Bogleheads.org

I answered zero although I have once or twice in the last 25 years (with the last time in the 1990s) bought my own lottery ticket. I have been a few lottery pools at my old job (the leader, a trustworthy friend of mine, made photocopies of all the purchased tickets and gave them out to everyone in t...

Quizzer, I use BOA bill-pay to pay my co-op's monthly maintenance fees, akin to your rent. I have been using it for nearly 2 years, having switched to it after the USPS failed to deliver my personal check in time (I was not charged a late fee, thankfully; they are cool about such things). The managi...

Back in 1986 when I first began investing in my old 401(k), we had only 2 funds to invest in - a Stable Value fund and an S&P500 fund. Our company picked up the expenses in the former while the latter had its low expense ratio so it was hard to go wrong - only if you branched out into other (cos...

I retired at 45, at just the right time for me.

My biggest work victory was being able to negotiate a part-time, telecommute deal back in 2001. The part-time portion of it lasted me for 7 years until I retired early in 2008. The telecommute portion lasted for only 27 months, though.

Congrats, Jingo. I think you are in good shape, too. I was 45 when I retired in 2008 (single, no kids, no debts). I now have about $800k in non-retirement accounts and $400k in an IRA. The non-retirement accounts generate much more than the $21k in annual expenses. My main goal is to get to age ~60 ...

I have been with Fidelity since 1990 and their service has been quite good. When you have a large enough portfolio with them, I learned in the 1990s, you get put to the head of the queue when you call them. I have used online chats, phone reps, letters, and my own Account Executive at the local offi...

I have different ceilings for the types of accounts I invest in. For example, I don't want anything over 0.5% for my IRA because I have a long-term horizon whereas in my taxable accounts it is a short-intermediate term horizon and I am more likely to switch from one fund to another (not like I do th...

I get a lot of my non-fiction book ideas from C-Span, particularly BookTV. I don't read a lot of fiction, but I recently began reading more books which were made into movies I saw and liked, even if they came out years ago. There was even a list of books like this on the Net. Other sources of book i...

Three expenses changed a lot after I ERed in 2008. I saw my commutation expenses and FICA taxes disappear while my health insurance costs increased. Income taxes dropped a little bit. All of thses things roughly canceled each other out.

I just finished the book a few days ago. I'd put it in the sane general cateogry as Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics but I think those readers who don't have any statistical background will be turned off by quick-and-dirty statistics lessons. (I have a background in statistics at the college level...

Last November a friend of mine bought a new PC but was undecided about getting one with W7 or W8. He decided on W8 so I had to learn its unusual features (he is not very good with computers) along with him. I have a W7 PC I bought in January of 2012 and it is great (it replaced a 10-year-old XP syst...

I recently received a notice from a past employer about changes to the pension. MAP-21 changed how the pension fund calculates its liabilities. Prior to MAP-21 pension plans determined their liabilities using a 2 year avg of interest rates. After MAP-21, now pension plans must take into account a 2...

I would make a decision on each coverage separately/ Comprehensive I would definitely keep because, as Quasimodo pointed out, it covers you for all the other causes of loss such as theft, vandalism, and glass (don't forget about glass - do you have full coverage on that high-frequency loss? If you u...

Six. Two in my IRA and 4 in taxable accounts (mainly to generate income as I am an early retiree). One stock fund in each account and 4 bond funds (munis, corporate, long-term, intermediate term, investment grade, just below investment grade) scattered across 2 brokerage companies.

Back in the late 1980s, I had an account with Citibank and was well over their minimum balance to avoid monthly fees. But after I bought my apartment, I fell below that balance which had risen in those years I was saving up. So I switched to another bank which had minimum balance requirements much l...

For us, it was investing in our companies' employee stock purchase plans. Not that we made tons of money in them, but more that it got us used to saving. The money for the investment came out of our checks before we missed it. And so we made a habit of saving. Another smart move, for us, was paying...

Although it was not done as a financial move, it has turned out to be my best financial move - not wanting to have children. On a purely financial basis - (1) paying off my mortgage in 1998, and (2) retiring in late 2008 at age 45 just as the market was crashing because I was able to cash out my com...

Back in 2008 I needed a medallion signature guarantee when I left my company and liquidated my company stock holding (using NUA). Because I wanted to use ACH to transfer it to my bank account and the value of the transfer exceeded $100,000, I needed the guarantee from my bank. It was a minor ordeal ...

I keep some there as "2nd Tier" Emergency fund. I don't re-invest distributions. Hopefully I never need to sell it, but if I need a new roof or something I can. "1st Tier" is Money Market and checking account. That is also used for daily operating expenses. This is pretty much m...

I scored 100%. I had to scratch my head on a few of them but managed to get them right. I am stunned!

I pay all but one of my monthly bills (electric, phone, cable TV) through "pull" from the company and have been doing so since the 1990s without any problems. I pay my monthly co-op maintenance charges through my bank's auto bill pay (they mail a check because my managing agent does not ac...

For me, it's not a matter of not feeling sorry for them, it's a matter of regretting that the show mixed up separate matters that detracted from the fee issue. I saw at least three issues in the segment: (a) insufficient savings rates; (b) inappropriate investment allocations; and finally (c) high ...

I'm probably going to make a fool of myself (not the first time!), but I just cannot understand this topic of an emergency fund. If I need up to $20K at a swipe of a card, well, I have a credit card (actually two, hence more flexibility if needs be). Then for anything not strictly instantaneous (or...

Although I didn't really learn anything new watching this program, I really enjoyed the content and format. Great insight by Jack Bogle and Jason Zwieg. Martin Smith of Frontline did a fabulous job interviewing the financial industry executives......boy did they seem uncomfortable. The Prudential e...

Stemikger, I agree with your assessment of the Mogan Stanley rep and your reaction to his so-called advice. I once met with a 401(k) advisor back in my working days. It was a quick meeting and he did not try to push any products my way. At the time, my early retirement plan was in its very early sta...

Thank you for your replies so far. Alan S. - Assuming that the catch-up limit applies this year, then his (higher) cap will enable him to stay with his current plan through the end of the year (probably, I'd have to run the numbers because he did not make this change until a few months into this yea...

I mentioned in another thread about a friend of mine who inherited a large brokerage account and smaller TIRA. Using some of his inheritance, he paid off his mortgage on his co-op and as a result has significantly lowered his monthly expenses. What he then did was to increase his contributions to a ...

Back in 2004, my then-employer switched its 401k from Dreyfus to Principal. In meetings and in literature PFG gave us, we learned how the Dreyfus funds would transfer to PFG funds. In some cases it was a pretty clean switch (i.e. S&P 500) but some others it was not (PFG had no Balanced Fund comp...

I have the text from a WSJ article dated 11/28/2008 (author Michel Aneiro) when bond fund prices were bottoming out. He addressed only muni bonds but he wrote about the plummeting demand for muni bonds (which IMHO can be extended to taxable bonds). I own shares in several bond funds, munis and taxab...

I rebalance more frequently in my IRA than I do in my taxable accounts. Having no tax implications is the big reason. I have a wider range of tolerance in my taxable account than I do in my IRA, so it takes a bigger AA deviation in my taxable account to rebalance than in my IRA.

The times I have prepared part-year or non-resident state income tax returns, I have never included one state's return with another state's return, even if there was a resident credit being taken in one state.

My best friend inherited about $650k late last year and enlisted my help in investing it well, given his other investments and risk tolerance. Most of it is in taxable accounts but some of it is an inherited IRA, both of which include individual stocks. individual bonds, CDs, and mutual funds. He ha...

I live in NY but worked in NJ for 7 years. NJ has a different definition of wage income than NY does. I had a pretax transit reimbursement account whose contributions were not deductible in NJ. Same for pretax health insurance premiums. I did not realize that right away but once I did I expected the...

I retired in 2008 at age 45 with less than $1M but broke the $1M mark in 2010 for the first time (of many times) and am now just over $1.1M. Worked full-time for 16 years before switching to part-tie for 7 more years. (1) No kids (childfree) (2) Never married. (3) LBYM, greatly. Avoided credit card ...

I worked in an actuarial division for 23 years (until 2008), specializing in pesonal auto insurance. While stacking is somewhat popular in Uninsured and Underinsured Motorists coverage, I never saw it in PIP. However, the principle behind stacking appears to be the same. From a pricing standpoint, h...

To me (and to others here), the term "budget" implies some sort of cost or spending control. Many of us, including me, simply monitor our spending and calculate summarized totals at certain points of the year such as year-end. I also, however, plan out my cash inflows and expenses at the s...

I did not expect to retire in 2008 at age 45 until about 18-24 months before I actually retired. Before that, I thought I'd be able to retire some time in my early 50s. So I got there at least 5 years ahead of schedule.

Bundy, if your goal is to end up owing a little bit instead of getting a refund, then that's okay. I once put a "12" on my W-4 form when I figured out in advance that I was going to get a big refund. It worked perfectly, and having the money right away enabled me to buy my first car (this ...

Suggestion : Get rid of your watches. A few years ago, I had read that the younger generation no longer wears watches, since everyone already has cellphones, which have the date & time automatically updated. Cellphone date & time automatically updates for daylight savings time, and it autom...

About 2/3 in non-retirement accounts, 1/3 in retirement accounts. Early retiree.

My barber can also change watch batteries. A few years ago I brought my watch in when I needed a haricut. Took him 5 minutes to change the battery then he cut my hair. One stop shopping at its best, huh? The watch battery cost about $5 or $6. The haircut was about $16 including tip.

So the conventional wisdom is to view your taxable and tax-advantaged accounts together as one portfolio, which in most cases makes sense. However, what if someone wanted to retire early and use their taxable as a separate portfolio to bridge the gap until they can access their tax-advantaged? Say ...

I am doing much better than my dad was doing, although not because he is doing badly. He retired in 1994 at age 63, the same year he paid off his mortgage. At that time, I was 31 and was already earning as much as he was earning per year. Also at the time, my mom had been diagnosed with cancer and w...

As an early retiree, I have tiers, or layers, of money based on speed and ease of access along with risk of principal. This is the same philosophy I used when I was working. I have some extra cash in my local bank's checking account (beyond any minimum balance requirements) in case I have some small...

I'm almost finished with my taxes, and it looks like I get about $550 refund from the fed, and owe about the same amount to NY State (also includes city tax). I'm trying to figure out if I should elect estimated tax payments for 2013. TaxAct is suggesting I do so. I know one outlier in 2012 that sh...

One spreadsheet tab; the rest is packaging. Victoria Oh, how interesting. Are you saying that you have all the forms that you need to file in spreadsheet form? If so, don't you have to comb through it each year to incorporate changes? I keep medical and charitable info in worksheets, but that's it....

For about 2 years I had a mostly telecommute arrangement, going to my former office only once a week as part of a part-time deal. As the programming expert in my division, it was a good fit for me to have this arrangement because I was able to do a lot of my programming maintenance work during the o...

Early retirees (I am one of those) may also be in the 0% cap gains and qualified dividends bracket. In 2012 about 1/3 of my income was in those categories and was not taxed at the federal level. It was still taxable at the state level, though. And a few years ago, I noticed that a small increase in ...

The page ranges overlap slightly. Mine is 5 pages but I chose the first option (0-5) because I was assuming the next one should have been 6-15 pages. I did not include non-filed worksheets such as the dividends and cap gains worksheet to calculate income taxes.