Bogleheads.org

Avoid overspending on baby gear, clothes and above-all on toys. Before you know it you'll be swimming in kids stuff and looking for a larger house.
Babies don't need much. Really! Even firstborn ones

The rules would vary by county - have you been on their website to get information what is needed? We successfully challenged our appraisal last year (we wanted $2000 a year down, in the end they offered $1000 down, I could have fought it to 1500 I am pretty sure but I felt I wasted enough time). Ou...

I use a few different methods to come up with new titles to explore: - book reviews or comments in blogs I frequent - half an hour each week browsing at the library shelves (while my daughter is listening to storytime in the kids section) - random searches on Amazon, jumping from review to review - ...

Check indeed whether the private loans could be discharged through bankruptcy. 13 years ago I was in business school, all through private loans - as an immigrant I didn't qualify for anything federal. We ended up with more than $100K in debt (it was an Ivy). I paid off my debt 5 years ago, by having...

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Solzhenitsyn - this is the only book I have re-read more than 30 times
Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Heinlein

If it's $300 or $500 no brainer to get it. Ours was $1700 and just went up to $2000 (for context, the homeowner insurance is ~$550, and we have $5K deductible on flood). We still have a mortgage and because 1/4 of our backyard is in the flood zone, we have to carry the flood insurance. What bugs me,...

This blog post should give you what you need in a lot of detail
http://www.plantingourpennies.com/actua ... ol-part-3/

I think looking at the actual emergency expenses makes more sense in deciding on the fund, rather than taking current expenses, let alone basing it on salary as some people do. We have an emergency budget prepared - we are a single breadwinner household, so for us it's more likely than for a dual in...

Is it possibly to auto-pay Kohl's charge? The only store card we have and use is Kohl's. They give 15-30% off nearly all the time, to get some of these deals you have to use their card. Their store is very conveniently located for us and we buy most of our clothes and some other things there. I don...

I was in the same situation 2 years ago. My husband has no earned income, but since preschool expenses were real and documentable I thought we qualify. It was my fault for not reading the fine print on our HR website before signing up. I realized my error around April, and called them to stop the wi...

I am working in somewhat similar industry and have friends in i-banking. The recruiters in these industries are not looking at what courses you took, they are looking at experience and academics (i.e. GPA). Go for the internship if there is a chance for it. When I was doing my MBA I had i-banks afte...

I am looking for temporary medical insurance for my parents who will be visiting from abroad for 2-3 months this spring. For previous visits they used cheap travel insurance from their home country, but last time we had a very unpleasant experience with an emergency room visit, which the insurance c...

I would advise caution even when you think you have expenses that are certain to happen. Nothing is certain, and psychologically it's worse to have money left over (lost) than to lose some tax advantage. We had a situation 2 years ago when we had an IVF procedure planned and decided to go all in and...

By the way, why are you concerned about the Roth IRA eligibility? You can always use the backdoor - contribute (after tax) to traditional IRA and next day have the funds converted to Roth. No income restrictions.
http://thefinancebuff.com/the-backdoor- ... ow-to.html

Ask the kids where they would like to go (from a short list of choices). That way they won't resent your choice, and you may end up with a different sightseeing list from what you imagine but in the end more satisfactory for them. Paris a safe choice, it will have something for everybody. I would bu...

Can you benefit from the low appraisal by using it to reduce your property taxes? That's what we did in a similar situation earlier this year. First I was very angry about the low value, even though we had enough equity that it didn't hurt us with the loan, I just thought the appraiser did a quick a...

I would say research is critical, and the time for it should be commensurate with the value of the item relative to your typical spend. For us $200-500 or so would be a mid-ticket item, but definitely worthy of research and postponement of a decision until we are certain. We just bought a Neato robo...

I am no attorney but we have established both revocable and irrevocable trust for our kids, so we have been through the process recently. You mention irrevocable when describing your situation - if that is the case, there shouldn't be any estate tax, because the whole purpose of the ILITs would have...

Why not FTSE All-World ex-US (VEU)? Smaller in size fund than VXUS, but outperforming. It also won't overlap with your domestic funds.
I have a mix of emerging markets and developed markets, but the latter one is not offered as ETF

I recently checked with my insurer because my employer moved offices and now I drive under 6000 miles a year. But they said their cutoff for low mileage was 12000 a year and I was already under it, so they will make an adjustment but the premium won't change. I think they also said they consider 12-...

All depends on whether you feel you need more precision here for your investment plan, but looking at comparables is much better than relying on your own Zillow assessment. For properties long off the market I've found Zillow to be way off (ours is off by close to 30%). The research is not difficult...

2.3% of assessed value in New Jersey. It should be close to market value because I just went through the appeal process and got a reduction, it was ridiculously overassessed before.

To your first question this book is not too bad. I read it when we were on kid#2, so I knew most of this, but decently written and focused on financials http://www.amazon.com/Street-Journal-Financial-Guidebook-Parents/dp/0307407071/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&tag=bogleheads.org-20&qid=134...

I am infrequent poster but wanted to add my 2 cents. Would it be possible to find a less stressful job within the same company? Maybe at somewhat lower salary, but further from the stress-inducing part. It seemed from your comments that it's not the job content itself, but the company policy what is...

If you decide on Turkey in addition to Istanbul I would suggest Ephesus and Pamukkale. This would require a flight or an overnight bus ride, but they are amazing, especially Pamukkale is unique, breath-stopping sight. We spent 2 weeks in Turkey, split between Istanbul, Cappadoccia, Ephesus, Pamukkal...

I have 2 kids, a baby and a toddler, and I am a voracious reader so plenty of parenting reading material at home. Personally, I never liked much "What to Expect" despite its popularity - entertaining reading, but not very useful as a reference book (it's organized mostly in Q&A), and s...

Most of the discussions and advice refer to international allocation only in stocks. How should we consider a similar allocation in other assets such as bonds and REITS? Our current portfolio has a 401k of privately managed investments tracking global indices for stocks, bonds, REIT, commodities, et...

Thanks for the advice so far. I am already maxing 401k, Roth (backdoor), and putting some, not too much in 529s. Finally being able to start a taxable account is exciting, I am reading up a lot and I appreciate your thoughts. I will try keep it simple with funds selection and will likely do the emer...

Hi, livesoft, I have read most of these posts and the wiki article but of course will keep reading. The investments I was considering all keep in mind the tax-efficient placement I think - I was considering only stocks and tax exempt bonds in taxable. To some of your points: - we don't have anything...

Hello, First posting here, but have been following the forum for a while, read advice on the wiki, etc – I am hoping to get some good feedback on asset allocation Context: We are a couple, with 2 kids below school age, total earnings just over 200K. We came to USA for b-school 10 years ago and start...