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Are larger engines to provide better acceration or more comfortable interiors cost effective? I know that sounds like a strange question, but people are willing to pay extra for them. I find that hybrid cars are simply better cars to drive. The electric motor provides a degree of low speed control y...

It sounds like both parents are moving into assisted living. Is this correct? Do they already have friends in the facility they want to move to, or is it convenient to visitors? If not, consider assisted living in a warmer climate. There a huge state to state differences in the cost of assisted livi...

25-27 mpg, about the same as other people report for a Honda CRV, which is a much smaller vehicle. The official rating is 28 city/28 highway. For

We've had ours since 2008. I still consider it a treat to drive. One thing to note is that it has very different performance characteristics than the Prius. It's tuned as much for performance as economy. The acceleration test numbers are quite comparable to the BMW X5 with the smallest engine. I lov...

Funny thing he should mention Wade Pfau. Wade Pfau has published a simulation study in which found that, in low interest rate environments, a combination of stocks and - drum rolll -fixed SPIAs was optimum [url]http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151259[url]. No inflation adjusted an...

Most of the time, when John Bogle says something, either there's an analysis behind it, such as the impact of fund costs, or other people have come along and done studies or performed analyses that later validate his initial statement. In the case of "age in bonds" though the support is we...

Look at the formulas mhc posted.

In a nutshell, if the money is taxed first, you start out with less money to invest. Over longer investment periods, starting with more money more than makes up for the difference in tax rates when you take it out.

How about a reverse mortage on the house? There are reverse mortgage which provide lifetime payments; if he's in his 80s, they might get more money out with the lifetime payments than with a fixed number of payments. This is probably a more expensive solution than selling the house and buying the an...

The Trendnet fax modem costs about $25. It does require that you have a hardwired telephone line to connect it to.

Here's an analysis of why 4% might be too high in the future: http://corporate.morningstar.com/us/documents/targetmaturity/LowBondYieldsWithdrawalRates.pdf Make sure that you're interpreting the 4% guidelines correctly. That percentage is for the first year amount only; after that, the amount is adj...

Tis true, many on this forum believe that you should wait until after age 70 to start an annuity and that you should hold bonds in your portfolio to dampen volatility. More recent research questions this advice. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2151259 This paper argues that fixed ...

Get more information about the INVESCO stable value fund. Usually, the returns on these funds are quoted net of expenses, so 3% really is 3%. Often, stable value funds are a good deal. For reasons, having to do with how they actually earn money, they are only found inside of retirement and savings p...

Let me put in my $2.50 worth. (It used to be two bits, but I had to adjust for inflation.) The safe (?) withdrawal rate studies in the Wiki show that a 4% withdrawal rate can sustained with a high probability of success with portfolios ranging between 30% and 70% equities. Going both higher and lowe...

1. U.S. debt and monetary policy are no secret. Other investors know about them, too. Many of them have even read the same books. If they believed what you believe, they'd have bought what you bought and your commodities and gold would be reaching new highs. What do you know that they don't know and...

I just noticed that one of the ETFs being asked about is an international ETF. That makes the NAV calculation even more complicated. Many large companies trade their stock on multiple exchanges in multiple currencies; Toyota trades on the Tokoyo stock exchange in yen, the London exchange in British ...

The OP will, in fact, be getting zero investment return on his bonds because he intends to spend all of the interest. The value of his bond holdings in ten years will depend only on whether interest rates are higher or lower than when he purchased the bonds and there's no way to predict which it wil...

To a first approximation, the Vanguard long term bond fund pays about 4% right now. If interest rates rise, but the amount of money you get will stay the same, because the value of the bonds will drop. (There are additional issues because the bond fund is constantly selling bonds whose maturity has ...

Stable value funds often (but not exclusively) work by buying long term bonds and holding them to maturity. They report the maturity values of the bonds, not the current market values, so account balances are never reported as dropping due to market movements. What lets them get away with this is be...

If it's the part of how insurance works, I'll gladly give you a reference to a textbook on insurance. As for the state of the LTCi industry, how about http://www.longtermcarelink.net/eldercare/long_term_care_insurance.htm#overview ? If it's exact statistics you want on the ages when people buy cover...

The big problem with LTCi is that the financial underpinings are shaky at best. Here's the problem: It's insurance from insurance companies. This means that they need to take in enough in premiums to cover the cost of claims. If a lot of people need the money from their policies, either the insuranc...

Hospitals are the largest category of health care costs, accounting for 31% of expenditures; physician services come in second place with 20%; drugs are in third place with 10%. http://sciencetoprofitsblog.com/2012/03/19/top-healthcare-cost-categories/ One of the big problems in U.S. health care is ...

There appear to be a number of doctors doing this. Another name for it is "boutique" medical care. Like other boutiques, you pay more for personalized service. In fact, the medical practice in the link makes no promise or guarentee that your medical care will cost less; one of the reasons ...

As Quickfoot points out, you can use Truecrypt to create a virtual volume inside a single file in the file system, without encrypting the entire disk. This has the advanatage that you can copy the file containing the virtual volume to another device, such as a thumb drive. Then, if find that after t...

I never did offsite storage until two summers ago there was a major fire in our area. Many people were away at work and didn't make it home before their houses burned. They didn't have much luck with the melted hard drives. Another good candidate for cloud storage is Amazon S3. Unlike Google Drive, ...

If all you're interested in is maximizing your return, 100% stocks is the way to go. About about 10% bonds, overall returns are lower, rebalancing or not. If you hold any bonds at all, at any age, it must be because you're interested in reducing volatility. Stocks go up and down a lot and that might...

Long term care coverage is like car insurance; you have to pay continously to keep the policy in force. The longer you pay without making a claim, the more money the insurance company gets to cover claims. That's why the cost rises as you get older; you're likely to pay for less time before you make...

I'd be worried. You are withdrawing more than 10% a year from Trust 2; if Mother lives 10 more years, it'll run out. If interest rates rise or the stock market drops, it won't even last that long. You can't afford to take any risk with that money, not even the Target Retirement fund. An SPIA, bought...

+1 on the SPIA. If Trust 2 were converted to an SPIA, at her age, it would provide more income than she's getting now and the payments will continue for as long as she lives, even if it's for 20 more years.

The basic problem I have with LTC insurance is that I can't figure out a business model for it that could possibly keep rates constant over a long period of time. If payout amounts are increasing 5% a year, then the insurance company has to come up with 5% more money each year. Possibly, they have w...

Let me repeat: AARP is not offering LTC coverage with a lifetime benefit; in fact, as of June 1, they are not offering LTC coverage of any kind. AARP used to offer LTC through Genworh Financial; as of June 1, 2013, they no longer will offer it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that no one offers lifetime co...

The long term average real return of the market has been 8% but there have been periods of nearly 20 years over which it took a loss. The market loses money in about 40% of five year periods. How would you have felt in March, 2009 when your $200,000 investment made five years before was down to $120...

AARP used to offer LTC through Genworh Financial; as of June 1, 2013, they no longer will offer it. In fact, I'm pretty sure that no one offers lifetime coverage with increasing payouts and a fixed premium any more. To do that, insurance companies would have to be able to invest premiums at a rate o...

Strongly consider paying off the mortage now. Bonds are currenly paying less than the 3.75% you're paying on the mortgage so for it to make sense to keep the mortgage, you'd need a portfolio with lots of stocks. If your husband has another heart attack and can't work any more, the stock market might...

If he does roll the $650,000 over, then it will be subject to RMDs. From the point of view of tax considerations, the two alternatives have the following effect: 1. Part of the annuity payments will show up as annual income. The amount that shows up each year will be proportional to the OP's life ex...

How interested is she/you in leaving a legacy? If the answer is that you'd rather she spend the money while she is alive, then consider a single premium immediate annuity (SPIA). It will pay out as long as she lives but no longer. Since dementia does reduce life expectancy, you might be able to get ...

Talk to your tax man again. Unless your pension is somehow funded entirely with post tax dollars, you'll pay taxes on all or most of the lump sum distribution. http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc412.html The only way to avoid the taxes is to roll the money over into an IRA and then do RMDs. Taxes on $65...

How about trying to pay off her mortgage? She probably doesn't have enough to do that all at once and still have an adequate emergency reservce, but if she can do that over the next few years, it'll get rid of a major expense when she retires.. She'll have to make more than 4% in a Roth in order to ...

If you are in the position to be considering a minivan, it is time you give up any illusions of being cool. Diapers, vomit, boogers etc. I was expecting this kind of inane comment. I've never figured out why inefficient (in terms of weight, size, fuel mileage, etc.) SUVs are considered to be "...

If you live or are traveling to hilly country, get the Highlander Hybrid if you can afford it. Forget about gas mileage savings; instead, think about moving into parking places on hills. With just the internal combustion engine, it's always touchy. Too little gas and the car won't move up the hill; ...

If you're just worried about inflation, 5 year Treasury bills are a good bet. They tend to follow interest rates, which tend to follow inflation. Of course, their real return is about zero. The problem with any longer term bond is that it represents the market's best guess as to inflation going forw...

By the way, except for John Bogle saying it, there's absolutely no other evidence that "age in bonds" or any other glidepath makes you safer!! If you look at the "safe withdrawal rate" studies in the Wiki, you achieve the highest safe withdrawal rates with between 30% and 70% sto...

Here's a link to an earlier thread. [url][url]http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=99826&f=10[/url][/url] Yup, he really does say to include the present value of Social Security and pensions. Of course, now that interest rates are lower, Social Security is worth more. Using data from ...

Alas, the real cause of the rise in college tuition is simple to understand; between the 1970's and today, the number of students attending college has increased by a factor of 3! That means 3 times as many classrooms, 3 times as many professors, 5 times as many parking spaces, etc. If you factor in...

The OP wrote. When I ran Firecalc, there was advantage in the modeling for taking the benefit earlier. If the OP ran Firecalc correctly and the Firecalc output showed advantage in taking SS early given these extremely low current real interest rates, then Firecalc should not be used for retirement ...

The OP wrote. When I ran Firecalc, there was advantage in the modeling for taking the benefit earlier. If the OP ran Firecalc correctly and the Firecalc output showed advantage in taking SS early given these extremely low current real interest rates, then Firecalc should not be used for retirement ...

When you compare investments with delaying Social Security, be sure you use comparably safe investments. You can't really compare to stock returns, since stocks have had negative returns in 40% of five year periods; you might to decide to take Social Security early only to discover than rather than ...

I would expect the trend to lead to index funds doing better and active funds having a harder time. The more that is known publically about company, the less chance there is for people to be able to take advantage of imperfect information. Securities which don't trade publically and don't have to me...

1. All of the "safe" widthdrawal rates studies have been done with fixed allocations, with annual rebalancing. If you do a glidepath strategy, such as age in bonds, you're on your own for figuring out the withdrawal rate. 2. Believe it or not, there's some evidence that a "bonds first...

Before you do anything, have someone else review your calculations, particularly if you use a software spreadsheet. If Prof. Reinhardt and Rogert can make a mistake in a published book, you probably aren't immune. I did the calcuations two different ways, one with a spreadsheet and one with a retire...

There are two different kinds of water based finishes for wood floors: non-catalyzed and ones to which you have to add the catalyst before using the finish. Most home ownders use the former kind because it's less complicated but the catalyzed ones are reputed to be even better than oil based finishe...