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Finally getting some bounce from TMF when UPRO goes down. Still not nearly enough to recover all the losses, but at least it's not broken entirely.

The most unbelievable part about this is they lasted that long in a double wide in Florida without it being destroyed.

Tax assessment was based on Jan 1 22, and house was valued at $1.2m in Bellevue, WA, so taxes went up 20%. Houses were selling for that much then and continued to rise until around April with one going for 1.4m in the neighborhood. Now we'd be lucky to get $1m based on comps the past 6 months. Hopefully tax assessment for Jan 1 23 is back down.

Do not pay off the student loan until payments are unpaused. It's a 0% loan, so it doesn't get better than that and if forgiveness does happen, you'll kick yourself for paying it.

We'd need to know you purchase price and zip code. I had good luck finding lenders through zillow and bankrate. The numbers were always what was stated during the search or better in some cases.

… I doubt your contract has a clause to get out due to the house not being insurable. Neither here nor there now with the OP’s update, but what I think is the “standard” New Mexico offer agreement has a clause that says the buyer has X days after offer acceptance to obtain satisfactory insurance coverage. If such can’t be obtained, the contract can be terminated with no penalty, as I recall. I’d be shocked if other states’ standard agreements didn’t have something similar. What is X days??? New Mexico? Is this in New Mexico? I think you are stretching....there is no such clause in the standard contract in my (large) state. By all indications...this is in Florida. X days was either 3 or 5 days, as I recall. I presume that the precise number...

A lease can be a good way to ride out the overinflated prices on cars right now. I've leased a couple Hyundais and a Honda and they really don't look too deeply into wear and tear unless you're really abusive.

Popular cars are going to be a lot more expensive to lease though. We generally look for stuff that's been sitting on the lot for a while or has a national lease special. Right now, we have a 21 Sonata at $204 per month for 35 months, nothing down. We sold our old car (16 Corolla) for cash for near what we had bought it for 5 years before to take advantage of the crazy used car prices and got the lease for something bigger. In 3 years when it's up, we'll probably go electric.

Ally has checking accounts. Thanks for the head-up and nudge. I just looked into that a bit and their available services for checking, mobile deposit, and online bill pay have improved considerably since we set up our HYSA there a few years ago. Definitely worth considering now. Transfers are instantaneous. They haven't been for us, and Ally has never promised us otherwise. There's always been a 3-day lag in EFT transfers, and they've never arrived sooner. For example, last month we moved $40K from Ally HYSA to our US Bank checking account. We initiated the transfer on 12/18 and the funds arrived on 12/20, as promised. Regardless, Ally isn't a "standard bank" by any stretch of the generally accepted definition. I ditched Ally bec...

- With 1.4x leverage you didn't need to deleverage at any time since 1929. (The 2007-2009 showdown would have turned 1.4x into 2.3x with no action from your side.) So if I don't deleverage, like you often advocated, then my excess return from leverage should be approximately equal to the equity risk premium (5.55% - 3%) on the leveraged amount (40%) -> 2.55% * 0.4 = 1.02% p.a., or not? How would that reconcile with your result of 0.21% p.a. excess return from the Kelly formula? Kelly Criterion is the portfolio and leverage that maximizes CAGR. That is, no other portfolio beats it in growth over arbitrarily large time periods (thousands of years). For that to be the case, it clearly cannot go bust as it doesn’t matter your CAGR if you have ...

As I said on the budget thread, people in the US spend the lowest amount on food as a % of income of any country in the world. Why people choose to cut pennies in this particular category that is the most important to overall health is beyond me.

What is a lemonaid stand? Is this where injured lemons go to get patched up?

It's crazy to me that people see a family of 4 spending less than 10% of their income on food and saying it's too much. Americans spend way less on food than any other country on Earth and our diets suffer for it. Everyone would be happier and healthier if we spent more on food and less on other things that don't really matter.

Lawrence of Suburbia wrote: ↑Sun Jan 15, 2023 2:30 am I've increased my international exposure significantly over the last year or so. U.S. outperformance can't last forever.

It can't or you don't believe it will? Because it certainly can unless you can see the future.

TheHiker wrote: ↑Wed Jan 04, 2023 11:08 am

corpgator wrote: ↑Wed Jan 04, 2023 10:50 am We bought in Sept 21 in Bellevue, WA for $1 mil. Similar houses in the neighborhood sold for $1.3 to $1.4 mil in the Spring. Since then, prices have steadily declined with a house that sold for $1.2 in early spring reselling for $850k in December- they must have been desperate. Mostly there is no activity, but prices have definitely dropped and mostly due to RSUs getting obliterated.

I am waiting for prices in Bellevue to drop to 500K. Then we move there LOL.

Not going to happen without a time machine. Even with Amazon cutting, Microsoft still has a ton of high paid employees to prop up the market. I still think there's room to drop, just not that far.

We bought in Sept 21 in Bellevue, WA for $1 mil. Similar houses in the neighborhood sold for $1.3 to $1.4 mil in the Spring. Since then, prices have steadily declined with a house that sold for $1.2 in early spring reselling for $850k in December- they must have been desperate. Mostly there is no activity, but prices have definitely dropped and mostly due to RSUs getting obliterated.

Thank you! Merry Christmas and Semper Fi

Some of my colleagues are wondering how "great a deal" is investing in a 401K? We each put away about 67K/year because we own businesses in which we have safe-harbor plans with profit share, deferrals and matching. These plans cost us about 5K in fees every year. We are in 44% tax brackets (fed, CA and NIT). So, by deferring this 67K we are saving 30K in taxes right off the bat. The issue is whether or not this is always the right thing to do assuming our post retirement tax rate declines to 33% combined: -If we are investing our 67K in bonds, REITS or other tax-inefficient vehicles within a 401K then there is no way to "lose money" . The reason being is that the interest or dividends from those investments would be tax...

12/1/22 TMF up 9.8% in 1 day giving hope to those like me who have been buy and hold investors this year. yes it was a good day for my HFEA and for PSLDX. my HFEA strategy is still trailing my benchmark of VT by 33% ytd, but its been as bad as 50%... big TMF days help quite a bit. I haven't been rebalancing this year and watching my portfolio dive. I did start to question whether I should have rebalanced finally at the end of Sept, but even now, UPRO is doing better - up 25% this quarter vs 16% for TMF. I decided I'm not rebalancing until they pause rate hikes when Q1 rebalance time came and I'm sticking to it. Upro is down 54% TYD and TMF 60%, so I'm still pretty close to where I started the year anyone except I've bene DCA'ing into UPRO ...

If I sign up through Market Place for a health plan and I choose to not ask for advanced tax credit (and therefore do not provide tax info), I can still get the right amount of tax credit on my tax return when I file. Is that correct? Thank you. That is true as long as your MAGI is not low enough to get the Cost Sharing Reductions that help to lower your deductibles and copays. Those have to be claimed up front, and can not be recovered when reconciling your taxes later. This is only available if your MAGI is below 250% of FPL. If you are above that, you can wait until tax filing time to get all your tax credits. So what would keep someone from lowballing their expected MAGI to get the cost sharing reductions, with the idea that, if they e...

I'm so glad my employer went away from all the 401k nonsense. I don't know why they have to make it so complicated. Mine now matches 100% up to 50% of the max of the 401k. Everybody gets the same match if they put at least half the 401k. Very simple and no true ups or % changes to worry about throughout the year.

I'd turn off the bonus 401k unless you company matches that one too.

... In my case, I anticipate spending the entire balance of the HSA--I've never opened one before--on dental work, if that matters. Have you considered not spending the entire balance - especially since you are maxing out your 401k? See the BH wiki: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Health_savings_account#How_to_use_the_plan Either way, maxing out the HSA contribution especially in your high tax bracket could be very attractive. Is it a single plan or family coverage? With chronic health issues, are you counting on no unforeseen health costs? It’s a single plan. Are you recommending the HDHP as well? I’ve never had one before but I’m realizing now it’s the better plan for me. Feels strange opting for a super high deductible. In my calculatio...

Here's a calculator that will do the math for you:
viewtopic.php?t=320663

Just eyeballing the numbers though, the HSA is going to come out way ahead at any spending level if you actually contribute to the HSA due to tax savings. The max crossover point is at $3k spend which would give you $3000 + $1170 - $600 = $3570 for the HSA and $1750 + $125 (assuming 10% co-insurance after hitting your deductible) +1490 = $3365. So the HSA is only $205 more but if you contribute the HSA max, ($3250 after the $600 employer contribution), that's another 22%+ (depending on your tax bracket) savings, so the worst the HSA would do is $3000 + $1170 - $600 - $715 tax savings = $2855 or $510 cheaper at the worst.

Not all HSA plans have aggregate deductibles. 2 out of my 3 employers had embedded and it bit me in the ass when I had my son and my wife had hit her out of pocket max for the year then the baby came out and boom, whole other deductible met due to healthcare costs charged to him at the hospital - a lot of them completely BS. My current one has aggregate - which is better depends on running the numbers.

Another vote for fidelity. Hands down the best option if you have a choice.

That’s an almost two week reduction in PTO. I would negotiate that, but only if you sincerely plan to accept the role. Isn't this a remote / work-from-home position? How do they handle "time off"? Sick pay is one thing but if you can work from home, why not work from a vacation home? Can't I take a trip to Italy or Japan and still do my work remotely? I often wonder how this works. Is it wrong to do? Prohibited? This would definitely change my idea of PTO. I don’t know about your situation but remote work is still work. You are generally expected to be as fully productive as and available the same hours for meetings and calls as if you went into an office. Your convenience is not supposed to be an inconvenience or productivity ba...

That’s an almost two week reduction in PTO. I would negotiate that, but only if you sincerely plan to accept the role. Isn't this a remote / work-from-home position? How do they handle "time off"? Sick pay is one thing but if you can work from home, why not work from a vacation home? Can't I take a trip to Italy or Japan and still do my work remotely? I often wonder how this works. Is it wrong to do? Prohibited? This would definitely change my idea of PTO. No, you cannot take a trip to Italy or Japan and still work remotely unless you have a work visa for those countries. You would also owe taxes there depending on how long you worked there. Same goes for working in different states - all have different laws for how long you can ...

*snip* I don’t know about today, but back then WhatsApp only had about 50 people working for it. So now you have to account for 79,500+ employees for the other three sites. those highly paid staff aren't highly paid anymore (relatively speaking, still great vs other professions). compensation in tech is very RSU heavy. with Meta down 70% YTD, pretty much half of their income or more went bye bye. the Meta brain drain is coming... In most big tech companies they simply convert a refresh or signing on bonus from a dollar value to shares. So folks who stick around will be getting something like 4x the shares, and over time it might be extremely profitable. It’s basically how I made my nest egg. I was at a company everyone trashed, mocked us…....

Meta is definitely bloated. They could easily trim staff by 25% and not suffer any issues. There are for instance thousands (yes thousands) of recruiters sitting around making 6 figures doing nothing due to the hiring freeze. The market is dumping them due to the reality labs spending - the ads side is still producing a ton of profit and it's being dumped into something that's not going to be monetized for years. Eventually, they will have to change how they pay employees or people will start to leave. As far as tech being overweight in the indexes, people just need to accept it. Every company is really tech when you boil it down - developing a technology to sell to the rest of the world whether it be Information technology or any other typ...

When I bought my first house my agent was next to useless. I did the searching, I found the house, about all the agent did was open the doors and go through the routine procedure of presenting an offer and processing the paperwork. He definitely didn't deserve a high payout, but I wasn't the one paying so I guess it didn't matter all that much in that instance. I suspect the quality of the average agent would increase if commissions were less. Only the higher volume higher quality agents would be able to make real estate a career, most of the amateurs would decide the payout wasn't worth it and go find another job. You were the one paying. A higher commission means you had to take out a larger loan to pay for the house. Without the extra 6...

KyleAAA wrote: ↑Fri Oct 07, 2022 10:41 am Redfin charges 1-1.5%. Never used them, but might be worth a look.

I've used them. Worked out fine and saved me a bunch of money.

Gronnie wrote: ↑Tue Oct 04, 2022 12:00 am

quattro73 wrote: ↑Mon Oct 03, 2022 8:23 pm FedEx, what two weeks ago, reported their awful quarter. Remember we were told it was awful right?

They still made $875MM.

$875MM in net profit in 3 months.

Stock correctly priced? Maybe maybe not.

But sign of impending doom when you make $875MM in 3 months…..not in my book.

I'm not sure what you are trying to argue here? While $875MM might seem like a "lot" of money, it's all relative to the size of the company and number of shares.

Yep, Facebook made $7.5 billion in the 1st quarter and got absolutely hammered because they made $9.5 the previous year in the same quarter.

Because tech makes up 28% of it and has experienced WAY above trend growth the past 2 decades. VTI doesn't fare much better at 25%. Regression to the mean is incoming at some point. Maybe now, maybe later but as some point you'll experience it. Or maybe I'm wrong and the future is still easy money and tech. If you're young and DCA'ing throughout, maybe it's not a big deal. The single biggest risk is country risk. The older you get, the more diversified you need to be to narrow the range of potential outcomes. I'd rather just be diversified from the beginning rather than trying to time it later. Just my 2 cents. By tech, I'm assuming you mean information technology and not just technology since all of human history is tech based. Farming, w...

Because tech makes up 28% of it and has experienced WAY above trend growth the past 2 decades. VTI doesn't fare much better at 25%. Regression to the mean is incoming at some point. Maybe now, maybe later but as some point you'll experience it. Or maybe I'm wrong and the future is still easy money and tech. If you're young and DCA'ing throughout, maybe it's not a big deal. The single biggest risk is country risk. The older you get, the more diversified you need to be to narrow the range of potential outcomes. I'd rather just be diversified from the beginning rather than trying to time it later. Just my 2 cents. By tech, I'm assuming you mean information technology and not just technology since all of human history is tech based. Farming, w...

Mr. Bogle gave us a way to invest and not stress. Why make a simple idea that works so complicated. Because lifecycle investing increases lifetime wealth by 70% without increasing the variance of outcomes. People on this forum stress over fund fees and tax loss harvesting that will increase lifetime wealth by maybe 5 or 10%. 70% is huge. It works, until it doesn't, then what? Change to another strategy. If Jack said it once he said it a million times "Stay the Course". So basically you are on a forum that promotes the teachings of Jack Bogle and promoting this. He definitely did not promote Lifestyle Investing. None of us have a crystal ball and some strategies may do better at certain times and not others, pick a simple plan and...

With respect to bonds, the FED has made it clear (at least for now) that they are going to fight inflation which would support more rate hikes until they say otherwise. Not quite sure why anyone would be in 3x long 20yrs until their posture changes. Won't be perfect, but the FED does tend to trend rates in one direction for a while. The problem with this journey was that using leveraged bonds as a ballast is very problematic when rates basically went from the teens in the early 80's to basically 0 and then inflation reared its ugly head. Perhaps , LT, there is a free lunch with this strategy, but the drawdowns can be so severe that the ability to stomach those losses would test many investors RM One alternative I posted before is simply ho...

The only reason I'm holding tmf is in case we have a real short term system shock, but I kick myself after every rate hike. It happens every time: flat or bump on rate day then dump the next. It mightcome up a little in the next few days, but I'm leaning towards dropping it and waiting until the hikes are over, but if I keep I'm definitely not rebalancing into it until after the hikes stop.

chris319 wrote: ↑Sun Sep 18, 2022 6:56 pm That paper inspired an interesting idea for asset allocation:

TQQQ (3X): 75%

QQQ (unleveraged): 25%

This gives us leverage of

.75 * 3 + .25 * 1 = 2.5

The risk of ruin (portfolio to zero) is vanishingly small as only 25% of the portfolio is leveraged.

If QQQ goes to zero then we've got bigger problems than the stock market going down.

Isn't it 75% leveraged in this scenario?

I was about 50/50 HFEA and VTI. Now It's more like 33/67 after the large HFEA drop. I'm dumping all new contributions half and half into VTI/UPRO. Hanging strong so far, but it's tough to stomach at times. Every time I think it's finally over, there's another gut punch. It also doesn't help that I got a new job at one of the big tech companies and have about 1/3 of my comp in equity, which is no longer 1/3 anymore.

Long term rates fell a lot from 2010 to present. Expected returns for tmf are not high, but are probably positive. One estimate is the term premium. I was foolishly looking at 10 year rates when TMF is leveraged 20 year. Let's look at 20 year rates and try to compare apples to apples: https://www.multpl.com/20-year-treasury-rate/table/by-year Jan 1 2012, rate 2.69%. Jan 1 2018, rate 2.73%. Close enough even for leverage, right? But the CAGR of TMF from 2012 thru 2017 is only 3.8%. Jan 1 2015, rate 2.20%. Jan 1 2022, rate 2.15%. CAGR of TMF from from 2015 thru 2021 is only 5%. In the long run, it doesn't look like TMF has a good return at all! So what makes it useful? Its correlation to zero, so it provides no protection to UPRO. And its re...

CletusCaddy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 10:45 am Not sure what all the TMF gripping is all about. TMF is saving UPRO’s butt today.

TMF is down more than 2% on the day. There's nothing saving going on since cash would be better. Saving would be tmf up on a big red day like today.

If someone invested in this strategy because they expected bonds would always or usually move against stocks, that was contrary to this long term history. That said, correlations below 1.0 are beneficial in modern portfolio theory. A correlation near 0 is still quite good and beneficial to portfolio construction. Only if both of the non correlated components have a good expected return. I'm unsure if TMF does. If rates never changed from here on out, what would TMF return? Its return from 2010 thru 2019 - a period where for the start and end dates, both rates and rate expectations had to be near 0 - was 16% annualized, so maybe it is great.. Long term rates fell a lot from 2010 to present. Expected returns for tmf are not high, but are pro...

revhappy wrote: ↑Tue Sep 13, 2022 10:16 am

chris319 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 06, 2022 4:30 am

Do you have a exit plan if 2000-2003 happens?

No.

Few more points down tqqq could go to zero.

Please describe the scenario under which that would happen.

I think the scenario is playing out realtime now

No, circuit breakers would stop us long before we could ever hit a scenario where QQQ hits zero. Could it go down much more? Absolutely. Will it hit zero? Not unless the whole economy starts collapsing. We're in an inflationary period - but unemployment is still at record lows, so economy is doing just fine.

And once again lamenting that I didn't dump all my TMF. Down another 5% since I last posted. Yes, UPRO is down too, but "only" 40% yoy whereas TMF is at 66% yoy - more if you go back further.

I don't know if it's same person(s) that I am seeing posts by, recently, but it's disconcerting to see folks react to recent fund (under)performance and mix it with their own flavour of predictions, leading to them dropping a major asset class completely (LTT). Sure, LTT dropped significantly, along with stocks. We're in a rising rate environment, so far this year. Further rate increases are most probably around the corner. That's all well and good, but you can't know for sure how the market will react (as we've seen this year, already) and you don't know what could happen with stocks. Let's just take a hypothetical recession, due to continued rate increases or some other, unknown reason. People could pile on into LTT and ITT, even if thos...

Still riding out a large portion of my portfolio in it - but I'm young and my best earning years are ahead. New job pays me double and has mega backdoor roth, so all dollars are going into UPRO. I keep kicking myself for not dumping TMF every month when I said I would, but alas, here we are. It will still probably go down even more and I'll say the same thing next month, and then the month after. I haven't been rebalancing into it, so I probably won't this quarter either, and then I'll miss the bottom of course and kick myself again. Are you planning on adding back tmf at some point At the 45% ratio? I think it is a better strategy to dca into rather than lump sum, and new contributions are sort of like a hedge so only need to add one when...

Still riding out a large portion of my portfolio in it - but I'm young and my best earning years are ahead. New job pays me double and has mega backdoor roth, so all dollars are going into UPRO. I keep kicking myself for not dumping TMF every month when I said I would, but alas, here we are. It will still probably go down even more and I'll say the same thing next month, and then the month after. I haven't been rebalancing into it, so I probably won't this quarter either, and then I'll miss the bottom of course and kick myself again.

Of course this poll underrepresents the expected net worth of younger folks, as it ignores any new money those under 50 will be contributing. This. For the sake of the poll, I did the math with my current values, but I'm fairly skeptical of the reality of the answer. Right now, I'm 29 and my wife is a SAHM. She'll be returning to the work force soon when our daughter goes to school and her income will all be gravy. We have no debt beyond our mortgage and we're both well educated with degrees from well known schools. I tend to think that the upward curve of our net worth over time is significantly sharper than 1.05. Oh well. I look forward to crushing my poll answer. Agreed, even at 41, I'm pretty sure my NW increase is going to be closer t...

Can't have stagflation without high unemployment. Can't have high unemployment with job reports like today month after month.

Early 40s for me, mid 30s for my wife.

75/25 stocks/bonds but leveraged to 160/50.

What's the justification for small/mid tilt? There's no indication it ever worked in the past with complete data or that it ever will in the future.

Leverage is the only surefire way to juice returns via higher risk if you have the stomach for it.