online . The muni index funds sure would make TLH-ing these funds easier. Unless something has changed, Vanguard's online sy...

To ilan1h and light1. I do have 15 years experience running about $1 million in individual munis. But I do not have any expertise whatsoever, except what I pick up from this forum and Larry's bond book. I buy through Zionsdirect. They sell at the bonddesk offering price and add $10.95 commission pe...

Les' graph is fascinating. It basically shows a kind of a shell game of debt. These overly indebted nations have borrowed from each other and are using each other as guarantors of future debt. This is kind of similar to the financial crisis we had in the U.S which involved AAA rated debt suddenly be...

Richard, Yes I agree that the Federal government cannot do as much this time. But I would add this, though I would not count on it, if they would not let GM go bankrupt, will they let a state? My crystal ball is cloudy so I don't have answer and certainly would not rely on it. That is why I would n...

Probably true and I will certainly defer to your and Larry's experience and expertise. Nonetheless, I believe that Larry points out that his firm can buy at wholesale prices, and has the research and knowledge of the muni bond market. A retail investor on their own seems to incur greater costs, and...