Search found 1570 matches

by ourbrooks
Thu Jun 02, 2016 4:30 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: How to get a real Chip and Pin card?
Replies: 108
Views: 35891

Re: How to get a real Chip and Pin card?

Does anyone have experience with either bank debit cards or prepaid debit cards, if they have a chip? (I would use the debit card on an account that had a minimum amount of funds in it.)
by ourbrooks
Wed Jun 01, 2016 12:02 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Soy-based rubber, car hoses, and hungry rodents
Replies: 11
Views: 3956

Re: Soy-based rubber, car hoses, and hungry rodents

Soybean oil is actually used as an insecticide; I also found a patent for using it as a rodenticide! Maybe the mice were suicidal. Other products from soy beans include inks, plywood, particle board, and foam for car seats. Most oil-based paints these days are made from soy alkyd. Had any problems with mice gnawing at your woodwork? Even though all of these products are made from "food", eating them is likely to be fatal. As Teague points out, rodents chewing on wiring and hoses is a problem that goes back decades, maybe even to the time when hoses were made of natural latex. An alternative hypothesis is that it makes good nesting material. A nice warm car with nesting material near by? What's not to like? There also may be dried ...
by ourbrooks
Wed Jun 01, 2016 10:22 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: anyone got used to reading very technical/academic papers online?
Replies: 22
Views: 2981

Re: anyone got used to reading very technical/academic papers online?

Any solution involving scrolling is a non-starter as far as speed reading goes. A human eye movement (saccade) is in the range of 200-400 ms. That's all the time it takes to look further down on a page which is already displayed. A single mouse movement, like moving up to scroll bar takes 800-1200 ms; it typically takes two such movements to accomplish a scroll. Keyboards are much faster, on the order of 200 ms., for a key stroke in isolation, so it might pay to learn to use the page down key for scrolling. In either case, though, it takes one or more eye saccades to locate where you were on the page before the scroll. These times are a result of the way the human motor system operates and it's pretty impossible to train yourself around the...
by ourbrooks
Tue May 31, 2016 2:45 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: anyone got used to reading very technical/academic papers online?
Replies: 22
Views: 2981

Re: anyone got used to reading very technical/academic papers online?

The reason why you are printing out the papers rather than reading them on screen may be because you can read them faster and with less effort on paper. This review may seem quite old but no one has published radically different results since it was published: https://www.ischool.utexas.edu/~adillon/Journals/Paper%20vs%20screens.htm Unfortunately, as the review points out, no one has clearly identified the cause of the problem. Let me suggest, though, that you might start with the following: Read the articles in software which can do font anti-aliasing, such as Adobe Reader, and not as HTML rendered text. If you want to match the visual properties of paper, then you have to have 300 dpi resolution for something held at normal paper reading ...
by ourbrooks
Tue May 31, 2016 10:07 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: weeds, trees and managing large lawns
Replies: 13
Views: 2216

Re: weeds, trees and managing large lawns

In the sunnier areas, till up the grass and plant wild flower seeds. No mowing, no weeding, no watering. Nice comments from the neighbors. Even if you end up needing to seed every year, it's much less work than fertilizing, mowing, weed killing, etc. in a grass lawn.
by ourbrooks
Fri May 27, 2016 11:04 am
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Monsanto-BayerAG
Replies: 19
Views: 2567

Re: Monsanto-BayerAG

The new DowDupont agriculture company will be almost the same size in seeds as Monsanto and larger in pesticides: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3902056 ... ant-making

Very handy of them to separate out their business this way. In the past, to own Dow and Dupont's life sciences businesses you'd have had to own parts of things like their floor covering businesses. From an investment perspective, that probably wasn't such a bad idea; at least, recently, the life sciences parts of their businesses haven't been doing that well and one view of the merger/reorganization is that it's a way for the profitable businesses to dump the unprofitable parts.
by ourbrooks
Tue May 24, 2016 4:12 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: 2 Big Companies merging = no severance package?
Replies: 24
Views: 7239

Re: 2 Big Companies merging = no severance package?

One WEEK per year of employment is common; I've also never heard of one MONTH. Companies which give severance pay usually require that you agree not to sue them over being let go. Given how much lawyers are paid, it may be cheaper to give you severance rather than fight your age/race/sex discrimination suit. The problem with firing and rehiring everyone, besides the inevitable law suits, is that all the good people won't come back. I haven't ever heard of any company taking that risk. A more real possibility is that they shut down your location and move everyone to a location from the other company. Depending on how much they want to keep you, the benefits can arrange from none at all up to buying your house and covering closing costs of th...
by ourbrooks
Tue May 24, 2016 3:21 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Monsanto-BayerAG
Replies: 19
Views: 2567

Re: Monsanto-BayerAG

Sell your Monsanto stock ASAP and invest the money in an index fund. Picking individual companies is hard; picking high tech companies for the long term is practically impossible. Whatever happened to Radio Corporation of American and Digital Equipment Corporation? Heard of any recent breakthroughs at Bell Labs? The writing is pretty much on the wall for Monsanto. They're negotiating for a higher price from Bayer. If they really thought that their current businesses had long term prospects, they'd be trying to stay independent, or, if they thought that the merger with Bayer was really synergistic, they'd quickly have agreed to a lower offer. The merged company is going to have only one set of executives; the negotiations for the merger soun...
by ourbrooks
Tue May 24, 2016 3:08 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?
Replies: 59
Views: 7013

Re: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?

It's already too late to invest in Elon Musk. He's already had billions thrown at him. What you should be doing is looking for the next Elon Musk and investing in him/her while it's still cheap to do that.
by ourbrooks
Mon May 23, 2016 4:58 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?
Replies: 59
Views: 7013

Re: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?

Oh my, some of the advice on this thread is well-intentioned but so very incorrect. Symbolics and Thinking Machines? Neither of those companies have done anything interesting in 20 years! Perhaps you might want to go back and read my earlier post a bit more carefully. The reason why neither Symbolics or Thinking Machines has done anything interesting for the past 20 years is both of them went belly up more than 20 years ago. They're dead, Jim. I mentioned them to illustrate that AI isn't anything new; attempts to commercialize it go back to the early 1980s and pretty much all of the early companies have long since disappeared. Before anyone goes off and invests in the latest, greatest, most hyped new company, they ought to make sure that t...
by ourbrooks
Sun May 22, 2016 7:07 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: The Perils of Historical Asset Returns
Replies: 19
Views: 3060

Re: The Perils of Historical Asset Returns

Seems to me that human ingenuity is such that a decline in productivity isn't a given at all. I wouldn't make assumptions in this respect. Too many technology breakthroughs in progress... An intriguing and important question. The highest productivity gains of the 20th century for the U.S. came from industrialization (the adoption of electricity and the internal combustion engine, plus their follow-on impacts) — which only happens once as an economy develops (1920-1970 in chart below). A second bump to productivity came from the digital revolution (1994-2004 in chart) — but so far these impacts have paled compared to those from industrialization. Annualized Growth Rates of U.S. Total Factor Productivity, 1890-2014 http://i.imgur.com/HMX3Dqj...
by ourbrooks
Sun May 22, 2016 3:51 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?
Replies: 59
Views: 7013

Re: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?

As for investing, I have first hand knowledge of investing in AI companies in the 1980s. If it weren't for FTC rules and the rules of this forum, I'd be more than happy to take everyone's money who wants to invest in AI today with a guarantee that they'd get similar results to what nearly everyone got back then. :D (No, don't PM me about this.) Guarantee? LOL! Well, nearly everyone lost all their money. Some aspects of AI technology have become ubiquitous; every database management system has some form of height balanced trees which were first developed for use in chess playing programs. I could simply buy shares in bankrupt oil companies, claiming that they were using AI technology to manage their data. Then, again, there's the plot of Me...
by ourbrooks
Sun May 22, 2016 1:21 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?
Replies: 59
Views: 7013

Re: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?

As I said in my early post, AI ain't new. Well, what about self-driving cars? Self-driving cars aren't all that different from mobile robots which navigate visually; here's a review of work in that area: http://dmi.uib.es/~fbonin/survey.pdf Note how old some of the references are. Why are self-navigating cars possible now when they weren't earlier? There's a combination of factors. One is simply that computers have gotten faster and smaller. The computing power for the image processing needed for navigation systems now fits into a 20 lb box; in 1990 it would have weighed more than the car. Another factor is market size. Google's system depends on highly accurate maps. Google already has a system in place to gather this mapping data, built o...
by ourbrooks
Sat May 21, 2016 6:42 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?
Replies: 59
Views: 7013

Re: How do I invest in artificial intelligence?

Invest in Symbolics and Thinking Macines. Symbolics started building Lisp machines for use in Artificial Intelligence in 1981. Thinking Machines was founded in 1983 to build highly parallel computers for use in artificial intelligence applications. Of course, the problem is that both of these companies didn't even make it as far as Y2K. Artificial Intelligence technologies have been around a long, long time. They were once the darlings of the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration. These technologies received a great deal of commercial investment in the early 1980s; none of them achieved any great commercial success. What has changed since then? What have the major breakthroughs been? Not much really. Probably the b...
by ourbrooks
Thu May 19, 2016 7:37 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Ok to have 2 separate RMDs?
Replies: 9
Views: 1355

Re: Ok to have 2 separate RMDs?

If it's TIAA Traditional, what you would have to do to put the funds into an IRA is withdraw the funds from TIAA Traditional and then deposit them in the IRA. The money will no longer be in TIAA Traditional and will have to be invested in whatever options the IRA offers. Depending on the terms of Dad's plan, the withdrawal might have to be done over 10 years.

Another option is take the funds out of the TIAA Traditional as lifetime stream of payments directly to Mom. No need to roll over to an IRA. No RMDs since life annuities are considered to satisfy the RMD requirements.
by ourbrooks
Thu May 19, 2016 5:35 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Magic Android TV box
Replies: 3
Views: 876

Re: Magic Android TV box

You haven't given us enough details about which particular Magic Android box this is. If it's like the ones I found in a search, there's nothing special about them. All they are are small computers which hook to an external monitor and run the Android operating system, like most smart phones, except that they require an Internet connection, either hardwired or via Wi-Fi. All of the apps which provide content are just ordinary Android apps, like the Netflix app, so the question is, how much are you tied to cable TV only channels or would your entertainment needs be satisfied by content available over the Internet? It used to be the case that there was a lot of exclusively cable content. Not so much any more. For example, HBO is available ove...
by ourbrooks
Thu May 19, 2016 11:46 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Starting Point For Navigating Through Medicare Maze
Replies: 19
Views: 2439

Re: Starting Point For Navigating Through Medicare Maze

If you want to continue using the doctors and hospitals you have been using, check carefully which plans/supplements cover them. In the area in which I live, many medical care providers don't even take Medicare patients. You may want to consider a Medicare Advantage plan simply for their provider networks. The converse is also true. Some medicare advantage plans are terrible and providers don't take them. You can't trust the insurance company lists of networks 100% either as they do not update them properly. I didn't intend to imply that every Medicare Advantage plan had a good network. Obviously, if a Medicare Advantage plan has a poor provider network, then it doesn't make sense to sign up with them to find providers! If you're intereste...
by ourbrooks
Wed May 18, 2016 7:10 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Starting Point For Navigating Through Medicare Maze
Replies: 19
Views: 2439

Re: Starting Point For Navigating Through Medicare Maze

If you want to continue using the doctors and hospitals you have been using, check carefully which plans/supplements cover them. In the area in which I live, many medical care providers don't even take Medicare patients. You may want to consider a Medicare Advantage plan simply for their provider networks.
by ourbrooks
Wed May 18, 2016 7:05 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Pride in no inheritance to kids?
Replies: 233
Views: 11488

Re: Pride in no inheritance to kids?

There are some who feel that they've already given their kids their legacy up front by bringing them up under comfortable conditions and paying for their educations and that their financial responsibilities ended when the children were able to support themselves. The parents would now like to feel free to spend what's left on themselves.

On the other extreme, some posters on this forum have expressed a desire to give to the children while the parents are still alive. Their goal is also to leave no estate because they've given their money away while they were alive.
by ourbrooks
Tue May 17, 2016 4:43 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Thinking of moving to SC or TX
Replies: 31
Views: 6083

Re: Thinking of moving to SC or TX

And water is going to be an even larger issue in the growth dynamics since Austin and San Antonio depend on the Edwards Aquafer ground water which is being sucked out faster than any replenishing can ever happen... It took thousands of years to put that water in there and it is coming out faster than ever... Thank you for the excellent guidance on Texas for the Austin and San Antonio area. How much of a concern is the water situation there? I want to move somewhere where my kids will grow up and have grand kids that will hopefully stick around. I'm Abraham searching for a promised land basically :P But if water will be a serious problem then maybe this area is not a good idea long term. Are these concerns scare mongering, or do they have r...
by ourbrooks
Mon May 16, 2016 8:30 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Stock Quesiton: AAPL or FB?
Replies: 21
Views: 4315

Re: Stock Quesiton: AAPL or FB?

Anybody remember Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)? How about Compaq?
Of course, everyone agreed that Adobe would go out of business after Microsoft announced TrueType.
Remember when Nokia was far ahead of everyone else when it came to cell phones?

Predicting the future of technology companies is hard work.
by ourbrooks
Sun May 15, 2016 5:37 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Long Term Care Insurance or Not?
Replies: 41
Views: 4191

Re: Long Term Care Insurance or Not?

No question you have more than enough. The most expensive form of long term care is nursing home care. Most people's stay in nursing homes before death is 6 months. Even at Connecticut rates, that's only $70,000. A very few people who suffer from some form of senile dementia have much longer stays but, with an income of $136,000 and that much in the bank, you could afford to stay decades in a nursing home, even as rapidly as rates are increasing.

Worst case, you might have to be moved to a nursing home in Texas outside of Houston or Dallas. That will cut your costs to only $49,000 a year. Even at 3% cost increase per year, you could stay there until you are 101 and still not exceed just your pension income.
by ourbrooks
Sun May 15, 2016 4:06 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Decision time - supplement pension, or not?
Replies: 12
Views: 1499

Re: Decision time - supplement pension, or not?

You are dealing with two, very different options here. The first of them depends on how long you live. If you live for 30 years, the "years of service" option will return $120,000 total. That's actually close to a 6.9% rate of return since you'd be getting most of the money long before the 30 years. If you die the day you start your pension, the return is zero. (If you know Excel, the RATE function is one to get started with; a more precise, actuarial calculation requires the use of mortality tables.) In general, private pensions pay more than purchased annuities; immediateannuities.com gives only a 5.28% payout rate, so if you want a life annuity, the pension is a good deal. The period certain options don't depend on how long you...
by ourbrooks
Sun May 15, 2016 1:41 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Asset Allocation 1 year in advance?
Replies: 4
Views: 650

Re: Asset Allocation 1 year in advance?

Don't worry about it. The goal of asset allocation is to balance volatility against returns; the more bonds, the less volatility but also the lower the returns. If your asset allocation went from 60/40 to 63/37, would you scream "oh how awful, my portfolio has become far too volatile?" Probably not. In fact, some people use rebalancing bands; if their target is 60/40, they don't rebalance until they reach 65/35 or 55/45. Most people only rebalance once a year, so if this year, you'd bought too much fixed income, you could buy less over the year to get back to your target.
by ourbrooks
Sun May 15, 2016 10:10 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Living with the 4% Rule
Replies: 19
Views: 3397

Re: Living with the 4% Rule

My understanding of the 4% rule is as follows. Do you see it differently on any point(s)? 3. You should fund a savings account from the proceeds of the 4% for large expenses that don't recur on an annual basis, like a new car, home remodeling, and special trips, etc. No fair hitting the portfolio that is generating the 4%! Bad idea. Effectively, what you are doing is shifting your asset allocation from stocks/bonds to cash. Instead, just take less than 4% each year and leave the money in your investment account until the point of the lump sum expenditure. More generally, you should not be funding your essential expenses - health insurance, taxes, basic food, etc. - from your investment portfolio. Instead, these should be covered by Social ...
by ourbrooks
Sat May 14, 2016 2:35 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Best withdrawal strategy?
Replies: 16
Views: 2636

Re: Best withdrawal strategy?

If you refill buckets annually, then the strategy in Kitches' article is numerically equivalent to choosing, arbitrarily, some fixed asset allocation, e.g., if you do the buckets, but calculate an overall allocation, you get something like 60/40. The difference is that the bucket approach actually has a rationale, based on volatility of asset classes, behind it, in contrast to just choosing some pair of numbers out of the blue. If you don't refill buckets annually and spend down the bond buckets first, you get a rising glidepath strategy, e.g., your percentage of stocks in your overall portfolio increases as you age. This is the opposite of "age in bonds." Wade Pfau and Kitches have shown that, contrary to popular opinion, rising ...
by ourbrooks
Fri May 13, 2016 7:25 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Best withdrawal strategy?
Replies: 16
Views: 2636

Re: Best withdrawal strategy?

A related Michael Kitces article: https://www.kitces.com/blog/are-retirement-bucket-strategies-an-asset-allocation-mirage/ " ...Which means in reality, the bucket strategy ends out producing substantively similar asset allocations as a systematic withdrawal strategy..." The strategy Kitches is talking about is one with different buckets for different intervals of retirements; it's independent of market performance. Strategy B is not the same; it looks at market performance to determine which asset class to sell. It's very similar to rebalancing in which take money proportionately out of both asset classes but then you sell from the best performing class. There are lots of other possibilities. Not all of them maintain a fixed asse...
by ourbrooks
Fri May 13, 2016 5:58 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: stocks benefiting most from low oil prices
Replies: 15
Views: 1812

Re: stocks benefiting most from low oil prices

How sure are you about your premises? Fracking is not new technology; hydraulic fracturing has been available commercially since the 1950s and horizontal drilling since the 1980s. By 1990, George P. Mitchell had demonstrated that fracking could be used cost effectively commercially. Why did the fracking boom take so long to start? What happened in 2008 that kicked it off? One of the many factors contributing to the fracking bubble was that most of the landowners did not know the value of the oil underneath their land and leased it at relatively low rates. How likely is that to happen again? A fracked well costs 40% more to drill than a conventional well and produces for about a quarter as long. Right now, many of the wells drilled in 2008 a...
by ourbrooks
Thu May 12, 2016 4:00 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: With Guyton Klinger I"m rich
Replies: 8
Views: 2012

Re: With Guyton Klinger I"m rich

VPW doesn't come anywhere close to leaving zero at death with no heirs; for example, it says that at age 89, you should take 10.7% of your balance, so, if you die before age 90, you've left 89.3%. That's pretty far from zero. The only vehicle that guarantees zero left at death and that you'll never run out of money before you die is a life annuity, such as Social Security or an SPIA. On the other hand, I've never talked to anyone who has died and left money on the table who complained about it, so leaving exactly zero might not be your highest priority. Let me suggest instead the following strategy: Figure out which of your expenses are basic, such as health insurance, taxes, critical house repairs, etc. Make sure that Social Security/SPIA ...
by ourbrooks
Tue May 10, 2016 4:36 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Stock Quesiton: AAPL or FB?
Replies: 21
Views: 4315

Re: Stock Quesiton: AAPL or FB?

I'm surprised that AMZN isn't on your list. Unbeknownst to most people who order stuff through them, they are the largest Cloud services company; Apple's Cloud services are mostly Amazon! What they're doing with warehousing/delivery services is also impressive and, really, still in the early stages. Perhaps, they'll move into all of the old Best Buy stores and deliver what Best Buy should have done, a completely integrated Internet/bricks-and-mortar shopping experience in which you can look at something in the store and have it delivered to your house before you arrive back home. For something completely different, I'm impressed with the reinvention of General Electric. In these days of services and consumer electronics as the hot areas, th...
by ourbrooks
Mon May 09, 2016 5:39 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Thinking of moving to SC or TX
Replies: 31
Views: 6083

Re: Thinking of moving to SC or TX

Wow. Great information from everyone! We are going to adjust our upcoming trip to the Carolinas based on your feedback (nix Columbia, spend some more time in NC). As far as TEXAS, we are attracted to two areas so far: 1. Hill Country/San Antonio/Austin 2. Houston area Just how bad is the traffic? I am concerned that the population density is overwhelming. I think a decent idea would be to buy a house in the Hill Country and then commute to either San Antonio or Austin. .... We homeschool, so schools are not an issue. However, we want to live in an area with strong family foundations. The sound you can't hear is my hysterical laughter in the background. Austin is growing at about 3% a year; in 10 years, it'll be one third larger. Traffic is...
by ourbrooks
Sun May 08, 2016 12:27 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Anybody have success reducing memory overhead on windows computers?
Replies: 22
Views: 3342

Re: Anybody have success reducing memory overhead on windows computers?

There is a high probability that at least one of your problems is the Background Intelligent Transfer Service. It's used to download Windows updates but it can be used in other ways to download files, so just turning off Window Update won't fix the problem. The cache can become corrupted and when this happens, it may produce the symptoms you're seeing.

http://pureinfotech.com/reset-windows-u ... -installs/ The instructions are for Windows 10, not 7, but the instructions about deleting the cache are the same.

Reboot after blowing away the cache and turn Windows Update back on. It should start downloading updates without increasing memory.
by ourbrooks
Wed May 04, 2016 6:08 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Considering buying my own modem
Replies: 43
Views: 5449

Re: Considering buying my own modem

bengal22 wrote:
runner9 wrote:Did this nearly 2 years ago, found a modem on ebay. Time Warner tech support talked me though setup, no issues at all.
My understanding is that if you have a land line through Time Warner you have to use their modem. It is a hidden cost of bundling a land line with your package.
If I correctly read the Time Warner site, they say you can buy your own modem and still keep your telephone service http://www.timewarnercable.com/en/suppo ... modem.html
by ourbrooks
Mon May 02, 2016 7:42 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Near-Horizon College Costs -- How to Invest
Replies: 15
Views: 1930

Re: Near-Horizon College Costs -- How to Invest

Be very wary of buying your kids more expensive college educations than they want or need. If your child ends up being in the bottom third of a freshman class, either they'll have to change their study habits big time or they'll end up going out where they came in, with a GPA that's in the bottom third. In addition to how this might make your kid feel, graduate schools and companies aren't really great at adjusting for the quality of the school when they look at GPAs. National Instruments wants a 3.2 GPA; a 2.9, even from a really great school means that the HR department won't even send out your kid's application for review. Your kid is best off at a school at which they can do well academically. As earlier posters have written, keep an op...
by ourbrooks
Sat Apr 30, 2016 6:30 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: How about a 6% flexible distribution schedule?
Replies: 14
Views: 3812

Re: How about a 6% flexible distribution schedule?

I have often thought something like this makes sense as long as you have your core expenses covered by SS, pension, annuity, etc. That's a key tenet of flexible expenditures. You can't be flexible about your health insurance, your utility bills or your taxes; these need to be covered by steady, preferable inflation adjusting, sources of income. If you were intending to cover these things by 4% annual withdrawals from your investment portfolio, you might sleep better and live longer if you buy annuities to cover these expenses. The only things you can afford to be flexible about are discretionary expenditures, ones that, if necessary, you could do with it. If that really is the case, then it doesn't matter what rate you withdraw at. Suppose...
by ourbrooks
Thu Apr 28, 2016 6:27 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Help getting out of a tiaa traditional
Replies: 22
Views: 1941

Re: Help getting out of a tiaa traditional

None of the Fidelity funds can come anywhere near close to TIAA Traditional. TIAA Traditional has the property that your balance never goes down, regardless of whether interest rates go up or down. Money market funds are like that but none of them are paying even 1/10th as much as TIAA Traditional. Livesoft claims that TIAA Traditional has about the returns of an intermediate term bond fund, but with none of the volatility. Hold on to it and, if you can, increase your contributions.
by ourbrooks
Thu Apr 28, 2016 2:33 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Visiting Austin TX
Replies: 14
Views: 2122

Re: Visiting Austin TX

Start downing the allergy pills now. There is something in the air there that just knocks me out. The allergies don't really stop in March; right now, pecan pollen is peaking and then there's the mold due to the recent rainfall. Which is worst, the allergies or the traffic? If you're staying downtown, don't count on leaving downtown by car between 3:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. The rest of the time the traffic is just slow, especially with the MOPAC construction, not mostly at a stand still. There used to be some pretty good music in the bars along 6th street but the housing prices have gotten so high that many of the musicians can no longer live in Austin. During the middle of the day, you might want to drive out to Loop 360 and Bee Caves to look a...
by ourbrooks
Mon Apr 11, 2016 3:55 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Wifi Booster
Replies: 22
Views: 2920

Re: Wifi Booster

You say you bought a new computer. Is the old computer still running and does it use a Wi-Fi connection? If they're both running at once and they're near each other, the problem may be interference. Even if the connections seem to be on different channels, on the 2.4 Ghz band, the channels overlap. If both computers are connected at the same time, try turning one off and see if that improves things. Then, either leave it off or move it as far away from the other computer as you can.
by ourbrooks
Sun Mar 27, 2016 7:04 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Predicting stock market returns accurately?
Replies: 52
Views: 5651

Re: Predicting stock market returns accurately?

You should read the same author's subsequent post, entitled "Valuation and Stock Market Returns: Adventures in Curve Fitting," which begins: The title, “The Single Greatest Predictor of Future Stock Market Returns”, was something of an intentional exaggeration, chosen not only to draw attention to an out-of-the-box (and, in my opinion, useful) way of thinking about equity returns, but also to take a subtle jab at commonly-cited valuation metrics. The title was not meant to be taken literally. He (I'm assuming based on the pseudonym) endorses many of the criticisms that have been mentioned in the thread, and as you might gather from the title and quote, he doesn't think you should take his model (or any of the other models) overly...
by ourbrooks
Thu Mar 24, 2016 9:04 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Predicting stock market returns accurately?
Replies: 52
Views: 5651

Re: Predicting stock market returns accurately?

QuietWealth, I agree, I read the axis on the chart incorrectly. A corrected interpretation is that when people hold a lower percentage of stocks, they tend to buy more and prices go up and vice versa. 1975 would have been a good time to go into the market, given the relatively low percentage of equities held. The other points still hold though. It is the desire to hold stocks which determines future prices, not valuations per se. I strongly suspect that the results will be very good a decade from now as well. There's a model behind it, not just random data picking. To get very different results, the behavior of investors would suddenly have to change so that there was no relationship between market performance and the percentage of equities...
by ourbrooks
Thu Mar 24, 2016 6:40 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Predicting stock market returns accurately?
Replies: 52
Views: 5651

Re: Predicting stock market returns accurately?

FWIW, Bogle repeatedly in books and interviews talks about valuations and uses the kind of Gordon's Equation modeling to predict future returns that is covered in the article, formulated here as Total Return = Price Return from P/E Multiple Change + Price Return from Earnings Growth (Realized if P/E Multiple Were to Stay Constant) + Dividend Return Bogle refers to price return from p/e multiple change as "speculative return." See here for example. The article proposes looking and decomposing returns in terms of (change in) aggregate investor asset allocation and total assets. I thought it was an interesting idea when I first saw it and haven't much seen others comment on it, which is a shame as the results at least warrant a seco...
by ourbrooks
Sat Mar 19, 2016 1:19 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: How long to plan for sequence of return risk?
Replies: 8
Views: 1528

Re: How long to plan for sequence of return risk?

There's no absolute answer. 1. After a stock market drop of 10% or more, on average, it's taken 3 years to recover. 2. After the 1929 stock market crash, it took 25 years to recover. It also matters a great deal when in retirement the downturn happens. If it happens in the first five years, you end up spending money which would otherwise grow to fund future retirement. That same down period after 25 years of retirement will have almost no effect; by then, you've probably actually got more than you started with, even after all of the withdrawals. There's some evidence that a "bonds first" withdrawal strategy actually gives slightly better odds of making your money last because you withdraw from bonds, not stocks in your early retir...
by ourbrooks
Wed Mar 16, 2016 9:10 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: SPIAs and safe withdrawal rates
Replies: 18
Views: 3229

Re: SPIAs and safe withdrawal rates

I also cringe when SPIAs are compared to bonds. SPIAs are insurance, not an investment. Not buying them because you can't get your money back is like not buying car insurance because you can't get your money back for past periods of coverage. There have been some recent studies by Wade Pfau in which he's shown that by using SPIAs to fund essential expenses, you can leave your equity investments untouched and growing for longer. It would seem logical that a "bonds first" spending scheme would do the same thing, but the mortality credits give SPIAs an advantage. The problem with VPW, or any scheme which computes withdrawals as a percentage of portfolios is the your withdrawals can change substantially as a result of market fluctuati...
by ourbrooks
Mon Mar 14, 2016 5:26 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: SPIAs and safe withdrawal rates
Replies: 18
Views: 3229

Re: SPIAs and safe withdrawal rates

To add to the other good comments, the rate you're getting for an annuity is for a fixed payout that never increases throughout your life. (There are inflation adjusted annuities, but for a 55 year old currently, the payout is more like 1%.) The "safe withdrawal rate" is just for the first year amount; every year, the amount is adjusted upward for inflation. The amounts are not even comparable.

Also, a rough formula for SPIA payouts is 1/remaining-life-expectancy + 1/2 10-year-Tbill rate. Given that T bills are just about 2% now, it means that almost all of the payout is mortality credits so if you subtract them out, the payout rate is actually around 1%.
by ourbrooks
Thu Mar 10, 2016 6:43 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Concierge medicine Worth It????
Replies: 317
Views: 46603

Re: Concierge medicine Worth It????

Perhaps, I should have edited my post to say "you will certainly want to continue to purchase health insurance coverage in addition to the concierge coverage." Concierge coverage is a cost above and beyond the basic costs of health insurance. It's like purchasing an upgraded seat on an airline. From the MDVIP website: Most PPO, POS and HMO health insurance plans are compatible with your membership in an MDVIP-affiliated practice. We will be happy to discuss your specific health plan with you. Your annual fee is for a wellness program that is generally not covered by insurance. You will still need health insurance to cover all other healthcare visits unrelated to your wellness program, including office visits, hospital stays and vi...
by ourbrooks
Thu Mar 10, 2016 4:56 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Concierge medicine Worth It????
Replies: 317
Views: 46603

Re: Concierge medicine Worth It????

One of the things to worry about is what happens if you need either a specialist or hospital care since your concierge relationship covers neither. Also, drugs would not typically be covered. You probably want to purchase health insurance in addition to the concierge coverage. One of the issues you will then have to face is how much of your concierge expenses can be claimed as deductible for the policy. Another issue is whether your concierge physician could still manage your care if you are admitted to a hospital and whether they would be willing to consider hospital care as part of the original concierge agreement. The common situation which results in physicians being overscheduled is that they have become part of an organization which t...
by ourbrooks
Mon Mar 07, 2016 11:57 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: new gas range + convection oven, is it all that?
Replies: 14
Views: 1657

Re: new gas range + convection oven, is it all that?

A convection oven is just a regular oven with a fan to circulate the air. The ones I've used offer you a choice; some things want only bottom heat and cook better on the conventional setting. Worse case, the fan breaks and you decide not to repair it, you can still use the oven as a conventional oven. Convection cooking seems to reduce cooking time by 30% on many things but you need to be careful not to burn things.

$900? Why so much? There are decent convection ovens out there for $650. More expensive stoves tend to have more powerful burners but you need large pots to go with them; otherwise the heat just goes up the sides. Also, they tend to have fancier electronics, including things like temperature probes.
by ourbrooks
Sat Mar 05, 2016 5:05 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Is TIAA the opposite of Bogle? Massive confusion- help please
Replies: 32
Views: 4104

Re: Is TIAA the opposite of Bogle? Massive confusion- help please

Formally speaking, there is no way to avoid annuitization of your TIAA Traditional balance. The way you take money out of TIAA Traditional is via a (drumroll) Transfer Payout Annuity!

There is also no requirement that you withdraw from your TIAA Traditional account when you retire, although you will have to include the value of the account in your RMD calculations. There's even an option for TIAA to automatically withdraw your RMD percentage each year.
by ourbrooks
Fri Mar 04, 2016 5:14 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Is TIAA the opposite of Bogle? Massive confusion- help please
Replies: 32
Views: 4104

Re: Is TIAA the opposite of Bogle? Massive confusion- help please

The Bernanke portfolio is very understandable: 50% of contributions to TIAA Traditional and 50% to CREF Stock fund. Why is it called the Bernanke portfolio? When Ben Bernanke was chairman of the Federal Reserve he was required to disclose his holdings. As part of his Princeton retirement plan, he had holdings in TIAA Traditional and CREF Stock fund, but not any of the other TIAA/CREF funds.

From the disclosures, it's not possible to determine the percentages of each, but long before Vanguard was founded and TIAA started providing advisors, 50/50 was the recommended percentage so that's what Bernanke may have been doing and he's never seen fit to change things much.
by ourbrooks
Wed Feb 24, 2016 6:25 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: What withdrawal % are you planning on?
Replies: 89
Views: 9732

Re: What withdrawal % are you planning on?

Taylor,
Why did you decide to take out 4% a year? Why didn't you decide to take out 7%? Seven percent would have given you much more to spend on vacations, etc. Why did you choose such a low number?