Bogleheads.org

AllieTB1323

Greatness wrote: ↑
Thu Apr 12, 2018 1:06 pm
Seems Vanguard wants me to sell all my 401k holdings prior to switching. Which, I do not want to do. I do not understand why they make things so hard to do. The ironic part is that all the holdings in the 401k are Vanguard ETFs.

This is a head spinning comment.

AllieTB1323

I have Fidelity Contrafund (ER=0.43%) in my 401(k). About 10% with the rest in indexes. Its fee is about 53% of the total fee. Not sure why I chose it :?: , but "contra" somehow sounds some counter-weight. It has done well and interestingly it is the only one that shows gain :!: , +1.63%, YTD. DW's...

AllieTB1323

Thank you all for the responses :happy My portfolio is majority U.S. Stocks. (mostly large cap), followed by developed international stocks. I was advised to use the $6K to invest in emerging Int'l stock. However wouldn't it be better to split the $6K among other areas instead of just Int'l emergin...

AllieTB1323

TwstdSista wrote: ↑
Sun Apr 08, 2018 9:09 am
Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX), ER 0.74%

This fund did very good for me for years. I recently sold it though, solely because I switched to a pure 3 fund portfolio.

An excellent actively managed fund with good stable management.
DW has held FCNTX in her IRA for years along with Wellington.

AllieTB1323

You do realize your NHMAX is pulling something like a tax free 5.1% yield because of this: From Morningstar: The portfolio can be leveraged up to 30% using inverse floaters, and Miller occasionally uses futures to short U.S. Treasuries, which is a duration-hedging tool. These tools have given the fu...

AllieTB1323

when w@rking, I typically wore decent non-slip shoes in the lab; I had other shoes for general meeting shoes (black or brown) and had higher end when giving presentations/platform sessions in conferences ...and steel-toed shoes for the pilot plant wore through the lab shoes in usually two years but...

AllieTB1323

I just found that for 100k, a 61 yo woman in mn could receive a yearly income of $5724 . This is 5.724% of the 100k. No cola. I would argue for the first 17 1/2 years she is receiving her own money. The average life expectancy of a female in her sixties the USA is about 85 years. That doesn't work ...

AllieTB1323

Lots of responses indicating their kids have no choice in the matter...I'm interpreting this to mean it is strongly encouraged. Pretty hard to force someone to do something they don't want to do. Our two daughters were raised with the expectation they would attend college. It was either college or ...

AllieTB1323

Get some advice before delaying Part B.

This may be of some help:

https://www.medicare.gov/your-medicare- ... nalty.html

AllieTB1323

Before retirement we had automatic contributions for both the retirement accounts and the two taxable accounts. It kept us from over-thinking (market timing) our purchases. DCA rocks!

AllieTB1323

Yup it's a nice problem to have. In our case we had rental and taxable income from investments. Our goal was to pay 100% of the prior year's total taxes in order to avoid a penalty. To do this we bumped up our W-2 withholding and also paid quarterlies.

AllieTB1323

Halfvolley wrote: ↑
Mon Mar 19, 2018 5:23 pm
Kirkland

Nothing wrong with their bourbon. Today my SIL, a bourbon snob had my daughter pickup two bottles of Kirkland's finest. If Costco is out of Buffalo Trace then Kirkland does the job.

AllieTB1323

Knob Creek & Buffalo Trace, we look to see if they are in stock at Costco.

AllieTB1323

DW and I have maybe $40.00 in our wallet/purse gathering dust.

AllieTB1323

We use cash back credit cards for almost all our purchases and have the accounts on autopay so we keep the monthly total cc balance plus an extra 3K as a buffer.

AllieTB1323

Kenkat wrote: ↑
Sun Feb 25, 2018 6:07 pm
I look at my portfolio value at the end of every day the market is open. I do nothing with the information beyond noting how much you can gain or lose in a day and saying “well now that’s interesting”.

+1
We have been doing this too many years to get excited by the daily changes.

AllieTB1323

I am looking to replace 5 windows at my home (Seattle). - 3 windows are large (around 7 ft by 8ft). Each of these window will have 3 sashes (1 fixed picture and 2 open-able sashes) - 2 small windows (around 2 ft by 3 ft). both with two sashes each. I opted for all default options - low e glass, dou...

AllieTB1323

Good for them. I've thrown out lots of worn out llbean clothes - when someone once told me I could turn them in for new clothes I told them that was ridiculous as I felt I got my money's worth out of them. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Ditto and it helps me sleep well a...

AllieTB1323

miles monroe wrote: ↑
Wed Feb 07, 2018 3:08 pm
the ONLY reason i have a brick and mortar bank account is for the safe deposit box.

+1 and even then we use a credit union. We closed our Washington Mutual/Chase bank after we finished paying off our mortgage.

AllieTB1323

AZAttorney11 wrote: ↑
Mon Feb 05, 2018 4:04 pm
Couldn't access Vanguard, but no problems using Fidelity. Sigh...

Yup and this is the reason we maintain parallel accounts at both houses.

AllieTB1323

We went from AT&T to the T-Mobile geezer plan and are happy with it. T-Mobile's unlimited cellular data has been a money saver. We haven't noticed any difference in the coverage area.

AllieTB1323

2008 Honda Accord with the 3.5 L VTEC engine. It's quiet, comfortable and almost as quick as my garage queen a 1994 Corvette coupe.

AllieTB1323

oldcomputerguy wrote: ↑
Thu Feb 01, 2018 6:26 pm

Dyloot wrote: ↑
Thu Feb 01, 2018 5:23 pm

BlueRidgePro wrote: ↑
Thu Feb 01, 2018 4:44 pm
Don't marry her.
+1
Guess I’m luckier than some; I married her at age 22, and am still happily married to the same woman at age 62.

Ditto, married at 22 and still blissfully married to her some 45 years later.

AllieTB1323

Another Washington resident. When we purchase a major item, say a new heat pump or a new car, our CPA adds the extra sales tax found on the invoice to his calculated amount. If you are remodeling then you should have a sizable sales tax deduction.

AllieTB1323

2017: +14.97% with AA 62/38 and a 10% international exposure.

AllieTB1323

We have a Fido account and buy and hold VG ETFs in our taxable account. The DW moved a her tIRA over to Fido which holds a slug Wellington and there has been zero problems. Her quarterly reinvested dividends show up at the same time Vanguard distributes the proceeds. Other than the trade fee, now at...

AllieTB1323

When DW and I were young and dumb we let an insurance agent into our apartment. As he hit us with his spiel about WL I mentioned what a crappy, expensive deal his product was. He blew up and yelled something about me failing to provide for my wife if I were to die early. My DW said if I passed she'd...

AllieTB1323

Are you the trustee or the successor trustee. Are you the only beneficiary of the trust?

Anyway, first things first; get a copy of the trust documents.

AllieTB1323

I don't think there are any shortcuts, pretty much one at a time systematically. If you only need to find one, binary search might help a tiny bit. You can use another person and a walkie talkie, cell phone, intercom (some cordless phones have one) https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-KX-TG4742B-Answer...

AllieTB1323

Both my wife and I lived in Idaho and still have relatives there. Any road trip from Boise to Missoula will be an adventure. Please be aware of the elevations of the mountain passes. The weather changes quickly. Prepare according. Also from experience, if you are driving from dusk to dawn be on the ...

AllieTB1323

investing1012 wrote: ↑
Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:13 pm
Well that’s because the majority of small business owners fail and they don’t post their bankruptcies on this forum

From our package delivery person we heard some of their drivers have a betting pool on how long new small businesses will last.

AllieTB1323

Construction Equipment rental is a competitive business with many players. Before jumping in, you should look at the competition. A quick Google search turned up national companies such as Home Depot, Sunbelt rental, United rental, etc. What are you and your friend going to offer that they don't? W...

AllieTB1323

This is the amt. of time I was told to expect for an IRA transfer request. "It is easier to change a 'No' to a 'Yes' than the reverse." You are experiencing Marketing 101. It probably won't take that long. Always best to under promise and then over deliver. Vanguard quoted five to six weeks to move...

AllieTB1323

My opinion is that you should have at least two main locations for assets, money holdings, etc. as a precaution against some temporary glitch in access to your assets. That could be anything from an IT fiasco, hacking, suspected fraud on your account, etc. Going beyond that seems unnecessary. It co...

AllieTB1323

We owned a sucessful C-Corp privately held service business for thirty years and always valued it as a net zero in our net worth. Our investments were split 60/40. The rationale was the business at it's worst was worth the salvage value of the office furniture.

AllieTB1323

That is the reason for the question. Dividend tax rates could prove to be lower for say 200K in net profit before salary, 100K in salary and get the rest in dividends after paying payroll, futa/suta, income-tax. Maybe 0% if taxable income is less than 75k if I understood correctly, assuming one can...

AllieTB1323

Both taxable and retirement are split between Fidelity and Vanguard.

AllieTB1323

Had a C-Corp for about 27 years and I took a salary at the upper levels of range for managers in my industry and took the rest a dividends. I also personally owned the building the business occupied and set the rent at the upper level of the local prevailing rent. The rent/dividend question is indus...

AllieTB1323

Our trailer trailer. It is now on consignment at a local dealer. Live and learn.

AllieTB1323

Apple's Numbers. We put maybe 90% of our spending on credit cards. Most of our expenses are reoccurring. Our income is fixed so we are basically running a monthly cash profit and loss.

AllieTB1323

Leave a few dollars in a dormant account for 5 years, and then begrudge the brokerage for their small transfer fee. The sign of an extreme Boglehead. :oops: I agree. Not only was this an extremely unprofitable account. An account closing/transfer fee is the norm for the industry not withstanding Va...

AllieTB1323

mouses wrote: ↑
Tue Sep 05, 2017 9:22 am
And people wonder why I insist on paper statements and keep offline records.

Did anyone explain how the money got "lost"? That would be interesting to know.

Also, it's wise to routinely backup pdfs of the statements and any trade confirmations to the cloud.

AllieTB1323

During the 90's we had our one and only advisor. He had too much our money concentrated in the Munder NetNet B fund. That fund went sky high until it didn't We were caught when the bubble popped. We were lucky to get out with a small profit. We weren't his only victims; other clients were far less l...

AllieTB1323

Use FSITX at Fidelity and BND with a touch of VCIT at VG.

AllieTB1323

To us it was a hair on fire buying opportunity.

AllieTB1323

A mutual fund manager would be in the investing hall of fame if they could beat a comparable index fund by 1% a year over the long term. They also do stock picking as their full time job and have staff to help them. Thinking that you might be the market by a significant percent when you only spend ...

AllieTB1323

It's a bit late for this suggestion now, but for others... DRIVE the car, the exact model, you are considering buying. Drive it for an extended time, not just 10 minutes around the dealership. Take it on bumpy roads, fast highways, etc., for a few hours. Also keep in mind that if one is driving dem...

AllieTB1323

Three credit cards. One, Fidelity Visa is on auto pay the other two I manually schedule the payment two days before the due date. I put everything on the cards which sometimes gives us a larger balance which may or may not affect our credit score. We don't worry because those days are behind us. It'...

AllieTB1323

We have VWINX happy with it. A more "Boglesque" similar fund (or "Sharpesque") might be Life Strategy Moderate Growth VSMGX, which is total market index. Believe performance is a notch above VWINX. In Fidelity I use PONDX as a surrogate which seems to match VWINX Given VWINX is basically 40 : 60 wo...

AllieTB1323

A Fidelity site search for "FIDELITY FREEDOM" will return a list of their target date funds. Don't consider the Fidelity Freedom Funds. They have higher expense ratios. Consider only the Fidelity Freedom Index Funds. They have lower expense ratios. Yup, Fido has about 33 target dated funds of which...

Search found 173 matches