Bogleheads.org

I adopted the tax strategy of paying my taxes from a single RMD from my traditional IRA at the end of the year. There is a special provision in the tax law that allows you to do this without incurring penalties. I think this is a good strategy even though it forced me to take an RMD this year when I...

$73,314 was spent on take home pay of $91,708 (My SS and wife's salary). The rest ($18,394) went to savings. Wife also maxed out 401k.

Includes about $18k spent on new furniture and refrigerator.

No major vacations in 2020 due to Covid. Hoping that will change in 2021.

I keep 20% cash in all of my accounts. By that I mean T-Bills or a short term government bond fund.

That is what the Golden Butterfly portfolio calls for. With the Permanent Portfolio which the GB is based on, it's 25%.

How can a rebalanced portfolio possibly boost returns when the market is generally upward moving? I think it was Peter Finch who likened rebalancing to "Trimming the flowers and watering the weeds". Or something like that. I don't do any regular rebalancing and only rebalance once a year ...

Relatively low net worth? Compared to who, the Vanderbilt's? I just came in here to see if "low" was over $1mm. Yep. Check. Bias confirmed. :oops: Not to mention $2620 monthly pension and SS income. The book "The Millionaire Next Door" was published 24 years ago so if you count ...

I retired almost one year ago today at the age of 67 and our investment portfolio (not net worth) was worth almost exactly $1M at the time. With my wife still working (she's 17 years younger) but me delaying SS to age 70 to get the max I resolved to budget my spending to the point where we always ha...

Engaging in sloth wrote: ↑Tue Dec 29, 2020 3:42 pm Liquidity nearing $1.1M AA 30/70 (cash)

Not sure what that means. 70% cash?

I don't remember whether it was Loan Depot or somebody else but when I first applied for refinancing this year my phone started ringing off the hook almost immediately. I eventually had to put it on Do Not Disturb and start blocking numbers. About a month after that experience I tried again but used...

I think you can get a general idea of how your portfolio is doing just by taking a quick, occasional glance at what the asset groups are doing (Stocks, Bonds, Gold, etc). No need to look otherwise except to do a detailed analysis for possible rebalancing which I usually do around this time of year. ...

Sarasota/Bradenton would be a great choice for retirement. I'm in Tampa but was just down there a couple of weeks ago. Don't remember any hurricanes hitting down there but I may have forgotten. They tend to round the corner down in the keys and then head north so we don't get them as often as the Pa...

I was an independent contractor as a software developer from 1995 to about 2005, after a long and successful period as a salaried employee. I was making $100 per hour and was once even paid $1k/day with a five day minimum and a first class plane ticket just to help a company solve a problem they cou...

I'm 71 and haven't noticed this yet.

You don't know what tomorrow will bring no matter how much money you have so developing sensible habits of saving and spending and sticking to them seems like the only prudent thing to do to me.

For an embarrassingly long time, I didn't contribute to an HSA because I thought the money was restricted to cash/money market. I had no idea I could invest it. I can relate to that one. I don't remember when I first had access to HSA's but I remember writing the whole idea off because I had it con...

Is anyone here familiar with how aggregators like Personal Capital and others manage to pull data from your financial institutions in some sort of recognizable format? I don't mean how do you connect and login. I have lots of experience doing that. The question is what do you do after that to pull ...

Is anyone here familiar with how aggregators like Personal Capital and others manage to pull data from your financial institutions in some sort of recognizable format? I don't mean how do you connect and login. I have lots of experience doing that. The question is what do you do after that to pull a...

The solution that has worked best for me when I've had to introduce reluctant seniors to a new TV is to get a simple dumb remote control only does on/off, volume, and channel change for them to use and store the remote that came with the TV away. If they hit a wrong button or two on a regular remot...

This could be tough. Many TVs come with a netflux button on the remote. That would be a smart TV and probably is the simplest way to go. Much easier than cable, IMO. Pretty damn cheap nowadays too. You need an internet connection for it to work however. Having said that I have two Vizio TV's with s...

1. Not realizing that "bubbles" are real things until it was too late. The first was the dot com bubble in which I lost a lot on Fidelity's Aggressive Growth Fund. The second was when I bought my current house right at the peak of the bubble just before everything crashed. 2. Having a fina...

I use Google Sheets Same here. But I do very little “analysis.” Mainly short term cash flow planning and estimated tax calculations. My spreadsheet doesn't import any data or do any kind of deep technical analysis. Not really interested in that sort of thing. I just enter each line item from all of...

I use Google Sheets

Damn, I don't want to be accused of being crazy so I checked my IRA on Fidelity which is one place I hold Long Term bonds. I've gotten better long term gains from stocks and gold, to be sure, but it doesn't look all that crazy to me. And twice a year I even get coupon payments. So should I sell all ...

I think there are just too many unknown variables involved to reduce this problem to simple math and logic. You don't know what kind of return you will get on your investment and you don't know if your house is going to increase or decrease in value over time and how long you will keep it. You can o...

12% - Only debt is a mortgage just refinanced for 30 years. Pay cash for everything else unless I get a good zero-finance deal. I'm retired.

The amount of money we usually spent on travelling was more than offset by the upgrades made to our home while we were cocooning. We had to cancel our planned trip to Europe but we have some nice new furniture and appliances. Especially enjoying the patio which we never used before but now it's nice...

My investing philosophy when it comes to home ownership is to always go for the lowest payment with the least amount of money invested. I just refinanced @3%, resetting the loan to 30 years, which is the second time I've done it in in the past 10 years. Got my payment down to $868/month from $1250/m...

My mother died last year and both my brother and I disclaimed the inheritance in favor of my sister. I had originally planned to do this by gifting the money to my sister but when my brother looked into it, all we had to do was sign some papers to release the accounts to my sister. It was all cash s...

6.5%

20%

20% - as called for by the Golden Butterfly portfolio

I can't see how there is much of any benefit to applying that $100k to your mortgage other than the psychological satisfaction of lowering your debts (which isn't nothing, of course). It isn't going to reduce your payments and it isn't going to pay off the mortgage any faster than it would if you se...