Bogleheads.org

bberris

No vacancy and never a missed payment. It's a perfect world.

bberris

Dental usually has a preexisting condition exclusion.

bberris

Your CPA could be jailed for tax fraud. I think it's normal to protect oneself.

bberris

Benefits have been cut several times. [...] 3. Change in the inflation index As far as I know the only time the COLA provision was changed (after initially being added in the 1972 Amendments) was the 1986 change which removed the 3% threshold for COLAs. Am I missing something? Right. Maybe I was th...

bberris

I just read that SS benefits will be cut to 75% starting in 2035 unless something changes. I'll have to model that and see if that affects the breakeven age. In my opinion the chance of reducing SS benefits is 0%. People over 62, vote in droves. NO chance...NO way!!! :!: Avoiding speculating on the...

bberris

... $ 483 - Title - Owner's Title Insurance (optional) ... The rest of the costs are for taxes, property tax prepay, and homeowners insurance prepay, which are what they are. If you bought an owner's title policy when you closed on the house, you don't need a new owner policy for a refi. Only the l...

bberris

I would just shop around and see if you can get better. Unless you've already spent money with the guy you're locked with (like for an appraisal), there is nothing to keep you from going with someone else. Locks are binding on their end, not yours. If you find a better quote elsewhere you can take ...

bberris

I just read that SS benefits will be cut to 75% starting in 2035 unless something changes. I'll have to model that and see if that affects the breakeven age. In my opinion the chance of reducing SS benefits is 0%. People over 62, vote in droves. NO chance...NO way!!! :!: Avoiding speculating on the...

bberris

zaboomafoozarg wrote: ↑
Sat Jul 25, 2020 2:00 pm
I usually pay way, way more than spot for gold

but the only kind I care about is in the form of ancient coins

Some of the Roman gold is gorgeous. I really like to look at them in museums but I could never bring myself to own any. Picture?

bberris

I don't buy it. It might cover a deductible but I'm not sure about that.

bberris

Maybe you are thinking of the medical coverage part of car insurance. It pays the hospital for your own injuries in case you are at fault. It ends up being a reimbursement of your health insurance.

bberris

I believe the issue is licensing. So for example googlefinance will give you a price for any sp500 index etf, but not the index itself. Maybe just apply a conversion factor .
Something like
=googlefinance("spy", "price")/10

bberris

I can see how total bond, treasuries, etc perform with a stock portfolio of different allocations in portfolio visualizer, but would be nice to see how total bond / treasuries perform only when stocks are in a downturn. Any thoughts/insight on this? https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=...

bberris

This probably isn't what you had in mind, but short etf's are as close as you can get. Completely neutralize gains and losses. For example, SDS has a -1.00 correlation with VTI. Some people (not me) advocate volatility bets as a proxy for shorting. For example, VXX pretty reliably runs inverse to th...

bberris

Science and technology fields generally get a funded and paid research assistant position. Anyway that was the way it was 45 years ago. I would guess all teaching assistants get paid even in new useful fields like gender studies. We were required to teach 4 trimesters out the supposed 12. In some sc...

bberris

The credit score hit from another hard inq is very small and won't affect your rate if you already have good credit. Multiple credit inq within a few weeks (seems you've gone longer than that) only count as one. Just shop around, fill out the applications, and let them know you are doing it. If you'...

bberris

Does the basement have a window you can open? Or put a fan at the top of the stairs to get air moving.

bberris

We retained a real estate lawyer to represent us & ensure we received the correct amount of money. The attorney fee was small & worth it for one of the largest financial transaction of our lives, and one which also involved legal contracts. Hire an attorney to protect yourself and ensure smooth sai...

bberris

livesoft wrote: ↑
Mon Jul 20, 2020 12:42 pm
Right back at you: Convince me to convince you. LOL!

Somebody should link all the previous posts just like this one. We know how those turned out.

I haven't checked, but I believe all of these posts say, "I'm not timing the market. This is how I plan to time the market."

bberris

So you want to eliminate prepaid interest by closing at the end of the month? That means you will pay the interest on the existing loan up to the closing date at your old, higher interest rate, rather than your lower, refinanced interest rate. I can well imagine that a lender would be peeved to have...

bberris

I would stop asking questions of touchy people who can fire you. My guess is that the fees are fixed and forfeitures due to people leaving before vesting do not reduce any fees you pay. It reduces the company's administrative costs in a general sort of way. Administering a 401k is a money losing ope...

bberris

Silk McCue wrote: ↑
Thu Jul 16, 2020 9:31 am
Claussen Whole Garlic Dill Pickles

The struggle is real.

Cheers

We're all in this pickle together.

bberris

petulant wrote: ↑
Tue Jul 14, 2020 12:16 pm
.....
It's also not clear to me that the product was horrible ....

Yes it was horrible. Compare it to the equivalent: He could have bought bonds and SPX options with the interest. That is what the vendor did, raking 2.65 % from the proceeds.

bberris

All the MMFs on TDA are yielding near to zero and I stopped purchasing them. I now purchase whole shares of VGSH and leave the remainder in cash. The above comment applies to my IRAs. In the taxable account, I simply transfer the cash to an online savings account. VGSH has an SEC yield of 0.16 % as...

bberris

No fee. But American Equity lists their average spread in their annual report; the company is publicly traded. The spread is the equivalent of an expense ratio; it is the difference between AE's cost of funds and their distribution to the customer. The spread is 2.65 %. It's going to take 5 years to...

bberris

I heard that some dentists billed the extra costs of PPE's 100% to their patients instead of cost-sharing. $10 more per visit. I'm confident that the cost to the office is much more than that, especially adding in the time to get suited and changed between patients. According to my dentist biller, ...

bberris

It's not clear from your post, but those charges may not have gone through. In my case, Chase seems to have caught every fraudulent charge (and a few legitimate ones). They really can't blame you, and I suspect that most of these breaches are inside jobs.

bberris

Consult an experienced real estate attorney ^^^ +1 be careful you are entering into a legally binding contract and while I agree that saving that 6% sounds attractive, you have no protection if you do this without an attorney. Except that a real estate salesperson cannot give legal advice unless th...

bberris

A long time ago, I bought a $ 2 1/2 gold coin (Sesquicentennial commemorative) with collector's value way more than metal value. It turned out to be counterfeit. I think it was really gold but not genuine.

bberris

The bigger opportunity lies in using low-income years before starting SS to do withdrawals/Roth conversions of tax-deferred balances at low rates. This can help reduce the exposure of SS to income taxes and mitigate the possibility the surviving spouse faces higher tax rates as a single filer. IMHO...

bberris

I personally would never do this. As a buyer, you don't pay the 6%, the seller does. There is no financial cost to you as a buyer for using a realtor. We bought a home two and a half years ago that seemed simple from the outset. By the time it was done, our realtor, who we've used before and think ...

bberris

An antenna is a wire, so you can't get a wireless antenna. We live in the deep suburbs and the attic antenna works great. The wires are in the walls and the connection to the TV can't be seen behind the wall mounted TV. The cheap way to invisibility is to mount a flat antenna behind the TV. You will...

bberris

New Providence wrote: ↑
Sun Jun 28, 2020 2:14 pm

sailaway wrote: ↑
Sun Jun 28, 2020 11:58 am

Sell immediately and diversify.
Keeping it is a form of diversification. I kept my shares and made 30% return when my co. was acquired.

Congratulations! You gambled and won. But you did not diversify, unless your other investments were in a single, other, stock.

bberris

The biggest tax advantage from house ownership is when it is fully paid off. The deduction for interest paid on a house note is limited; you only get the benefit that exceeds the standard deduction. If you borrow on your house equity, you have to pay tax on the return you get from the investment. If...

bberris

Isn't the utility required to purchase your excess electrons? You can use the grid as your battery for free.

bberris

The currency difference means she'll get less US dollars than she has Canadian dollars. But so what? If she wants a big number of dollars, she should transfer from $CAD to Zimbabwe dollars. She'll get about 200 trillion Zimbabwe dollars per $CAD. Confusion results because Canada calls their money "...

bberris

It's possible they are trying to get a purchase agreement and sell the contract without closing. If they can't find a buyer, they will just bail on the closing using some of the various contingencies; or possibly abandon their earnest money.

bberris

Well, this is one of the more bizarre requests I've ever seen. OP wants to own physical currency, but wants someone else to hold it and charge a fee. Why not just get your own fireproof and waterproof safe and stick it in the safest place you can in your house? There is basically zero demand for su...

bberris

A loan application is not a commitment. At that point you don't even know what they are offering you. Your upfront cost will be the appraisal (after you have a purchase agreement), which should be transferable to other lenders. You are entitled to a copy. You will definitely do better by having at l...

bberris

Some stockpickers are good at picking stocks. The stockpickers themselves benefit; not their mutual fund holders. All the outperformance, and then some, is eaten up with fees.

bberris

You don't need to fret about this. You never really miss out on any money by selling before a dividend date. You don't get the dividend, but you get a higher capital gain. The stock price drops by the amount of the dividend on the ex-dividend date. It literally means that the stock is trading withou...

bberris

This is a very helpful thread. My spouse and I made our first offer on a home. The seller wasn’t willing to budge on the price so we walked. Afterward seller states they paid for an appraisal, which appraised the house at the asking price. We still didn’t feel it as worth that. I didn’t realize tha...

bberris

How will you rebalance your mortgage? This brings up Lincoln's joke (it's an old joke). How many legs does a horse have if you call the tail a leg? Four, calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. You don't need anyone's permission to increase your equity allocation. You decide if you can handle it.

bberris

There isn't any difference between the US defaulting on its debt and defaulting on a dollar bill. In the latter case, the US would say, for example, that they would not accept US currency as valid payment for taxes. US currency is a zero-yield government debt receipt. So even paper money has a credi...

bberris

have been offered a once in a lifetime chance to buy common stock in the LLC, It is interesting that this "once in a lifetime" chance comes during a pandemic when many companies are struggling to survive. Even if they are not disclosing the financials you should have a pretty good idea if the compa...

bberris

Margin loan interest is not deductible when it is used to buy tax-free bonds.
There may not have been any payoff at liquidation if the loan was already paid off. Maybe the bonds were bought and paid for a month later. The interest paid would still be reported.

bberris

Yea I know the argument it's too complicated so it must be evil but I'm looking for anyone who can go deeper and explain. The payoff profile is in the note and pretty clear, although not as clear as straight VOO. Im not sure about why 2 indicies but I do know they are highly correlated. And it prov...

bberris

Oh they have strips. I've just never bothered to sign them. It's never been an issue. There is very little checking of the signature in the US, but it’s different in other countries. For example in Europe, where the vast majority of customers use chip+pin cards and don’t sign anything, my signature...

bberris

J G Bankerton wrote: ↑
Fri Jun 19, 2020 12:18 am

newcustomersf wrote: ↑
Thu Jun 18, 2020 7:36 pm
“You have to be crazy, if you ask me, to be in bonds at this point in time.” - Susie Orman
After I saw this I will never listen to a word she says.
How Suze Orman SCAMMED the World

I knew I would find Oprah at the bottom of this pit of evil.

bberris

Aberdeen Standard Physical Gold Shares is not an ETF. The Aberdeen Standard Gold ETF Trust is not an investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 or a commodity pool for purposes of the Commodity Exchange Act. Shares of the Gold Trust are not subject to the same regulatory...

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