Bogleheads.org

I also read "Beyond the Grave". Worth buying a used copy if you haven't thought about these topics in depth. It caused me to appraise some scenarios for our family that I never would have considered, but are eminently possible.

My friend has a large amount of commercial property and a 100 employee light manufacturing business. He also has 2 adult daughters. One is highly responsible and capable. The other is flighty and is married to an underachiever. He has chosen to leave the bulk of the estate to the responsible daughte...

About 8% of gross in Mort/Ins/Tax. Then another 3% prepayment against principal.

Influence by Cialdini is great, but not directly about negotiation. It's a review of the psychology of persuasion, citing a lot of case studies and experiments. Not designed to be a practical guide, but the insights are highly usable. Story : In the final class in my MBA course on Organization Proc...

There was a thread a week ago about how to avoid medical bankruptcy. The OP mentioned that his neighbor had a good job that provided his health care. The neighbor then contracted cancer, began treatment, and got fired/replaced a few months later because he couldn't work and lost his health care. Sa...

Ages 40 & 35 CURRENT Roth - 11% SEP & 401k - 71% Taxable - 18% We are maxing all out (SEP makes conversion for one of us too costly, so we to BD-Roth for just one of us) and adding aggressively to our taxable accounts. Given that, and that our deferred accounts are bond heavy, I project our ...

I've searched around and haven't seen this addressed in a comprehensive way, so here goes.... Question : How do you mitigate the risk of losing your coverage as a result of a serious illness? Scenario : Neighbor has a junior exec job at a white collar company. By his accounts has a good health plan,...

Awesome. Thanks. To answer your questions: Q - What are the HSA options? A - I don’t have access yet, but I suspect they won’t be adequate and , I’ll move rollover to one of the recommended custodians and roll my accumulating contributions 1-2x per year. And, I guess a fund like Total Bond Market wo...

Hi there, I hope you can help with rebalancing and rethinking. We are in the middle of rebalancing and have reached a stage where the tax-advantaged opportunities aren't enough. Good problem to have, but it's unfamiliar territory having less than 1/2 yearly contributions going to taxable accounts. E...

How do folks deal with the point where every new dollar earned seems to phase us out of one deduction or another? Suppose we (no-kid joint-filing couple) earn $220k-250k and have a lot of deductions (property taxes, mortgage, etc.). If we contribute the max to our (no-match) 401k plans, it lowers ou...

In response to Helga... As a consultant, I did some work for a few mining companies a decade ago. There are a lot of ways to extract the gold from the rock. and the classic way involves a series of crunchers that break the "blowed up" rock into a large granular form. From there, it is run ...

Spacemonkey, Continuing that thought into the modern era. Do we, in this age, wage war in a way that would have that same effect? Those "total resource" kind of wars (with boots on the ground, tanks, jeeps, tens of thousands of air and naval craft, et...) seem to have been replaced by jets...

Shizzyfin, I don't want to seem like an apologist for Laffer. I'm not, but your comment about zero taxation demands a response. Laffer doesn't say that revenues increase indefinitely as taxes decrease. There is an inflection point where revenue is maximized...somewhere between 100% taxation and 0% t...

On the New Deal and the Depression As I understand it, the current thinking (Krugman aside) is that the New Deal did not and could not end the depression. Rather that money supply is far more siginifcant a contributor to the recovery (as well as with other recessions). Here's a paper on it: http://w...

DieHard, RE: your question on freezing eggs. I haven't tried it, but I imagine grandma could just beat the eggs before pouring them into trays. They sell frozen egg whites in the market, but I think yolks don't handle freezing well. I'd like to buy a laying hen or two....just to see my neighbors' re...

Even though I took macro-economics at MIT, I never got a good feel for macro-theory. I might just be too simple, but then again, I didn't sit in Krugman's class. So, my question is this: Don't most people discussing "paradox of thrift" come at things from the wrong angle? The discussion us...

FWIW:

My broker with Wells Fargo quoted me the following--

30y FR at 4.875 0 pts, $2534 fees (initially offering 4.75 with .5pts)

Our savings rate is 25% or so. Most of that goes into tax-advantaged accounts.

If I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying any taxable savings should go to the loan. I agree. We'll be able to whittle it down pretty quickly, especially while we're on two incomes.

Thanks for the input.

Thanks all. Alexander: You're right. I forgot the interest on the extra 10% on the mortgage in option 1 after paying the student loan. With PMI, it would cost more. I'm not crazy about the HELOC idea since it'll be closely tied to Prime Rate, as is my current loan. They'll always be within 5 basis p...

Blackhawkzone: I don't think I can re-finance the Student Loan at a better rate. Also, it's a private loan and can't be consolidated via a govt program. EmergDoc: The SL interest is tax deductible. But without a house or state income tax (TX), I dont' think we can do better than our standard deducti...

Hi folks, I'm faced with a dilemma: Let me lay it out with rough numbers: Option 1) Put 20% down on a DP for a $360k house. Option 2) Put 10% down, put the remaining $36k toward a private student loan charging 8.25%, and pay the PMI on the mortgage. That would push the loan balance with Citibank to ...

Valuethinker,

For the record.

Maxed Out was directed by James Scurlock

Supersize Me was directed by Morgan Spurlock

Similar styles, different guys.

Cheers.

Jim in Austin, Your numbers are very close, except that "her roth" is 4% and "his roth" is 3%. Was probably a rounding error. "his roth" is above the $3k min of many funds, but below the $10k that others want. Thanks. Laura, I see that your suggested reallocation resul...

(disregard original comment. corrected)

Thanks for spotting.

EDIT -

On second review, it wasnt' a mistake. In selling off my brokerage accounts for the loans/house, I pulled money out of the total "pool". The proportion in the SEP account naturally grew by 10%.

Wow. My appreciation to both Alexander and Laura Laura, your comments are clear....and it's a lot to digest. We're gonna walk through this carefully, and may have some follow-up questions down the line. Thanks BTW - We weren't thinking of the REITS as bonds. I placed it last on the list because of i...

Thanks for the input. I'm not very excited about our plans' funds. That's why I've latched onto the idea of the BrokerageLink account. We'll be putting the max into our 401(k), so I didn't want to be stuck with the options in these plans. Are there any downsides to using the Brokeragelink? I imagine...

We're getting married in a few months and want to get started off right. As you'll see, our investements are a hodgepodge. Professional couple. He's 35. She's 30. No kids yet. Tax rate: He today=28%. She today=25%. Joint (both employed) 28%. Joint (his salary during kiddie era) 25%. *Have emergency ...