Bogleheads.org

22twain

Yesterday I took a mini-roadtrip to a hobby show about 130 miles away. The trip out took about 3.5 hours along rural roads and through small towns, with lunch along the way so as to avoid the expensive convention-center food concessions. Then a couple of hours checking out dealers' displays. The tri...

22twain

ETFS have to many fees Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF has an expense ratio of 0.04%, and no transaction fees if you hold it at Vanguard. That's $120 per year on your $300K. That's about as low as you can get except maybe for a basket of individual stocks (which have no expense ratio) if you can fi...

22twain

A lot of BHs seem to struggle with the concept of filling their previous working hours with their own creative agenda. A thread like this may give them some practical examples of how to fill their day. Or it may reinforce their idea that people in retirement fill their day doing boring things. As o...

22twain

When I was 26, I was halfway through my Ph.D. studies. I didn't start saving "officially" for retirement until I became eligible for a 403(b) plan during my first teaching job after grad school, at the ripe old age of 30. I retired 33 years later. My wife, also a college professor, had a similar car...

22twain

livesoft wrote: ↑
Mon Jun 11, 2018 10:02 am
Tidied house for the maids who come this afternoon.

Uh... aren't the maids supposed to do that?

22twain

Strong desire to move from the N/E (PA) to the South and find a nice college town where we can walk to events ... and work up a nice sweat, at least during late spring through early fall. :wink: My wife and I worked for many years at a small-town small college in the South and still live there in r...

22twain

Why isn't government allowing Roth IRA contributors same amount as employer 401K ?\ If people could contribute to either a personal IRA or a 401K with the same (total) limit, which would seem to be logical, it would probably lead to a loss of income for companies that manage 401Ks. Those companies ...

22twain

She qualifies for full social security soon, and the amount she will get, even accounting for the cost of Medicare, will cover her expenses two times over. She also has a separate pension coming that, if added to the Social Security, makes her monthly expenses be covered 2.4x over. For people in si...

22twain

Welcome! First let's try a big-picture feasibility estimate. Adding up all your assets, and rounding up a smidgen, I get $600K. Have you heard of the "4% rule of thumb?" It says that if your assets are invested "reasonably", you can start by withdrawing 4% in the first year, then adjust the dollar a...

22twain

I am a bargain seeker, not a timer. I'll buy winter clothes in late spring and swimming suits in late fall when they go on sale. Because of the reliably cyclical nature of seasonal weather, you can count on winter clothes being cheaper in late spring, etc. You can't count on anything with stocks. T...

22twain

It didn't use to be this way. It started doing this sometime in the not-too-distant past, probably a bug introduced in an update.

22twain

My wife starts collecting SS benefits next year, and I plan to follow five years later. Both at age 70, to maximize the income stream. We're fortunate in that (a) our combined SS will at that point cover our current basic expenses plus taxes on SS and our RMDs, plus my Medicare premiums (she's alrea...

22twain

If you could invest in two bonds: one with 3% interest and another with 5% interest, then you aren't going to pay as much for the 3% bond. The price you pay will be discounted to make up for the fact that it pays less interest than other bonds available to be purchased. When you buy the bond also m...

22twain

I believe you shouldn't even spend time pondering this until you actually visit Phoenix. You may love it. You may hate it. If you have enough time to visit there before your wife has to decide on the job offer, and of course if you can get time off from your job to do it, I would definitely conside...

22twain

2. How is the idea of spreading the investment over 36 months (to average ups and downs) and invest in several securities ($250k/36 = ~$6,945/month invested) As discussed before, dollar cost averaging is probably statistically more likely to net you less in the long run, but if it makes you feel mo...

22twain

If you're planning this far ahead, you should have some time to learn some language. Not enough to be fluent but enough that you can make an attempt and natives will switch over to English to be nice to you. it also helps to know enough to be able to decipher maps, restaurant menus, common street s...

22twain

I just have no idea if there are any actual mutual fund or ETF constructions that offer this tax deferral. And if not, then why not. Mutual funds/ETFs are required by law to distribute dividends in the US. In many tax-deferred retirement plans like 401k's and 403b's, you can find mutual-fund-like t...

22twain

I see from a previous post that you have a public-sector job with a defined-benefit pension plan. Do you also have a tax-deferred retirement savings plan like a 403(b) or a 457 plan, and if yes, are you contributing the maximum amount to it yet?

22twain

i would imagine with your high paying jobs that you are both talented and have stellar resumes that would be super competitive anywhere in the country. do you have family anywhere else? anywhere else you would prefer to live? is it possible to work similar jobs in smaller cities? I would say that t...

22twain

cjcerny wrote: ↑
Wed May 30, 2018 4:15 pm
should I let probate handle it

Has an executor been officially named for the estate? I would think that person would have the authority to get the necessary information from the bank.

22twain

What's "Slavic" about this portfolio? I don't see anything Russian, Polish, etc.

22twain

BeBH65 wrote: ↑
Tue May 29, 2018 12:26 pm
Apparantly it is the sixth biggest position in VOO see morningstar

And the seventh biggest in VTI, at 1.33%.

22twain

pomidoro wrote: ↑
Tue May 29, 2018 10:21 am
(10-12x annual expenses)

Total expenses or residual expenses after Social Security and/or pension? Will you be old enough to collect from either of those, when you plan to retire?

22twain

Bogleheads (at least the ones who post on this forum) are skewed towards the high end of the income and net-worth distributions, with correspondingly lower percentages of their income coming from SS in retirement.

22twain

Grt2bOutdoors wrote: ↑
Tue May 29, 2018 6:10 am
Upon retirement TIAA will annuitize some or all of the investment value of fund [and send you a monthly check.

I would rather say "can annuitize" instead of "will annuitize", because as far as I know, it's completely up to you whether to annuitize a CREF variable-annuity account.

22twain

If I needed to sell stock funds in my taxable accounts, I would simultaneously exchange total bond for that stock fund in my 401k. One can argue that it's not necessary to do that second step immediately. Suppose your total portfolio is 50% stocks and 50% bonds. You decide to sell 4% from your taxa...

22twain

I don't have cable, or even decent streaming because of a puny Internet connection. But at now that we're at the finals I can watch them on ABC for free via the antenna on our roof. Go Cavs!

22twain

TravelforFun wrote: ↑
Sat May 26, 2018 10:37 pm

Where are the dividends? Try using instead of the S&P index values, a Morningstar growth chart, which includes reinvesting dividends, for e.g. VFINX, Vanguard's S&P 500 index fund.

22twain

toomuchRE wrote: ↑
Fri May 25, 2018 10:11 am
Now or within 4 months..

You bought a house yesterday, right?

22twain

Right now our expenses average about 50k/year (that includes mortgage). Does it also include taxes? an income of 170k (single income earner) In retirement, how much tax you pay will depend on the nature of your income and how much of it is taxable. In our case, about half of our savings is in tax-d...

22twain

each bank has a purpose (holding a mortgage, deposit account for tenants, etc) So you own rental property? In that case it might be helpful to keep your rental income and expenses separate from your salaries from work and your household expenses. Have all your rental-related stuff flow through one ...

22twain

It just occurred to me: Anyone planning decades into the future, who assumes that Social Security benefits will be cut around 2034, as must happen according to current law, should also assume that the current individual tax rates and brackets will expire in 2024 (IIRC) and return to last year’s setu...

22twain

[about powerline adapters] There's also some worry about containing your network to your house, as your power plugs are directly connected to the telephone pole, your neighbors, etc... and you hope the power transformers isolate your network traffic. Each adapter has a password configured in it, and...

22twain

If the covered person dies before the life expectancy, the insurance co wins. If the covered person lives beyond life expectancy the insurance co loses. Actually, I think the winners are mostly the covered people who live beyond the life expectancy. I strongly suspect that the "cut" that the insura...

22twain

the "RE" part of FIRE refers to "Retiring Early", often quite early. Not sure if that is what you are contemplating According to a previous thread , the OP is contemplating retiring at 57-58. Somewhat early, but not super early. Maybe use an average withdrawal rate of 3.5% instead of 4% for back-of...

22twain

For example if your annual spending in $80K you needs $2M to consider a FIRE retirement. To illustrate dbr's comments with an explicit example: if you will receive $40K per year total in Social Security and pension, then you need to cover only $80K - $40K = $40K from your investments, which accordi...

22twain

On the west side of the river, take the road between West Point and Newburgh that hugs the east side of Storm King Mountain. There's a place where you can pull off and enjoy spectacular views up and down the Hudson River.

22twain

Silk McCue wrote: ↑
Thu May 17, 2018 3:09 pm
On a lighter note:

I would do wheat conversions to bread and eat the gains.

Or do a different kind of conversion, and drink them.

22twain

Does home equity count towards net worth? As far as funding your retirement is concerned, you should count home equity only if you plan to tap into it to help pay other expenses if necessary. For example, you might plan to sell your (expensive) house and move to a LCOL area where houses aren't as e...

22twain

If you have no channels that are actually in the low-VHF band (2-6) (*), look for an antenna that's specialized for high-VHF (7-13) and UHF (14+). Low-VHF requires long antenna elements which increase the weight and susceptibility to wind. A good antenna of this type for long-range reception is the ...

22twain

PFInterest wrote: ↑
Wed May 16, 2018 2:07 pm
Statistically your childrens success is determined by SES

22twain

Where do you have your Roth IRAs, and what are they invested in? The normal philosophy here is to consider all your accounts (except for your emergency fund and/or day-to-day checking account) as a single portfolio. You first decide your asset allocation ("AA"): the overall percentages of domestic s...

22twain

What are the first steps a person should follow when they are beginning? The first thing you should do is take advantage of whatever tax-deferred retirement savings plan your employer has (when you get a "real job", that is.): 401(k), 403(b), etc. Unless you start out making a lot more money that I...

22twain

Implicit in your thinking is, I think, the assumption that equity markets always recover in that time frame. [...] 1966-1981 (or probably until around 1986) they did not do so. 1966-1981 almost exactly covered my days in high school, college and graduate school. When I got my first college-teaching...

22twain

I should not have worded it like that. I should have said that bonds earn significantly less than bonds over a period of time. That sounds tricky. How does that work? ;-) Am I incorrect in saying that bonds tend to under perform equities? Read your first quote again, carefully! :wink: (It's easy to...

22twain

My Roth is completely in Vanguard Total Stock Market Index ETF (VTI), except for $9.70 in cash left over from my most recent purchase because one can't buy fractional shares of an ETF. But it's such a small fraction of the total that I don't lose sleep over it.

22twain

What are 5% rebalance bands? Is it hard to do this consistently. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Rebalancing: When asset classes deviate from their target by a certain absolute percentage. For example, if your target asset allocation is 60% equities and 40% fixed income and your (absolute) rebalanc...

22twain

I do all my retirement planning in current non inflation adjusted numbers. You only have to guess what the future "real" rate of return on your investments will be without inflation. And every few years, adjust your savings target upwards according to the inflation that has actually occurred during...

22twain

Here's a Morningstar growth chart that compares VTSMX (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, blue) with VFINX (Vanguard S&P 500 Index, yellow), both with dividends reinvested, since 1992. VFINX was ahead in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and VTSMX had been ahead by a hair since the early 2010s. http:/...

22twain

I would agree that she would not need snow tires or AWD in the Dayton area. HOWEVER, I would strongly recommend that she has good tires with plenty of tread depth for the few days that there is snow. IAWTP. (I agree with this post, for those who haven't seen this particular acronym before.) I grew ...

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