Bogleheads.org

Doctor Rhythm

Welcome to the forum. There is unfortunately no way to reconcile this contradiction. Investing in stocks involves risk. Over 10 years, there is likely to be another bear market. There have been two ~ 30% drops in the last 3 years alone. Some might recommend dollar cost averaging into the market (ie, gradually buy VT over months) rather than make a single large purchase. This might ease the anxiety, but over 10 years, it probably doesn’t make a huge difference in risk reduction. If you do this, don’t try to time the market; just make scheduled purchases. We talk about risk tolerance as one’s need, ability, and willingness to take risk with investments. You’ve stated your low willingness, which is fine. What about your need and ability? Will ...

Doctor Rhythm

Not really an appropriate question for this forum. Instead, I would recommend changing the investments in your tax deferred accounts to prevent this from happening in the future. My retirement accounts use funds that track a Russell or DJ Total US benchmark, for example, while my taxable Vanguard account uses S&P 500 and CREF based funds.

Doctor Rhythm

If you like your meat very lean, then I don’t know that Costco makes a difference. We prefer our meat heavily marbled with fat, and find that Costco’s “Choice” ribeye often looks like Safeway’s “Prime” in that respect. As someone said above, their steaks are also cut thicker than what grocery chain typically do. We also buy their rack of lamb and ox tail regularly. Have not splurged on their $99/lb A5 Wagyu.

Doctor Rhythm

Sometimes the only thing worse than dealing with customer service is being customer service.

McD is required to post the calorie count on a Royale with Cheese. If you want to know how much riboflavin it has, it should be easy to calculate based on its components, but unless I were a masochist, I wouldn’t ask them to do this.

Doctor Rhythm

I’m slowly planning the replacement of my 16-year-old (2007) CR-V sometime in the next 6-12 months. Spouse already has a (2019) CR-V, otherwise it would be a no-brainer to buy another one. The Mazda CX-5 was at the top of my list of alternatives, but learning about its (non-touch screen) infotainment system has given me pause. Might be even more of a non-starter for someone younger. A bit more expensive, but the CX-50 does have a touch screen and some other accoutrements. I’ll chime in that it’s fine to provide input about choosing a car, vacation spot, or air fryer, whether to lease or buy, or yes, which brokerage or funds to use. While he didn’t help choose our first car, my father did walk us through how to negotiate the price. This didn...

Doctor Rhythm

Its been almost over 6 months or so that I have been getting mails from NORC (www.norc.org) saying that they want to interview me for some research study. initially they mailed that they will offer $50 for the interview. later it became more that that amount. they also came to my residence but I made an excuse as I was reluctant ....Now they are mailing & offering $500 and started calling me as well. Did you ever give them an unambiguous “no”? Or did you at some point express interest, “let me think about it”, or otherwise engage with them? It’s hard to imagine they would send someone to your home if you previously told them you weren’t interested. There are legitimate scientific reasons for them to be persistent. In any case, feel fre...

Doctor Rhythm

I think your instincts are right. Too many funds for what is basically a conservative capital preservation / income portfolio. This could be done with a single balanced fund at any of the big brokerages. It’s US-tilted as you say, but that’s common and might have been driven by what your friend told the advisor. There is a small cap value tilt as well from what I can see, which isn’t what I’d recommend for someone trying to be conservative with a shorter investment horizon - but it’s not crazy either. Overall, not an unreasonable portfolio for someone who wants to be (and is able to be) very conservative, like your friend. If your friend is set on using an advisor, then it probably comes down to fees. $30,000 per year (based on a 1% AUM) of...

Doctor Rhythm

Mr Buddy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:20 pm
Is there a way to mitigate this tax burden, or do I understand correctly that I will have to pay 15% on 23,000? My account now offers TLH. But will that be useless since the funds I now own will be less than a year old by the end of the year?

If there are losses in your current taxable portfolio this year, you (or Mr. Roboto) can sell and take a short term capital loss. The ST loss will first be applied against ST gains (if any exist), and the remainder of the loss will be applied against LT gains.

Doctor Rhythm

Worst case scenario is that someone has your account name and password, used them to log in but were thwarted by 2FA. You did the right thing by changing your password. You might also change your username in this situation. Even if they can’t access your account, their attempts may get you locked out.

If the possibility of getting more information is worth your (potentially futile) effort, you might contact their security department. I won’t give you their phone number, because you shouldn’t trust me, but you can look it up easily.

Doctor Rhythm

VOO: 77.5K (+0.90%) VTI: 26K (-13%) VXUS: 10.8K (+0.06%) QQQ: 10K (-8%) T Bills (3-months): 17.7k (18K at maturity) Emergency cash with 4.8% HYSA: 50K I’m at -8% with QQQ. Waiting for it to become positive to sell and invest in VTI or VOO. Im 31 and aiming to earn at least 2.5M by 47yo. What else I should do to become better at diversification and meat my 2.5M goal Current TC is 255K and get 15k monthly and my wife gets 5K monthly. Monthly expenses are around 4.5K and rest will go to 401K, Roth and brokerage, HYSA If you plan to sell QQQ to buy VTI or VOO, there’s no reason to wait until it recovers, especially if it’s in a taxable account. Otherwise, your funds provide adequate diversification among US stocks. You only hold a tiny allocat...

Doctor Rhythm

It feels like you are getting ahead of yourself. Picking funds is the final (and I think, the easiest) step in creating a portfolio. Before you ask “what funds should I buy in my 403b”, you need to think about how much risk you can tolerate. This will inform your decision of how much stock vs fixed income to hold. Also consider how hands on you want to be (especially as it sounds like you haven’t been hands on before now). Once you decide on the big picture, then you pick the funds to make this happen, aiming for diversification and low costs. To give you some perspective, if this is your only account, you are close to 100% stocks, which is very aggressive and risky. If you were invested in Fidelity Contrafund last year as you are now, your...

Doctor Rhythm

I don’t understand this at all. Why pay off debt at a lower interest rate than you can earn risk free? Why pay capital gains tax or pull money out of a down market? As others said, bank failure doesn’t put you at risk of losing money if you have a mortgage. If anything, if you owe money to a bank, its troubles are your strengths. As a real world example, in 2008-09, my mortgage lender was one of many banks that gave up the ghost during the Global Financial Crisis. My loan was bought by Bank of America, which held it for a year or two before selling it to another lender. Other than the minor inconvenience of logging into a new website and changing my automatic payment destination, everything was the same. The new lender can’t unilaterally ch...

Doctor Rhythm

It was important for us to get our post-Millenial / Gen-Z child set up with a credit card. The main reason was to avoid the unnecessary risks of using a debit card (but I won’t disagree with those who say the risk is small). Building credit is also a secondary goal.

Beyond the fraud risk, I also like having a major bank act a firewall between me and the merchant.

Doctor Rhythm

We can’t say unless we know how much the cat earns, its other expenses, and the size of its portfolio.

But as a rough guess, let’s say it’s 15’ per day of work, so 3-4 hours total. It involves handling poop, so is worth more than minimum wage. It’s a neighbor, so you don’t want to lowball it and look bad.

$100 for two weeks.

Doctor Rhythm

mega317 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 1:14 pm I wonder what you'll be doing that you need technology to track your kids instead of just watching them.

I like those backpack/leash things for little kids. They're basically pets anyway.

I’m usually checking the S&P 500 when my child or pet wanders off. Or maybe they’re staying perfectly still, and I’m the one wandering. It’s all relative, right? Anyway, I guess the answer is to use mutual funds instead of ETFs, so I only need to check once a day at market close.

Or I could wear the leash, I suppose.

Doctor Rhythm

Not advocating this, but the parent of a young child (too young to remember a phone number) with a penchant for wandering off would write her phone number on his arm with a Sharpie. It worked when we were at Disneyland, and her child promptly wandered off.

Doctor Rhythm

Welcome to the forum. The actual allocation between stocks and fixed income is very individualized. However, the specific funds to use to achieve that allocation might be:

VTSAX or VTI for US stocks
VTIAX or VXUS for international stocks
VBTLX or BND for core bonds

If you want to simplify and be hands-off, you should look into their target date funds.

Doctor Rhythm

Mostly, I don’t do anything special.

Workplace account contributions are automatic, so I see the total at the end of the year, which should equal the maximum allowable. I do Roth rollovers with workplace after-tax contributions, which again should total up to the maximum allowable by year’s end. I also need to manually reinvest the rolled-over cash, so I always confirm that it happened. Purchases in taxable accounts are much less predictable. I confirm on the website or app that each transactions occurred, and sometimes look back as part of another transaction like TLH. Otherwise, no reconciliation.

Definitely never tried to determine whether distributions and unrealized gains/losses were even remotely accurate.

Doctor Rhythm

NazgulSentient wrote: ↑Sun Mar 26, 2023 6:23 pm If I believe in the market as a whole, then it stands to reason that I should also believe in the market in part, as this fund holds 3680 companies' stocks.

Only time will tell if this is the right decision, but the rationale you present doesn’t make sense to me. It’s not enough that the extended market recovers. That’s would be easy. You have to hope the extended market outperforms the total market in the future by enough of a margin that it makes up for not tax-loss harvesting.

Then again, hopefully $2800 isn’t a lot of money to you, so it could be seen as an inexpensive wager that justified the opportunity costs.

Doctor Rhythm

I would follow the instructions on the summary and instruction page. Perhaps someone from MD can confirm your state-specific instructions. In California, the instructions were to NOT attach the W-2 for state mail-in. State e-file fees are not included in the standard price at most retailers.

There’s another thread about whether it’s worth the effort to save the e-file fee by mailing the return. Opinions varied, but I decided it wasn’t after doing so for my child’s basic return.

Doctor Rhythm

I’m also having trouble believing that the bank is giving you accurate predictions on probability of success. Throwing numbers similar to what you’ve posted here and your previous posts into one online simulator, I’m seeing 100% success with either your current portfolio or with the advisor’s proposal, with both likely to leave you with more money in 20 years than you currently have. The advisor’s portfolio + fees is predicted to leave you with a median of $400,000 less on a starting balance of $1M at the end of 20 years compared to what you are already doing. In the worst case scenario for each portfolio, your current portfolio still outperforms the advisor’s by almost $100,000. Even ignoring the 1% AUM fee and the capital gains tax, which...

Doctor Rhythm

What are you currently withdrawing from your portfolio each year, let’s say 3-4% or so? They’re advocating that you withdraw an additional 1% (in other words, increase your annual expenses by 25-33%) to benefit them. So maybe for every five dollars you withdraw, two go towards living expenses, one goes towards discretionary/joy, one goes to tax, and one more goes to your advisor. That sounds bad, because it is. But here are some other horrible ways to look at it. — Hard to say how much you will pay them over the rest of your lives, but it could easily be a couple hundred thousand. How long did it take you to earn that much after taxes? You could have retired that much sooner if you didn’t have to pay your advisor. — That’s how much less you...

Doctor Rhythm

Thanks all!

Got approved for a (surprisingly) unsecured card from CapitalOne, and also added on as a user to my oldest card account from Citibank, which otherwise is seldom used.

Doctor Rhythm

OP - do you even have the ability to buy VTSAX in your retirement account?

If so, it’s a good fund to hold for your entire domestic equity allocation. If not - and that’s what I assumed from your post - then hold something else that provide a total market cap weighted portfolio, like the funds that you mention in the original post at the 85/15 ratio. This should provide similar returns as VTSAX with possibly even lower cost.

If you want to learn about Boglehead philosophy (or basics of investing in general), selecting funds, or what your asset allocation should be, then start here. Best I can tell, you are trying to understand diversification and risk tolerance.

Doctor Rhythm

Have had a Panasonic Arc5 shaver that has served me well for 3 years. It's lasted longer than others with regular cleanings without having to replace the blades. I go to look for replacement blades for part WES9032P, and I cannot find any place to buy replacement blades that I trust will be genuine or original? It shouldn't be so hard. What am I doing wrong? It seems like it would be more practical and possibly cheaper in the long run just to buy a brand new product from reputable brick & mortar retailer when it goes on sale $150 retail, probable sales in $110-130 range, then pay for replacement blades where, for whatever reasons, seem ridiculously expensive with potentially suspect quality. Am I missing something? When I google “WES90...

Doctor Rhythm

Unusual that a 401 only had target date funds as options, unless maybe it offered some kind of linkage to a brokerage with other offerings.

We cannot make recommendations without knowing more about your financial situation and risk tolerance. Your prior posts seem to indicate a lot of disparate ideas and beliefs (everything from a dividend portfolio to the speculative investment-that-must-not-be-named), so it’s difficult to gauge what makes sense for you.

Here’s the template for asking portfolio questions:
viewtopic.php?t=6212

Doctor Rhythm

Lower expenses for similar funds - sounds good. Besides, what’s the alternative? Is there a target date or balanced multi-assset fund you can use since you don’t like to rebalance? The allocation you picked is recommended because it represents the total US stock market, not because it mimics VTSAX (which does the same). Unless, you can explain why this isn’t the best option for your particular beliefs or needs, I’d stick with it. As others said, consider adding international (whether in your 401k or a taxable account) if you want to mimic the 3 fund portfolio that’s talked about here. There are target funds available. Those are for traditional retirement right? I am looking to FIRE. My taxable account at Vanguard is just VTSAX. Roth IRA is...

Doctor Rhythm

If you sell while it’s down, you can tax loss harvest. This is what I would do.

Waiting makes sense only if you believe that it will go grow faster than FSKAX by the time you ultimately sell. However, if you really believed this, you should sell FSKAX to buy more FSMAX.

Doctor Rhythm

FWIW, one of the Dell replacement batteries purchased on eBay is 10 years old now, one is 7 years and the other is 5 years and all are working better than the original and two of them have a low battery indicators the original did not have. 7 years ago I bought 12V Ni-Cad replacement packs for an old DeWalt drill. DeWalt wanted $199 for a single pack. I bought 3 for $45 and all are still going strong, holding more energy than the originals. I suspect if you are going to have a problem, it will be right away and both eBay and Amazon give you an easy return process. So if a $119 a non-starter on dell.com, what do you plan to do now? I'm glad your batteries haven't exploded! If the risk was just the cost of the battery, an ebay/amazon battery...

Doctor Rhythm

TLC1957 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 24, 2023 10:30 am 1. What if any is the downside of taking a photo of a photo with an iPhone?
Image quality will be inferior compared to scanning. It will take a lot of time, unless you really don’t care about quality, in which case images will be even worse than that. The only upside I see is cost savings.

2. I have not researched yet but is a stand available to place the iPhone on and place the photo to ensure a clear photo?
They exist, but the main issue isn’t the the phone but evenly and accurately lighting the subject.

3. What did I not consider of but should?
Using a professional service if this is meant to be an archival project.

Thanks for your help.

Tom

Doctor Rhythm

Lower expenses for similar funds - sounds good. Besides, what’s the alternative? Is there a target date or balanced multi-assset fund you can use since you don’t like to rebalance?

The allocation you picked is recommended because it represents the total US stock market, not because it mimics VTSAX (which does the same). Unless, you can explain why this isn’t the best option for your particular beliefs or needs, I’d stick with it.

As others said, consider adding international (whether in your 401k or a taxable account) if you want to mimic the 3 fund portfolio that’s talked about here.

Doctor Rhythm

If I’m getting a takeout order at a restaurant where I might typically get table service, I’ll add a small courtesy tip. For places that are strictly counter service, I don’t tip.

I’m not sure this makes any logical sense, it’s just my habit.

Doctor Rhythm

I’ve been getting repeated calls from fidelity advisors saying they offer free advising. It sounds very shady bc what advisor is completely free? There must be a catch. They said it’s not free only if they do managed funds (which I won’t do). I have a zoom meeting on Tuesday but has anyone else had any experience with this? Apologies, but this really doesn’t make any sense to me. You aren’t shopping for an advisor. You don’t really trust them. You’re annoyed by their frequent sales calls. However, you agreed to do exactly what they want by taking a sales meeting. Why would you do this? Just because a door-to-door solicitor comes by every other week doesn’t mean you should invite them inside one time and read their pamphlet. You don’t even ...

Doctor Rhythm

You should ask them (or try it on their webpage) and see for yourself. That said, VTSAX is around $95 per share today, so 0.001 shares is around 10 cents and 0.0001 shares is a penny. Factor that into how much effort to put into this.

Doctor Rhythm

It's something that I suspect most people have done at some point. I probably do it more than most because of opportunities related to being associated with my profession and work place. I don't know how you would pursue this, rather than just passively do it when an offer comes to you. I personally don't get scammy invitations, but I'm sure they exist and you should be wary.

Doctor Rhythm

I'm in the camp that says to buy a cheap bike from Target or Walmart for a young child, preferably one that's Spider-Man themed. Remember that for a child, Spider-Man > Shimano components, especially if we're talking about training wheels ("Yeah, man, but these are titanium training wheels"). Unless they had really rich parents, every kid from my generation learned to ride on something like that and we all turned out fine.

That said, if you don't feel comfortable making adjustments or doing minor assembly, you could go the more expensive route of buying from a bike shop.

Doctor Rhythm

I bought a non-OEM battery from Amazon for a cheap Dell laptop many years ago. It was fine. The computer only lasted another year or two after that anyway, so the durability of the battery was a non-issue. I'm not a "power user" by any means, but even I have trouble justifying spending money on a computer that's more than 3-4 years old, especially as I don't buy a top-of-the-line model to begin with.

Doctor Rhythm

AnnetteLouisan wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:29 pm It’s likely dependent on where you live, as the prior commenter mentioned.

These days, people who left the cities to WFH but need to go into the office occasionally but prefer not to use public transportation are considering this. I’m not the only one.

Why don’t they drive themselves, take a taxi, or use Uber/Lyft like other city-dwellers who can afford this?

Doctor Rhythm

For the urbanites Bogleheads among us, I’d appreciate your thoughts on when and under what circumstances and net worth levels it makes sense to use a personal security person and driver for routine shorter and longer day trips. How about “never”? At least for regular folks who deal with everyday concerns and lead ordinary lives in relative obscurity. Not to make light of crime, but everyone faces risks, yet exceptionally few people feel the need to hire a body guard, even if they can afford it. So if one does, I think it says more about them rather than their environment. If I felt scared to leave my home, I would move to somewhere I’m more comfortable or learn to deal with my anxiety before I hire protection. By the way, if your wealth ma...

Doctor Rhythm

Ignoring financial considerations completely, Costco for us based on return policy and fact there's are two of them within 10' drive, so I don't have to pack and ship a 75" monstrosity. If price is considered, I'd still pay any extra $25 or so on a ~$1000 total price to buy from Costco for those reasons.

Doctor Rhythm

It's sort of Fight Club Rule 1 on this forum with regards to discussing Crypto and other "greater fool" investments, so we should probably drop that line of inquiry. A more generic approach is to say it's okay to sell an investment that has lost money unless you believe (with some confidence) that it will gain value faster than the alternative investment you will buy from the proceeds of the sale. So, someone decided to buy Company X's stock when it was hot instead of a total market index fund, and X lost 50% of its value within weeks. Should they sell the loser and use the money to buy total stock marrket, or hope and wait for X to recover? Unless they feel it is likely that Company X will grow faster than the total market in the...

Doctor Rhythm

paul e wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 11:00 am
Doctor Rhythm wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 10:54 am VITNX has a minimum investment of $5M and shaves a whole 0.01% off the ER compared to VTSAX. I’m guessing the rep you spoke with doesn’t get a lot of questions from retail customers about it, so I’d cut them some slack on this.
Not true. VITSX also has a $5m investment minimum and has the same .03% ER

Sorry, Google directed me to VITPX which is the institutional “plus” fund with higher minimum. The -SX and -NX funds do seem similar, same number of holdings. Their NAV prices differ. One is a few years older.

Doctor Rhythm

The VITPX has a $100M buy in, and cuts .02% off its ER compared to VTSAX.

VITNX has a minimum investment of only $5M and shaves only 0.01% off the ER compared to VTSAX, so it’s clearly aimed at plebs like you and me.

Edit: Oops - wrong ticker! Was looking at the Institutional Plus fund.

Doctor Rhythm

Simplification thoughts.

You have three 401(k) accounts. Can you roll the old ones into your current employer’s plan? This alone would reduce the number of funds you hold by two-thirds. But that’s just the start. Your current 401(k) holds 8 funds, including two different Target Date funds. I don’t know anything about those specific funds, but if one of these TDF has an asset allocation and glide path that you like and the expenses are low, you could put everything into it. 100% of all your workplace retirement savings from 3 employers into one fund with no need to rebalance or reallocate. There’s no reason to expect a more complex portfolio with the same stock/bond allocation will outperform this single fund.

Doctor Rhythm

I haven't tried those. Can you dive down with them very easily? I don't mean a long deep dive, I'm not that good a swimmer/diver. I just mean a brief foray down 10 or 15 feet and gliding for a bit. There’s a bit of a safety controversy over full face masks. The main concern is the increased dead space within the mask volume leading to rebreathing exhaled CO2. I won’t try to litigate it here one way or another, but you should at least read up about it before you go that route. Even ignoring that issue, I like having separate mask and snorkel. Easier to find the right fit. Easier to get your ideal combination if you buy individually. Most importantly, easier to trouble shoot when something goes wrong in the middle of a swim. The diving issue...

Doctor Rhythm

Welcome to the forum.

The only hard advice I have for you is to simplify your portfolio. That’s a lot of funds to divide $240K between. It would also be a lot of funds to divide $2.5M between. This isn’t a rule, but I think you should be able to articulate why you need more than 3 funds in any account. What does my N^th fund (which has less than $3000 invested) do that justifies its place in my portfolio?

We are by and large a community of market agnostics. We happily admit that we don’t know what will happen in five years because we don’t have to. Given this uncertainty, a reasonable default approach is diversification across the total market. Thus, I only hold broad market funds (total US or S&P 500 and total international).

Doctor Rhythm

It’s often said that you shouldn’t make investment decisions based on chats at the water cooler, a YouTube video, or a friend’s hot tip. I absolutely agree, but I would do any of these before I made a decision based on someone else’s recollection of a partially overheard conversation between people they didn’t know well enough to ask for details.

Doctor Rhythm

Yes, I have done it a few times. Perhaps I’m a bit on the paranoid side .. before handing my phone over, I do the following: 1) Back up to icloud 2) Sign out of icloud account 3) Remove sim card 4) Reset Phone 5) Go through set up process, so that it is functional, but no longer has any personal data. 6) After servicing, reset and restore from icloud. You don’t actually need to give Apple Store your passcode or hand over an unlocked phone. If I recall, you need to change some settings only. Oddly, I was asked to provide access to an unlocked phone the very first time I changed a battery, but not in any subsequent swaps. I just said that my work prohibits me from granting access to my phone (which is true in my case). They didn’t have a pro...

Doctor Rhythm

We go to Hawaii, since that’s most geographically convenient and it’s an easy trip that requires minimal planning. It’s also the best snorkeling in the US, especially if you want beach access rather than depend on a boat. We dislike boat tours: the cost, extra planning, extra travel time, limited in-water time, and yes, the people. PM if you want specific beach recommendations.

Have also done Cancun/Cozumel and USVI which have their own appeal but Hawaii mo betta.

Doctor Rhythm

You may already be able to communicate with them using Zoom or FaceTime. On the other side of the conversation, if I needed to speak with a patient’s overseas relative/DPOA for healthcare, I would use one of those approaches rather than modifying my phone or asking them to modify theirs.

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