Bogleheads.org

I found that online resources report federal tax on lottery winnings is 25%. State taxes vary, California is 0%. Ordinary income tax. California tax is only zero on its own state lottery. Since Powerball is not a CA state lottery, the top tax rate of 13.3% will apply. a. California Lottery Winnings...

Despite how many experts have joined the chorus against intermediate bonds, they've been wrong year after year, from about 2010 on (when the chant initially became much louder IMO). It is a form of market timing, and they've timed wrong. Of course, if they keep saying it, they will eventually be rig...

Like a Costco that will charge you larger and larger membership fees depending upon how wealthy you are.

So sad. Majority of people who chase this nonsense do not practice simple investing. IMO, when the odds of winning are about 1 in 175 million and the cash value is $350 million, it's not clear that it is nonsense to purchase a ticket. Of course the real reason I purchase a ticket is so I can "...

Bonds don't look like a great investment at this time, but that will only hold true if there is no stock crash in the future. Actually, no. What will happen to the value of your bond holdings when interest rates go up? They will decline, most likely modestly as long as duration is controlled. The e...

Here is how I think it works: It depends upon where your IRA is held. If you hold an IRA with a bank, you can probably buy IRA CDs from that bank. If your IRA is held with a broker such as Vanguard, it's not so simple. You couldn't just go buy an Ally Bank CD and stick it in your Vanguard IRA. You c...

They seem similar, but the effect of the purchase fee is to lower the expense ratio, benefiting all investors. Vanguard uses them at times for funds that they wish to discourage frequent trading - likely for asset classes that carry high transactional costs - as this cost structure will disproportio...

However, I am looking for the select one or two that have done well over more than a decade, in spite of changes in economy, markets, and perhaps even managers, primarily due to the philosophy and approach of fund management by that company. I thought a chart comparison of real returns would simpli...

The NY 529 plan is 0.17% regardless of investment choice, with no other fees. I don't think anyone should worry about those fees. As for the options - there isn't a small-value or international small cap if that matters to you, but this is consistent with most plans. One thing I don't like is that t...

Why not? Because the expected return is lower. You're trading expected return for lower risk. Sound familiar? Interest rate rises are a boon for the long-term fixed-income investor, not something to be dreaded. As discussed above, capital losses in bonds are temporary (unless the bonds default), and...

I don't see any problem with going extremely aggressive. If you wish to throw in a smattering of bonds to smooth its growth a bit, that's fine as well.

I would go ahead and lobby for some index fund choices. There is a section in the wiki discussing how to try to improve your employer's play. In the meantime, your plan is fine and you should not hesitate to invest. I would likely favor your IRA after receiving your match, but after maxing out your ...

It depends upon what your goal is with rebalancing. If it is to maintain a risk profile, then daily would be best. Beyond that, it's really just personal preference; the real effect on your portfolio will be small if you do it once a month. Consider this - if your equities have a bad month, down 10%...

16 spread out among 9 different accounts (2x 529, taxable, 6 retirement accounts). Technically 18, but two share class overlaps.

I've talked to a few people who were on boards of churches to see what percent of people tithe. From the (small) sample size I got, one church was around 5% and the other one was a little bit higher than that. It appears that a popular amount is around the 2-3% level. The 2% level is like putting $...

The answer to your question is yes, as noted above. One additional note is that they generally do not include Loads, when applicable (which they aren't in your case). If you look up a Loaded fund on morningstar, the Load is ignored in the chart. If you look up that fund on the company's website, the...

Well...you can move all of your accounts to Vanguard, but you can't combine IRAs between yourself and your wife. They are Individual Retirement Accounts.

We don't tithe. However, in my "thought experiments" of increasing our giving rates, I've used net. The reason (again, in my head) is that we don't itemize deductions. Of course, if we actually tithed, then we'd itemize...so I'm not sure. I think I would probably use net, but aspire to eve...

livesoft wrote:How about best financial move in the past 4 months?

Stuck to my plan - lived below my means, saved, and followed my IPS. Net worth went up 10% or so despite a new baby at home.

Haven't been using mine much lately due to my new routine of skipping a lunch hour/eating at my desk and lifting at the on-site (free) gym. I used a Bowflex XTL for a while, but eventually sold it and switched to a dumbbell workout using Powerblocks. My home gym now consists of said dumbbells, an ad...

I would definitely look at using the Roth TSP in your case. I assume, like most military, that you have a 0% state tax rate. Between a meager 15% marginal rate and your high guaranteed retirement income through your pension, the Roth is a very attractive option.

I did ace it. I guess that's a good thing, since I had friends stating last week that they just look to me when they have personal finance questions. Agreed that this would be easy for a typical Boglehead, but probably pretty difficult for the average American. My wife is highly intelligent, but doe...

I'd be putting money from cash reserves into it for the long term. Probably no more than 1% of total assets now and maybe add more, building upto 3-5% of total assets on dips. I think it's ok to do in your case, as long as you recognize that this is your "play money," which many Boglehead...

Let's see -

"October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February."
- Mark Twain

Yep, May is in there. You're playing with fire!

I need to get umbrella insurance. Already have great disability and term life to cover my family if I kick the bucket or have a stroke etc........ :D Anyway, do most companies require the purchaser to also have their auto or home with them as well? My auto is with Progressive which does not offer u...

You really should be determining your desired asset allocation before you start picking funds. You have some of the right ideas, but you're not quite there. 1. Determine your desired stock/bond/cash mix (based upon your risk tolerance, need for income, etc.) 2. Determine your domestic/international ...

Not buying a house. Victoria Likewise. We were pressured from every direction to buy a SoCal house shortly after starting our careers, from 2006-2007. Thankfully, we decided that if we were going to be priced out forever, so be it - we would be much better off renting and saving. Houses/condos we w...

letsgobobby wrote:also I think it is important to include company contributions/matches in both the numerator and denominator, since it is part of one's total liquid compensation.

I don't like doing that. It makes me feel better not to.

Personally, I think an e-fund should be sized to reflect that spending will be reduced in an emergency, so I would not include daycare, and would probably not include IRA/529 contributions. We have about a 6 month e-fund, but it would probably only be a 4 month e-fund if we made no changes in spend...

Can't say that I'm an expert in these, but from that article it looks to me that these products are just a different way of couching a value tilt, and could easily be replicated by value-tilting your cap-weighted index portfolio (which many people here, including myself, do). Mr. Bogle does not beli...

Discussion on this issue on a talk radio show this morning - the host kept saying that the market "went into free fall." Come on, a 1% free fall? I think it's interesting that the market responded to a bogus tweet, but that's about it. Wasn't really actionable; if you happened to have some...

With a 30 year loan for 5 years in a starter home, you are effectively renting your house from a bank (ie you will not be building much equity). Why not just keep actually renting and not be on the hook for repairs, transaction costs, etc? Save more money and in 5 years buy a better "permanent...

We faced a similar situation several years ago, and elected to take some muted risks, given the flexibility in our purchase date (though we live in a high cost area and had to save much more than you). Our allocation has been approximately 10-15% stocks/25-30% bonds/60% cash+CDs. Sure, you can take ...

I would want a lot more than 5% for buying a 30 year bond, at least 7% probably 8% John Edit, this may interest you http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=102349&hilit=+would+you+market+time John People were afraid to buy 10+% long bonds in the early 1980's. All depends upon w...

I tilt to SCV, and I also use REITs; they offer reasonably low correlation to major stock indices - lower than you can achieve with any combination of value, growth, small, large, domestic, international (emerging or otherwise) as your variables. They're still high risk (and part of my equity alloca...

It's also a direct quote from a radio ad run XX-YY-20ZZ (where ZZ = 08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13) on any number of stations across the country. I've listened to many of them, and they've all been wrong.

I read an article from a DCA advocate a while back that argued that anything longer than 1 year to DCA was very inefficient.

In your case, you're talking about only 20% of your portfolio, and investing it at 78/22%. I would lump it in.

For EE bonds, unlike I bonds, it's hard to fund college, since you really had to purchase most of them before you ever had children. That's foresight that most people don't have. Really? I don't find it so hard to imagine such foresight, even if I'm a little too old to claim it. But let alone EE bo...

Yes, I understand that. They're also free from state income tax, which in Michigan is 4.25%. Of course I would not want to ever sell them, unless it is within the first couple of years, otherwise the penalties are huge leading up to the 20th year. (0.2% return!) Long-term bond? Sort of a non-market...

Look in your owner's manual. What does the manufacturer actually recommend at 10k? Basically, you can ignore the things that just say "inspect." That's trivial, especially after a mere 10k miles, and any place will do that. Anyone can do oil change/tire rotation - possibly even you - and i...

Probably depends upon your local market. Properties are moving quickly right now where I live (and am considering purchasing). A year or two ago, they weren't. The statement about rates not remaining low much longer is pure speculation; that's sales-speak. They have been saying that for about 4 year...

So, the way I read that is I (being married) can put in 130K per child without repercussions. Is this correct? Not sure how to know when I have put too much on one 529. Are limits based on how/when the money is to be used or who it is set up for? If you only have a single plan, you can put in (now)...

You can only have one beneficiary named per 529 account. You can only change beneficiaries once per year. This won't be much of a problem early on, but eventually you will have to unravel these details. I would assume that you will have more than one child in college at some point - you can't pay fo...

Axes are not labelled. What are they? I guess horizontal axes is number of children and vertical axis is percent house value of net worth? Let's not be ridiculous. Everyone knows that by the time you've had your 48th child you need to be increasing your allocation toward personal housing. It's comm...

Yes.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/rollover_chart.pdf

Specific question - if your equities are 50/50 US/int'l, is it ok if the SV component is solely US? If not, why? I suppose that depends upon your what you mean by "ok." That's what I do, due to specific fund availability and access. I have small tilts and value tilts, but my only "sm...

RNJ wrote:Don't know how my quote immediately above got attributed to "RNJ."

Weird.

I doubt there are any calculators for the masses that account for the intricacies of standard vs. itemized deductions. The calculators will work as long as you would itemize regardless of whether or not you have a mortgage. Only at that point do you get the full benefit of mortgage interest deductib...

Past returns are handy to get a feeling for how a particular fund might respond to market drops, bull runs, interest rate changes, etc. What probably should be noted is how a fund performed in comparison to a similar index. Beyond that, understanding past performance is only useful if you truly unde...

Here's what I see: IJS/VBR Avg. Market Cap 1.13B/1.43B P/E 16.98/13.55 P/B 1.49/1.27 Yield 1.71%/2.80% ER 0.29%/0.20% Turnover 30%/25% Assets $2.2B/$2.8B Holdings 445/1003 So, the Vanguard fund (which I hold via VSIAX) is a bit cheaper and more diversified, with slightly larger companies and a heavi...