Search found 1570 matches

by ourbrooks
Sat Jul 22, 2017 12:30 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Alternatives to Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player
Replies: 63
Views: 12046

Re: Alternatives to Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player

Go to eBay and search for "mp3 player." You'll get a huge number of hits for non-name brand devices. Nearly all of them require a separate memory card. Which one is best? Splurge and spend a total of $10 for the three most likely ones.
by ourbrooks
Sat Jun 03, 2017 2:21 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Lump Sum or Annuity
Replies: 8
Views: 1714

Re: Lump Sum or Annuity

E.g., for 30 years of a $525/mo withdrawal, starting in 4 years, the return on the lump sum would have to average ~5.4%/yr for the next 34 years. Yes, that's the return I get too. [1] But living to age 95 is optimistic. Based on the SSA 2013 Period Life Table , only 7% of males and 13% of females age 61 will still be alive at age 95. [2] A more conservative estimate is obtained by weighting the annual pension by the odds of being alive each year. I did this with my longevity estimator using the same mortality table . For for a female [3] age 61 $525 per month beginning in four years has as present value of $75,700 when discounted at 3.3% . As powermega points out, this is better than buying a comparable annuity on the open market. But I st...
by ourbrooks
Fri May 19, 2017 6:13 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: iPhone GPS apps
Replies: 15
Views: 2319

Re: iPhone GPS apps

Here WeGo is free and has offline maps, so you can still use it even if you can't get a cell phone connection. If you ever drive outside of big urban areas, this is well worth having.

The company which produces it is owned by a consortium of German automakers who don't want to be dependent on Google for their map data. Intel also has a share.
by ourbrooks
Thu May 18, 2017 4:11 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Managing My Elderly Moms Portfolio
Replies: 13
Views: 2860

Re: Managing My Elderly Moms Portfolio

If you're sure she's going to exhaust her finances, why not just buy an SPIA (single premium immediate annuity)? If you put $700,000 into buying an annuity, at her age, it'd pay out a bit more than the $80,000 for as long as she lives.

The amount the annuity pays out is not adjusted for inflation so, over time, you'd still have to make up the difference but that would happen gradually over time, instead of having to start paying it all, all at once.

The problem with any stocks at all at her age is that the market might be down when you need the money. The stock market went down over 50% in 2008 and over the period from 1999 to 2009 there was no net gain.
by ourbrooks
Tue May 16, 2017 5:38 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Artificial Intelligence ETF
Replies: 12
Views: 4673

Re: Artificial Intelligence ETF

I've lost track - is this the third or fourth AI revival? I still have my proceedings from the 1985 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Three kinds of things have happened along the way: 1. Algorithms have gotten better. Sixty years of continuous improvement in machine learning algorithms or image recognition algorithms has had an effect. 2. Computers have gotten faster. Algorithms that were discarded in 1985 because they took too long to run now execute in seconds on cell phones. In fact, increased computational power may have had the largest effect. 3. Applications have gotten better connected. The first AI medical diagnosis apps did a question and answer dialog with the physician. This took way too much time and it...
by ourbrooks
Mon May 15, 2017 8:31 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Anyone else agree with my logic on silicon valley housing?
Replies: 84
Views: 11562

Re: Anyone else agree with my logic on silicon valley housing?

I'll agree that the weather in Austin isn't as nice as in the Silicon Valley area; it gets a lot hotter in summer and freezes in winter. If you come to visit, August is a good month to see what the weather is really like.

Honesty compels me to state that there are a lot of music places available after midnight. You won't be able to take Uber or Lyft to get home afterwards, though; they both stopped doing business in Austin after they badly lost a referendum on their operating regulations.

Before buying property in Austin, be sure to understand the new CodeNEXT zoning code. It might have a big impact on what your house is worth five years from now.
by ourbrooks
Mon May 15, 2017 8:15 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Anyone else agree with my logic on silicon valley housing?
Replies: 84
Views: 11562

Re: Anyone else agree with my logic on silicon valley housing?

Please, please, don't move to Austin. There are 20,000 - 24,000 people moving here a year and the City of Austin has done a miserable job of planning for growth. They expect traffic on the main, MOPAC freeway, to go from 185,000 trips per day this year to 320,000 trips a day by 2030. What are they doing about it? Adding two more lanes to the 183 freeway which feeds into MOPAC. They estimate that what is now a 15 minute trip will become a 40 minute trip. Prices near downtown Austin are near Bay Area prices; people have been moving to Austin from the Bay Area for several decades now and they've driven the prices up. Increasingly, the lower cost housing is moving further and further out. If you're talking 2200 sq ft on an acre, my guess is tha...
by ourbrooks
Mon May 15, 2017 6:43 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: mirror or clone my windows 10 HD?
Replies: 10
Views: 1726

Re: mirror or clone my windows 10 HD?

I'm not sure "mirror" applies to your situation. I think you either want to "clone" or create a backup "image" of your entire system. To me, "mirroring" is when you have copies of a file or folder in more than one location and you want them to stay in sync (like with Google Drive or One Drive). You can use the built-in tool in Win-10 to do a full "System Image Backup". Then if you do not like things after Creator, you can roll the entire system back to the state it was when you created the backup image. There is good info on this page. Skip down to the section "System Image Backups" if you want... https://www.howtogeek.com/220986/how-to-use-all-of-windows-10%E2%80%99s-backup-and-r...
by ourbrooks
Mon May 15, 2017 4:45 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: mirror or clone my windows 10 HD?
Replies: 10
Views: 1726

Re: mirror or clone my windows 10 HD?

From the Start menu, go to Settings/Backup and select Backup and Restore (Windows 7). Connect an external HDD with enough space to hold all of the space you've used on your disk. Select Create a system image and select your HDD When it asks, create a recovery drive using a USB stick. Put the hard drive and the USB stick somewhere where you won't accidentally use them again. If things really go badly on the upgrade, set the BIOS to boot off of the USB drive. Boot from it and it'll let you reload the image from HDD. Read up on mounting a VHD. You can mount the image as an external drive and read stuff off of it, so you can use it to restore individual files as well as restoring the whole image. In fact, I keep an HDD image in a fire safe to u...
by ourbrooks
Thu May 11, 2017 3:47 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Home Addition Costs
Replies: 19
Views: 4783

Re: Home Addition Costs

Unless you're able to go see examples of what you're purchasing, be cautious about prices advertised online; they may not be the same grade of product. Also, was that the price of just the shower door or did it include installation? Glass shower door installation in my area are usually done by glass and window companies as part of the sale. I suspect that both contractors went to the same glass company and got the same price. Contractors tend to like products where a subcontractor handles all of the installation and all of the problems. This may or may not be to your advantage. When we did a cost plus 15% remodel, the contractor sent us the actual invoices he was sent. Some of the costs were from building supply companies and we could have ...
by ourbrooks
Thu May 11, 2017 2:39 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Home Addition Costs
Replies: 19
Views: 4783

Re: Home Addition Costs

Part of the problem might be, you went out for bids for the whole job. Contractors have a hard time controlling costs; maybe, when they finally get to your job, the subcontractor they were going to use is busy on another job so they have to use a more expensive sub. Maybe the cost of tile takes a big jump due to new tariffs. The contractor has to build all of that into the bid. Another part of the same problem might have been that the architect's bid wasn't detailed enough. Did you put in the exact brand and model number of the sinks you want? What kind of crown molding did you specify? How smooth a finish did you ask for on the drywall? If you didn't specify things at that level, then the builder will have to make assumptions. Rather than ...
by ourbrooks
Thu May 11, 2017 8:55 am
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Assisting Parents (82 and 78)
Replies: 17
Views: 2866

Re: Assisting Parents (82 and 78)

The stock market must be up; people are recommending equities to people in their 80s. In 2009, people were recommending no stocks to people in their 20s. Between 1999 and 2009 there was a 10 year period in which equities lost money; it can happen again. The rule of thumb used to be, don't put any money into equities that you'll need in the next 20 years. By that rule, they might consider, say, 1% equities.

+1 on the CD suggestion, though. How about a plain, old CD ladder? Compare current CD rates with bond rates; current CD rates for five year CDs are better than what any of the suggested bond funds are paying and the principal won't drop if the rise in interest rates continues.
by ourbrooks
Sat Apr 29, 2017 5:37 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: When to consider Long Term Care Insurance
Replies: 38
Views: 4734

Re: When to concider Long Term Care Insurance

Approximately how much did this policy cost? What were the policy limits? What company offered the policy? I'm guessing that the policy cost on the order of $2,000 a month and that policy limits were on the order of $300,000. In the case referenced, the client deposited 300,000 with the insurance company and could get all his money less claims at any time. There is no policy limits. Contract isn't for everyone, but it does solve the question of increasing premium potential and a long term claim. Definitely interesting. Is there any reason why you can't name the company? I'd guess that only the living beneficiaries could get their money back, not their estates. If that's the case, I'd suspect that there's some medical underwriting going on ...
by ourbrooks
Sat Apr 29, 2017 4:18 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: When to consider Long Term Care Insurance
Replies: 38
Views: 4734

Re: When to concider Long Term Care Insurance

pintail07 wrote:It is very fact dependent. For example a case I recently reviewed, husband 73 is care giver for 67 year old wife with MS. They are very wealthy but concerned about a long claim and funding 24 hour care. He will pay the first 300,000 of care then the insurance company pay the balance up to policy limits for life, contractually guaranteed. Monthly benefit starts at 12,700 per month that increases each year 3%, contractually guaranteed.
Approximately how much did this policy cost? What were the policy limits? What company offered the policy? I'm guessing that the policy cost on the order of $2,000 a month and that policy limits were on the order of $300,000.
by ourbrooks
Sat Apr 29, 2017 3:16 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: When to consider Long Term Care Insurance
Replies: 38
Views: 4734

Re: When to concider Long Term Care Insurance

pintail07 wrote:There are some policies that will cover this worst case. And there are policies that allows you to cover the first few years then they will cover for life, guaranteed by contract.
Please provide pointers to such policies. I claim that they no longer exist because the companies which offered them got out of the long term care business. I would be particularly interested in policies which kicked in after five years.
by ourbrooks
Sat Apr 29, 2017 12:16 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: calculating best house value across US markets
Replies: 18
Views: 3008

Re: calculating best house value across US markets

You also might want to look at the data Zillow publishes.
by ourbrooks
Sat Apr 29, 2017 12:07 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: calculating best house value across US markets
Replies: 18
Views: 3008

Re: calculating best house value across US markets

What you want is the FHA Housing Price Index (HPI) ZIP5 map. It shows relative prices, which are not the same as relative values, but it's a start. If you work at home and rely on the Internet, one thing to be really careful about is connection availability in rural areas. You need to look at this specifically for the house you are thinking of purchasing; there may be access along a main road but not along the dirt road where your house is. Also, think about connection reliability. When a storm does damage to communication lines, the most rural lines get fixed last. How would you do if your Internet went out for a week? If you have kids or are thinking of having kids, worry about access to health care. There are places in Texas where the ne...
by ourbrooks
Mon Jun 20, 2016 6:33 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Hard to understand in percent for AA, any better alternative models out there ?
Replies: 22
Views: 2616

Re: Hard to understand in percent for AA, any better alternative models out there ?

I started with all fixed income investments for the first five years. Then I did a glidepath, in five year chunks, of percentage stocks going from 0 to 100 percent at 20 years and stayed at 100% out to 30 years. In the past, stocks have never lost money in any 20 year period, so I figured that after 20 years I could stay at 100% stocks. That works out to 58.33/41.66. That's close enough to 60/40 to give me some comfort that the approach is reasonable but also raises the question, why bother? Well, the main goal of asset allocation is human emotion control, keeping enough money in less volatile assets so you won't panic when the market crashes. Normally, I'd be converting some stocks to bonds each year to replenish the short term money, but ...
by ourbrooks
Mon Jun 20, 2016 3:33 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Hard to understand in percent for AA, any better alternative models out there ?
Replies: 22
Views: 2616

Re: Hard to understand in percent for AA, any better alternative models out there ?

The concern is not math. It is ability to correlate to a real life use-case/situation. What does this mean? :( Let me try and answer that, since I have the same problem as the OP. Why 60/40? Why not 63/38? The standard answer is that experience has show that 60/40 gives a "good" balance between risk and reward. Whose experience? What do you mean by "good?" Why should someone who is spending only 0.5% of his portfolio on average keep the same asset allocation as someone who is spending 4%. I'm much less concerned with 50% drops in the stock market for money which I won't need for 20 years than for money which I'll need in five years and my asset allocation ought to reflect that reality. Asset allocation ought to be relat...
by ourbrooks
Mon Jun 20, 2016 2:26 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Changing life path (giving up the dream) to FIRE
Replies: 26
Views: 5470

Re: Changing life path (giving up the dream) to FIRE

There's lots and lots of stuff on factors affecting urban development, but alas, I don't know of a good starting place. To get a feel for how things happen, you might try reading up on the history of the place where you live now. I've always found the life cycles of urban neighborhoods interesting; Hyde Park in Chicago in the 1960's was on the way to becoming a slum; Hyde Park in 2016 is where the president of the United States has his house. In addition to schools, things like museums, libraries, and zoos are often lacking in newer areas. Things I'd look into are transportation plans. Are new highways planned or being built and which way do they go? Highways can make it easier to get to place far away but they can also cut apart neighborho...
by ourbrooks
Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:30 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What would be the best way to sell this software?
Replies: 80
Views: 7088

Re: What would be the best way to sell this software?

As I posted earlier, try the 10 user test. They've actually got to use the app, not just watch you use it. Other applications which use Qt mostly do so because they have no other choice. They've got old, poorly structured applications which can't easily be split into front end/back end structures for use with a web interface or a more modern UI toolkit. I think they pay a cost in increased support and lost sales. Don't even consider trying to sell desktop software to intensive Excel users, such as financial planners. All of their data is already in Excel and they're already used to working with Excel. For your app to work well, it would have to be able to easily get data into and out of Excel. You'd be far better off re-writing the app as a...
by ourbrooks
Sun Jun 19, 2016 8:25 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What would be the best way to sell this software?
Replies: 80
Views: 7088

Re: What would be the best way to sell this software?

Most users have never worked with AWS and have no idea how to use the remote desktop launcher so you'll have to be ready to guide them through doing this, including people running on Windows XP, people running on Linux and people running on Macs. Are you prepared to become an expert on all the different versions of remote desktop launchers? The launcher, though, is a pretty minor problem compared to what they see when the application comes up. Does the application currently have a graphical user interface? If so, what tool kit does it used? If the answer is that it's a Managed C++ Instance and you've used WPF/XAML, then you do have a tiny chance of coming up with something that looks enough like an Office app so that people will be able to ...
by ourbrooks
Sun Jun 19, 2016 12:34 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Changing life path (giving up the dream) to FIRE
Replies: 26
Views: 5470

Re: Changing life path (giving up the dream) to FIRE

You don't want to move to a "rapidly growing" area. It might seem nice right now but you won't like it when it's all grown up. Those nice affordable houses? When the value of the lots increases, they'll be torn down and replaced by McMansions. You'll end up in the smallest and oldest house on the block and your neighbors will all be people who make a lot more than you do. You'll get a lot of money when you sell, but there'll be no where in town you can afford to move to. That 20 minute commute to work? It'll be 40 minutes, etc. Look at what has happened to other "rapidly growing" areas, like Houston and Austin. I have to write that the above paragraph is not always true. If you buy a McMansion now in a nice neighborhood...
by ourbrooks
Sun Jun 19, 2016 11:24 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Changing life path (giving up the dream) to FIRE
Replies: 26
Views: 5470

Re: Changing life path (giving up the dream) to FIRE

You don't want to move to a "rapidly growing" area. It might seem nice right now but you won't like it when it's all grown up. Those nice affordable houses? When the value of the lots increases, they'll be torn down and replaced by McMansions. You'll end up in the smallest and oldest house on the block and your neighbors will all be people who make a lot more than you do. You'll get a lot of money when you sell, but there'll be no where in town you can afford to move to. That 20 minute commute to work? It'll be 40 minutes, etc. Look at what has happened to other "rapidly growing" areas, like Houston and Austin. A better bet in the long run would be prospering communities in otherwise stable or declining areas. If you had...
by ourbrooks
Sat Jun 18, 2016 6:36 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Customs Duty when buying from Overseas
Replies: 4
Views: 931

Re: Customs Duty when buying from Overseas

The duty that is owed depends on the item being imported; live fish are free to import; frozen horsehead mackerel have a 3% duty. The rate varies from free to 37.5% of the value of the goods depending on what you're importing and where you're importing it from.

First question: What are you planning on importing and what is the duty rate? I've brought in several thousand dollars worth of goods and never paid any import duty, because there was no duty on the items.
by ourbrooks
Sat Jun 18, 2016 6:10 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Do I need a company to sell software?
Replies: 51
Views: 5555

Re: Do I need a company to sell software?

Are you sure your product is ready to sell yet? How many people have used the product besides yourself? How much code have you run through it? What other testing have you done? What version control do you use? How are you going to provide support? What happens if a customer calls when you're at your day job? When your friends were telling you that you need a company to sell software, they may not have been referring to the legal structure. Instead, they may have been referring to all those things that you need to do to develop and sell a software product - testing/quality assurance, production, marketing, sales and fulfillment, etc. Doing it all yourself is very difficult. Any company which provides all the rest of those services is going t...
by ourbrooks
Mon Jun 13, 2016 8:31 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Help! Microsoft kills WIN Live Mail-2012
Replies: 22
Views: 3954

Re: Help! Microsoft kills WIN Live Mail-2012

What changing is just the outlook.com server. Just those servers are going to move to Microsoft Exchange. Unless the other companies are moving their servers as well, which is very unlikely, no clients should be affected. For the record, Windows Live Mail does support both POP and IMAP, just as Thunderbird does. Even though it's from Microsoft, Windows LIve Mail doesn't support the protocol used by Microsoft Exchange, MAPI. Yup, Microsoft has been giving away a mail product that won't work with their own servers!! Now, they're finally going to fix that. Outlook.com will default to only supporting the MAPI protocol. You'll still be able to use Windows Live Mail with things like Yahoo and Gmail, just not with Outlook.com. (If you really insis...
by ourbrooks
Mon Jun 13, 2016 7:16 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Help! Microsoft kills WIN Live Mail-2012
Replies: 22
Views: 3954

Re: Help! Microsoft kills WIN Live Mail-2012

The option to enable POP might not become available until they switch you to the new servers. There's material in the link on how to recognize when they've done that. Right now, devices and apps can already use POP, so the option doesn't make much sense.

After they do make the change, unless you re-enable POP, Thunderbird might not work at all. Thunderbird can handle the POP and IMAP protocols, just as Windows Live Mail can, but I can't find anywhere that they say they support Exchange protocol.

If Microsoft is going to only support Exchange protocols in the future, which they might decide to do, then your choices will be to use the web client or to get some version of Outlook.
by ourbrooks
Mon Jun 13, 2016 4:24 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Help! Microsoft kills WIN Live Mail-2012
Replies: 22
Views: 3954

Re: Help! Microsoft kills WIN Live Mail-2012

What Microsoft is doing is changing the protocol that clients have to use in communicating with the server. Here's some information about the change: http://www.howto-outlook.com/howto/outlookcommigrationinfo.htm#pop3 . This is not a case of abandoning old technologies, since Exchange and Outlook were around even before most of the servers which support POP/IMAP. Microsoft Exchange is what most of Microsoft's business customers use for company email so I can understand that Microsoft would like to support just Exchange and not other servers. I don't know for sure which protocol Thunderbird uses to talk to outlook.com; I suspect it's POP. The link given above tells how to turn POP3 support back on after Microsoft turns it off. How long Micro...
by ourbrooks
Sun Jun 12, 2016 7:39 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Cord Cutting, "local area networking" TV at home
Replies: 16
Views: 3316

Re: Cord Cutting, "local area networking" TV at home

In fact, the spec for HDMI doesn't specify a maximum length so, under the right circumstances, a 100' cable might work. Monoprice does sell them up to 100' long. As the lengths get longer, though, the quality has to be higher and I don't get the impression that the OP wants to worry about cable quality. Also, HDMI cable is about a buck a foot while coax is about a penny.

For the cost of 100' of high quality HDMI cable, the OP could buy an Apple TV or Fire TV box and have change left over.
by ourbrooks
Sun Jun 12, 2016 5:32 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Recommendation for international SIM cards?
Replies: 30
Views: 5060

Re: Recommendation for international SIM cards?

If you have a T Mobile Simple Choice plan in the U.S., then texting and data download in Greece are free and calls cost $0.20 minute.
This will probably work really well if you're the one doing the calling or texting, but your family in Greece will get charged international rates for calling you, even if they're standing next to you.

If you already have TMobile service or are willing to switch, you could take your US T Mobile phone to Greece and text everyone that you've arrived and, while you're waiting for them to show up, buy a Greek SIM card.
by ourbrooks
Sun Jun 12, 2016 5:18 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: What does "Self Insure" mean?
Replies: 43
Views: 8044

Re: What does "Self Insure" mean?

....According the US Health and Human Services Dept. , someone turning age 65 today has almost a 70% chance of needing some type of long-term care services and supports in their remaining years. I'm guessing the 70% number you're seeing reflects the impact of unpaid caregivers . For example, according to the website "about 80 percent of care at home is provided by unpaid caregivers." http://longtermcare.gov/the-basics/who-will-provide-your-care/ No, the number reflects the definition of long term care. Long term care is any support for performing activities of everyday life. There are six basic activities of everyday life: eating, bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring (walking) and continence. There are also the "instru...
by ourbrooks
Sat Jun 11, 2016 5:23 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Include Social Security in AA calculations?
Replies: 73
Views: 6932

Re: Include Social Security in AA calculations?

It doesn't really matter - you get the same results whether you include it or leave it out! Stocks have the highest average annual returns; if you want to make the most money, go 100% in stocks (well, maybe 10% in bonds). Stocks are also the most volatile asset class; they go up and down a lot and they might be down when you need the money. Any asset allocation is a balance between higher returns and lower volatility. The right asset allocation is the one you can stick with. If you include the present value of Social Security as a fixed income asset, to maintain your asset allocation, you'll buy more stocks. If you buy too much, you won't be able to sleep at night when the market is down. If you don't include the present value of Social Sec...
by ourbrooks
Sat Jun 11, 2016 4:06 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Cord Cutting, "local area networking" TV at home
Replies: 16
Views: 3316

Re: Cord Cutting, "local area networking" TV at home

One issue is the length of the HDMI cable; HDMI is good for only about 25 ft. without a repeater. The second possibility is the one NJ2SLC mentioned. If your Verizon box has coax cable connections and if your TV also does, you could run coax between them. Coax will easily handle 100 ft. A Roku TV box is one of many kinds of boxes that connect to the Internet either via Wi-Fi or via Ethernet cable, like your computer and provide video output via HDMI. Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV do the same thing. There are also generic boxes under names like MXQ Pro which run the Android operating system and run the same apps as an Android phone. You could spring for another Roku or experiment with one of these other boxes. As wolf359 points out, if you're ...
by ourbrooks
Fri Jun 10, 2016 8:02 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: What does "Self Insure" mean?
Replies: 43
Views: 8044

Re: What does "Self Insure" mean?

Thanks for the cumulative graph.

Since my earlier post, I've discovered one additional, useful fact: Only about 40% of people over 65 ever enter a nursing home at all.

This means that the overall probability of staying longer than five years in a nursing home is somewhere around 1%.
by ourbrooks
Fri Jun 10, 2016 6:39 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Hedging EUR Currency Risk for Instrument Purchase
Replies: 7
Views: 1017

Re: Hedging EUR Currency Risk for Instrument Purchase

Everbank offers foreign currency accounts for U.S. residents. They even have FDIC coverage on the dollar value of the accounts and interest paying CDs in some currencies. They charge a 1% fee for the purchase of the foreign currency but, for $35, they'll send wires in the foreign currency.

You could buy the Euros now, possibly earn some interest, and then wire the Euros to the guitar maker when the guitar is ready.

Of course, my having given this information is an absolute guarantee that the Euro will tank in the next year and you'll wish you'd paid in Euros at the last minute, but until that happens, you've got your purchase hedged for a bit over 1%
by ourbrooks
Fri Jun 10, 2016 10:13 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Illiquid assets pay you for holding them (?)
Replies: 34
Views: 3217

Re: Illiquid assets pay you for holding them (?)

There are other, common examples of an illiquidity premium. There are lot of posts about TIAA Traditional. In most plans, you are only able to withdraw from it over a 10 year period so it's pretty illiquid. It has a stable share price but with returns (says livesoft) of an intermediate term bond fund so you are being rewarded for the illiquidity with better returns than other low volatility investments such as money market funds.
by ourbrooks
Fri Jun 10, 2016 8:30 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Pension-PBGC & Fund management
Replies: 9
Views: 921

Re: Pension-PBGC & Fund management

It is quite frequently the case that a pension buyout lump sum will not buy the same amount of monthly payments as the pension. First, even if the company uses exactly the same actuarial tables as the insurance company, they don't have the advertising or sales expenses that the insurance company does. Second, the company is doing the buyout to save money; for that to happen, they have to offer you less than it would cost to give you the pension. In fact, it may be the case that what the company is doing when you take the pension is buying you an annuity from an insurance company. The insurance company will sell the annuity to the company for less than you could buy the annuity directly because the insurance company doesn't have marketing ex...
by ourbrooks
Thu Jun 09, 2016 3:54 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Pension-PBGC & Fund management
Replies: 9
Views: 921

Re: Pension-PBGC & Fund management

Let's suppose that you do take the lump sum and you purchase a commercial life annuity with it. Even if the insurance company is highly rated today, will it be highly rated 10 years from now? The only protection you have is whatever coverage the California Life and Health Insurance Guarantee Association provides, and my guess is that the failure of one insurance company in one state is not likely to generate the kind of pressure for legislative action that the failure of something like PBGC would produce. How about taking the lump sum and investing it yourself? Now you'd have to deal with all of the issues of safe rates of withdrawal, etc. Further, let's suppose that the PBGC does fail and millions of people lose their pensions. How well do...
by ourbrooks
Thu Jun 09, 2016 12:07 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: 401 k moved to tiaa from vanguard
Replies: 5
Views: 916

Re: 401 k moved to tiaa from vanguard

401K plans are an expense to a company; they pay the plan provider for providing the plan. Part of what the plan providers do is provide customer support such as a website and telephone lines. Support may even include local offices that can send people out to your company, people who are far more qualified that your HR department in giving investment advice. Where's your nearest Vanguard office? My nearest TIAA office is within walking distance.

TIAA and Vanguard are hot competitors in the funds management business; they compete for managing 401K plans and 529 plans. Another possibility is that TIAA simply offered the lower bid. Interestingly, both Vanguard and TIAA are mutual companies owned by the people who's money they manage.
by ourbrooks
Wed Jun 08, 2016 4:46 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Who owns Vanguard?
Replies: 20
Views: 4200

Re: Who owns Vanguard?

ruralavalon wrote:I own Vanguard :D .
So do I. I also own State Farm and TIAA-CREF.
by ourbrooks
Tue Jun 07, 2016 8:11 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: What does "Self Insure" mean?
Replies: 43
Views: 8044

Re: What does "Self Insure" mean?

Here's the historical distribution of stays in nursing homes: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_g6b7lckX2zE/THX7D3XuBpI/AAAAAAAABVI/fk7-z20ukqo/s1600/Screen+shot+2010-08-25+at+10.25.58+PM.png I note that you don't have a choice; everyone must self-insure since you can't even buy an LTCi policy which would provide for the extreme case in this data for both members of a couple staying for the longest period. The question is what mixture of self-insurance and commercial coverage you want to buy. It would take the extremely unlikely event of both members of a couple living in a nursing home for ten years to get to the $2.5 million figure. Alas, neither the review nor the original article provide the raw data so I can't graph the cumulative probability;...
by ourbrooks
Tue Jun 07, 2016 7:14 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Self-insure LTC?
Replies: 31
Views: 4420

Re: Self-insure LTC?

I have LTC insurance. The agent told me that there is value to the policy in facilitating things with the nursing home. He made a big deal about how important this benefit is. He told me that Bill Gates has LTC insurance, for just this resson. Any truth to this? I am single with no children, so having someone to facilitate things is of value to me. Yes, there's truth to this, but, perhaps, not in the way you thought. A private nursing home wants to be sure that you can pay as long as you live because once they give you a bed it may be very difficult to get you out. Clearly, LTCi is proof that you'll be able to pay at least part of what's owed. Social security, pensions, life annuities, and owning a valuable home also help. Social security,...
by ourbrooks
Tue Jun 07, 2016 4:51 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Self-insure LTC?
Replies: 31
Views: 4420

Re: Self-insure LTC?

To elaborate slightly on what Watty wrote, for an insurance company, an SPIA is the opposite of life insurance; the sooner you die the more money they make, so poor health alone is probably not a reason for an insurance company to deny you a policy. The issue about mental competence is a more subtle one; if you are clearly not competent to make financial decisions on your own, I doubt whether the agent will want to do the deal any more than they'd want to sell you any other kind of insurance. On the other hand, if someone has a financial power of attorney for you, I'd guess that the insurance company would sell a policy for you, since it would be regarded as a prudent thing to do to conserve your assets. Before making a commitment to this a...
by ourbrooks
Tue Jun 07, 2016 4:28 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: What does "Self Insure" mean?
Replies: 43
Views: 8044

Re: What does "Self Insure" mean?

I presume it means you have enough saved to cover the costs out of pocket. 3.5k+/month for assisted living and 6.5k+/month for a nursing home isn't cheap though. X 2 in CT and most of the Northeast 2/3 as much in Texas. The median stay in a nursing home prior to death is 5 months; the average is 14 months due to a small number of people who stay much longer. The most common diagnosis for the longer stays is a mental health diagnosis, usually some form of dementia or depression. Ideally, one should be able to purchase high deductible long term care policies which only paid out if someone were in nursing care for three or more years but the currently purchasable policies barely cover the first three years so you have no choice but to self-in...
by ourbrooks
Tue Jun 07, 2016 11:51 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Self-insure LTC?
Replies: 31
Views: 4420

Re: Self-insure LTC?

One option to consider if someone is going to require long term nursing care is to buy a single premium immediate annuity (SPIA). Even though someone may live quite a long time with an Alzheimer's or vascular dementia diagnosis, their life expectancy is still lower than someone in better health and insurance companies may be willing to do medical underwriting and increase the amount of the payout. I'm unclear on the benefits of that approach. Are you suggesting the insurance company would adjust the payout upwards on an existing policy, after a new diagnosis? What I had in mind was buying the SPIA at the point it was clear that the nursing home stay was probably forever. This is also probably the time at which house sale decisions get made...
by ourbrooks
Tue Jun 07, 2016 11:02 am
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Self-insure LTC?
Replies: 31
Views: 4420

Re: Self-insure LTC?

Nursing home care is the largest cost component in long term care and the most common diagnoses for long term stays are mental health diagnoses - Alzheimer's Type dementia and other dementias and depression. Things like strokes generally don't result in long stays; someone who is paralyzed by a stroke is at risk for another stroke or for a fatal infection. In contrast, someone can suffer from a mental health diagnosis and still be otherwise physically healthy. According to the Alzheimer's Society: Above the age of 65, a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or vascular dementia doubles roughly every 5 years. It is estimated that dementia affects one in 14 people over 65 and one in six over 80. Note that just because someone is aff...
by ourbrooks
Mon Jun 06, 2016 3:46 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: After 30 yrs at Megacorp my IT job was surplussed...
Replies: 52
Views: 10276

Re: After 30 yrs at Megacorp my IT job was surplussed...

Are you actually still working or did they escort you out the door? If they're still letting you work, they must trust you not to get revenge in the next six months. In fact, compared to other people's layoff experiences, they're sending you a message: get off the payroll but don't go away mad. A better bet than the stock market is that they offer you consulting work at a pretty good rate. If you do the numbers and add up the cost of all of your benefits, the consulting rate won't look so good after all, which is why they're laying you off. Also, in the future, they can get rid of you on a day's notice, not six months.
by ourbrooks
Sat Jun 04, 2016 5:49 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: FASFA Questions [Free Application for Federal Student Aid]
Replies: 9
Views: 1252

Re: FASFA Questions [Free Application for Federal Student Aid]

UT Dallas awards scholarships without the FAFSA form: http://oue.utdallas.edu/aes/ The only mention of the FAFSA form on the UT Dallas website is as a requirement for receiving financial aid, which is not the same as a merit scholarship.

It looks to me as if the FAFSA form is required for needs based financial aid but not for merit scholarships. The reason why the OP's daughter was required to fill out the FAFSA form may be because the school would like to know about the incomes of those receiving merit scholarships.
by ourbrooks
Fri Jun 03, 2016 2:36 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Constant Percentage
Replies: 10
Views: 2830

Re: Constant Percentage

Imagine it's 2007 and you withdraw 2.73%= $54,600 from your 100% stock, $2,000,000 portfolio. Next year is 2008 and the market drops 50% so you can only take out $27,300. Think about what kind of a life style you would have to lead to be able to cut your expenses by 50% year over year. Constant percentage withdrawal isn't a scheme most people could live with.

There are, of course, lots and lots of schemes for varying spending amounts depending on market performance. If you want to compare them to your own approach, a useful metric might be the average year to year variance against historical data and the size of the balance at death. Most people would like to minimize the amount left to their heirs.