Bogleheads.org

San Francisco is a great place for kids if you do it right. I moved there recently with two kids (2 and 6), and they love it. The parks and nature - both in town and within a short drive - are amazing. I think you're already on the right track already, and I would recommend: * Redwoods, either north...

I just ordered a TGT. Haven't tried it yet, though.

Separately, has anyone ever told the Munchkin Man that he writes like a Chuck Pahalniuk novel?

Thanks JHD -- on small cap value, is there an index mutual fund that tracks the S&P 600 value index -- I understand that that index is better (smaller, more value-ey) than Russell 2000? Also, is small cap value appropriate for taxable account? Also, I'm not sure I understand your comments on TI...

Hi Rushmore - Here's how I look at asset allocation: what portfolio could I hold through both 1999 and 2008 (or 1929)? Too aggressive and I wouldn't sleep well in a market crash/Great Depression. Too conservative and I would be tempted to buy stocks at their peak during a boom. 70/30 is a fine asset...

If we're basing our AA on the rear view mirror of the past 12 years, shouldn't we just dispense with equities entirely and hold 50% bonds and 50% gold? :sharebeer Exactly. You can find 12 year samples to justify any portfolio imaginable. Pick your sample right, and the new Three-Fund Portfolio will...

Cash is effectively a short-duration fixed income investment. 30-day T-bills (bonds of 30 day maturity) are considered to be cash or cash-like. So it is reasonable to consider cash to be a part of your fixed-income assets. So if you want a 50/50 portfolio of $200,000, and you have $50K in cash, you ...

A few thoughts. 1. Have you checked out SecondMarket? Before you do anything, see if you're really getting a good offer. Maybe 80% over the previous funding round is under-market. If you're talking about making a 7-figure transaction, it pays to do quite a bit of diligence and look for a good offer....

For me, the key is that a mortgage is directly offset by a place to live. It's not JUST a negative bond in isolation... it's a negative bond that substitutes for the expense of paying rent somewhere. If I rent a house for $1500/month and then decide to buy with a mortgage payment of $1500/month, why...

I'm in tech and have made money via stock options, but I also vote zero. Unless you have stock options at a fairly late-stage private company (like Twitter), where you can place a current value on them, you probably have a pretty low chance at a pretty high payout. That shouldn't change your asset a...

I was self-employed for more than a decade, first with a software consulting business that paid salaries for a half-dozen folks, then with a couple of startups - one of which went died, and one of which made a lot of money. I did this without taking excessive personal risk: no debt, no dipping into ...

Emotiva is pretty popular amongst the cost-conscious-but-still-discerning crowd. See http://shop.emotiva.com/collections/amplifiers for more. I haven't heard them personally, but lots of folks have written them up online. As a side note, I'm a total skeptic when it comes to lots of audiophile gear, ...

Am I Doing This Right?

Long: ACAS, BRE
Short: MD, TWTC

I don't know home prices, since my family rents, but $750 is modest for a SF home. Sounds more like a condo budget to me. These are some general pointers - if you want something more specific, let us know what you want in a neighborhood. E.g. why do you want a second home in San Francisco? If you ne...

Check out the Santa Cruz Mountains for that type of "close yet far" environment. From LaHonda down to Corralitos - it's all nice. Agreed. I lived there for a winter, working on a startup. It was beautiful. Redwoods, isolation, rural/mountain feel... but only 15 minutes to Los Gatos and th...

You need to seek professional financial advice. Professional advice to legally lower your tax liability. This is the most important professional advice an investor can get (or possibly tied with a good estate lawyer). I'm pretty sure the OP said he had both already, though. Beyond that, a financial...

I've seen this type of attitude a lot on the board (I'm a lurker) and I'm sort of surprised by it. Is there a certain point of wealth at which Boglehead philosophies no longer hold true and you should get into exotic alternative investments, or something? My world didn't suddenly become a whirlwind...

I've done this a bit, and hope to be more strategic about it in the future. Changes to the tax code should also factor in here: on the one hand, US tax rates will probably be higher in 2013 and beyond, so 2012 might be the wrong year to do this. But on the other hand, there is talk of new limits on ...

I did not mean it had the expected return of a lottery but the dispersion of expected returns looked like lottery ticket disperion, big fat right tail and the average return way below the mean. That is what VC in general looks like and the earlier the stage the more skewed the returns likely to be ...

I've taken angel and VC investment too. It doesn't have to be a lottery - unlike publicly traded markets, private funding is inefficient. The best angels and VCs have a significant advantage over the median. That said, if you don't think you can be one of the best (or ride the coattails of one of th...

The Roku interface for Netflix is really nice. I have a DVD player (Sony) that also supports Netflix, but it isn't nearly as nice - you can only browse movies in your Netflix queue, whereas with Roku you can browse recommended movies, search, etc. As long as the player supports 720p+ output (which I...

Also check out http://propersuit.com. Custom-tailored suits for non-tailored prices.

Disclosure: a friend of mine is the founder. So I'm biased.

Is anyone doing anything cool as a side business out there? Any advice for someone looking to jump back in? When I ask real life folks I know about this about the only thing they can come up with is 'consulting'. For many reasons including the concept of replacing a job with a job I am not interest...

Definitely. Is the child less worthy because of the parents' situation?

What I find amazing about the chart is the number of "runs" where one class does well or poorly for a number of years in a row. Seems like it's evidence that letting the winners run and not rebalancing too much is the correct approach. Whats known as momentum. This basically visualizes so...

One more thing to consider: Aerons are fairly easy to find on the used/refurbished market. I've purchased 4-5 of them over the years for work, and I've never paid more than $450 for one. The lowest I found was $300. Check Craigslist.

+1 (or 5) for the Aeron. It really is a great chair.

How? So far I'm not aware of any of the social networking sites being able to figure out a viable monetization model. That was true a while ago, but isn't true anymore. Facebook is rumored to have made about $1B-$2B in 2010. Advertising is a viable business model at huge scale. Just look at Google....

Equity Style - I have no idea if your method will beat a diversified buy-and-hold portfolio over the next 30 years. A momentum premium makes sense to me, for behavioral reasons; but I don't know if your system effectively captures that premium. But: thanks for being a contrary voice here, and puttin...

One disagreement with jhd -- with a CS degree and an MBA and 3 years experience I unknowingly took a job away from a self-taught programmer cum Yale philosophy major who'd had the job for 7 years but had not expanded beyond one language and one algorithm. I took the job not knowing someone else alr...

Many of the jobs I have looked at thus far in Finance are looking for people with some computer programming skills. I am considering enrolling in a university in Chicago to earn a Master of Science in Computer Science. I'd also develop some targeted skills that meet exactly what they're looking for...

I'm a software developer, and I entered the workforce in 2001, during an economic downturn. Like you, I didn't have a CS degree (Philosophy FTW!), and couldn't find a job at a "traditional" company. So I started freelancing. For about 2-3 years, I made very little; but now that I've figure...

TIPS are probably better than I-Bonds as an investment right now. But I'm going to hold onto my I-Bonds and consider them part of my emergency cash reserves. 12 months after purchase, they make a nice cash-like savings vehicle.

I simply wonder if the free lunch component of SV's return can be counted/planned on given that it is now so widely known? That's all. That's my one and only point. Aren't you kind of defeating your own argument? As long as people say "The SV premium is a thing of the past" when it doesn'...

I think he has a much bigger issue with people using leverage to invest in stocks. If you have a well diversified portfolio, through index funds or other means and you go bankrupt it most likely means that the world is in pretty bad shape. If you are leveraged 4 to 1, though, because your models to...

I think Taleb is spot on in some of his thoughts on market psychology, risk, Wall Street, etc. And I find his investment ideas intriguing. At the same time, when I read his writings, I get the sense that anyone who invests in stocks will eventually go bankrupt. Maybe today, maybe in 20 years, but so...

Talk of $200 or $1000 oil may be overheated in the short term. But over the next 40 years, oil prices and shortages could cause significant economic disruption. Or they could be low and stable - we don't know.

Assuming one wanted to, how does one invest for the $1000 oil scenario?

I'm a little embarrassed for old Taleb. After several years and several hundred pages skewering people who take credit for predicting market movements, he can't resist telling us how he predicted this particular drop. Also a little sad to hear him talk about how he "put his neck and money on t...

As I read it, you hold your stocks in taxable and your bonds + REIT in tax advantaged, and now you're out of tax advantaged room. If that's not right - if you're holding stocks in tax-advantaged - then I'd move those to taxable to make room. What do I do in this situation? Are there any "bondli...

This was an interesting presentation. Of course, some in the startup community are asking what is new here. Sequoia's advice is to control spending, focus on quality, and get to positive cash flow. So what was their old advice - waste money, neglect quality, and don't worry about revenue? The questi...

1) Are student loans something I should pay off with the low interest loan, or should I wait until I get a steady paycheck (8 months) and pay them off then? I think a 6-month emergency fund should take priority over paying off a low interest student loan. I'd also fund the Roth before paying down t...

29 days ago, I sold two ETFs to harvest small losses and replaced them with similar (not identical) ETFs. Tomorrow (or Monday - can I buy back on day 30, or day 31?), I'll be harvesting large losses and switching back. No one likes to lose 40%, but TLHing is a nice side-effect of volatility. On the ...

I got a PM yesterday from Shelafi Anand, a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, asking for thoughts from a "person on the street" (er, web) about declines in international markets. Here is what came of it. http://www.wsj.com/article/SB122333746961709675.html I'm quoted under "Not Pa...

The core idea here is interesting. My question: how do you put it into practice, via an IPS, and not rely on feeling and judgment? I can see weighting international holdings based on valuations; i.e. if European stocks are valued lower than Japanese stocks, holding a bit more Europe and a bit less J...

Welcome, Yeti! -- Instead of holding a small-cap fund, why not go with a small-cap value fund? That way, you capture both Small and Value premiums (if they exist over your time horizon) in a single fund. And historically, Small Growth stocks have done pretty badly. -- Reinvesting dividends is fine, ...

Here is feedback on a few of your questions. 1. I want to divest all of the individual equities and sector mutual funds in my taxable account. Is this a good idea? What is the best way to do this? Should I just sell them all at once and purchase the appropriate index funds per my asset allocation? I...

If you have a HDHP ($1,100/year deductible for individual, $2,200/year for family), then HSAs have a lot of advantages that FSAs don't have. I've written a bit more on my blog: http://blog.9assets.com/post/50454635/hsa-as-a-multi-purpose-investment-account. Summary: HSAs have at least four uses. 1. ...

I'm with mithrandir. I don't know that 10,000 stocks will be less volatile than 5,000 stocks; I've seen studies that show that diversifiable risk gets pretty small when holding 50-100 stocks. But diversifying beyond a single country makes a lot of sense to me, especially a country with a "hot&q...

1)Would anyone advise owning TIPS in a taxable or does it only make sense if tax-deferred? Don't own any TIPS now and one option is to exchange some of my tax deferred bonds w TIPS and add tax-exempt bonds in the taxable side These will likely get destroyed by taxes. I'd put all tax-deferred bond a...

Nearly every market-timing newsletter base their system on "backtesting." The result? The vast majority of market-timers (and newsletter's) fail. I know. I used to write one. Backtesting is so unreliable that even the government requires a warning about past-performance statistics. I agre...

ER doc - I think you actually get it!! You are still seeing a lot of haze that appears to be inconsistency. I believe most of this is my fault. I do somethings in my head automatically. However, I don't think I have adequately explained myself in terms anyone can understand. One of my mistakes is t...

I like the 20% bands suggested by the Opportunistic Rebalancing paper ( http://www.tdainstitutional.com/pdf/Opportunistic_Rebalancing_JFP2007_Daryanani.pdf ). Pretty similar to the 5/25 rule - follow 20% bands, rebalance back to within 10% either way, and check every 1-4 weeks. I don't do the latter...