Thanks. Hope it helps.
New edition coming along….. (slowly, spare time etc).
Thanks. Hope it helps.
No.gavinsiu wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2024 11:20 am A question about the tool. It seems to find generate a list of bonds by the income needed, so if you want $10K of income by 2026 for example. Can the tool be use to generate a list of bonds for equal investment like I want to invest $10K a year for 5 years?
Probably best to use the original ladder portfolio. The tool is designed to generate a ladder as an integrated unit, with early rungs deriving income from later maturing bonds. Not well suited yet to assembling a ladder incrementally over time.hudson wrote: ↑Thu Feb 15, 2024 10:02 am I'm waiting for another IRA transfer to happen to finish the last 7 rungs....hopefully within 30 days or so. Transfers don't seem to be lightning fast.
I'm not sure if I use the same Kaesler calculation or re-run it for the last 7 rungs.
I'm thinking that it doesn't matter?
Root cause was an unexpected behavior on or around February 1 each year from the BLS web service which provides CPI data. I have a workaround which I will deploy shortly.kaesler wrote: ↑Thu Feb 01, 2024 10:38 amIt's up again.kaesler wrote: ↑Thu Feb 01, 2024 10:14 am The service at https://tipsladder.com is failing every ladder generation request. I'm looking into the problem....
It's up again.kaesler wrote: ↑Thu Feb 01, 2024 10:14 am The service at https://tipsladder.com is failing every ladder generation request. I'm looking into the problem....
Noted. I plan to refine my algorithm so this works as you’d like.MA405 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 20, 2023 3:33 pm Just came across one thing that I think could be improved in the calculations. …
It seems that the extra $6,417 from the 1st year could be applied to partially cover the 2nd year, thus reducing the number of TIPS to buy and the cost of the ladder? I couldn’t find a way to make that happen.
Thanks for the word. I like to hear when people find it useful.
Prices fluctuate by the minute. The tool uses prices as of the close of the previous bond trading day.
I know the feeling.
No. tipsladder.com is not open source.littlebigfis wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 11:12 am Any chance you can share your scripts for importing the data so I can get to work on building the ladder structure in google sheets to accomplish my goals?
Thanks. Done: https://www.tipsladder.com/static/TipsL ... urces.htmlzf888 wrote: ↑Tue Nov 07, 2023 12:37 pm Rob Berger did a video tutorial of using your tool! You might consider listing it somewhere on your website:
https://youtu.be/WMSOdk9Ga_Q?si=yB2V_Nwm1VQXoM8A
It is repaired: https://tipsladder.com .
#Cruncher wrote: ↑Wed Nov 01, 2023 3:56 pmI get the same error:billc6 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 01, 2023 1:22 pmI’m getting a heroku application error when trying to access http://tipsladder.com.Could it have anything to do with WSJ TIPS Quotes not yet listing the new 10/15/2028 5-year maturity, even though it was issued 10/31/2023?Application error
An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details. You can do this from the Heroku CLI with the command
heroku logs --tail
I think this is because the 2053 bond has a coupon rate of 1.5% whereas the 2052 has a coupon rate of 0.125%. So the 2053 bond is priced higher than the 2052 one, with ask prices of $840 vs $595 respectively.Alpha4 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 15, 2023 7:58 pm I just ran a purely hypothetical scenario (roughly $12K each year of real income in the years 2043 to 2053) to see what would be needed in the way of TIPS purchased today to generate that real income in those years.
Why does the 2053 maturing rung require so much of a larger amount purchased than the rung maturing only a year before in 2052?
Fixed now. Thanks for reporting the bug.sycamore wrote: ↑Sat Oct 14, 2023 3:15 pm
I noticed a minor display bug with a scenario of $2000 per year from 2027-2036 inclusive.
In the "Show Details" table, the first row has an extra <td></td> element:
Thank you for checking my work #cruncher. That was indeed a typo. I've deployed a new version to correct it.#Cruncher wrote: ↑Sun Oct 15, 2023 1:16 pm The formula on the last row should be "a / (b + c)" not "(a - b) / c". I assume this is just a typo in the text file and not an error in how you actually build the ladder. But I can't tell for sure since, with rounding, both formulas can produce the same result.
I've deployed a new version that offers a link to download the "rung decisions" file. This is a text file log of the decisions and calculations the tool makes when constructing the rungs of a ladder. I'm hoping this will clarify how the tool works. Let me know if you think it is doing it wrongly.
Looks like the service has crashed. I’ll take a looks in an hour or so when I get home.Harry Livermore wrote: ↑Wed Oct 11, 2023 2:26 pmHi there, after reading numerous TIPS threads over the past year, I was curious to try your tool. But I get this error message:kaesler wrote: ↑Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:55 pm
I built a TIPS ladder builder that is fairly easy to use. It can be used via a web interface here:
https://tipsladder.com
"Application error
An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. If you are the application owner, check your logs for details. You can do this from the Heroku CLI with the command
heroku logs--tail"
I tried on a couple of browsers, cookies off and cookies on.
Any ideas?
Cheers
Never mind. I see now. That interest total for 2024 was contributed by all the bonds in the ladder, not just the bond that matured in 2024. This is a FAQ, the single most misunderstood aspect of a TIPS ladder I think.kaesler wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2023 2:23 pmHow long was your ladder?hobscrk777 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2023 2:17 pm
How can it be that a bond purchased today (or strictly speaking, 5 bonds as indicated in the table below) for $6,487 will provide interest of $3,412, such that the real value of the asset at maturity is $10,116? Naively, that seems like effectively a 50% interest rate (even larger than that, actually, since there are ~3 months until the maturity of this asset on 2024-01-15). I know I must be missing something, but I have no clue what that is.
How long was your ladder?hobscrk777 wrote: ↑Sat Oct 07, 2023 2:17 pm
How can it be that a bond purchased today (or strictly speaking, 5 bonds as indicated in the table below) for $6,487 will provide interest of $3,412, such that the real value of the asset at maturity is $10,116? Naively, that seems like effectively a 50% interest rate (even larger than that, actually, since there are ~3 months until the maturity of this asset on 2024-01-15). I know I must be missing something, but I have no clue what that is.
To facilitate what could be a complicated investigation could you please provide details of two different portfolios, one generated by tipsladder.com and the other by the spreadsheet, as lists of (CUSIP, count) pairs. along with the years expected to be funded?kalarama wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 2:05 pm (Bump). With rising real yields and lots of people using kaesler's tipsladder tool and/or #cruncher's spreadsheet to build a TIPS ladder, any chance kaesler and/or #cruncher could comment on the different calculations between the two tools to determine quantities to purchase for 2033 and 2040 TIPS to fill in the gap?
Never invest in something you don't understand.quietstorm wrote: ↑Mon Sep 25, 2023 4:24 pm Yes. No mistake or bug, and I don't have the knowledge nessessary to understand what I'm doing if I use this.
The latter for sure. And the projected incomes will be exact because they don’t depend on the purchase dates.protagonist wrote: ↑Thu Sep 14, 2023 1:15 pm Will it require knowledge of the dates of purchase, or will you be able to calculate an approximation of annual revenue and interest payments based on valuation at the time you enter the data and coupon rate?
I would suggest the latter, since many are probably in my situation...
Thanks. It's actually going to get a bit easier to use first. Current plan is :Incognito2u wrote: ↑Tue Sep 12, 2023 10:39 pm Kaesler, yet another request to integrate previously bought TIPS into your already superb and easy to use TIPS ladder tool. I'll wager there are quite a few people that would benefit from this addition.
Hoping to add that feature soon.protagonist wrote: ↑Mon Sep 11, 2023 7:53 am But if you already have a ladder, is it possible to enter the TIPS on your ladder by CUSIP into the tool?
And if so, how?
Thanks.
This version updated the Javascript used for the parameter input page. If you are getting 400 errors, try forcing a full reload of that page, usually achieved by pressing either the Control or Shift key and clicking the reload button on your browser.
I've deployed a new version which should fix these bugs with hitting Back to get back to the parameter input page.Stormbringer wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 9:01 am Two bugs, both related to going back to the parameters page after creating a ladder:
1) After viewing the ladder, if you hit the Back button and change the annual amount, it resets the last year to be funded to current year plus 10.
2) If you specify an amount year by year and then go back to it, the "Specified for each year" is still selected, but the year by year annual amount fields are missing. If you click on the Create Ladder button, you get an error: Inconsistent parameters for IncomeRequirement.Lumpy
I intend to improve the docs on the website. But for now look at these posts above in this thread:
Good little book on it: Explore TIPS: A Practical Guide to Investing in Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities https://a.co/d/ihiQDxb
Heroku fixed their bug a few hours ago so the tool is up again at https://tipsladder.com