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Very good then, thanks for the responses.

Has anyone ever encountered this? My spouse's 401k (through Fidelity) doesn't purchase the stocks until as much as 10 days after she gets paid (the paycheck from which the contribution is taken). This doesn't make any sense to me, and I feel like it can't even be legal. What's the money doing for 10...

I am 100% in stocks because I'm low 30's age, no debt, beefed up EF, investing for the long, long term. 401(k) is maxed out each year. But because my income fluctuates with business, some years I have 0 to invest in taxable accounts, and other years I might have more for taxable than I can put in 40...

My basic take is that you should pick and stick to an AA. But I'd like to entertain your idea, if you at least explain it in more detail. My gut is telling me to lock in some of these gains in order to take advantage of the next bear. exactly what would you do to "take advantage"? It seems...

I echo janetplanet. You need to obtain your full credit report and see what's on there. There could be a bankruptcy-related inaccuracy or could be something erroneous on there completely unrelated to bankruptcy, possibly even identity theft. I will get a copy of my credit report from annualcreditrep...

Great, thanks for the input.

No real reason to wait. Vanguard will upgrade you to Admiral funds when you qualify. I did not know this! Great, that makes it much clearer, I understand the reason not to wait now. Appreciate all the input. If I still have anyone's attention, I have two follow up questions: Set aside the spouse fo...

Ok, thanks, good point. And because you can make 2012 contributions up til April 15, 2013... so you're saying I can just make a $10,000 contribution in, say, Feb. 2013, for ME (thus allowing me to buy into one Admiral share fund), which would constitute my own 2012 and 2013 contribution, and at the ...

My spouse and I--neither of us has any form of any IRA. Been maxing the 401k and soon will have excess cash. We are ineligible for deductible IRA and ineligible for direct Roth IRA. I am going to do a backdoor Roth probably for both 2012 and 2013 (and hopefully longer than that, as long as the backd...

I appreciate all the thoughts, thanks. I will look into my 401k and see if I can squeeze anything beyond the normal $17,000. I do have an HSA and that's a good point, I could maximize that each year too. Beyond that, sounds like backdoor Roth is indeed the way to go for me, before taxable accounts. ...

I do not have any IRA of any kind. I have a 401(k) and beginning next year not only will I be able to max out my 401(k) but will have extra cash after that to do more investing. I am not eligible for a deductible IRA. And not eligible for a straight Roth IRA. I personally feel that a non-deductible ...

This issue was discussed at length back in May: http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=96347 The best info coming out of that thread is here: I asked on twitter if there were any updates to the above-linked article from January and received the following reply: Vanguard_Group wrote...

I concur with others who said you need to look at your actual credit report to see the details of what's on there. You can get free ones at the only official site for your free annual report, http://www.annualcreditreport.com. There might be something that creeped onto your report erroneously. If yo...

Keep in mind: many (most) cards have 3% international transaction fees. This will eat way into your cash back. If you do even a little bit of travel abroad I highly recommend factoring this into your calculation and card choice. I have the Chase Sapphire Preferred which has 0 foreign transaction fee...

I think you are right to call it a "mindset" problem in part. Because what's driving your excess cash is worry about job stability, that tells me that, whether you admit it or not, the cash in your portfolio isn't actually part of your portfolio but rather extra emergency fund money. You l...

congrats. and FWIW, I encountered this exact issue and asked my tax professional about it and she said you can file as married filing jointly as long as you are married as of Dec. 31 of the tax year, and that status applies back for the whole year. You'll obviously want to verify this but I was reli...

We want to buy a bigger house (in the 300,000 range) within the next 5 years and put 20% down. One major thing we don't know is how much equity you have in your current house and thus how much cash you will get when you sell it in ~5 years (setting aside that obviously nobody knows what the real es...

I agree with the basic sentiment that it's mostly up to your personal preference how you want to categorize them. They are bonds as part of your portfolio if you include them in re-balancing of your portfolio. If your re-balancing does not include i-bonds, then they're something outside your portfol...

It's been a while since I've heard anything about the eventual roll-out of Vanguard's two new international bond funds. https://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/article/international-bonds-01172012 Last I heard they were to introduce them sometime in 2012, but we're already into May. Anybody know a...

Great, thank you both. It's nice when the only logical explanation turns out to be the actual explanation.

I'm trying to figure this out and need some help. See this: http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Approximating_Total_Stock_Market and look at the third row down where it has a hypothetical allocation of: 81 - 500 Index 6 - Mid-Cap Index 13 - Small Cap Index But then notice the Morningstar box next to it. ...

Berilak is right, you don't want to use a public WiFi or some other non-secure network. You should exercise normal caution. But you should do that anyway, SSN or not. Your home computer network should be secure with appropriate password protection. Once you have that, I wouldn't worry about sending ...

Any "hard" pull of your credit report, meaning for the purpose of getting credit, will hurt your score by about 5 points. As others said, this is not a big deal, especially since you don't have other credit needs in the future. I agree with those who said too many applications all at the s...

"have about 17-20K per month to invest" I would use the 17-20k per month to aggressively get rid of any of the above 3,,,one by one I would disagree with this. Sounds like you're a young guy...keep pumping money into long-term investments, take advantage of the time value of money. Maybe ...

I'm sort of surprised people are reluctant to address the actual question. Obviously it's a personal judgment whether and how to have the discussion but it seems clear that you have the green light to have this talk, and that you know how to do it delicately. So let's get to the substance. I think i...

I agree with robocop that your age matters here. You also didn't say how many kids or their age(s). But even without that info I would say this: Don't pay off any of the debts beyond the regular payments (which are presumably on payment plans that gradually reduce the principal, and not on some inte...

The first priority is to figure out what can be done to decrease the interest rates on the loans and it unfortunately appears to be little. I assume this means you have looked into loan consolidations, all options, Sallie Mae, your own bank, etc. Either way seems that you get the obvious first step...

Although there is some interest to be paid on [the personal loan] I am hoping this cost will be offset by obtaining a better loan rate when I need to buy a newer car (which at the rate my car is aging this will be sooner then wanted). I think you are underestimating how this needless loan is cuttin...

It was touched upon but wanted to add to the answer about credit cards. Yes, you should get one. As was mentioned, cc transactions are more secure than debit card transactions. Also true: use of a credit card will help you build a credit profile and good credit score, which will help you obtain a mo...

Great, thank you.

I've searched this site and found a few relevant postings but nothing that goes to the core of my question, figured I'd start a new thread. I'm trying to figure out what percent of world stocks are US stocks. And I'm also interested in bookmarking a website that updates this stat on a regular basis....