Bogleheads.org

11 years ago, I was needing a car. We compared the just released Honda Civic hybrid to a similar Civic and came up with a payback time of 7 years. The day we did that calculation, gas was $1.34 a gallon. I'd suggest that I got my money's worth and then some. But if I hadn't gotten my money's worth, ...

What program of study might she be interested in? A lot of non-prestigious schools have individual programs that are truly spectacular and lucrative (meteorology at the University of Oklahoma for example). Being a National Merit Scholar by taking the PSAT is a good start. Believe it or not, I sugges...

So the average "younger retiree" (pre age 75) living in a 2.5% CPI inflation environment might expect a 1.5% effective personal inflation rate. That is all well and good when you are talking about averages. But the thread is specifically titled personal rate of inflation. So the question ...

my long term goal is to own investment properties. Really? If I said my long term goal was to own lots of growth stocks, I think people here would look at me funny. I think you need to dig down and figure out in financial terms what your goal is. Investment properties obviously represents to you so...

Submit any maintenance requests in writing and have someone in the office sign and date a copy for you to keep.

I think for most middle class and above households, it is their discretionary spending habits that are much more important than how much the cost of a cheapie loaf of bread has changed, especially if you have no intention of buying the cheapie loaf. OP what percent of your actual spending did you us...

I think you have to pay very close attention to the particular house if you are downsizing. You have to think about everything - even something as small as not having a coat closet can drive you batty if you are in a climate with a definite winter. It is easier to downsize if you can get rid of bedr...

I'd pay it down 50% in the first year, then take 2 more years to pay off the rest. New car loans at .9% will reduce the value of the same car used - which would be your car if you needed to sell it. After 3 years, the car is likely to start needing a little more put into it like tires and such so no...

This is for new money only, which means I can use other accounts (All Vanguard, All index, All Admiral, All the time) to create an asset allocation From smallest to largest expense ratio we have: .52% MBFIX - Wells Fargo "Core Bond I" .81% FCNTX - Fidelity Contrafund which apparently "...

We could talk about what investment you would put these into, but have you considered what container? Do you have anything that would meet your needs in a 401K available - like a stable value fund? Are you using all your TIRA space? I say this because at age 60, you are past the 59 1/2 required to b...

I prefer to have the CC pull the payment from the bank account, so that it shows up as scheduled when I look at the CC webpage. Also, when switching banks, I find it easier to remember one bank account number rather than try to remember all the different bill pay account numbers.

Honestly, this is more about what you really want, and I think you like nice cars. You could consider your current car something worth sacrificing for, and look to cut your budget somewhere else, before 2014 . However, I think it pretty likely that your current car, a 2012 at 25K is depreciating mor...

If you did this, you would move from $6XX payment to $3XX payment per month.
Where would the other $3XX per month go?

The people supposedly buying our house have a tiny down payment and are getting closing costs paid. But it's hard to care when you're the seller. And it isn't just first time home buyers who benefit from low down payments - our buyer had to sell their house so they could buy our house so we can buy ...

I think that the financial pressure many state and local governments are facing right now are leading them towards more usage based taxes, matching the tax up with what causes those expenses to increase. To that end, gasoline taxes and impervious area calculations both qualify as a move in that dire...

I think you have to remember who owns all that stock. That means that the big investors who are extremely wealthy are going to skew any averages here. And of course the extremely wealthy can afford to take more risk, so they can afford more stock. IMO it doesn't tell you what "Americans" d...

I think in your situation with a car loan and a mortgage - you have a clear path for a way you can do more. Set a goal for when you will pay of the car loan and make it soon enough that you will feel pressure to get it done.

Can? Yes. Do? No. But the real question is would you want to? One of the things about being a SAHM is that if your husband's career changes geographical directions, you can go and the re-lo packages often help with selling the primary residence, but I've never heard of one for rental property. The o...

She will need her own account. She can also fill out a form that will give you access to her account and the info will show up when you look at your accounts and she can even give you authority to make transactions. She may be able to fill out that form electronically as well. HTH.

inevitable reversion to the historical mean That, IMO is where he loses the argument. I don't think you can assume anything will ever revert to the historical mean (nor can you assume that it will not.) And you certainly can't say it will do so within the number of years it would have to in order fo...

I think you have to consider tax treatment separately from the expected return of the investment itself. Both must be considered, but you can't just lay one on top of the other and say this is "the" return, which is what that chart implies.

You mentioned charity. Have you looked into a charitable remainder trust? The details of such an arrangement are, IMO best left to an expert, but I think it may help accomplish your parents goals. Or your parents may be willing to go ahead and let those appreciated assets go to charity now, if they ...

Well I don't think doing the re-fi would be a bad decision even if you end up selling in a couple years as long as the closing costs are low. But I think you should change the way you look at this a little. You owe more than the house is worth. That makes it a liability. If someone were to get on he...

My strongest suggestion would be if the home is occupied and you are interested, go back for a second showing with the understanding that you will be poking and prodding much more than polite company would do. This means moving furniture to look for carpet stains and to locate electrical, phone, and...

In my experience, if the homes are more than 7 years old or so, the estimates can be significantly off, often depending on how much updating has been done to the individual home.

For ex-spouses, they won't both be able to do it. The reason is this requirement:

The benefit you are entitled to receive based on your own work is less than the benefit you would receive based on your ex-spouse's work.

http://www.ssa.gov/retire2/divspouse.htm

Well that is interesting but I don't expect my spouse to manage the money the same way I do in the event of my death or incapacitation. We are not the same age, nor do we have the same spending styles, one has a chronic disease, one does not, and so forth. So what we have right now and how it is man...

For lack of a better term, how "aware" is your wife of the condition of the car she is driving? A bad rack and pinion generally means there is looseness or slippage or other type of steering issue that most likely was present before her trip down the mountain. A driver that is unaware of t...

I'm in the process of transitioning my EF into I-bonds where hopefully they'll sit for a long long time. While they are not tax-exempt, they are tax deferred, but I'm also subject to a state income tax for which they are exempt. I did 5K in Jan which will be available next Jan if needed, then I'll d...

To be honest, energy efficiency is not the be all end all of environmentally friendly. I would suggest that you look at what you really mean when you say you would really like a home that is energy efficient. Get a little more detailed about the things that are important to you and allow that to gui...

Just over 20%. But we've done it since we got out of college.

Wow, if their defense is that it wasn't intentional I think they are screwed. In my extremely limited experience with government agencies suing very large corporations, what is contained in the e-mails can be the most damning with respect to intentions. And they've got e-mails.

There's been a lot of studies about how indoor air quality can be much worse that outdoor air quality. Dashboards are made of plastic, seats are treated with flame retardants, the list goes on and on. I would suggest defaulting to fresh, especially since there is almost always at least some wind and...

Yeah, I don't think it is worded quite right because he wanted the reader to know the answer. It becomes clear he is talking about a "which" question when later discussing the asset classes because that is another example of asking "which."

I'm not sure I follow the logic of the statistics here. You have two estimates - for bag A the estimate is 0.8 (with a large confidence interval because of the small sample size), while for bag B the estimate is 0.67 (with smaller CI because of the larger sample). But the best estimates you have ar...

We split ours in thirds, and the 1/3 in transit was considered "bonds" so we could keep a fairly stable overall AA.

Fund investors do have a problem. They select funds well, but they allocate poorly. This to me sounds like M* is saying that it isn't the fund managers' fault that the average investor gets lackluster performance. That if they would just stick with the fund, they'd be OK. And then they suggest that...

It doesn't make sense to do that when talking about the basic rules of thumb (like age in bonds). The reason it doesn't make sense to do so is that a mortgage is an alternative to rent and of the two, the mortgage - (assuming you are mortgaging something similar to what you would rent) is less risky...

I think it depends on if you've decided your AA based on something like "risk tolerance" or based on how much equities do I need to reach my goal. I think when you are younger, because there is a lot of uncertainty in how much you might need to reach your goal (and even a lot of uncertaint...

What happens if some artificial illiquidity is inserted so that it is not so easy to sell or selling is disincentivized, like a redemption fee or mandatory holding period?

Thanks!

If you buy I-bonds through Treasury Direct, will the account information keep proper track of the current value or is that something you have to do yourself? Does it calculate in the interest penalty for the first 5 years or not?

Well sometimes a trip to a foreign country is part of the MBA experience. If you are interested in international business, then consider holding off on going by yourself. It is easy to add on some vacation to such trips.

I guess the way I see isn't "don't prepay the mortgage if you think you might need the money" but it is "Don't buy the house if you think you may need that money for something else." I've heard about a lot of people who would like to / need to relocate and can't because they are ...

Probably not all at once right away, but yes that would be the goal. In my very limited experience, the price of bonds continues to go up even after the stocks have stopped crashing. So I wouldn't really want to sell quite so much bonds right away. But I might be tempted to put cash into stocks inst...

Our first house had Hardi-plank. We got a discount on our insurance because the insurance company counted it as masonry, unlike other types of siding. The color retention aspect was appealing too since it was a place that gets about 300 days of sunshine a year. Our home inspector said that Hardi-pla...

I think that a term like "grandnieces and grandnephews" is legally ambiguous, and you probably want to define exactly what you mean by that (all her biological children, all her surviving biological children - it can get even more complicated) and state laws can come into play. You can def...

Even very improbable things happen. Rolling 15 ones in a row doesn't change the odds that the next one will be a 1. So yea, every so often a Peter Lynch or a Bill Gross will show up. That doesn't mean their dice are loaded. That doesn't change the odds of their next roll.

I think you should continue with it. U of M may not specifically have a scholarship for it, but when the individual colleges or organizations offer their scholarships, having that info on there can help and "National Merit Finalist" sounds better than putting "34 ACT score". Also...

Obviously being frugal is what people think they are doing when they are (often temporarily) financially secure.