Bogleheads.org

New to this home ownership shindig, and have to figure out what kind of blinds to get. In terms of brands, I want something that will not have a cheap, rickety mechanism that gets stuck and causes annoyance. Otherwise want relatively plain vanilla blinds that are inexpensive and reliable. Home Depo...

redlbj01 , you want an AA of 80% stocks, 20% bonds (a little low for your ages), with 15% of stocks in international (low). That breaks down to 68% US stocks, 12% international stocks, and 20% bonds. Here is a possible retirement portfolio: Taxable -- 33% 21% ( VTSAX ) Vanguard Total Stock Market I...

Congrats on the baby, that's awesome. For starters, it looks like you guys are doing well. Especially if you are not even counting the DB pension for your wife, that'll be gravy on top of your portfolio so long as that formula stays the same (and based on comparisons to other public employee pensio...

Hello All! My wife and I are expecting our first born to arrive in about a week!! We've been fairly frugal, and I believe have saved a nice little bit for retirement relative to our income. My wife is a Middle School Teacher, and I'm in Sales. Total Gross income for 2013 will be $85,000 not includin...

My college didn't teach us squat about how to manage our personal finances (and I was a business major!). I was finding that my first jobs income was disappearing at an alarming rate and I had no idea where it was going. I ended up doing the Dave Ramsey thing, and it has been a very helpful tool for...

Howdy Fellow Bogleheads; With the historic low mortgage rates that have been hitting the news like crazy, DW and I decided it could potentially be prudent for us look into refinancing our current mortgage. Being that this is our first home (and thus mortgage), we want to make sure we are taking the ...

To Many Favorites: Career: Pursuit of Happiness -every High school and college student should be made to see this movie before they graduate Action Collateral-epic action, great relationship between the protaganist and antaganist Fantasy Lord of the Rings Triology-Need I say more? Horror Constantine...

Lots of suggestions here, and I'll add my .02 (it's all it's worth) as I may have a more unique perspective being the husband to a "band geek." My DW is a Music person, it's her love, her passion, and it’s what gets her up every morning. When I met her in college (with an argument, but tha...

As many others have mentioned above, his product is for a specific audience and he is attacking the behavioral aspect of what got the person in debt. Dave Ramsey was a Godsend for my wife and I. I was irresponsible with money for a time and found myself in some pretty nasty debt (although peanuts c...

Interesting conversations here. My wife inherited around 70k from her grandfather, who very wisely, set up a trust to ensure his grand kids would have to pay nothing for college and hopefully have money left over if they were frugal enough. It was something he wanted to do, and my wife honored his w...

I can certainly understand your concerns about burning out, but to be honest if your fresh out of medical training, the road has just started for you. Many people would kill for the type of income you are earning fresh out of school. I'm not a doctor, nor am I in medicine, so take everything I state...

Congrats....I think you've gotten some good advice above. From a spending standpoint, you are about to get sucker-punched with everything from cribs, to carseats, and a whole lot in between. I wrote an article about my experience in an article I called " Frugal Baby 101 ." Bottom line -- ...

4. In about 6 months - Review your life insurance and disability insurance to ensure that it accomplishes the intended goals that you would want should something happen to you and/or your wife. I'm sure that you mean well, but this is not good advice. His wife is pregnant today. If he dies today, h...

Be happy that she even invests and cares about financial items at all. My wife views looking at our budget as a form of torture. Honestly, while I agree with your points, this is a LOOOOOOWWWW priority on the things you should be arguing about. Thinks that will be top on the argument list involve su...

review your insurance plan for the next year, assuming birth will be next year. open enrollment is either here or just around the corner. if you have the option to shift to a better plan for the birth year, it might be worthwhile to do so. in our case, it was the difference between a flat $350 paym...

i agree to start looking now .. my mother was set to be my daycare provider as she did this for about 20 years prior to her getting ill and passing .. daycares are a different world, you will need to tour 5-10 of em before you find one you enjoy i imagine .. also amazon mom as stated is a great dea...

First thing: relax......... Second thing I would do is think about preparing the nursery, just think, don't do anything. Decide if you want new baby furniture, or used. If you are truly frugal, you might start checking out consignment shops, ebay, craigslist to get a feel for the $$ you might have ...

You want to work weekends so your wife can work full time and get no help from you on child rearing? You want to miss out on watching your child grow and develop, even more than will happen with a full time job? Don't you want your child to squeal with delight when you come into the room, because t...

Sounds to me like you're in a pretty darn good spot...no debt, good jobs, a year's worth of cash savings. Others will advise you on the life insurance and such, but I'd scratch the idea of getting a part time job on the weekends unless you absolutely have to. Spend that time at home. Especially if ...

My DW had some exciting news for me this past weekend, in that we are going to be parents! First Reaction: :D We always wanted to be parents! Second Reaction: :) Don't kids cost money??? Current State: :shock: Now what..? :confused We have been a very frugal couple that last few years, have good pay...

Apologies for the late reply. Had some items come up the past couple of days. As mentioned above, I'm a long way of making this a reality, and merely seeing if franchising is an option for me in the future (3-5 years). My current short list of potential franchises: (1) Moe: Mexican Grill; Think Subw...

Hello All, I've been having the "itch" to get away from being a Wage Slave in Corporate America with all of the weeks of travel (Sales), and I've been doing some preliminary research on Franchise opportunities. Obviously this is a huge decision and it will impact my wife and I for years to...

I use credit cards for everything I possibly can in order to maximize my cash back rewards. But, without exception, I pay off the entire balance every month so I never pay a penny of interest. If you aren't the kind of person who can do that, I don't recommend relying on credit cards for anything. ...

(1) Find someplace that is cheap, but located in a safe neighborhood. Use the opportunity of cheap living to pay off any car loans/consumer debt/student loans. And if your goal is to be a home owner, live a Spartan lifestyle and hoard up cash for a home/etc. (2) Determine how you and the gf are hand...

Also, part of this is our culture (imho) that has emphasized/trained women to believe they can have it all (great marriage, great career, kids, big house, lots of money, etc) without some sort of sacrifice or compromise in the other areas of life. Yeah, we've been led to believe we have the right t...

This actually an issue my wife and I are struggling with. We've been attempting to get pregnant for about a year now, and while we haven't been fortunate enough to be blessed yet with a child yet, it has given us more time to get our financial and career situations set in a way were we have more opt...

My wife is a FT Band/Orchestra teacher and also tutors on the side. She charges $25 per hour lesson, and gives a bulk discount for multiple students. It took her a bit, but she's built up quite the customer base via word of mouth from local band teachers sending kids her way. In fact, she's begun pu...

krantcents wrote:I would suggest you do the right thing, which means reporting it. Make sure the supervisor makes his/her own observation and decision. In that way, the reporter should have no problem. After all a supervisor should know what his or her employees is doing.

Tattle tale!!!

Is the offending co-worker getting his "official work" projects and tasks done to his immediate manager's expectations? If so, how does this guy's "slacking off" effect your friend in any harmful way? If he is truly slacking off doing this consulting work and it is effecting his ...

Wow! Thanks for all of the feedback! Definitely not as cut and dry as I thought. Looks like tire rack.com is the place to go. Thanks! I'll do some more research and will get back to everyone about my decision.

My DW's 2005 Impala will be in need of some new tires soon, and I'm currently price shopping the following from local shops: Uniroyal Tiger Paw Touring http://www.uniroyaltires.com/tire-selector/name/tiger-paw-touring-tires I'm looking to get another 80k miles out of this car (hopefully) before we h...

I don't have any experience with Roman, but from what I heard, I'd rather work with Dave Ramsey. My wife and I were (are) a young couple fresh out of school who had ZERO idea how to handle the new income we were getting from our first real jobs. While we had minimal debt (thankfully) we still had no...

You want your child to wear/play with a stranger's hand-me-downs? Think again on that. I really don't see the problem with that. I had my share of hand-me-down clothes and toys when I was a kid. Didn't do me any harm as far as I can tell. JJ The problem is that it doesn't make any sense for somebod...

You want your child to wear/play with a stranger's hand-me-downs? Think again on that. I really don't see the problem with that. I had my share of hand-me-down clothes and toys when I was a kid. Didn't do me any harm as far as I can tell. JJ JJ - Hand-me-downs among family and friends are OK, but y...

Wow, with all of the comments here, it'd be nice if someone gave you some actual decent advice for you and your wife to work together. You know, as husband and wife. (Seriously, what are you people thinking here?) And no, there is nothing wrong with kids wearing hand me downs either… (1) Gather all ...

Married almost 4 years now. She moved halfway across the US for me, and then half away again, when my job took us down south. She's my best friend, and even though we can drive each other crazy some days, we still can laugh with and at each other at the end of the day. On the flip side, I have VERY ...

I was having difficulty for awhile with my employees financial crisis spilling into work crisis. A person in panic over finances is not usually an effective worker. We're talking about a car being repo'd from our parking lot, an employee not being able to take a promotion and moving because he coul...

And maybe driving a nicer car is worth it to them. I feel sorry for you if you can only see the world through a cost lens. Sorry to upset your world, but not everything is about the best deal or the lowest cost option. Some people value leather seating, sunroofs etc. Maybe that helps their reputati...

Well Dave Ramsey is much aligned on this forum for his investing advice, however, from personal experience, he has done wonders for our family in terms of our finances and our marriage. His program is simple, common sense teachings that resonate with people. The fact that he has done "stupid&qu...

making $30-$50k per year and barely getting by I know it's an oft-discussed topic on this forum, and that there are strong feelings surrounding it -- but it's still mindblowing to me that someone making anywhere close to $50K can be considered just barely getting by (unless there's an exceptional s...

I'm based out of Mooresville, NC, and travel a lot, but if we make it a weekend event, I'm game.

My wife and I are in the "planning stages" of having kids, and we make considerable less income than the OP. I'm almost 30 (god help me!) and my wife 29, we feel it is about time. We are debt free (except a small mortgage) and invest as much as possible. The big concern for us is (1) I tra...

My friend is a pharma sales rep. It should really be called pharma "marketing" rep. From what I understand, there is no selling. You're simply educating medical professionals on the benefit of your product, giving them free samples, and hoping they'll prescribe it to their patients. You'r...

Do your research by reading the "CafePharma" forums...you will get an insight on how each company runs their sales force. Keep in mind that in that last 3 years the majors have cut their sales force in half. Make sure you understand what your day will consist of...if you are a retail rep,...

Have you researched the company? Do you think the company is ethical? I wouldn't invest in some of the big drug companies due to unethical practices that I can not overlook. Yes, I have begun to. What I've basically gotten from their and other websites is the following: (1) Mid Size Pharm Co (So no...

As a doctor who rarely interacts with drug reps, here are a few random thoughts: 1) Who do you think is hosting those weeknight drug dinners and staying until 10 PM to pay the tab? 2) Why is there a GPS system in that company car? (To track the rep) 3) I prescribe based on the patient's insurance f...

Well, from what I've seen waiting in Dr's offices myself - here's my view/stigma. The job is most often held by young single females. Having cheerleader looks is a real bonus. Well unfortuntely I don't have cheerleader looks.:cry: Also, my wife would kill me if I said I was single... Any other sugg...

I've recently been approached by a head hunter for a Pharmaceutical Sales job. Everyone I've talked to seems to have a view (or stigma) on the position within the industry. However, the medical industry is where I believe the US will continue to lead the world in innovation/growth over the next few ...

I'm in a similar situation (though my income is not nearly as nice as yours), and I am currently looking into pharmaceutical sales as I need a greater challenge than my current company can offer me. Also, being gone 3 weeks a month for what they are paying is starting to take its toll a bit on the f...

No comment on fees. Mowing, hedge trimming, and manual labor should not require a special license, but it might - check your state's law. Applying chemicals is much more likely to require a license when done for pay - definitely check before agreeing to do any of that. I just emailed a contact at t...