Bogleheads.org

Bogel0048

AlohaJoe wrote: That would be illegal. Only banks can engage in fractional-reserve banking. Brokerages aren't banks.

I know of an Economics graduate student club that calls itself the "Committee for 100% Reserves".

Bogel0048

My wife and I are retired and have enough assured current income from pension, RMDs and SS to cover our annual expenses. Our portfolio has been at 75/25 for many years. I have been following Trump run-up and high PE threads, and this "should we be less greedy" thread made sense to me. I ca...

Bogel0048

My wife and I can do fine on about $100K per year after state and federal taxes. That covers all our insurances, utilities and property tax, house and car expenses, groceries and restaurants, clothing, etc., which add up to about $80K per year. The last $20K is for our retirement travel budget, whic...

Bogel0048

We used Nevada's Vanguard 529 because we could choose Vanguard funds and the account shows up as part of our overall account at Vanguard. Also, I thought the ERs seemed as low or lower than other 529s, but we may have missed something favorable about Utah or New York.

Bogel0048

The number one advice we have received and followed is to fund shared family vacations that will create memories for our family. I think you should definitely do this. I do not see the need to give your children $1M gifts now. We have given about $28K per year to each of our two sons since age 20 (t...

Bogel0048

It seems like you perceive your retirement planning as very complicated, with a need for separate buckets, etc. I really do not see it as complicated. I just made a spreadsheet with rows for each year out to age 100. Then I put in columns for our annual expenses, each of our savings categories (IRA ...

Bogel0048

I was in your position in 1975. You are being very conscientious with your portfolio, as was I, but from my current perspective, now retired, I would suggest that you can save yourself and your spouse a lifetime of second guessing your portfolio decisions by moving toward a BH three fund portfolio a...

Bogel0048

I am the owner of our grandson's 529 plan and my wife is the successor owner. If college financial aid rules at the time our grandson reaches college age make it advantageous to have his uncle rather than a grandparent as the owner of his 529 plan we will name his uncle as the owner at that time, be...

Bogel0048

I purposely bought thumb drives and an external hard drive that came with encryption software, so it's easy to store my entire collection of documents behind an encrypted "vault" and just as easy to unencrypt any of those documents. Regarding the network, I downloaded WiFi Guard (free) wh...

Bogel0048

I am not sure how safe this is, I understand that if ransomware somehow finds it way onto your computer it will lock and encrypt any hard drives connect to your system. This may be true. I hope I never open a file that contains ransomware, or a keystroke logger. However, like 2015, I keep our exter...

Bogel0048

I am getting around this by storing nothing on my laptop, including the keepass database. The database and all my documents at home sit behind an encrypted external hard drive, and two additional identical encrypted thumb drives. If my house is broken into, all they'll get are encrypted devices and...

Bogel0048

I am not an extensively educated investor. My equity holdings are almost entirely in VTSAX, with very little international. I have gotten to this position by (1) reviewing past performance, (2) being comforted by the comments of John Bogle and Warren Buffett, and (3) believing (rightly or wrongly) t...

Bogel0048

If you have Mac computers 1Password is the way to go. I use the licensed version and I have it set up to keep everything on my own computers, out of the cloud. Each password item has a notes area for the answers to security questions or any other info you want to enter. If you are "of and age&q...

Bogel0048

I also use 1Password on our mostly Mac household computers, but I do not let it sync in the cloud. I sync it entirely within our secure home wifi network and use it in no-sync mode, with PIA VPN, when we travel. I used to use an encrypted spreadsheet, but it became too much effort to use and maintai...

Bogel0048

My suggestion would be to get an account at a good national bank that has a brick and mortar office near you, where you can go in to see the local bank officers for help when various issues arise. We use Bank of America, which has an office two miles from our house. They offer a comprehensive range ...

Bogel0048

Update from the OP I just called Fidelity to review my problem from yesterday and to make sure they were going to mail my wife's 1099-R. This time I connected with a much more knowledgable rep who explained that, in fact, there was a way to access all of my wife's account records, including her down...

Bogel0048

In spring, 2016 my wife rolled over an entire $400K employer-based retirement account from Fidelity to Vanguard. When I was doing our taxes yesterday I could not find the the 1099-R in our 2016 tax folder. I thought maybe my wife had set her Fidelity account for all electronic records, but she did n...

Bogel0048

Both of our sons and my niece all had weddings during the past three years. Each wedding was very nice, including a dinner and live band afterward for all of the wedding guests. The first was at a church with the dinner at a local community venue, the second was a scenic rooftop wedding at a big hot...

Bogel0048

Thanks flascorp. As you probably guessed, my reason for asking was to see if the $400K number was accurate and included all taxes, etc. (sounds like you are not sure). Also, I was looking for any larger than necessary expenses, like $100K/year to charities and other children, or $50K per year for tr...

Bogel0048

flascorp, When you present your additional info. it would be good to understand your parents' $400K annual expense allocation among: Parents' annual living expenses, including everything not broken-out below Income taxes (and fed. and state marginal tax rates, so people can comment on benefits of ta...

Bogel0048

You have not told us why you are considering this. Would you do it for dispassionate reasons, just because you think it could be a good investment? Are you flattered that your friend has asked you to invest in their business and you want to impress them by investing this money? Is this person connec...

Bogel0048

When I was in grad school, in the early 1970's, my mother was in a small dollar investment club with other SAHMs. She told me I should buy a great stock, Houston Oil and Mineral. I bought $2K (about all I had to my name at that time) and within 18 months I sold it for $4K. I thought making money on ...

Bogel0048

Replies inline. .. just following the trust's instructions to distribute trust's assets to the trust's beneficiaries? Yes, this ! The wills just say any assets not included in the trust at the time of our deaths should go to the trust. The trust itself is void of directions or intent, the will is s...

Bogel0048

OP, you are not giving us clear information. Do you really mean breaking the trust, which is a big deal legally, or just following the trust's instructions to distribute trust's assets to the trust's beneficiaries? You also reference disposing of the trust's assets according to the provisions of the...

Bogel0048

Appears the simplest would be to transfer stock. It might be wiser for another reason as well, that being your son's qualifying for a mortgage loan. Those loans are carefully vetted. If the loan officers find he could not qualify without your contribution, it could be denied. Tim When we gave our a...

Bogel0048

I'll fess up on our food budget - my wife and I spend over $8K per year, not including restaurants. Perhaps we eat very well, but our kids are out of the house so it's just the two of us. Even if your entire 3% vacation budget is for food, at $100K/yr gross you are only spending $3,000 on food. At $...

Bogel0048

https://s28.postimg.org/ffn8ods7h/Captura_de_pantalla_2017_02_26_a_las_9_28_19_PM.png When it comes to the technical side of investing analysis I am an advice consumer, not and advice producer. I always find nisiprius' posts to be well researched and clearly presented. The chart above makes me feel...

Bogel0048

Duplicate Post - Deleted

Bogel0048

The OPs' expected SS income, starting at age 70, needs to be discounted back to their target retirement age of 55. Also, I imagine some people would discount the SS income stream even further based on the risk that SS benefit rates for current 35 year olds may be reduced before they reach benefit ag...

Bogel0048

All of my savings and two-thirds of my wife's savings are at Vanguard. Our expense ratio for our funds at Vanguard is about 7 basis points. My wife's other savings are all employer-based, with most at TIAA @ 26 basis points and a small amount at Fidelity @ 56 basis points. On a weighted basis our ov...

Bogel0048

The answer to your questions on whether the executor is correct depend on several pieces of information we don't have: 1. Generally, if this was .. a revocable living trust that became irrevocable at death, the stepped up cost basis would = fair market value of the house at the date of death.... 2....

Bogel0048

I would not make a decision to forgo a survivor's benefit based purely on family longevity. I agree, parents' longevity should not be a factor. My initial inclination to take a single life annuity was based purely on our financial resources, not on our fathers' longevity. I mentioned our fathers' s...

Bogel0048

The correct way to answer this question is to ask whether you will have sufficient income to cover all the expenses you might possibly need to cover if your wife takes a single annuity pension and then dies well before you do. You need to lay out all of your possible expenses, the ones you know and ...

Bogel0048

I am very impressed by jhfenton, who seems to be a very high power person. I mean that seriously, not sarcastically. At a more modest level, I also enjoy putting info in spreadsheets, and I think that is the aspect of financial planning that I enjoy more than than the complexities of actual financia...

Bogel0048

I agree it's a pretty close call. Given that both funds qualify as a responsible bond choice, e.g., not chasing returns by picking a long term bond fund for the "safe" component of your portfolio, I go with VBILX. A Vanguard CFP recommended it to me twenty years ago (Investor shares only a...

Bogel0048

30X or whatever calculation is not applicable for us since our SS benefits and my DB pension exceed our annual expenses, including our income taxes. Since we do not draw anything from our savings we keep our savings at 75% equities/25% bonds and cash. We are basically managing our savings for our ad...

Bogel0048

You say you have a copy of their will, but you do not note whether you are their executor or whether they have executed DPOAs for finances and health care. If they have not done so yet, they should definitely execute DPOAs. If they don't want you, or whoever they designate as their DPOA for finances...

Bogel0048

There are some of us who make <40k. I mean, I'm at the very beginning of my career and in graduate school for now, but yes it is possible to be a Boglehead on a low income. Didn't stop me from saving $20k+ last year :) Okay fine, last year I made slightly more than 40k but most years an equal amoun...

Bogel0048

There is a huge difference between a portfolio goal and an income goal when considering targeted retirement income. I agree with you completely. My previous post said "In planning for retirement, BHs start with an assessment of needed or desired income during retirement, net of other confident...

Bogel0048

BHs look at post retirement income flows in terms of a sustainable withdrawal rate from a target savings portfolio accumulated by retirement. Not all BHs look at post retirement income flows in those terms. Some believe the target should always be, even before retirement, the retirement income flow...

Bogel0048

There are plenty of us who have gone our entire working lives without seeing a single year of six-digit family income. I think the Flex MMM model is aimed primarily at workers with incomes that are considerably lower than six digits. Also, the model is specifically meant to aid low income workers w...

Bogel0048

Hi Bogel0048, I suggest you read at least parts of the second paper I linked to... BobK I read the full paper. Although there are no differential equations, this is nonetheless an academic paper. The authors will have to develop a Reader's Digest version if they want to communicate their model to s...

Bogel0048

rattlenap wrote:
Bogel0048 wrote:VTSAX 75%
VBILX 25%
How come you use the Vanguard Intermediate-Term Bond Index Fund rather than the Vanguard Total Bond Index?

VBILX just seems to do a little bit better than VBTLX. Also, a Vanguard CFP recommended it to me a long time ago and I have just stuck with it.

Bogel0048

I read the OP's first link, a two page summary, but I have not read about the plan in any further detail. Based on the two page summary, I cannot envision a successful state-sponsored retirement program for low-income workers that would approach the retirement income flow that low-income BHs could a...

Bogel0048

..... I have been reading lately that Fidelity actually has lower fees on many of its funds than Vanguard. And while there is always variability, their customer service appears to be better too. So it would seem I would lose nothing and potentially gain better service. Of course, there will be some...

Bogel0048

VTSAX 75%
VBILX 25%

Across taxable and IRAs.

Bogel0048

One way to hold funds with minimal worry. Multi unit apartment high rise one owns in cash with no debt leased to the state,city,fed for low income housing on a 30 year long term renewable lease (and they will renew). Your suggestion is an example of how one could hold an asset that guarantees a sta...

Bogel0048

There are many other ways besides holding cash that one does not have to worry about their investments. But probably many of those ways are not accessible to many people. Examples? I'm just wondering what you may have in mind as investments that are as worry-free as cash. Perhaps various short term...

Bogel0048

One suggestion would be to hire a personal trainer and nutritionist to help you stay in the best shape possible. I think Watty has got the winning response. From here on in your major investment of time and money should be in staying healthy and flexible (mentally and physically, I guess) so you ca...

Bogel0048

My understanding is that grandparents' 529 balances are not reported at all for a grandchild's financial aid application. You are correct wrt the FAFSA. But most selective schools meeting full need use the CSS Profile and their own institutional methodologies to calculate EFC, and in some of those ...

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