Bogleheads.org

baw703916

Please transmit my thanks to your son for his service. I served from 2007 to 2014 as a Navy Surface Warfare Officer, so I'm familiar with the struggle. I agree with those above saying to go Roth for both TSP and IRA. Better to be taxed on the initial contribution than what's taken out, especially a...

baw703916

Well, ideally I'd like my portfolio to have a lot of alpha!

baw703916

I searched high and low and every media outlet is saying everyone in ACA is screwed. Seems the real news is right here at Bogleheads.org... Nobody is saying we would get a better deal with the subsidies based on Silver Plans going up, not even the politicians grasp the facts I read in the post pape...

baw703916

Actionable items: Get a job with group insurance Marry someone with group insurance Houston, we may have a problem. (1) I may be too old to get a job, but too young to be on Medicare. (2) I can't find someone with group insurance to marry. Actionable alternative three: If you are too young for Medi...

baw703916

Hi Taylor,

It looks like you may have accidentally started two threads with (almost) identical title.

Best wishes,
Brad

baw703916

TIPS are less risky than nominal Treasuries of the same duration: specifically, they avoid inflation risk. So according to MPT, the market should price them to have a lower expected return in the long run. So investing in TIPS, all else being equal, is likely to decrease your portfolio value down th...

baw703916

The reason that Bogleheads like the TBM fund is that most of them don't have TSP accounts and they can't invest in the G Fund. :) More seriously, the reason the F fund/TBM has better performance in backtesting is that interest rates have been generally falling for many years. That benefits the F fun...

baw703916

9/23 isn't a good time to buy. For one thing, the market's closed.

But if you buy TSM, you will have made a bigger investment in Apple than in any other company...

baw703916

It depends on state law, and getting an attorney to help you through the process is something I'd recommend. I ended up being the administrator of my grandmother's estate (administrator meaning I wasn't named as executor in the will). The first person named as executor predeceased my grandmother, an...

baw703916

Why would you get a colonoscopy at a hospital? That makes it more expensive than it needs to be, so the patient should pay those excessive charges. We get colonoscopies at the clinic part of our medical group. We are in and out in about 2 hours and it doesn't cost us anything. Medicare pays for all...

baw703916

After expense performance is all that matters - I'd give my whole portfolio over to Renaissance Technologies and pay their 5% management and 44% performance fees if I could. However, you can only do so IRL if you work for them. And then, both your employment and your portfolio returns depend on RT ...

baw703916

Hedge funds might have a place in a portfolio if you could find a good one whose manager charged five basis points. Seides is right that a large factor in his loss is that the E/R's are just too darn high!

baw703916

VictoriaF wrote: ↑
Thu Sep 07, 2017 6:29 pm
One of Brian's commenters has posted a link to a Bloomberg article Three Equifax Managers Sold Stock Before Cyber Hack Was Revealed. This can get really ugly.

Victoria

Yeah, I noticed that article. (sigh)

baw703916

Well good, because I have been waiting... EM was a great diversifier in the early to mid-2000's and really help cushion the blow of the tech crash. And it's been a great diversifier this decade as well. Just think, if you'd been 100% invested in U.S. stocks, your portfolio value might be so inflate...

baw703916

In thinking about it a little more, I'm wondering if the median assets of $0 after 6 years is partly a consequence of the Medicaid planning industry--since the lookback period is 5 years.

baw703916

With statistics like this, why do so many Bogleheads frown on LTC insurance? The problem is most policies being sold today don't cover the tail risk. They only cover 5 years of LTC or so. A good Boglehead should be able to afford 5 years, if that's the worst outcome. The article says that the media...

baw703916

So hypothetically, if you did have taxes withheld on the original amount when converting to a Roth, wouldn't you owe an early withdrawal penalty because you didn't roll all of it over into the Roth account (unless you were 59.5 years old)?

baw703916

I'm a little confused. The qualifying event test only applies for enrolling in an ACA plan outside of the open enrollment period. During an open enrollment period, you can sign up for an ACA plan regardless of whether a qualifying event has occurred. Exhausting one's COBRA eligibility (at the end of...

baw703916

I just decided to check how the Fidelity fund has been performing compared to Vanguard's Total International. Over the last 6 and 12 months, the two are extremely similar. One wouldn't expect them to be identical as they track different indices. While Vanguard's fund has generally done better, you c...

baw703916

Vallejo is definitely on my radar, though most of the people I know in the Bay live much closer in and interact more because of that. What's weird is that I think everyone (friends who rent and myself as well) knows this is a temporary game - eventually, we/they will have to move out if we/they don...

baw703916

Yes, I did it. It's probably more straightforward to enroll in an ACA plan during the open enrollment period anyway. Obviously that won't necessarily coincide with the end of the 18 months of COBRA. I would advise waiting until you've heard that the ACA enrollment has been processed and received an ...

baw703916

Another hedge fund manager complaining about how passive investing is about to destroy everything he holds dear (his fee structure!) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-03/singer-s-elliott-hedge-fund-returns-3-5-in-the-first-half What may have been a clever idea in its infancy has grown ...

baw703916

1. click "customer service" (upper right hand corner of screen). 2. on customer service screen, click on "self service" tab, second from left. 3. scroll down to "reinvest your dividends" (DRIP), and click. 4. it will prompt you for which account and holding you want to reinvest/stop reinvesting divi...

baw703916

I'd favor restricting the comparison to the period beginning in April 2009, when Small FTSE had live returns (and VINEX was a Vanguard fund and had a similar management approach to what it does today).

baw703916

JoMoney wrote:
tadamsmar wrote:Should you confuse strategy with outcome?
What is the objective of the strategy?

To achieve confirmation bias?

baw703916

... https://s17.postimg.org/6bbblojcf/1491581046651.jpg ... Without taking a position here, let me just say that that's a very nice chart. (Is anybody kidding themselves yet that they see a predictable cycle in it? :twisted: ) I see not exactly a predictable cycle, but a few general tendencies: 1) ...

baw703916

Nice article by Larry, and it makes a point that I've been arguing on this board for quite a while: that for about a decade now, yields on high grade munis have been comparable (and often higher) than Treasuries of equal maturity. So why does the conventional dogma about bonds in tax-advantaged stil...

baw703916

It may be worth asking how the OP intends to handle health insurance, especially given the landscape may change in an unpredictable way in the relatively near future.

baw703916

One wrinkle with a SIMPLE IRA is the employer match works a little differently. It's a % of salary over the whole year, not for each pay period. And the employer can wait until the end of the year to put in their portion of the match.

baw703916

Thanks for giving your thoughts, Bill! I also, though, can't help but wonder how recent high equity returns have flavored this thread. Had it taken place in 2009, far fewer folks would have taken umbrage at holding a large amount of fixed income assets. As I remember it, in 2009 there were a lot of ...

baw703916

OTOH, the "U.S. Market in Freefall" thread now seems to be pretty close to the longest on the site. I think real estate in my neck of the woods is much more likely to be in a bubble than the stock market (unless you believe there can't be a real estate bubble in Seattle because it's still cheaper th...

baw703916

Setting aside the two *additional* properties, I would love to know where in the Bay you can have a 2500 SF home on a quarter acre with a view of the Bay and the city for less than, say, 1MM (I'm assuming the other 1MM is tied up in the other two properties and liquid spending needs). I'm casting m...

baw703916

I think it makes sense to have one's emergency fund be layered. An "emergency" isn't a one size fits all thing, in amount of money needed, reason for the need, duration, correlation with economic conditions... So in order of priority, emergency fund layers might look something like this 1. bank chec...

baw703916

I'm looking for a source of advice on my rather unique financial situation. Maybe not completely unique, but I've never found advice on this board or elsewhere that addresses the major issues in my financial planning. Basically, my situation involves having a disability, the possibility of needing l...

baw703916

Besides the mantra about individual stocks (which can be read on hundreds of threads on the board), there's also the question of whether one already owns BRK in a taxable account, and how much in the way of capital gains one would realize by selling it. I own it, but it's only 2% or so of my portfol...

baw703916

Top99% wrote:I love this one in "11 signs" : 8. Jim Cramer? Who’s that?
During the tech bubble I don't know if I lost more chasing Jim's picks or Fortune Magazine's picks. I have been passive ever since.

Didn't he write a forward for one of the Bogleheads books? Or maybe it was one of John Bogle's?

baw703916

They are not the same. One insures your ability to work and get a paycheck. The other insures your medical costs. If you have considerable assets, but are unable to keep working due to a significant health issue...stand alone disability isn't going to help you much, because while you might be able ...

baw703916

The individual insurance market is a concern for everyone, even employed people who get group insurance from their employer. Early retirement and layoffs aren't the only scenarios. If you get seriously ill (cancer, auto-immune disease, etc.), you are likely to lose your ability to do your job, and ...

baw703916

VictoriaF wrote:
Gamma Ray wrote:Bogleheads meet in person? I never knew that.
You did not know that in October 200 of us will be meeting in Pennsylvania? Or that we have local groups, including some outside the U.S.?

Victoria

I've met VictoriaF in person! And she's just as knowledgeable and witty as one would expect.

baw703916

Maybe we need to apply efficient market theory here...similar to the story of the $20 bill.

If an ideal Boglehead spouse is out there, why hasn't some other Boglehead already picked them up?

baw703916

I know the literature for the G Fund speaks of an "investment objective", but really, what the heck does that even mean in this case? The G Fund can invest in one thing and one thing only: special Treasury securities which have a maturity the next business day. The characteristics of those securitie...

baw703916

G fund is more volatile as it is directly tied to Treasury rates as described above. How can the G fund be more volatile than literally any investment you can think of. It can't lose money, by rule. It has zero duration. I was referring to the rate, not principal. All of these are principal-protect...

baw703916

The G Fund's investment objective is to produce a rate of return that is higher than inflation while avoiding exposure to credit (default) risk and market price fluctuations. So, the stated goal of the fund is to beat inflation, and so far, over thirty years it's met that stated goal. Do we questio...

baw703916

investor997 wrote:I'll have to check with the agent again... I'm not sure he knew what he was talking about.

If that's the case, it's probably better to find that out now, when it's not your claim.

baw703916

I think I have less ability to identify outperforming managers than outperforming stocks.

baw703916

I was being facetious. I can think of no good reason for active management for this fund, and yes the idea that some Treasuries will outperform is ridiculous. I can think of a score. Most bond indexes only cover 10% of the most actively bonds, if you are willing to take a little liquidity risk you ...

baw703916

saltycaper wrote:
baw703916 wrote:Does Fidelity have an equivalent of TR that is made up of index funds?
Yes. Fidelity Freedom Index Funds. (Not the same composition as Vanguard.)

Thanks. The regular Freedom Funds are kind of a mess.

baw703916

Does Fidelity have an equivalent of TR that is made up of index funds?

baw703916

I hope Vanguard has a good method to identify those Treasuries that will outperform! :) Seriously, the only effect of a lot of these bond funds being actively managed seems to be that the Admiral minimum is $50,000. Why is your metric "outperform" and what does outperform even mean? Without looking...

baw703916

I hope Vanguard has a good method to identify those Treasuries that will outperform!

Seriously, the only effect of a lot of these bond funds being actively managed seems to be that the Admiral minimum is $50,000.

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