Bogleheads.org

I have an aging 200 foot concrete driveway that will soon require replacement. Given the cost associated with that, I'm postponing the maintenance until the cracks are so large that only our SUV can make it in and out of the driveway....or until my wife says I have to replace it. If I had a section ...

31

Been doing an additional $100K every two years or so since then. Apparently the first 100K is the hardest.

Scubadiver

I spent a total of $41K on my and my wife's cars. We'll own them each for at least 10 years, barring unexpected circumstances. Let's say we pay $4K per year towards the purchase of a new vehicle. I'm the sole breadwinner and make ~$125K / year, so that's 3.2% of our annual income.

Thank you for your service and congratulations on the pending arrival of your child. I do agree that you are invested in too many funds. As for your TSP allocation, you indicated that you desired an international exposure of 30% of your total stock allocation. That being the case, a 70 / 30 split be...

I would call several roofing companies to come out and check before you even think about talking to your insurance agent. If there is no damage then I would not file a claim by having them send out an adjuster. All the roofing companies should send someone out to check your roof and provide an esti...

I agree with the other posters that in general it is better to self insure. That said, what you are considering is less of an insurance policy and more of a service plan. If you buy and continue to renew this policy year in and year out, you are effectively buying your appliances from the plan provi...

Thanks all. I feel a little bit better. I hope I can cancel the oven maintenance plan. We didn't add the refrigerator but she said we could add it tomorrow when we come back to buy the dishwasher so maybe there is hope. (we are buying the dishwasher with all the points we earned from buying the oth...

Thanks all. I feel a little bit better. I hope I can cancel the oven maintenance plan. We didn't add the refrigerator but she said we could add it tomorrow when we come back to buy the dishwasher so maybe there is hope. (we are buying the dishwasher with all the points we earned from buying the oth...

Why to use banks? Credit unions are much better. Victoria This is most certainly not a universal truth. We recently dropped our credit union for Wells Fargo. The credit union sent us the "we're gonna start charging $5 / month unless you...." letter. We had a safe deposit box with them and...

Hey, thanks for the feedback. The two references provided gave me the answer I needed. Just to be safe, I'm going to contact the title insurance company from when we purchased our home, but it looks like we should be fine w/o purchasing new Owner's title insurance.

Scubadiver

I'm planning to refinance our mortgage and was wondering about title insurance. My understanding is that the financial institution will require it. So, does this also cover the borrower or is the borrower covered so long as they had borrower's title insurance at the time of the original purchase or ...

Regarding the teenagers and long hot showers, have you considered just getting a smaller hot water tank?

Greetings To All: As some of you know by now, the Munchkin Man has lost over 130 pounds since July of 2011. Munchkin Man To the Munchkin Man, I have no advice to offer regarding your current dilemma. Just wanted to say congratulations on this tremendous accomplishment. Way to go MM! Scubadiver

Looking to buy a new LCD/LED TV and was wondering if you guys have any good recommendations. I am thinking 32 inch would do the trick for me, I don't know if anything bigger than that is really needed? Will use it to stream netflix and watch movies via dvd. Thanks! My wife and I also use or TV to s...

I am disappointed in how little my profession pays compared to the effort required. I have a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering. Some times I feel given my brains I would have done ok in software but would have made a whole boat load more money. When I was in grad school we would often joke that the b...

I'll throw another vote in for getting rid of the debt. With the assets you have on hand and your current incomes you could be debt free in three years. If I were in your situation I would make paying off that debt my goal - you really want a clean financial slate when you start a family. Scubadiver

My father in-law who is in his mid-fifties does boxing, skydiving, scuba diving (caves included) and weight training. Ironically, badminton is responsible for the vast majority of his sports related injuries.

Keeping this discussion apolitical with a thread title that just begs for political discussion could be a challenge but I will do my part to stay on track. Your observation regarding the effective tax rate, while pleasantly surprising, does not necessarily suggest that you have made an error [politi...

When banks are getting money to lend out at 2 or 3 %, charging college kids 8 or 9% is usury, in my view. Nancylee, I would argue that the "usury" rates are entirely avoidable. I was born and raised in upstate New York. Attended community college and SUNY school for undergrad and found th...

Met my wife skydiving 10 years ago. We were going through a training program and ended up spending the better part of the day killing time in the hanger due to a weather hold. Went on our first date a couple of weeks later and never looked back. I've since learned not to complain about the weather....

Met my wife skydiving 10 years ago. We were going through a training program and ended up spending the better part of the day killing time in the hanger due to a weather hold. Went on our first date a couple of weeks later and never looked back. I've since learned not to complain about the weather. ...

Congrats!

DW and I are hopeful about joining that club someday as well. We're a little over halfway there now and can certainly appreciate the work (and patience) it takes to make it. Well Done!

DW and I are in our mid / late 30s. We are presently sitting a little north of 93% tax advantaged. Being a single income family it's difficult to max out the tax-advantaged savings and thus be forced to maintain non tax advantaged savings as well so most of our money goes into tax advantaged account...

I recommend the following video for those who think minivans lack style points:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql-N3F1FhW4

The easiest way to win this race is to avoid having children while simultaneously doing everything you can to encourage your friend to have children. Then just give it time.

I'm getting married in May and would like to poll the forum on how you are set up. I'm honestly not sure what we'll end up deciding, but we have both agreed that I'll be doing most of the finances since she doesn't like to deal with it. Obviously, IRAs/401ks will be separate since I understand that...

I use the cheap stuff.

In my 30's now and haven't found age to really be a limiting factor yet. Having kids on the other hand, now that really has cramped my style. Gave up skydiving when we decided that we wanted to start a family as that hobby is pretty much inconsistent with fatherhood. Wife and I bought ski's just bef...

An EF is not a new car/home improvement/vacation fund. But it can be a retirement account. :wink: I don't disagree that's it's simpler to keep your EF in your checking account, but a few extra dollars can be picked up or saved by contributing his EF to her Roth. Just to be clear, I'm not recommendi...

What I meant to suggest by liquidity is that the Roth not be the first account to be tapped, so have some liquidity to avoid Roth withdrawals. When you take money out of a savings account you don't have to worry about whether it's principle or dividends. You also don't need to be concerned about whe...

My wife and I pay a weighted average 0.08% expense ratio on our Vanguard investments. There's not really a whole lot of room for waste.

I wouldn't plan on using the Roth for 100% of my emergency fund. I am not suggesting that you have a full 6 months in cash on hand, I would keep a decent amount of liquid savings in the event of an emergency, you don't want to have to tap the Roth immediately if you find yourself needing cash. I ag...

Thanks for sharing. These types of posts make great public service announcements.

Our weighted expense ration is less than 0.08%. :) All of our retirement assets are either in Vanguard accounts or the TSP. I'm fairly new to the federal workforce though and presently we have less than 10% of our retirement assets in the TSP so our current weighted expense ratio is attributable mos...

Whatever you do, I strongly recommend a visit to the National Air and Space Museum.

Think of an extended warranty as an insurance plan. One buys insurance to cover against random and catastrophic financial loss such as that due to the unexpected death of a primary bread winner or the loss of a home due to fire. These are random events that are unlikely to occur for any one family /...

I remember once when I was about 9 I had the fortune of coming into a large sum of money, maybe 10 dollars or so. I remember walking to the corner store to play a couple of arcade games and to buy some candy. I would have to think that having $1M+ liquid today probably wouldn't feel as good.

I clean our gutters using a leaf blower. Can usually complete it in under 20 minutes with the biggest task being the time it takes me to walk over to my neighbors house and borrow his ladder (we have an opern garage policy :D ). I'll be cleaning the gutters tomorrow in advance of Sandy. Will probabl...

Two of the last three governors of our state have gone to prison. That pretty much says it all for me. Admittedly I have never been a big fan of pre-paid <Insert Item Here>. As a consumer you have very little leverage on a vendor to provide a quality good or service once you have paid the bill. Thi...

As a 27-year postal employee, I have accumulated a TSP account of about $410,000. When I was a youngster, I kept everything invested in the C, S, and I funds. More recently, I have everything invested in the Lifecycle 2020 fund. I am happy to take advantage of the Lifecycle fund's simplicity, low c...

If having two kids in college at the same time helps with the financial aid calculations then that's a definite plus. Otherwise it could be a major drawback that compels the family to take out more private student loans rather than being able to cover tuition + expenses out of college savings and c...

If having two kids in college at the same time helps with the financial aid calculations then that's a definite plus. Otherwise it could be a major drawback that compels the family to take out more private student loans rather than being able to cover tuition + expenses out of college savings and ca...

My husband knows, but he doesn't really understand the logic behind the system I have set up. Nor does he really, deep down, want to deal with it. And he really doesn't want to deal with the estate planning aspect of it. It's odd, because he's quite good at mathematics, but just can't face the deci...

My perfect blower would be a backpack with fine throttle control. Slight thread hijack: Anyone have a blower with this kind of control? My ancient 2-cycle hand-held is pretty much a two-speed: idle, wide open. The husqvarna 150 BT. See my earlier post for a link. In all fairness, I suspect this fea...

I'm going to throw in another vote for "keep on renting". A $90K / year income is not enough to support homeownership in the Bay Area. We have family that lives in San Francisco. They have no debt, a $200K annual income, and a sizeable downpayment and decided to keep renting rather than bu...

DW and I just signed up with Verizon about 2 months ago. We too have the unlimited talk and text plan for two lines but pay only $110 / month. Are you guys using the data plan as well but exceeding the allowed 30 MB (or whatever it is)? $169 is a lot of money to pay just for two lines of talk and te...

I understand the OP is not particularly interested in the gas leaf blower, but I would encourage some consideration of the Husqvarna 150BT. http://www.lowes.com/pd_192729-86886-150BT_0__?productId=1054763&cm_mmc=search_google-_-Outdoor%20Power%20Equipment_RTC-_-Husqvarna_150BT-_-husqvarna%20150b...

I have owned my Volt for about a year now, which I purchased used/demo. It is the best car I have ever owned. How inconvenient is it to have to plug the thing in every day? I don't have to plug it in every day, but of course I do. Usually multiple times per day. It's no more inconvenient than havin...

Did I get this straight? The OP is highlighting an airline as a model for how Vanguard can improve its customer experience???

Less is definitely more and I want less and lower fees. PERIOD.

Switch to Schwab or Fidelity if you want a free t-shirt with every 100K invested.

With all this talk about wage garnishment and defendent lawyers estimating your net worth, I think we've lost sight of the most important benefit of an umbrella policy, namely that of a high quality and vigorous legal defense in the event that someone targets your assets legal action. In the end, th...