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We just got a bid for a 20kW whole house generator from Cummins Oman unit. The price is $9300. This system is completely automatic and runs off propane. Looking at a few other options, this is first estimate. While replacing/repairing our basement discovered mold from at least two previous basement ...

Yes. We installed Solar in 2003 (maybe it was 2001). Our electric bill has risen to about $800 year from about $700 a year when they were installed. Our home is rather large, with a spa and pool, and in California, most of our neighbors have at least one summer month when their rates are over $500 f...

Correlation

I like the idea of owning timber as it has historically been relatively uncorrelated with the 500 Index and bonds. If you already do not own or plan to invest in a number of individual stocks, say at least 15 though more is better, I would not invest in a single stock. PCL would not be one of the fi...

We did just this a few years ago. To get clearer picture we needed to add a booster to our antenna. The booster cost about $25 and it cost another $15 to put an electric outlet near our antenna, which is in the attic. We are very satisfied getting about 30 channels in our area, almost all are HD. We...

For the record, my statement above about waiting for interest rates to rise before annuitize has been proved wrong. See this conversation at M* TIAA-CREF forum http://socialize.morningstar.com/NewSoc ... px#3408091

Stats

Stats, I am intrigued by your last sentence. Given the vintage-rates structure of TIAA Traditional, how could you exppect to get a better annuity deal by waiting for a time of higher interest rates? We currently have vintages paying, especially in payout rates, much higher than current rates; and t...

Thanks MNfinance... I was just thinking about that very issue. Our TIAA-Traditional are all RAs. By the way, I taught at three different research institutions and my wife worked at one so we have four accounts. This both gives us more options and complicates things. Still it is a great investment. T...

TIAA Traditional Annuity is a stable value fund. We count it as part of our bond allocation. This is a very special investment. In my opinion, you would be crazy to shift it to another investment. The main drawback are the restrictions on withdrawing your money. It takes nine-years and a day to with...

There is a poster on the m* tiaa-cref board
http://socialize.morningstar.com/NewSoc ... 00044.aspx
who can help you. He goes by the name crefwatch

Good luck
Stats

edited to correct poster name and give link

FinancialDave... it is possible. This is our second year in retirement and we were able to get into the zero percent tax bracket on our dividends and capital gains. It will be the last year for awhile, as we lose two tax deductions (daughter and brother-in-law) next year and we will also lose the Am...

Statsguy That is incorrect. The model has nothing to do with PREDICTING returns, only EXPLAINING returns of diversified portfolios. And it doesn't matter in this case about the FF model anyway because the research shows that div stocks and non payers have the same returns Larry My point is that the...

In my opinion, many in this thread are drawing conclusions from the Fama and French model that are not appropriate. The way I understand it, Fama and French developed a mathematical model to predict returns. I do not want to take anything away from that achievement because it is an outstanding impro...

Hi Ed, we follow a similar approach. One thing we do that you did not mention is listen to quarterly conference calls... I am listening to see how important the dividend is to the management. I prefer investing in a company that supports the dividend. Another difference is that we tend to supplemen...

statsguy Also dividends on NOT fixed. They are variable and can go to zero as well. In fact as I pointed out in 2008 a large percent of companies cut dividends and a large percent eliminated them. Larry I don't know the actual percentage of dividend cuts. We had 3 cuts out of 23 companies (13%) but...

It's also more valuable in one way that is directly measurable and very apparent to the investor -- you avoid the higher taxes on dividends. Even if they're all qualified dividends, the total return investor defers taxes for decades and comes out ahead. With good tax planning (or maybe simply earni...

FD Sorry but you are missing the point. The income is not really income, it is just reduction in the value of the company paid to you in the form of a dividend. You can create your own dividends by selling shares. That is what the evidence makes very clear---there is simply no difference in returns...

Um... is this really the example you want? The assumptions appear to be: 1. Non-dividend paying portfolio drops 40%, then has 0% total return forever 2. Dividend paying portfolio drops 40%, then INCREASES dividend to ~6.66% to keep paying out a $4,000/year dividend. If that's how the two portfolios...

It is my experience that our dividend growth portfolio increased dividends on 2009 (the increase was less than 1%) despite two significant dividend cuts. All other years have seen dividend growth above inflation. Over time our portfolio yield has dropped a little less than 1% since NAV has kept up w...

Your benchmark horizon is 5 years? I'm not FinancialDave, but if I don't see something positive in 5 years I would seriously question my strategy. Once retired and pushing 70 one does not have an overabundance of five-year periods to experiment with. those with shorter horizons may need to focus on...

We have invested in O (Realty Income) since 2006 when we bought our shares around $23.50. The dividend yield in those days was around 7% and now it is around 4%. I think there are so many investors willing to buy anything with a "high" yield that it has driven prices up and yield down. Rea...

I assume that this discussion is based on the M* interview with Christine Benz http://www.morningstar.com/cover/videocenter.aspx?id=586583&lineup=STOCKS I found the interview/discussion to be very interesting. Would love to read research paper but I did not find the link. As I have said before, ...

Hi Ed, we follow a similar approach. One thing we do that you did not mention is listen to quarterly conference calls... I am listening to see how important the dividend is to the management. I prefer investing in a company that supports the dividend. Another difference is that we tend to supplement...

It is possible it has changed since we lived there. Our bank, ASB, allowed us to deposit US dollars and they would convert to NZ dollars without paying a conversion fee. Their conversion rate seemed reasonable.

Best of luck
Stats

Larry, I find it hard to believe that investors substitute SDY for bonds, probably because I have not met anyone who would do that. Of course that is a crazy strategy. When I talk of owning dividend stocks, they come for the equity side of the equation.

Stats

Thanks nisiprius. I am on vacation and only have my iPad today and was having a hard time posting those links. In Larry's defense he might have been referring to the growing income that did not grow in 2009 (both ETFs he listed had a drop but have recovered). My own experience was that the income (g...

I am one of those investors who buys dividend stocks. We are most interested in buying common shares that have a history of dividend growth. Larry, I agree with 90% of what your write, but maybe a little less in this short article. I agree that the main argument against buying dividend stocks is tha...

I would not live my life pursuing a $50 million portfolio. In my opinion, that is the wrong approach. You should pursue happiness and quality of life. Since money can be an important part to that, I suggest you save a high percentage of your salary and pursue making the portfolio as large as you can...

Looks like this post is back from the dead. Thanks for all the new comments about Quicken Alternatives. I am still searching too. Will switch over to Mac based product in May... and will report back anything I find out. Note to statsguy: Also like you, I maintain an account of my own individual stoc...

prudent wrote:Not only is bit rot something to worry about, but there is also file format obsolescence and hardware/application obsolescence to deal with.

Tell me about it, we backed up onto 3.5" disks that we can no longer access.

We have paid off our homes so long ago I don't remember our net worth then but I can say

When we had one home our home equity to net worth was 25%
With two homes (second home purchased last year) the ratio is 56%

Stats

I am a professor of Mathematics with a Ph.D. from the U Texas. My research area is a statistics and I think of myself as a statistician. My first job was at a highly regarded research institution but after working there for nine years and publishing at least one paper a year, I wanted more family li...

We hit out number sometime ago. Even after we "made it" our portfolio remained 65% equities and 35% bonds. In 2008 meltdown, we almost hit our number again (this time going down). We was seriously considering what to do if we did it our number again, not because we could not handle the vol...

Maybe this is the year we drop Quicken. Having to upgrade to Quicken 2013 soon. We have been using Quicken since 1992 (well that is the oldest transactions I see just now). Our situation is that we run Quicken on a Windows machine but for six or seven months a year we only have a Mac available. Ever...

I am about to upgrade to 2013 from Quicken 2010. I notice that Quicken 2013 now works with a phone app... has anyone used the app?

Stats

Thanks for the quick replies. The Gold Panda coin is because the bride is Chinese and it is a very Chinese thing to give money at weddings. They are asking for money and I wanted to give something that would be remembered because I am the godfather to the groom. I will check the websites listed. Tha...

I want to buy a gold Panda coin as a wedding gift in lieu of giving cash. Any suggestions for where to buy the coin

Stats

different states have different rules. You need to find information on part-year residence for your two states. We also have to file taxes for two different states Virginia and California.

Ask both states what you need to do, it is not as simple as figuring when the income was earned.

Stats

As previous post notes... once you connect the splitter you are likely to not have enough signal. That was our case, we purchased an amplifier for about $30 which works great. We installed the antenna in the attic and the amplifier is attached to the antenna with a 6-foot long connection. So we had ...

ProfessorX, The answer to your question is yes.. so long as the assets are in a taxable account. If you hold total stock market in a 401k or TIRA then you will be forced to take RMDs once you are of age. I suppose you could still borrow from those accounts but you will still be subject to RMD

Stats

We did invest in treasury bonds in 1981 (also in 1980, 1982, 1983) those bonds are now finally reaching maturity. I find myself worrying that with the FED policies I might get a second opportunity in my life to buy treasuries yielding 10+%. From todays viewpoint looking back at those 1981 bonds it l...

The article is alluding to the fact that many investors and pension finds are buying intermediate and long term bonds planning to move into short term bonds when interest rates increase. No one knows how orderly that transition will be since it depends on many different scenarios. In this case the B...

Actually long term cap gains are treated the same as QDs. Those falling in the 15% bracket and lower are generally not taxed. The excess is taxed at 15% unless you're over 400K (450K MFJ status) Here is the actual situation. He will have income of about $4000 this year (this is all from cashing an ...

Thanks for the quick reply. I had a foggy brain this morning. I was thinking his capital gain would be treated as qualified dividends. I know that does not make sense.

Danke mein freund
Stats

My brother has income of about $4000 a year. He has an investment which, of he sells. will result in a $100,000 capital gain. Will he owe taxes on the gain? I think not because his income is so small.

Thanks
Stats

Increase the funding to your 401k/403b/457 to the maximum and use the 100K to reimburse you for the lost income. This has the effect of lowering your income and taxes. Also, make sure to fund your ROTH each year. That will eat up about $20K per year. In five years you will have your taxable moved ov...

Every time I see a version of this quote, I recall my parents... Keep it (she said) if you don't mind that it will someday go down 40-50% again from some unknown high point. It's not costing you anything. Bogleheadedness is about low cost investing. Otherwise do mostly index funds. In October 1987 (...

Does anybody have tips on managing a mostly worthless baseball card collection from the late 1980s? Over the years I have purged the vast majority of common cards, but I still have about 10-20 complete sets still in their boxes, a few wax packs, and about two dozen cards I had graded and sealed. I ...

Hmmmmn. Well you got me to calculate it ---- about 79%. I guess what is not in the market is real estate (two homes and a rental) and emergency funds. The 79% includes 35% that is invested in bond mutual funds, which I consider in the market. Maybe I should report 44% is in stocks.

Stats

I retired in 2010. I still work 6 months a year in California and will for another 4 years. We bought our retirement home in Virginia last year but still have our home in California. We l;ive in Virginia 6 months and California 6 months. We too will be able to pay the mortgage off when we sell our C...