Bogleheads.org

I made it in cash by around age 26. Then I bought a house and later paid 200k for an MBA. Now I'm $85k in debt but my 401k/IRA still have over $100k in them. Long term buy and hold did work!

Thanks for the replies. My personal situation is that I have finished grad school on the east coast and will be taking a job back in the bay area, starting in July. So I will be local again in about a month after some travels through Europe. Sounds like most here would sell if they were me. I'm lean...

You ignore that by paying the mortgage your equity increases and leverage goes down. I'm just starting out doing investment properties, but as others mentioned your rental income seems very low. As a comparison, we are in the process of buying an apartment for 140k and should get 1200 per month in ...

Yes, this is how I modeled it and was my original question! See the first post. If I model 2% growth and I'm leveraged 5x (your standard 20%) down. Then I'm getting a 10% return just from inflation. Example: The house costs $10000, you put 20% down, so your equity is $20000. Then, you rent for cash ...

Deanbrew,

Would you mind sharing the other real estate site you use? I find that this site is great for index investing advice, but the general population here is very against owning real estate so it's hard to get constructive feedback.

Thank you!

Deanbrew, Thank you! That was a super helpful and constructive reply. I see now that the cap rate is really low. Also, if I add in potential maintenance costs of 20%, it will be even worse. I will definitely consider selling in the next year. I still have about a year to get the tax free exchange. T...

To clarify, I am not an experienced real estate investor and this was not intended to be a rental property. I am an "accidental landlord". This purchase was intended for a family and kids. Based on unfortunate and fortunate circumstances that did not happen and I moved across the country. ...

Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I'm currently living rent free for a while and have at least $10k/month gross income and low monthly expenses (~ $1000). I can use this cash to backstop any vacancies, repairs, etc. Other than that, I would use the money to build up a 12 month safety net to cover a...

Hello, I have a single family home that I bought in 2009. I moved away for the last couple of years and have been renting it out. My tenant has been great so it's been easy to landlord the property, even from the other side of the country. However, my tenant is about to move out and I'm trying to fi...

Hello,

I am selling mutual funds within my Roth IRA. I bought the fund at different points in time and at different prices. Is it possible to indicate the specific shares I want sold? Is it brokerage dependent? My brokerage (first trade) doesn't seem to give me the option.

thanks

Ah that makes so much more sense! Thanks! The tricky thing is that E-trade lists my cost basis as a blank (but show my taxes paid) so I thought that I had no cost basis. I'm always confused when calculating my espp and rsus every year.

Need some advice from tax experts. I had $20k in Restricted Stock units in 2011. My company required me to pay stock on vest, so I had to pay $8k (40%) when I got the stock in 2011. The net is that I got $12k in stocks in my account. I sold the stock last year in 2012 at $16k (it increased $4000 sin...

Forgot to mention that if you are not planning to stay, you can do penfed 5/5 ARM at around 2.5%, which would lower your rate even more. You would need to exit within 5 years before the rate moves up (potentially).

The best financial choice is to move back into the house and refinance to the current mortgage rate of ~3.5%. You need to be owner occupied to get the 3.5% rate. The savings from going down to that rate would probably be ~$200. If you stay in the house for 2 years, you can sell it tax free after tha...

On this forum, the answer to "Should I try this flavor of market timing?" is going to be "No". Did you expect otherwise? I have been lurking here for about 10 years so I suppose I should not be surprised about that. :) Well maybe if I had been more strategic in the way I broache...

I made out like a bandit obviously and I'm back at my 80/20 allocation now waiting for the next crash. When will be the next crash? What constitutes a crash? I think of it as a double digit drop over a period of time, usually 1 day, but could be over a month(s). No clue when the next crash will be....

oh yeh. 122% on your initial $1 but 13% on your total portfolio. Maybe not great, but perhaps not so bad considering it takes a few minutes of work over many years.

Ok, I have backtested this strategy over the last 30 years from Jan 1983 to Jan 2013. I was able to show a 122% total portfolio improvement using this strategy. Strategy: shift AA from bonds to stocks on down months, and then reset AA back to normal when the market reached new highs. Initial Investm...

The flaw I see with this ideal is that the markets could move sideways for years. Look at Japan. True but in the 3-fund portfolio, you have total international. So you have exposure to the world. Unless securities around the world stay flat, then it shouldn't be a problem. Since there is a positive...

Ok, there is obviously no way to call exact bottom. One strategy could be for every 20% total drop from the market tip, you adjust a total of 25% of your bond allocation into stock. So if you had a 20% bond allocation and the S&P high were 1500, for every 20% drop of 300 points, you would alloc...

Ok, there is obviously no way to call exact bottom. One strategy could be for every 20% total drop from the market tip, you adjust a total of 25% of your bond allocation into stock. So if you had a 20% bond allocation and the S&P high were 1500, for every 20% drop of 300 points, you would alloca...

Hello, Wondering if anyone has backtested a 3-fund portfolio in which you were to go 100% stock on any crash (> 20%). Seems in the last 15-20 years, the market has been more volatile than ever with two 40% drops in the last 12 years. Obviously, we would get some benefit in the standard buy/hold/reba...

Valuethinker, Thanks for the clarification on FCF. I always hated doing discounted cash flow analysis and could never remember the details. I could never be a banker or finance guy! Good point on the customer lifetime value. Amazon should know the churn/retentation rate and will be able to calculate...

The article is confusing but my interpretation is that Amazon is trying to maximize operational cash flows. That is the money you generate from operations minus working capital needs (inventory, accounts payable), employee, marketing, and other operational expenses. If you have a ton of operational ...

Also, please give me what you think a "worst" case scenario would be. I am definitely a young investor and I could benefit a lot from the wisdom of this forum. I am humble enough to acknowledge that there is a ton I don't know. After having seen what happened to "market timer" (a...

My exit strategy would be to fold it into my overall portfolio. BND is just the total bond market and I already hold vanguard total bond in my 401k, so I'd be over weight bonds for a while. I invest about $50k per year across retirement accounts and outside. 20% bonds would give me about $10k. So th...

I rent out a SFH house in a high end area of the San Francisco/Bay Area. I've been renting for about 1.5 years and in that time, the plumbing has clogged 3 times and the refrigerator has broken, leaving all the food rotted. I had to pay for all the fees and replaced my tenant's food due to the broke...

I do use a core boggle head portfolio (s&p index, total international and total bond). In 2008, I started shifting all my bonds to stocks until I had almost no bonds. I am back at 80% stock to 20% bond now. I have a higher risk tolerance because I don't plan to use that money for 35 years and I ...

I grew up in the bay area and lived in a fancy house this summer in Hayes valley while interning at a local tech company. Here are my suggestions: South of Market Area (SOMA) - access to everything from restaurants, ball park, embarcadero. Quickly exit the city to the Eastbay (via 80 bay bridge) or ...

Hello, I am the original poster and have not been in here in a long time as I quit work, traveled around the world, and now attend a top 3 business school in the US. A little update. I did use the margin account for about $20-30k in margin ($50-60k total invested) at about 1.66% interest (< 1% after...

Abbas: I have mainly invested in Vanguard retirement 2045 since around 2004. I haven't really kept track of year over year returns but I think I have around 23000 contributed and the fair market value is currently 27,889 all in VTIVX (target retirement 2045). I don't plan to borrow from my 401k. Tha...

Livesoft - I just started an IB account. So 1.66% interest which is tax deductible, so effectively ~.9%. dodonnell - I have around 80k in Roth and 401k + 25 in high yield accounts (emergency). I'll continue maxing out the 401k but I'm no longer eligible to contribute to Roth. I would use the Roth an...

Hello, I have been investing for 8 years and am about to start a taxable account since I have maxed out my 401k and IRAs and have enough disposable income to do so. I am thinking about using a margin account (leverage) and applying a value averaging concept. My plan is to always have a constant perc...

Hi,

I usually re-balance once per year to my AA. However, the market seems to go up 5% one week, then drop 5% another. Would more frequent rebalancing be beneficial? This is assuming there is no cost to buy/sell funds in my 401k.

thanks

If you have a loss that is more than the discount price of a qualifying disposition, you DO NOT need to pay tax on the discount price. The article you linked says it, in quite confusing terms: for the taxable year in which falls the date of such disposition or for the taxable year closing with his d...

With all the posts about TLH, I thought it would be a good idea to sell my ESPP shares from earlier this year since they are down 50%. After spending some time reading up on disqualifying/qualifying dispositions, it seems that even if you have short term losses, you will still be taxed on the reduce...