Bogleheads.org

I have paid for years, and switched to the educator rate when it came available for professors as well as teachers. Only other periodical I have been more faithful to has been The New Yorker, which also offers an educator rate if you ask. I bought my first issue in sophomore year of high school. The...

Recently I decided to check on the tuition at my old college (a private Jesuit college in NJ). When I attended from 1963 to 1967 tuition was $900 and there were no dorms. I lived at home with my widowed mother and walked there. Now tuition and fees top $30,000 a year.

Actually, I was not yet in quite the right funds, so I took advantage of the bottom of the market to sell the wrong ones, buy the right ones, while keeping the same AA and scoring a big harvest of capital gains loss. At the same time I also converted from a traditional IRA to a Roth in expectation o...

Actually, I was not yet in quite the right funds, so I took advantage of the bottom of the market to sell the wrong ones, buy the right ones, while keeping the same AA and scoring a big harvest of capital gains loss. At the same time I also converted from a traditional IRA to a Roth in expectation o...

I just bought a pair of 2 lb Indian clubs from Revolution Clubs. And they have truly revolutionized my upper-body fitness routine. Check out this old-fashioned piece of equipment on YouTube. Great for strength, endurance, flexibility all at once. If you are not in shape the one-pounders might be bet...

1) Taking a tenure-track job at a school I thought wasn't good enough for me, San Diego State University 1970, and staying there 35 years at a low salary. 2) As a freewheeling bachelor guy, listening to the man who hired me and buying a house I didn't really want in Mission Hills ASAP, 2 3/4 years a...

I think you need not only to get advice from the folks here, but to do some research. Barbara Flanagan's "Flanagan's Smart Home" (Workman) discusses wittily and in great detail the items you need to create a basic home. She gets you thinking not about what you should throw away, but about ...

I like my Ruger LCR very much, but I like my $9 tactical flashlight even better. There have been some recent event where one would have been better than another, and some events where neither would have helped a bit.

Cook's Illustrated says the Tramontina Dutch oven is nearly as good as Le Creuset, for a fraction of the price. I recently came across Turk forged (not cast) iron skillets, made in Germany and priced reasonably. All Clad is great but quite pricey; Cook's recently suggested Calphalon or Cusinart, I'm...

Buy a killer pair of shoes like those from Peter Nappi. Buy a great fountain pen from Pelikan. Buy a McHenry and Williams carbon steel folding knife from Benchmade. These things are comparatively cheap and you will use them every day and they will perform better than cheaper models. There is no perf...

I am a world traveler, a travel writer for major publications, and a real snob, and I think very few of us can do better than to follow the advice of Rick Steves.

But one personal recommendation, in London go to the Borough St Market.

The CalPers switch from Medco to Caremark has been a disaster. Medco was just about perfect. I have problems with nearly every order or prescription with Caremark and CVS. Enormous ongoing problem with hypodermic needles!! Come on!! I would have nothing to do with these incompetent folks except forc...

Has anyone run the numbers on Dave's advice for the last eight or ten years, since a little before the downturn until today, and compared the results to a 60/40 AA of, say, V's total stock market index fund and total bond fund? That would be the acid test in my opinion. Thanks to winning the real es...

A Big Skinny nylon wallet, the slimmest there is for front-pocket carry. It holds a few cards, bills, and change as well.

Mid 1970s, San Diego. I was almost tenured at SDSU. Had bought a little Spanish house in Mission Hills for 33K (current Zillow zestimate is 645K), making between 12 and 13K a year. No debts, not much in the bank. Everything extra went to pay off the second mortgage (you had to put 20% down in those ...

We are currently 58/41. I am 67, my wife is 52, so her future needs must be taken into account. Also, I have a good defined-benefits pension that along with SS gives us enough to live on. Also, the house, on the California coast, is paid off. I figure all these factors may encourage a little boldnes...

Points to consider: Late model used car prices right now are often higher than new. German and Swedish cars are very expensive to maintain. My last VW (Passat) went through three ignition coils before 80K, and 1K each. It also burned a quart of fully synthetic oil every 1300 miles, and I'm told that...

In the current state of the market and with the current tax code, does the conventional wisdom still hold that you should stuff the tax-sheltered account with all the bonds it can hold and your AA requires? Or, for someone not enjoying the upper 1 or 2% of income, does it make better sense to simply...

If you belong on this website, but still have human foibles, then at least wait to place your bet until the house does. I expected on jan. 2 to be buying stock at a discount; instead I bought bonds.

Pasadena is a great town except for the heat and air pollution from July through October. Expect to pay over half a million for a so-so house for your expanding family. Expect to drive a long way to the beach in heavy traffic. Expect high taxes for which you get very little in return except the priv...

If you look at the pension as a source of cash flow, which of course it is, then it seems to me you would need investments of 25X the annual value of the pension to achieve a 4% withdrawal rate.

Miele! Vacuum repair shops love the Dyson, a piece of junk desogned by a brilliant promoter.

Stay away from the gourmet brands that cost many thousands. They are all less reliable than GE Profile and parts are often impossible to obtain. Our Twelve year old Thermador 's igniters failed, Not made any more!! Luckily our home warranty co. wrote us a check for 6K. We bought a Wolf. Not better t...

If there is a big drop in the stock market, I'll quickly rebalance by buying. Once things have bounced back, I'll quickly rebalance again and presumably reap some profit. Thus the Boglehead way can "time the market." BTW, I'm far from sure there will be a drop, since everybody knows a deal...

Surely the amateurs cannot foot the bill for all those profits!

In all that I read about the excesses of hedge funds, day traders, and even speed-trading for endowments, I never find any mention of whether the sharks of the market are hurting us Boglehead-style investors, or are just eating one another. Are hedge funds a compartmentalized zero-sum game? If not, ...

SS Ciritc; How the heck is a guy in NH supposed to anticipate how CA will treat his local, personal IRA-Roth conversion? I'm a smart guy with some free time, and I was surprised. That should be a reflection on the crazy tax situation, not on me. The tax code should be simplified.Maybe there's an ans...

I too converted an IRA to a Roth, but while I was living in NH. I later moved back to California; since some of my taxes were deferred, CA wanted to take a bite too. I refiled my old Federal return, payed the taxes and interest due, and thus doged the California grab. I thought it pretty cheeky of t...

It's a great question, and most of the replies seem to dodge it entirely. I have asked it of myself, especially since the yearly SSA estimate of benefits that we get includes a pay-in, take-out set of numbers designed to make you feel so grateful and, well, benefitted. Over 41 years I paid in over 1...

Something to consider before laying out any cash: If you were to de-clutter your house room by room, the greatest pile of junk would come from the kitchen--excepting of course the basement, garage, attic. Barbara Flanagan's "Flanagan's Smart Home" is an invaluable guide to the basic 98 ite...

As with knives, the experts (like Cooks Illustrated) are not big fans of sets, and neither am I. A cast iron skillet, a 2-3 quart saucepan, a big pot for pasta and soup, and a roasting pan can cover almost anything. And maybe a Dutch oven and a very small saucepan. For all but the skillet and Dutch ...

Sets are a bad idea. Cf. Cooks' Illustrated and Barbara Flanagan's Home book. Wusthof is good, but their chef's knife can't hold a candle in cutting ability to the much cheaper Victorinox Forschner which is both stamped rather than forged and does not boast the much-vaunted full tang. I also like Fo...

Tai Chi above all. Yoga if you like it. Pilates if you are jointed like a woman. Plus Indian Clubs--they're staging a comeback, And then a couple of pair if good walking shoes a year and maybe some other outdoors expenses if your benefit covers those--outings in biking, birdwatching, kayaking, etc.

If you buy, you are at the mercy of the house. If you rent, you are at the mercy of everything else. As for expense, I hit the house jackpot big, once; and made a fair bit on two other houses (not bad for a classics prof.); such times are not likely to come again. At the moment I feel smothered by m...

With a traditional pension and SS taken at 66 in my case, I have cut the pie several different ways. Blissfully, my pension for 35 years of uninterrupted service and my SS now exceed my 2005 salary at retirement by over 10%; and I have to make no more payments to SS, pension, or union dues; and the ...

Thanks. I see the reason I probably can't find it on the Vanguard web site. The minimum investment is 5 million.

What is this Vanguard fund VICBX that Jack Bogle says he invests in? I cannot find it listed among Vanguard bond funds.

My OP was about a full-size folder. Montague has that niche locked up. Does anyone have experience with that make?

Montague makes full-size folding bikes. The issues are performance (Navigator has 27 speeds) and weight (27 lbs). and of course price ($899). I intend to use it as I would a regular bike, 2 to 25 miles at a time.

I am much taken with the idea of a folding bike--I like my stuff to be minimalist and compact in general, and I hate bike racks. I tried a Bike Friday but didn't like the wobble or the small wheels. I am considering a full-size Montague Navigator, but have trouble locating one to try out. Does anyon...

Pension and SS currently at 91K. That's 10K more than I was making when I retired in 2005, and we are living higher on the hog now. But even so, and even with a house paid off, in California we spend it all and wonder where it went.

1970, fresh out of Stanford grad school in classics, $10,800 at San Diego SU. Half-retired in 2002, with teaching awards and lengthy list of publications,at 81,000--5K less than a starting MBA Assistant Prof and 5K more than a starting prison guard who earns no overtime. Stanford was free for me; my...

Or what if one is financially secure enough to withdraw just 4% of the remaining portfolio? Then it would last forever. This seems to be more or less Taylor's method.

While seeing the usual sights in Istanbul, you should pause for a gin and tonic in the bar of the Pera Palas Oteli. Mata Hari and Ataturk lived there. It features in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. Last time I was there it still retained the mood of an Eric Ambler, Graham Greene or A...

On the closely related subject of too much stuff, this in "Slate": http://www.slate.com/articles/life/fashion/2012/06/the_salvation_army_and_goodwill_inside_the_places_your_clothes_go_when_you_donate_them_.single.html I was astonished to learn the America's number one export by volume is u...

These websites may be of interest to the OP and to many other Bogleheads. Graham Hill founded Treehugger.com before he created LifeEdited. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8YJtvHGeUU http://www.liefeedited.com And then there's George Carlin's wonderful riff about "Stuff." One needn't go so ...

First, check that discharging a pellet gun is legal in your neighborhood. Then check whether a hunting license is required for a pest, and whether it is legal to shoot a rabbit, even a pesty one, with a pellet gun. Then, if you decide to feed the local birds of prey with your yard kill, either use n...

We first took our Airedale suffering from demodex to our regular vet. She discouraged us from seeing a specialist in dermatology, but in fact she knew little and much of that was wrong. Eventually we revolted and took the dog to a great dermatologist; he had the knowledge, skill, and access to exper...

There's a thing or two I don't understand here. Not surprising, given that an inability to pass a statistics course barred me from my major of choice (psychology) and kept me in classics. 1. A 4% withdrawal rate, with an unchanged dollar amount, should last 25 years--even if there were no dividends ...

Thanks Jenny345,

That's an amazing video. Given the prices, in some cases topping 10,000 for a bed+, these pieces would seem to make sense more in NYC or SF than, say, on Cape Cod. I wonder, too, how well they wear? The surfaces look like some kind of man-made laminate.

Rob