Bogleheads

Taking the bus is also cheaper than owning a car.

Perfect. Enough said.

That is indeed a good way to put it. It's a consumption item, and those who purchase should expect to get non-financial ...

Bonds Outperforming Socks For The Long Run

Keep in mind that socks are a lagging indicator, not only insofar as dress socks track employment but in that people tend to buy more exercise socks in go ...

I am sorry I wasted my time on this and apologize for wasting yours.
Not a problem. We all miss things from time to time.

In your example I am quibbling with the "now with the credit" part. It's always been there and has always been reflected in the price since the beginning of the IRS/personal income tax itse ...

The only home sellers this federal-subsidy price increase would have benefited would have been those who bought prior to the subsidization - or prior to 1913 if I have my dates correct (however, there ...

I don't see how a fair comparison can be made for an individual investing in 1949 vs one investing today. The "rules of the game" are different.
Isn't that part of the point though? There ...

Harbor Bond Fund is an eye-popping 155.14% today.
Might I suggest you sell Smile

One way to make the system as fair as possible would be to have a defined benefit pension plan. Everybody gets the same investment return out of the same pool of invested money with no choices to scr ...

Hi Doc:

What does this mean?:

Over the past five years I've seen our investment in Vanguard funds drop by 50% while our assets held at Vanguard have held steady.

Thank you.
I took it to mean ...

I like the list.

Rather than the demands of an overbearing boss, it seems to be a summary of commonsense rules. That so many waiters/ex-waiters don't see them as common sense suggests to me that c ...

I had thought that many of these countries are happier than the US because more of the populace takes satisfaction in simpler things.

Less psychological desire for the biggest house, most expensive ...

rampart corruption
What is the going bribe for castle construction anyway? Smile

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

No doubt Disraeli was a smart guy, but I'd alter his quote to say:

"What we anticipate seldom occurs: but one o ...

So how can the IRS say you have to charge interest?
They're not saying you have to charge interest, only that there's a tax consequence associated with the money transfer if you don't.

I went through precisely this exercise some time ago.

Looking at the mass of purchases and (comparatively tiny) dividend reinvestments was pretty daunting. But after reading the IRS pubs and seein ...

I don't quite follow the logic of:

We teach geography. Some students can't find Iraq on a map.

We teach mathematics. Some students can't do division.

We teach sex ed. Some students get pre ...

Fair enough Maryanne, I'd put that in the category of more education is good. I'd generally agree with that (though first I'd start with a goal of ensuring students have a solid mathematical foundati ...

Kotlikoff, in his book.....Spend Till the End.....had this observation about teaching investing in our schools:

Kotlikoff asks how well Americans really know the subjects they are taught in our edu ...

French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese are just corruptions of Latin.

Speaking of style, I primarily followed University of Chicago style in college. In most formal writing, there is a comma be ...

Well Patchy, perhaps that's because the use of the quotative like isn't "wrong". I like it too, and appreciate the added texture it can bring.

Not saying it's necessarily the case for an ...

$5 plus $2 tip, SF Chinatown

I am always amazed at pre-retirees saying that you cannot live on SS- true enough, but when I tell them how much $ would be needed to purchase an equivalent inflation-indexed SPIA, they are invariably ...

I am always amazed at pre-retirees saying that you cannot live on SS- true enough, but when I tell them how much $ would be needed to purchase an equivalent inflation-indexed SPIA, they are invariably ...

People should just save as much as they can for retirement without sacrificing a reasonable quality of life today.
Trouble is, a "reasonable" quality of life today may not allow for enough ...

Fast food restaurants do the same work. Do you also tip there?

They may do some of the same work but their wages are not the same. "wait" staff are usually paid less than min wage ...

I know Matt, and your approach is better. Mine just doesn't require any change from the original problem and points out a fallacy in assuming an underlying distribution of the cards.

If I were designing this game, I would obliterate the OP's strategy quite simply. I would add a harsh penalty for being wrong.

Or just give him/her a blue card every time. Don't even need to chan ...

In your problem, there are four equally likely outcomes with at least two reds:
RRR
RRB
RBR
BRR
so the chance of three reds is 1/4 (not the 1/2 that some have presumed).

And even that's not ne ...

What if the judge decides to always give you a blue card? Nothing in the statement of the problem precludes that possibility. (Of course, that would mean that the other players get red, which they d ...

Based on your numbers, it seems clear that the lump sum is being calculated on a PPA basis. The prior lump sum was calculated on a GATT basis. PPA phases in (20% a year) from the lower GATT Treasury ...

What's even odder, when you read stuff from the 1920s and 1930s, when a dollar was worth over ten times what it is today, the prices of things were usually round numbers of nickels

My grandfather w ...

I fully intended to put it all on a credit card, but the dealer accepted only $3K on credit card for me as well. The other $13K was a personal (Vanguard Prime MM) check, which I guess is unusual (mig ...

Unless you're either extremely particular about your hotels or enjoy spending hundreds more than needed, just go to Priceline.com and bid on a 4-star hotel. At the high star levels, you're sure to ge ...

I acknowledged that

Sorry, you did make that quite clear originally. For some reason, the word "fear" prompted me to write what I wrote.

Incidentally, I worry much more when driving t ...

But is it rational to fear driving to the grocery store

Fear may be a strong word to use. But it seem rational to me to acknowledge that it is a dangerous undertaking, and to strongly encourage th ...

The Government has been contributing 11.4% of our salary each month (a bit less for highly compensated employees) for us in a Government trust fund

This is not true.

It doesn't matter what mach ...

The Government has been contributing 11.4% of our salary each month (a bit less for highly compensated employees) for us in a Government trust fund

This is not true. Only the portion in excess (if ...

I have been puzzled (and irritated) to this day as to what happened. It remains a big mystery to all of us.So the nieces denied they took the stuff?

I wondered about that too. Some otherwise thor ...

If professional fund managers' decisions have actually put pension systems--plural, many of them, not just an outlier or two--into "crisis," then I say the culture of professional investing ...

Assuming the benefit is defined as an annuity (i.e. $462/mo for life starting at age 65), the way they'll calculate it is the sum of the actuarial present values of each payment.

The actuarial pres ...

E. Coli. It was in Spinach

Ironically, it seems that the spread of e. coli to vegetables may be due to manure from large scale cattle production making its way into the water supply.

In a big pi ...

A Simple Math Comparison of Standard & Roth IRAs

Let Ti and Tf= Tax Rates % during accumulation and distribution periods, Ri = Return % in ith period, C = After-Tax Capital , Co = Beginning ...

I believe A123 has a bright future.

This isn't really enough for you to make a lot of money on it.

It has to have a brighter future than the current market thinks (which is presumably bright, si ...

how do you know if there are outstanding shares that you can purchase? Are there always outstanding shares?

When a company needs cash, they can have a stock offering (such as their first one, an IP ...

Thanks to each of you for your comments and good wishes.

You've confirmed some of my initial thoughts and have given me some important things to think about. I'm going to continue thinking and try ...

Thank you for these responses. Although I wrote the original post dispassionately and without specificity, this is a very personal situation that's touching me closely (and the pronoun is she/her).
...

I'm trying to give advice on a situation involving a cancer diagnosis.

The individual is a part-time employee of the California community college system. A PPO policy purchased by the individual i ...

Besides the intellectual activity, from a philosophical angle it seems there must be a zenlike advantage for those of us who embrace our financial realities.

Most people, consciously or not, avoid ...

But I think that the segment of the American public whose life expectancy decreased is not a common buyer of SPIAs.

Given that there have been at least two lengthy threads on this forum discoursing ...

Pochax,

I have it at what I thought was maxed out at 15% of the income I get from my employer or abt $13,200. Can I go above this?
Thanks to cubedbee who pointed out rightly that there are two &q ...