Bogleheads.org

I am finding that quality of appliances manufactured these days is getting worse not better. Since the quality is worse they break down a lot so the vendors offer extended warranties to fix them. When I bought my current home my builder had a relationship with GE so I had to purchase GE profile or m...

I am refinancing right now. I have a smaller loan than you do. I am getting 15 year fixed at 2.50% with no closing costs.
Like other said go ahead and refinance to 15 year fixed but shop around.

Even though TVFool and antenna web told me that i need a small multi-directional antenna my experience with Mohu Lean antenna did not go well. I purchase Mohu leaf antenna based on great reviews on Amazon. I installed it in 2 different rooms. I tried moving the antenna to various locations in the ro...

Thank for providing this wealth of information. I checked Antenna web and it tells me that I only need small multi directional antenna. I checked TV fool and it shows that most of the channels available to me are green and 4 are read. All the transmitter are between 13-25 miles away from my home. I ...

My $120 is for directv only. I don't have any premium channels. I have 3 HD receivers and 1 DVR plus repair plan. I use comcast for broadband and Century link for phone. I may be able to save by combining all three for 12 months or so. I do like satellite better than cable but with appropriate anten...

Hi: we currently spend about $120 per month on Satellite. We have 4 set top boxes including 1 dvr. Satellite provider is direcTV. I have 4 receivers connected via wired network so we can watch shows from 1 DVR through out the house and even on our windows pc's. Shows we watch are: Kids shows on PBS ...

My spouse just got a new job and her new employer offers a 401K plan. In addition to that they also offer Personal Pension account or Personal Investment Account. She has 3 months to make the selection. If she chooses Personal Investment Account her employer will pay 5% of her income into this accou...

My spouse is a about to change jobs. Her current employer 401K is with schwab.
New employer 401K is with Vanguard. Should we create a rollover Ira at vanguard or rollover to employer 401K with vanguard. Is there any advantage to one of these options.

Mortgage rate is 2.875 15 year fixed we are many years away from paying it off. Car loan is 1.99% five year loan. Balance is 15000. We have $15000 extra and are considering making a payment towards one of these. I want to pay off car loan and my spouse wants to reduce the balance. Which one would yo...

Be aware of teasers quotes. I had a friend who had State Farm insurance. He was blown away be liberty mutual quote. One year later they jacked up his premium so high that he is back with State Farm.

I was a long time MS Money user. It was tough to see MS sunset a product that I loved.
I tried Quicken but hated the interface.
I gave up on Quicken and began using Mint. It does a good job for everything except portfolio.
I am using personal capital to keep on eye on my portfolio.

Hi: We are looking for life insurance for my spouse. We did use term4sale to look for insurance providers. I ended up asking a local agent to help us out. He has given use various options for 20 year term life insurance. Some of these were: 1. Protective Life Insurance 2. Principle Life Insurance 3....

I usually rebalance our portfolio once a year around the last week of December or early January.
I don't pay attention to the stock/bond market performance when I rebalance.
Are you rebalancing now? Has fiscal cliff affected the timing of your rebalancing?

Hi: After ignoring my employer stock awards for over 4 years I decided to take a closer look at them. It turns out that my stock awards are RSU's. When the stocks vest my employer sells enough shares to make a 25% tax payment. This seems a bit low to me as I am in 33% tax bracket. This may also expl...

I don't own any other individual stocks. I don't believe in holding stock in my employer as I am already invested in them via index funds. I will be selling some of my stocks tomorrow and sell any future vested shares as soon they become vested.



Thanks

These are actual shares. Taxes are deducted when the shares are vested.
I don't pay anything for them so my cost basis is zero.

How do judge and compare the quality of clothing without local stores? I am looking to buy some dress shirts and sweaters. Everybody has a sale at this time and I am trying to choose between: Lands end LL Bean Eddie Bauer I don't mind paying a little more if I know that clothes will last longer. Is ...

For the past 4 years I have been getting stock grants that get 20%vested each year. I have never sold them. My account is in schwab. When I sell them is there a way to sell the stocks that became vested earlier. I want to make sure I avoid short term capital gains. Last year I had hefty AMT payment....

I am currently using 15 year old Sony alarm clock. It has radio, buzzer, LCD display and 7 day alarm clock. My wife hates it. It is not hard to setup for me but she wants something easier to use and reliable. It has to look nice and have digital display. Only clue she has give me is Bose clock radio...

I calculated that I was going to lose $150-$200K on my home. I also had 2 rental properties in MN. My wife has a good job so we weren't sure if she can find a similar job. I got a call from the hiring manager and he asked me to make my decision today. I chose to stay put in MN. Thank you for taking ...

Hi: I have lived in MN for the past 20 years. I have liked living there. I am in low 40's and as I get older the long cold winters do bother me but not enough to justify moving. I have an opportunity to move to Texas with my current employer. I can choose any place to live but most likely it will ha...

I checked out term4sale.com I filled in the required information to get a quote. Ohio National had the lowest rate. I pressed more information button and filled out a request for an agent to contact me. I assumed that agent is local to my city. I was contacted by an agent in Florida. We are in MN. T...

I am grateful to all your responses and the discussion. I wrote my initial message rather hastily and I did not provide enough context. I have 2 young kids. Ever since my 2nd child was born I have been thinking about my own mortality. I am healthy and in early 40's. I was worried that if something h...

I purchased my term life insurance over 10 years ago. I might have used on online site get my quotes but I cannot remember what site I used. We I've in mn. My Wife has life insurance policy from her work but we want to supplement it with an individual term life insurance.

Thanks

I did not mean to imply that my wife is incompetent. I was paying the bills and she has never done this or used online banking. I was trying to find a way to clearly communicate our finances so she can learn easily.
Yes we will rotate duties for next 6-12 months.

I am married with two young kids. Both I and my spouse work. I am in technology and she is in healthcare. I am in early 40's. I have been paying all the bills since we got married. We have joint accounts in bank. I use online bill pay and most payments except credit cards are automatic. I have been ...

For the past 4 years I had very generous health plan from my employer. I did not have to pay anything from my paycheck to get coverage for our family of 4. We had no deductible and no copay so we had zero healthcare expenses even when we had our 2 kids. My employer has done away with the PPO plan. M...

We are looking for new knives set for our kitchen. I have narrowed down the choices to J a heckles 7 piece twins professional set http://www.amazon.com/Zwilling-J-A-Henckels-7-Piece-Knife/dp/B00005K8P8/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top And Width of 12 piece set http://www.amazon.com/Wusthof-Gourmet-12-Piece-...

Thanks once again for all the great suggestions. I took measurements and found that my home gym did have enough space for the rowing machine. So here are the winners: I will buy a concept 2 rowing machine now and take training lessons in January when I will have another $800 to spend. I will save th...

I live in twin cities, mn and I already own on bike. It is 10 years old but still works well.

Thank you so much for all these suggestions. I am going to start investigating some of your suggestions.

Hi: I get $800 from work every year to spend on fitness related expense. I have a home gym so I don't need gym membership. I have elliptical, power tower for chin ups, pull ups and a body solid all in one home gym. There is not muck H space left in the home gym. I work out 4-5 times a week. I do car...

Hi I have been using mint for a few years and love it but I don't like it's investment tracking features. I just came to know about a free online investment tracking software called personal capital. It was created by An investment company that provides fee based services. http://www.macworld.com/ar...

Hi: I am in my early 40's and my wife is in mid 30's. We live in MN. Both of us work. We have 2 young children(3 years, 8 months). The second child was born a few months ago so I am about to update my will. I am trying to decide if a simple will, durable power of attorney, health care directive is e...

I only made just 1 payment to Roth Ira 6 years ago when my I was able to lower my self employed income get a chance to invest in Roth Ira. For my traditional I only made a contribution twice in last 12 years so record keeping is not a problem. Yes I am not eligible for Roth Ira investments at this t...

I came to know about back door Roth IRA today. Here is what I am planning on doing for me and my wife. I wanted to make sure I am doing this right. Me: I have a traditional IRA at Vanguard with non-deductible contribution. I have had it for more than 10 years. Its current balance is $3300 and my con...

Hi I used to be self employed and I had opened a solo 401k at fidelity. I am about to start the process for back door Roth conversion and I noticed for the first time that fidelity calls my solo 401k profit sharing Koehn. Should this be a cause for concern? Let me know if your solo 401k at fidelity ...

I am grateful for your responses. So thank you all for sharing your thoughts. Even though I consider myself a boglehead I am embarrassed to say that I had never heard about back door roth before. Ever since Roth IRA began I have not been eligible for it. Even when I was self employed I was not able ...

Hi: I am trying to determine what is the appropriate amount to save for kids education. I am married with 2 kids. They are 3 years and 8 months old respectively. Both I and my wife work full-time so kids go to daycare. Childcare is very expensive in my state. Our ages are 42 and 35. We have no debt ...

I bought my current home in 2006. My current home owners insurance policy is from state farm. I have refinanced several times and each time my premium has gone up and the value of my home has gone down by 20%. Last year I finished my basement. I am trying to determine how insurance companies reimbur...

Your refi rate seems a bit high. I am refinancing to 15 year fixed at 2.875 and lender is paying me 5700. My loan is bigger. I too chose to lower the principal but didn't put too much down as the rate is so low.
Keep the money in investments unless debt really bothers you.

We live in Twin Cities, MN. My employer got me 10% discount and they also paid me 10% of the cost of the daycare. This resulted in 20% saving. My employer had this deal with one national chain. We were first time parents. I do a lot of research for everything so checked to make sure NAEYC Certified....

I completely agree with REIT. I have owned vanguard REIT index fund for a long time. It is 10 percent of portfolio.
Trying to be a landlord was one of the worst financial decisions I have made. All these years of being a landlord and I have nothing to show for it except losing $90000.

How does AMT prevent you from selling vested stock grants? In 2011 my wife's employer got purchased by another company. She had some stocks that were sold automatically. We had not control over the sale. Our mortgage rate is only 3.375, we had no other losses, we do live in a high tax state, we had ...

I will certainly check with a tax advisor about what I can do. It seems to me that I have to sell the property before I can deduct losses. If I sell the property from my LLC to me is that considered a legitimate sale? I have vested stock grants from work that I am unable to sell due to AMT. I am hop...

Hi: I and a friend a mine formed a LLC for the purpose of buying investment properties. We purchased 2 lofts in 2006. We both paid enough down payment to make it 20% down payment. At that time our plans was to hold these properties was 7 years and sell them. So we got a 7 year balloon loan. Over the...

We have 2 young kids ( 2.5 years and 10 weeks ). I bought a home in a nice part of town in 2000. I was single and did not know much about school districts. Even though I was living in a nice city my house somehow fell into a school district from another city. This district was terrible. I got marrie...

The only equities I own my taxable account are: 1. Stock Grants 2. Vanguard FTSE Ex US All World Index Everything else is in retirement accounts. Even though I am a full time employee of a large company I also have my personal Long Term Disability Policy from Guardian. I bought it 8 years ago when I...

Husband age 41 Wife age 35 2 young sons( 2.5 years and 10 weeks ) Mortgage 3.375 15 year fixed balance $345K Car loan 1.9% 5 year loan balance $19000 No other debt Emergency savings 10 months living expenses in ING and Credit Union ( not included in assest allocation) Kids 529 plans Utah State Plan ...

Hi: I am about do my annual rebalancing and I had a question about bonds. Here is some more information. I am 41 my wife is 35. We both work. We have 2 kids. We live in MN. No loans except mortgage financed at 15 year fixed rate 3.375% interest. Current balance is $345K. State tax 7.5%, Fed Tax Brac...

Unless you are going to downsize significantly it might not be worth the hassle to do what you are attempting to do. No one takes care of your home like you do. Since the property is down 50% it may take forever for it to recover. In the mean time you will have to deal with finding renters, property...