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Now, next couple of questions. then tried logging in again without yubikey. It sent me a text code and we logged in as before, without a yubikey. So, I presume if we want yubikey security, we have to do away with the text code option, which we will need to know how. Also, what if this computer were to break down. Can we use the yubikey to log in from another computer? Would hate to get locked out of my account. Welcome to the quirky world of Vanguard 2FA. First, there are conflicting reports about whether having two security keys allows you to turn off SMS security codes, but due to a misfeature in the mobile app, you don’t want to do that anyway. I live with this, and take the phishing protection the security keys offer, but others switch...

As of now, it's just still her account isn't it? Her login will work. Can you add yourself with POA under (on their webpage) Profile - Account Access? It's under maintenance now, but I remember there being options to do that ... not sure if POA was one though. I don't know the process after you become the trustee. But for now, there shouldn't be any trouble connecting her bank accounts. At Schwab at least, I have had zero trouble linking a RLT (under the grantor's name) to bank accounts not part of the RLT but in the grantor's name. There is no trust account now, just her IRAs at Vanguard and her bank accounts. We are her trustees (not successor trustees); she’s obviously the grantor but never was a trustee. We have transaction access at V...

My mother has dementia and two of us are her RLT trustees and durable POA. She is the grantor but is not a trustee. We don’t have any company-specific forms on file and it’s too late for that now. We’re thinking about how to arrange accounts to cope with her finances moving forward. She has accounts at a few banks and Vanguard. First issue is how to move money around and pay her bills. We can’t open a trust account at her banks, specifically because she isn’t a trustee, but Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard seem OK with it. Whose logins would such a trust account be accessible from? Can we connect her bank accounts (which have existing autopay arrangements) and move money from the trust account? Whose name needs to match when dealing with trus...

rockstar wrote: ↑Sat Feb 11, 2023 1:54 pm I can't believe people still DVR. I didn't realize it was still a thing.

People do, but I haven’t seen that mentioned in this thread. Streaming DVRs are essentially just bookmarks. The part I can’t fathom is services like Hulu that have “storage limits” for things they aren’t storing (separately, at least). Weird technical limits, I guess, like some streaming services won’t let you start watching a live show at the beginning, you have to wait until it ends.

I’ve only read Ambrose and Beevor from your list, so I may be misreading your wishes, but they seem to be more for stories than histories. In which case, ignore these, which are my favorites, both by Jonathan House and David Glantz:

When Titans Clashed
The Battle of Kursk

mptfan wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 8:47 am

otinkyad wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 2:26 am Along with the standard recommendation not to use your password manager for authentication codes...

Is this the standard recommendation? What is your source?

By standard, I meant usual, for example, in most reviews of password managers. Even in this thread, it has been mentioned repeatedly that even if your vault is decrypted, accounts with 2FA remain secure. That is not the case if your TOTP secret keys (or, as I was saying, your security answers or backup codes) are in your vault. It’s the usual trade-off between security and convenience.

If you're going that route, you need to change your security questions too if you haven't done so. Along with the standard recommendation not to use your password manager for authentication codes, you really shouldn’t store answers to security questions or backup codes there, either. I suppose a nice feature would be a second master password for them, but just using another password manager that you rarely need to use seems OK. We’re just using paper for now. We’re migrating to 1Password from various things and adding authenticators and security keys to everything we can. I noticed that I have a bunch of security answers for sites that don’t appear to use them any more, but it’s hard to know for sure. We haven’t yet changed providers over ...

I mentioned elsewhere I had no issues going from LastPass to 1Password except on my ipad. So far no matter what I try, it wants my master password on every single login. I'm hoping it will fix itself otherwise I'll just keychain. My masterpassword is quite long and typing it on a computer isn't too bad but typing it on a phone or ipad gets painful quickly and I don't like to use faceID or the fingerprint, I prefer using a pin/password. I had the same experience and preferences. My Apple ID password is designed for typing on the phone, but I forgot that with my 1Password master password. I caved to using Touch ID only for 1Password. I noticed that Chrome started using it for auto filling passwords, too, even though I have that setting turne...

Lots of good stuff. Both London and outside of London have enough to see for a lifetime. A few I haven’t seen mentioned that our kids like are the RAF Museum London, the IWM Duxford near Cambridge, especially if there’s an air show, and Old Sarum near Stonehenge. We check the English Heritage site if we’re driving and usually find something nearby.

The Chrome export is awful. The export CSV file has a line for each URL, so you get duplicate entries in 1Password. You could edit the CSV file to fix that part (I didn’t see a way to do bill deletes in 1Password, but I don’t have the app). It also uses the hostnames instead of the site name that 1Password would have picked by default. I also had issues where the stored URL in Chrome was obsolete. I ended up with a manual process of copying the password, opening the site, deleting the password so that 1Password would save the credentials, and pasting the password into the save dialog. Yeah. I’ve seen some sites where 1Password doesn’t pop up the “button” to fill the credentials, but it does have the icon in the text field, and you can use t...

London Bridge Surely you mean Tower Bridge. London Bridge is possibly the most boring bridge in the city. I like the London Eye, but I’d definitely trade it for the Globe Theatre and maybe a Thames cruise to Tower Bridge or all the way to Greenwich. Last year I spent more than a week in the British Museum alone, and still only saw a dozen of the hundred rooms. Even just the Rosetta Stone, Elgin Marbles, and the rest of that side of the main floor is worth the trip, though. I’d take the Eurostar to Paris (despite being a boring train ride), and fly home from there. The overhead of extra flights and trains to Geneva and Zermatt seems too much on such a short trip. Certainly, I would go somewhere you could open jaw the flight home (or at leas...

I would pick two places to stay, with day trips. We liked to see things our kids had learned about in school, such as the Tower of London, the Waterloo battlefield near Brussels, and Napoleon’s Tomb in Paris. We started with 9 days in London and Paris at ages 6 and 8, and it worked a treat, but our 6-year-old was teed up with Henry VIII and Napoleon in school, and was reading the first 39 Clues book, so he had some idea of what he was seeing. The Midi Fair in Brussels was a delight, although it runs later in the summer during the more crowded school holidays. Mini-Europe is a short walk from the Atomium, and I feel like the adjacent shops had more to offer than we saw. Parks in Paris (and France, generally) frown on playing on the grass. Th...

You could name a revocable trust as beneficiary of an IRA, but since a revocable trust is an administrative trust which will wind up, it wouldn't serve any purpose other than to add complexity. You could simply name the beneficiaries of the revocable trust (either individuals or continuing trusts) as the beneficiaries of the IRA. The beneficiary designations at many brokerages are fairly limited. They handle a contingent chain of 100% beneficiaries, or a set of beneficiaries with fixed percentages and descendants per stirpes, but not much else. Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab have much the same rules for most customers. Vanguard used to allow Flagship customers more flexibility, but I think it now requires Flagship Select status. I don’t kn...

It depends on the nature of the trip. For a multi-city tour in the summer, I’ll take a soft convertible bag (we have a Tom Bihn and a Timbuk2). For most trips, I check a bag and carry-on a small personal item. For extended international trips, I’ll take all three, packing enough in the Tom Bihn to cope if my checked bag is lost, and using it for overnight sub-trips. For family trips, in particular, checking bags was easier than wrangling kids plus carry-ons.

i grew up in a very frugal lower-middle class household, and my parents always said no and my delayed gratification skills are extraordinary. these skills may have worked for me as a broke college student, but they don't anymore when i'm in the highest earning years of my career. Same here. When I was a kid, “we can’t afford that” was a refrain. I realized when my kids started wanting things in stores that “we can’t afford that” was untrue, and I didn’t think that nuanced discussions of how I spent money were going to be effective. Our denials seemed aggravating and random to the kids. That’s why we gave them allowances and told them they could buy whatever they wanted to spend their money on. It was astonishingly intuitive for them at fai...

You'd include a statement of intent so that the corporate trustees understand that it's your intent to allow such distributions and even encouraged. Or not because you care more about legacy planning. That said, I find your scenario unlikely. Hems is extremely broad. She can pay for all of her living expenses via that standard. As such she can plow all of the business profits back in. Also, she should be able to secure a business loan and the trustee is more likely to approve a smaller down payment distribution. Another solution is she finds a directed trustee firm. I don’t find it unlikely. I started two businesses in my twenties, and neither was prudent or loan worthy. Both were decent ideas that could have worked with more money. That’s...

It was mostly their free choice on spending their allowances starting around age 6 or 7. We gave advice and said we would veto things we didn’t think they should have, but never needed to. We didn’t include food; they couldn’t buy ice cream or candy just because they had money. Books (except comics and graphic novels) and souvenir T-shirts were free. We paid for phone lines and they paid for phones. We used Bankaroo so that all of us could see how much the kids had, to automate their allowance, and to avoid needing them to carry cash or for us to remember to settle later. We switched to Capital One MONEY accounts when they were older and needed to pay for things themselves. We ended up with a saver and a spender, but neither one bought friv...

I haven’t seen any suggestions for what such a prenup should say. For late-in-life marriages with existing assets and children, both the need for and content of prenups is pretty clear. In the case of early-in-life marriages with low assets and no children, just unequal salaries and (possibly) unequal earning potential, what would you agree to?

We were only offered the (sub-)standard 25/30/35 formula, and went went full distribution at 25. The idea of trying to control people’s lives while dead was not appealing. The living will have to cope. Yes, though in most cases the child gets to control his/her trust upon reaching a specified age so at that point the trust is to keep the assets out of the child's estate for estate tax purposes and to protect against creditors and spouses, and Medicaid. Since then, I’ve been reading this take a lot, and I struggle with it. The appeal of it is obvious, and the nuisance of finding an appropriate co-trustee seems real (and is much debated in this forum). What I struggle with, though, is that the last phrase essentially reads as “protect against...

Child #3, struggled with grades and mental health throughout her college experience. First, we paid for another semester even with bad grades so did not stick to our agreement. Later I refused to pay for the next semester due to bad grades. She waited a semester and then re-enrolled with my support. Finally her scholarship ran out. A this point she was 22 and Vanguard required the UTMA funds be transferred to her direct control. She paid for an extremely expensive 9th semester with the last the 529 and the UTMA funds. She was scheduled to graduate, but failed every class except one. At this point her 529 money is spent and she has control of her remaining UTMA money. She now works as a teacher assistant. She is looking for jobs in her fiel...

My in-laws use a prepaid Verizon Jetpack, but that supports two iPads and two laptops in their case. For just one iPad, it won’t save money.

We just used the age-based funds, which were not quite what I wanted, even after choosing “ages” based on the allocation and not the kids. There are lots of things to worry about in life; rebalancing the 529s didn’t feel worth the time. It’s certainly possible to avoid bonds if you can cover stock losses. Bonds are a bit like insurance, they’re likely to just cost money, and are intended to avoid losses you can’t recover from. We’re certainly saving money having bonds in the 529 now, even with the terrible year, but I doubt it pays for having them the past seven years. I did it for peace of mind and so my spouse didn’t glare at me, not financial gain. Unless you have a state deduction, the tax benefits of contributing to a 529 later on, cer...

jeffyscott wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 10:10 am

riverratnorthfork wrote: ↑Mon Jan 02, 2023 8:47 am One change that Vanguard doesn't mention in their literature is that they do not allow brokerage accounts to have beneficiaries.

So they did allow beneficiaries on joint mutual fund accounts?

Sometimes. Whatever the rules were, it had something to do with the timing and balance. We never had the option on our joint mutual fund account, but others did.

My own laziness is in solving this by replacing our joint mutual fund account with a trust brokerage account.

There are other threads here on similar topics that might be interesting.

We’re the same age, I manage the finances, and I maintain the same AA for each of us, just to avoid any possible conflicts about one of us gaining or losing more. Different investment choices (401k funds, etc.) could easily tip the boat, but we don’t have that issue. With even a 4-year difference in ages, there may be tactical reasons for a difference, like SEPPs, Roth conversions, RMDs, etc. I don’t think there are any hard rules, it’s just what works for both of you.

Our parenting style is support and advice. No strings for grades, majors, or cost. We discussed our willingness to pay for a major and a university we thought they could succeed at, and how they could be useful for potential careers. It was neither a blank check nor a fixed price. We do have a “we’re paying, we see your grades” rule, but with no repercussions, just our best efforts to help them improve if necessary.

Many variations will work, but honestly the only ones that matter are the ones that work for your kids. Kids are not fungible. Under many of the plans espoused here on Bogleheads, our kids would be homeless dropouts. YMMV.

None of the forums I read open a new tab (or worse, window). That would drive me nuts, whereas clicking links with the middle button is trivial if desired.

I’ve enjoyed 9 day trips to both Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hiroshima) and Australia (Sydney and the Blue Mountains). They were both lovely and completely different. I didn’t have much jet lag on either trip, though I recommend 787 or A350 flights.

I don’t see how strangers could possibly pick one for you. I haven’t been to New Zealand, so I’d go there.

tibbitts wrote: ↑Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:59 pm Recently I became aware of someone […]

Does anybody else find this surprising (or not), and what (other than maybe using an authenticator service vs. texting for a 2nd factor) should have been done to secure the second (new) account?

So a possibly apocryphal story, possibly with elements missing. My main suspicion would be on a compromised device, not a SIM swap or GMail security.

The obvious step for improved GMail security is to use two security keys and disable security codes (both texts and authenticator apps). I haven’t tried the Advanced Protection Program myself, but this is a required step in that direction.

I don’t quite get the bit I’ve read about DPI retrieving matching pages, since it only knows the destination IP address and not the host or URL path/query. Any good primers on how all of this works? If you decrypt an HTTPS session, [[…]] So you’ve assumed the miracle, in the absence of controlling the browser’s trusted root CAs. If you can decrypt the HTTPS traffic, why bother fetching pages in the background? I was also asking about the entirety of DPI and intercepting HTTPS communications, not just the page-fetching I read about, but I still don’t get that, either. Pretty much any website you connect to has load-balancers in front of it that terminate the HTTPS session and look at the URI in the headers to make routing/forwarding decisio...

brad.clarkston wrote: ↑Thu Dec 08, 2022 2:23 pm Your 2FA token will do nothing to protect you from Google selling full e-mail scanning to any company that pays there price - end of story. This has been proven by the WSJ and AP multiple times. By e-mail scanning I mean a 3-rd party company (not a government) scanning private and business e-mail for keywords to run market analytics on or selling customer purchase information.

Do you sources for this (preferably other than the WSJ due to their paywall)? All I could find, some of it referencing the WSJ, were references to user-approved apps like travel planners. Your message seems to suggest stuff that users didn’t install and can’t remove, which I haven’t found a mention of.

Not true, your telco is a full man in the middle attack and it works against straight port encryption. We use F5 Big Iron & IPS switches to deconstruct 443/8443 packets in flight all day long. They get depacted, inspected, put back together and then sent on there way without you ever knowing it all for homeland security. I build those types of security systems for a living btw. I don’t want to derail this thread too much, but I’d appreciate pointers on that. I get how trusted self-signed certificates could work in a corporate environment, and how many kinds of metadata are available to sniff. I don’t quite get the bit I’ve read about DPI retrieving matching pages, since it only knows the destination IP address and not the host or URL p...

It is possible to specify a different DNS and then your ISP won't know what website you are visiting. That’s false. Not only can they see the DNS request go by, but all your traffic is routed by your ISP. Unless you use a VPN or similar, they have to know where your request is going. HTTPS is better with HTTPS-only mode and DNS over HTTPS (which still doesn’t hide your visited web sites from your ISP, it just makes it much harder for a random WiFi router to give you bogus DNS answers). Those are still optional add-one, not defaults. At that point, though, I don’t really trust VPNs enough to bother. At the moment, the ISPs and other main infrastructure like Google are large, well-known, well-probed, do what they do at huge scale, are under ...

TD Ameritrade just shut off my online login entirely less than 24 hours after Fidelity got my transfer. Stray dividends and the cost basis do follow along later.

This is from an earlier thread I posted on. As I said elsewhere, I’ve been asked for them twice.

viewtopic.php?t=376260

It’s just a free-form letter that says your children have permission to travel with their other parent. We’ve included relationships (“their father and my husband”), passport details (full name, country, number, expiration date), and itinerary (dates, cities, and flights). We’ve just had them notarized with older kids. With younger kids or when traveling with my niece, we got an apostille, which is a government seal confirming that the notary is registered. You might find templates in various places (government, AAA, travel agents).

So, brief summary: External port scanning is bad. Any modern router will block external port scans. It's not what this thread is about. JavaScript port scanning is what this thread is about. It's minimally an invasion of privacy by retailers trying to fingerprint my computer or detect possible breaches by scanning my computer without my permission. uBlock Origin will stop a few good guys from using JavaScript port scanning. It won't stop most bad guys. JavaScript WebSockets are limited and make exploiting vulnerabilities difficult. It is, however, not at all hard to believe that some network services on your computer or home network are vulnerable to crafted HTTP requests, even if they aren't web services. Given the apparent lack of protect...

gavinsiu wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 7:26 pm

otinkyad wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:59 pm Do you have a reference for this? All I could find was that it blocks some of the popular scripts that do such checking, not that it blocks all of them or directly blocks local web sockets.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... ost-sites/

So no, it doesn’t block the scans, just some of the scripts that do that scans.

maineeagle wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 5:08 pm I would prefer an approach that does not require rebalancing frequently. I ordinarily would have chosen target date funds for the simplicity but they seem very conservative (for example would invest in 27% bonds starting in year 6 of the child’s life).

I agree with others that given the timeline, 27% in bonds 12 years out is perfectly sane. However, if you prefer, does your 529 plan allow you to pick a later date? The new Vanguard Target Enrollment plans were a smidge too conservative for me, so I picked one two years later.

gavinsiu wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:35 pm 1. Install Ublock origin or similar browser extension. The extension should block port scanning from websites.

Do you have a reference for this? All I could find was that it blocks some of the popular scripts that do such checking, not that it blocks all of them or directly blocks local web sockets.

You can enable viewing, trading, or full access. Only the last is onerous. The others are just a matter of finding the right page. It’s one of the silly things that gets turned off in the transition and is easily reenabled.

Total market funds are rational. With our college-aged kids, I have worried about the possibility of early volatility disheartening them. Is there any merit to some fixed income allocation when the balances and contributions are both small, to avoid losses that could trigger poor investment behaviors?

There are very few joint credit cards these days. The Apple Card is one, and I think Amex offers them. It doesn’t get you a signup bonus, though.

gavinsiu wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 5:04 pm Can someone explain to me how to remove my sms security code.

See the post immediately before yours. First, you need two security keys to do it. Second, it’s a really bad idea to do it, given the phone app’s poor design (which you don’t have to be using to be vulnerable to).

bertilak wrote: ↑Sun Nov 20, 2022 5:55 pm So, no charging occurs while simply cruising down the road on ICE power?

You’re getting some absurd nonsensical answers. Every hybrid uses the ICE to charge the battery while the car is cruising down the road. There’s nowhere else for the energy to come from. Regenerative braking helps a little, but entropy would ensure the battery would soon be drained without another source of charging.

The mileage benefits come from a combination of a smaller engine, since it can get a high-torque boost from the motor, and running the engine at a more efficient fuel and RPM combination, including when charging the battery.

TravelGeek wrote: ↑Sat Nov 19, 2022 5:57 pm

otinkyad wrote: ↑Sat Nov 19, 2022 5:44 pm
Seat particulars aside, my physical well-being after a long flight on a 787 with its higher air pressure and humidity is so much better that I am trying hard not to fly anything else.

I believe Airbus’ A350 has the same 6000 ft air pressure and improved humidity, so you should have more choices.

Thanks, that’s very handy to know. I may have ducked an A350, but mostly it’s been 777s. Apparently the A380 has the same 6000 ft air pressure, but not the increased humidity. I haven’t gotten to fly on an A380 yet; I’d do that just for the check mark, personally.

As others are saying, the particulars matter. I’m 5’11” and once the seat pitch gets to 36” I don’t care what the person in front of me does. I don’t use a laptop on flights, so I can cope with reclining neighbors with less than 36”. To avoid getting knee-capped, I don’t fly anywhere in a seat with 30” or less.

Seat particulars aside, my physical well-being after a long flight on a 787 with its higher air pressure and humidity is so much better that I am trying hard not to fly anything else.

The OP has abandoned this thread and started a new one:

viewtopic.php?p=6969347

MDfan wrote: ↑Wed Nov 16, 2022 6:35 am I think I read it's going to be $12.99 for the ad-supported tier and $19.99 for no ads. Starts in early December.

$7.99 for ads and $10.99 for no ads, with annual discounts, starting on December 8th or the first billing period after.

It took me an hour or so. I did it all online and created accounts, which makes it super easy to lock and unlock later. It also got me free monthly credit reports from Experian, which I hadn’t been able to get a free one from in years.

Marseille07 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 09, 2022 12:20 pm Thanks. In this case, not only do they hold, the holding times were different - smaller amount X days later, bigger amount X+1 days later. It's not a dealbreaker but I don't quite understand why they do that.

It’s been a standard behavior under the PATRIOT Act for 20 years with transactions near or above $10,000. Some banks hold the full amount, and some provide earlier access to a small portion of the money.

They have three different savings accounts. The older (once ING Orange) checking and savings accounts had good interest rates. Their newer (and now legacy) money market, did too. They’ve since dropped those savings accounts, and the interest rate on their checking account, and added a new Performance Savings account with their high interest rate.

We opened Performance Savings accounts and moved our money over.