Bogleheads.org

seamonkey

Oh, those "posters." I thought we were talking about merchandise!

seamonkey

Paying a little premium for convenience is something we all do in one or more parts of our daily life. Target date funds (through lower cost mutual fund companies) are perfectly fine solutions if in a tax-advantaged account and appropriate for your risk tolerance / asset allocation. If you’re lookin...

seamonkey

Pay off the loan.

seamonkey

I went paperless with the Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500.

seamonkey

BradJ wrote: ↑
Thu Jul 05, 2018 12:46 pm
I have been waking up around 4am

There’s a 4 o’clock in the morning?

seamonkey

It depends on a number of factors... but in general, if I could afford it, I’d have a lower threshold in conditionally financing a close family member’s or close friend’s psychiatrist than nearly any other budget item. What’s the true opportunity cost? What are the potential downsides of not interve...

seamonkey

Is this money separate from your emergency fund and anything you’d need liquid for anticipated spending needs in the next few years?

seamonkey

Mistermooso wrote: ↑
Thu Feb 15, 2018 3:01 pm
Sounds like the overwhelming consensus is: replace WL with term and prioritize retirement over college.

Spot on!

seamonkey

Don’t get too attached to that whole life policy to the point that it clouds your true goals. Life insurance isn’t an investment. That $30K/year would allow you triple your current college savings rate! Personally, though, I’d think a lot more about taking the $45K/year that you’re saving and throw ...

seamonkey

Anatomical gifts are a great way to go. Some of us have learned so much from the privilege of working with a donated body — one of our first patients in medical training.

Thanks, Taylor. You’ll keep giving after you’re gone.

seamonkey

IRS Free Fillable Forms... cheaper than Turbo Tax and after a year of doing it this way, each successive year gets quicker and quicker. And I understand tax implications of everything as a result.

seamonkey

Interesting arrangement with the trust. Is it still considered a “governmental” 457?

seamonkey

Wouldn’t an insurer want to raise rates on people who use insurer-provided roadside assistance?

seamonkey

It probably makes sense. Are there any fees? If you’re able to make a larger monthly payment, calculate how much would be saved paying at that higher amount at the current rate and if you refinanced. Factor in any fees that can be the cost of the refinance and you’ll be able to determine which optio...

seamonkey

dbc47 wrote: ↑
Wed Sep 06, 2017 9:27 pm
May I ask how you stored all the scanned files? External hard drives, cloud?

Two external hard drives, one local and one in a safe deposit box.

seamonkey

I used the Fujitsu ix500 to scan the entirety of the paper archive. It was awesomely effective at digitizing many years of papers. Then I shred everything using a Fellowes Powershred 79Ci. This was a pretty quiet shredder (comparatively). Finally, the shred got composted. I trust our worms not to st...

seamonkey

Staying the course is more boring than this forum.

Being boring has probably saved the Bogleheads billions of dollars in aggregate.

seamonkey

I'm a physician. (Stating this up front seems to inspire credence.) You make nearly $200K a year with ridiculously low housing costs and reasonable student loan debt in one of the greatest places to live on the planet. This really isn't a dire financial question anymore. You either like what you do ...

seamonkey

I'm not an expert, and I have nothing else to add to previous answers, except that we benefited greatly from picking up a recently published Orlando / Disney-specific travel book. It is well worth the money or trip to the library and could save many hours each day by helping you plan efficiently.

seamonkey

To those who find this depressing, I propose a new formula. Instead of calculating expected net worth, we should use our actual net worth to back-calculate our expected financial age.

Actual NW / 0.10 / Income = Expected Financial Age

I'm apparently 13 years old. The fountain of youth!

seamonkey

Thanks for your service. Doc here, retired military spouse. Don't get overwhelmed. We all educated ourselves at some point and this stuff is much easier than the brachial nerve plexus. I FIND IT SIMPLEST TO SIMPLY SIMPLIFY. Consider all of your accounts together (taxable plus retirement) and decide ...

seamonkey

Good work! You're in the right place. That BTC LIFEPATH 2055 isn't terrible, actually, but you actually have some good options if you wanted to further lower expense ratio. You can recreate Total Stock Market with 80% Fidelity 500 Index and 20% Extended Market Index. Because contributions to the 401...

seamonkey

Lawn service and bathroom / kitchen cleaning are outsourced to make time for kids. Kids do their part in a lot of common work in the house and yard, but these give us significantly more time together.

seamonkey

Kindness and gratitude all around... We should compile more stories like this.

seamonkey

Nice work! It'll feel just as good years from now!

seamonkey

An IPS is a commitment to your household, like marriage vows are your commitment to your spouse. When you're fantasizing about breaking your IPS, think about the parallels and the precedents you're setting.

seamonkey

I'd figure out a way to avoid the small cap ER in the 401k. I'd probably just do S&P +- mid cap and add extended market or small cap in an IRA, e.g., if you have Roth space.

seamonkey

Just as a point of clarification, the Asset Allocation principles should apply to your entire portfolio. So include IRA space, taxable accounts, etc. when considering your splits.

seamonkey

With the amount of info provided, I'd say don't touch the Roth, but think about shifting future money to paying down the mortgage instead of future Roth contributions. While you're building up an Emergency Fund, the Roth could serve as a good backup. Paying off PMI early isn't an emergency, it's an ...

seamonkey

Depends on fees and the actual computations, but I'd consider keeping them separate until I knew for sure what plans are post-residency. You can still investigate refinancing them separately, and ultimately with your expected jump in income, you're not going to be holding on to the student loan for ...

seamonkey

Bank error in your favor! Collect $15.

seamonkey

Since you already have a traditional IRA, and your tax bracket suggests that you wouldn't benefit from conversion of that existing traditional IRA to a Roth, I would just roll your old 401ks into your traditional IRA and not into the new 401k. Importantly, the above rollover takes the backdoor Roth ...

seamonkey

Not sure what you mean about maxing out a 529, but in principle if you're saving enough then sure -- go ahead and get rid of the debt. Nice work!

seamonkey

Please start by reading the site wiki. You'll understand some more of the rationale of investing and the basics. - It doesn't make sense to contribute to both Total Stock AND Target Retirement as the latter holds the former. It's not really diversifying. - Your Roth IRA contributions are beyond the ...

seamonkey

What are the expense ratios?

I might be tempted to minimize 401k contributions to just what I need for maximum match. The S&P index might work and then I'd reallocate everything else in the other accounts.

It depends on the expense ratios and your match.

seamonkey

So you want to be about 80% stocks (~90% US and ~10% international) and 20% bonds with your total portfolio. That looks like 72% US Stock 8% Int Stock 20% Bond After your new contribution, you'll have about $36K to work with. 72% US Stock --> ~$26K 8% Int Stock --> ~$3K 20% Bond --> ~$7K Don't worry...

seamonkey

You usually have to pay extra for a longer rate lock period. You'd basically be adding to closing costs. I think I have seen 90 day rate locks but I don't know for sure if I've seen anything longer.

seamonkey

What a privilege it is to care of patients, even in the current system of healthcare. Unfortunately, your motivations ("non-highly paid, non-competitive, non-procedure" specialty) are looking at the glass mostly empty and ignoring the core of medicine. It doesn't sound like you're financially hurtin...

seamonkey

Welcome! You don't need a lot of time to follow an investment plan -- but I agree that it may take a little bit of time to really learn about things up front. Frankly, it is well worth the time spent to learn about this now rather than after an unfortunate financial mistake. I would probably still r...

seamonkey

Just contribute the minimum to the 529 to get the deduction at this point and pay for the rest out of your other sources. If you can afford the college costs, I would think the $200 / year should be affordable as well!

seamonkey

There are too many variables and too many assumptions to make this meaningful. Or rather, one can skew the data to suit a bias. I'm not sure there's a right answer here, though there may be wrong answers.

seamonkey

You can't guarantee growth, but you can to a large extent protect against risk of loss. It's hard to answer this question without knowing if you wish to pay for all of college or part of college. Even if I were planning on covering essentially all of college costs, and unless I thought I could pay f...

seamonkey

I'd also think twice about traveling to a funeral if it meant going into debt to do so.

seamonkey

So you'll occasionally have five people in a vehicle? I don't really see the need for a minivan.

seamonkey

Contribute the minimum to get the full match. And yes, I would definitely go all-in paying off that 6.8% loan. You have the discipline and the cash flow, shown by getting rid of your other high interest debt. Keep it going!

seamonkey

Consider the resume as a blank canvas. I don't think I'd omit what you did just as I wouldn't overstate it. A brief narrative statement at the top could shed light on why you made your decisions. Your eventual employer will understand more about you as a person making decisions with respect to kids ...

seamonkey

If it were me with that scenario, I would definitely help pay for college, but it doesn't have to be at those price points. You seem to be doing fine with retirement funds and a paid off house, and you have the cash in hand. Kids today are facing a completely different era of college costs than in p...

seamonkey

Yes, pay it off. The sooner the better but I would support anytime before retirement, so over 2 years is reasonable and a great compromise! Congrats on getting this far and having this option!

seamonkey

I've been waiting for 6 years to jump in because I haven't been able to decide whether to dollar-cost average or lumpsum, and now I realize that this is totally not actionable!

seamonkey

You know, I always believed this to be true as well, but I recently asked one of my existing credit card companies to increase my credit limit. They wrote me a nice letter explaining that they could not act on my request because they could not access my frozen credit report. Perhaps existing credit...

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