Bogleheads.org

Speak to your insurance agent. Should someone be damaged either through injury or property damage, you're the first one the lawyers are going after.

C is advantage which is like an HMO or PPO and can be very local or not. It's zip code based.

Why not consider G or N (traditional Medicare/medigap) where it is accepted everywhere?

Are you receiving other re-imbursements? I am on a car plan that matches our company's sales person car plan. So many dollars a month (taxable), gas for miles driven (sort of hokey but if it makes it not matter if you drive a Prius or a Hemi Ram truck), and they also pay insurance (tax grossed up) and oil changes (taxable). I've been on many different car plans including one where we received a big monthly and 1/2 the IRS mileage. That one also required everyone own a car 5 model years old or newer with 4 side opening doors (no sliding doors) and a 104 inch wheel base and they were very yes/no on all of this and we had to send our registration in annually. Car doesn't meet? No car plan money from the first warning. The second warning was te...

My younger son filed even with nothing but bank interest for several years. As a result, when the government was giving away money, he got some. Those who didn't file got nothing.

For low value items, eBay is fine. They have become infamous for always siding with buyers. A friend local to me sold a guitar that he called a "partscaster". It was built from various 1960's Fender guitar parts. As a player, it was fine. He made it very clear in his ad that the guitar was a partscaster and not a complete, original, as-built in the 60's guitar. The buyer complained to eBay that it was not as advertised because it was not an original as-built guitar. eBay appeared to not even bother to read the original ad, gave the buyer his money back and told him he didn't have to return the guitar. Fortunately for my friend, this was sold locally. It showed up on craigslist and my friend made contact as a random buyer and arran...

Chances are pretty good that the glut of hybrids is left over from dealer gouging on pricing from the chip shortage and parts shortage of the last couple of years. This is still a problem, mostly for Japanese cars who rely on Renesas (Japanese chip maker) who last year had a fab fire, then had 2 fabs flooded by a tsunami. So why are there lots of hybrids? Or what I notice near me, Hyundai and KIA EVs in abundance? Because all have the added dealer markeup where they expect to sell for over MSRP for many thousands of dollars and people have rejected this practice. With people walking away from $50k priced $35k cars, their lots are full. From a cost perspective, do the math. Being in California, you have both high electric prices and high gas...

I see the guy buying section 8 housing as quitting one job and creating another full time job for himself that he had to put a boatload of money into just to get the job. I think I'd rather leave one job and go work for Trader Joes to possibly increase social security quarters and probably take home more money with zero risk. I'll be retiring in June and DW has talked about 14 hours a week at Trader Joes which qualifies for group health insurance and she's between 10 and 35 years for SS earnings.

Reliability wise, only Fiat is worse. As many mechanics have said, BMW took their failed and thrown out parts to build this thing. It is fun to drive, however. As fun and more reliable, Toyota GR86, Mazda Miata, Mazda 3, Toyota GR Corolla, VW GTi.

Personally, I could care less about a small car in this land of SUVs. I drove a Lotus Elise for quite a while and remember one time on the highway looking up at an SUV next to me that I didn't recognize. I let him pull ahead to read the tail. It was a Ford Focus.

While the wife inherited the money, a married couple may not accept the idea of "his" money and "her" money. I've seen this said many times here and when DW inherited money from her aunt, I put to her that she could do what she wanted with the money. She insisted that all money coming in is "our" money and it was nearly immediately comingled in our joint Ally account. In like manner, for the 14 years DW stayed home with the kids and I brought in all of the money that supported us, I never considered it to be "my" money.

Buy a Subaru Outback and get the same ratings as a Model Y. (technically better) for half the price.
Outback
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/su ... wagon/2023

Model Y
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/te ... r-suv/2023

Heck....trade your Mazda and it becomes a cheap upgrade.

I think there are a number of options and a number of things that would need checking up on. Former Police officer driver: My first thought is whether this police officer is properly insured to drive others for pay. I actually checked into this for one of my sons who wanted to do Uber type stuff. Commercial insurance is required and there are a couple ways to get it according to my insurance agent. The cheapest way tripled the insurance cost which threw that out the window for us as the increase was $4000 a year and when including taxes that would need to be paid along with payroll tax, my son wouldn't make a dime if he drove 40 hours a week. Here's the downside. If the officer is not insured and gets into an accident hurting you, his car i...

Move to Massachusetts. All health insurance here MUST cover all infertility treatment including IVF. We did several rounds unsuccessfully and it cost us zero. Unfortunately, adoption isn't covered by anything, but that worked.

Long term rate is not the way to go now. Rates keep rising and it would make no sense to lock in at 5% and find in 5 years that banks everywhere pay 10%. Redneck just raised their money market rate to 4.55%. I'm sure we'll see Ally raise their 3.6% rate soon and everyone will leap frog up. And if you're thinking I'm just out of my mind citing 10%, I can remember in the late 80's having 6 month CDs at 10% as I was in grad school at the time and they required $10k, which I had available.

I would just be honest and tell the sales person that we are only there because of the free vacation and that we won't be buying any timeshares regardless of what they say in the presentation, so they shouldn't waste any time on us. If they keep on pressing, I'd be firm in saying "no, absolutely not, my mind is set, no matter what you say or do" while staying polite. DW and I used to go to an island once a year and we'd always go to at least one timeshare give-away presentation. The first thing to know is that when they say that the presentation will be 90 minutes, that's a lie. Expect it to be several hours. Next, when the sales person tells you after you make it quite clear after the 2 hours that you have no intention of buying...

I did way too much research before buying my last grill. My quest was to understand steel that rusts out in a couple years and non-magnetic stainless that can easily last 10 years. First, the cost over time is the same. A real stainless grill will cost 7 to 10 times what the same one in steel costs. Don't get conned by grills at sears that are magnetic stainless. They will rust. A real stainless one will be well over $1000. Here's the downside. A lot of the parts are still steel and can rust and will need to be replaced over time. With a $2000 grill, you'll buy $100 worth of parts after 3 years because the grill cost you a boat ton of money. In the end, we bought a cheap steel grill. It lasted a few years then got thrown onto my steel scrap...

Blue456 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 23, 2023 5:16 am

SevenBridgesRoad wrote: ↑Wed Mar 22, 2023 8:29 pm Actionable how?

Sell all your indexed mutual funds, pay taxes and hire LVW Advisors in Rochester, N.Y.

vs

Stay the course?

If your goal is to pay more taxes and pay most of your gains (and then fees when markets drop) to con men wearing clown suits, then this is excellent advice. Have a cigar while you're at it and light it with a rolled up $100 bill.

Sounds like a lazy employer. I can transfer my shares immediately. My employer sends a general email to the company email list with instructions for those who have transferred shares and then sold them.

I've used an excel spread sheet for ages. It's grown to have everything I need from AA and totals through RMD calculations, tax brackets, Long term cap gain tax rates with brackets, retirement spending, times spending that I've got, fees and average portfolio cost percentage and more.

If you sell, will they pay to create a new plot with the town/county? They can take full responsibility for all costs including survey, legal, fees, deed change etc. I've done this and my part was signing a paper and I was done and just got a check for the property.

If you lease, how long would the lease be? On the good side, no plot changes are needed. Sure, if you go to sell, the buyer might not want that tower but perhaps they'd look at the lease money as a good thing.

Will leasing change the value of the property with the town/county in such a way that you now have a much higher property tax bill?

For me personally, the maximum SWR is 4% at 65, maybe 3% at 55. At your age, probably 2%. LOL are you making rules as you type on my thread :) ? [/quote] These are realistic numbers. 4% is for a 30 year retirement. Do you and your wife plan to be dead for sure at 68? If so, 4% is fine. You have no guaranty that you will get dollar 1 as severance. Your focus should be unemployment benefits. Do 40 hours of work a week. Document, document, document. Act like a billable hours worker like a lawyer or private engineer. Say that today, you spend 3 hours doing such and such on priority #1 project. Write it in a notebook. Short description of the work you were doing and if it was assigned by someone above you, write that down. Continue all of this....

Aligning wheel means adjusting and working on several wear components on your vehicle. It may not be a scam. Get a list of what they recommend fixing and go get a second opinion. And have them show you while it's on the lift. Torn CV boot, loose ball joint, bad wheel bearing, etc, are easy to demonstrate on the lift and the mechanic can show you the difference between the good and bad sides so you'll be comfortable he's being honest. This is the key. If every time you go in, the shop aligns and tells you that you need $500 to $1000 in repairs, and you don't do any of it, that probably means simply that you actually need this work. Find out what work is needed. Ball joints at 100k miles? Yep. Normal. Tie rod ends? Sure. And both of these ma...

If you can DIY some of the updates, it can be worth it. Paint walls a neutral color (like off white). Big jobs like your description of the kitchen left to the next owner makes the house more affordable for them to buy and then they can do it the way THEY want it done. You might do tile floors, new white cabinets with glass windows, a double sink and granite counter tops. A buyer might come in and think that they really wanted a house like yours but with bold colored cabinets, black corian counter tops and a floating synthetic floor.

Go ahead and paint. Or just sell as is. From your description, you could easily spend $100k on complete updates, put it on the market and recover $50k of that, meaning you wasted time and money.

I'll first say thanks for this program. I used it to determine how DW and I will take SS. I'll next note that the SS payment for DW was way off. She'll be receiving her first payment in May of this year and the tool told us she would receive $1622 a month and her actual SS payment will be $1400 a month. It's sort of a "don't care" for us as we're going to be at something like 67 times spending in our savings, but I expected the number to more closely match reality.

Snow removal. Depends, of course on where you live. If you're in northern Wisconsin, this will be a major concern. Alabama? Not so much.

Pest control. Treatment inside and out and test devices to find termites before they get to the house. From a DIY perspective, look around the foundation for mud towers coming from the ground to the wood.

Painting the house. While that's being done, most painters will have a carpenter in their hire or that they contract out. They'll be better able to tell you if there's rot damage or if window frames are rotted and need to be replaced.

For the moving mulch and firewood and pulling a cart, my tractor with ag tires would work well if mowing was included. It's a Kubota BX series. These are called compact tractors. They are 4 wheel drive with a locking rear diff and has front and rear power take off so if you wanted a snow blower in the front, you could do that. Mine has a front bucket loader and I use it for moving lots of firewood, some snow moving and bringing the trash barrels down my 800 foot driveway. They have a mower available for it. With only a few trees, that shouldn't be an issue, I'd think. I don't know, my lawn is only 6000 sq feet so I use a self propelled Honda push mower. The Kubota's a 3 cylinder diesel so is really good on fuel use and unlike gas, it can si...

I use SWPPX in my Schwab accounts for amounts of money that aren't enough to buy a share of an ETF. For automatic investment, I guess that's fine.

To me, stuff in an emergency fund can be turned to cash money in my pocket the next day my credit union is open. So my checking account, savings account, DW's same and our stack of $450k in paper US Savings bonds as I know from experience that I can bring in any amount and before I leave, it's available for withdrawal from my account.

You didn't mention if your wife is also working. If not, adding her on a mortgage will not help. Your total household income is no higher. If yes, then sure, it'll help.

Something to also do would be to set up a credit card through your credit union. (you do use a credit union, don't you?) I did this with my son. By himself, they'd give him something like a $300 credit limit. With me as a co-owner, it started at $1000 and soon after, he was able to raise it to $10,000. At that point, he got a couple other cards to both build up his credit limit and get sign on bonuses and % cash back.

Taxes are relatively easy for me.

Gather all the documentation.
Make a list of all these documents.
Put this all in an envelope to send to my tax preparer.
Wait for the paperwork back.
Send a check for $250 with signed documents.
Wait for money to ACH into my checking account in 4 days.

Sigh. I've watched people's portfolios chosen by PAS over the years and they clearly have been given the thief financial sales clown training. Put as many funds as possible to make the client think that they could never possibly do this themselves. The entire strategy here is a 4 fund but broken up to give you more funds for no reason. Give them a few years and the high school sophomores setting up these portfolios will be pushing variable annuities and private equity. The 4 PAS funds are: US total market US bonds International total market International bonds But they now give you a large, mid, emerging instead of just a total. Then they give you a total. Or several totals. I see no reason why you couldn't have as your only funds: VTI BND ...

Employers change plans all the time. Say half way through the year, you've contributed the max, the plan gets changed and along with it, the new matching procedure is that matches are made every pay check with no additional at the end of the year. My own employer only matches per pay period. If I were to load up, once I meet the max, I get no more match. And as most plans are set up, mine matches the first 2% on average (it can be less).

An SPIA is an excellent choice for anyone who can't sleep with market volatility. My own small pension came up a year ago for either monthly payments or a lump sum. I took the lump sum and as we know, the market from a year ago to now, I'd have done far better with those payment from the pension which is essentially an annuity. But I do have a large fixed income pile of investments, so I just say "oh well" and move on.

So of your list, I recognize VEA, developed international as I hold that and BND, total bond. The rest are hieroglyphics. The good news is that they're all in tax advantaged accounts. What I would do is decide what you're going to invest in, then sell everything and invest in those things.

If you want US equity, developed international equity and bonds, you could build a portfolio of VTI, VEA and BND. Is there a reason to have more than that? There might be but there isn't a good reason. I'd even be fine with just VTI and BND.

Can someone with financial aid expertise explain the implications on aid to child #1 and #2 if there is only one (large) account in child #1’s name? With our 2 kids, my parents had a 529 for each one. I contributed to one of them. Then my state (MA) started providing tax credits ($200 on $2000 max contributed) while son #1 was in college. With annual costs over $60k, we drained my parent's 529 in the first year I contributed $2000 to my owned 529, let it settle and then withdrew it. After the first year, I had my mom change the beneficiary of the remaining 529 to my older son and we used it for college costs. After that, I would do the $2000 contribution and immediately remove it. Son #2 then went to community college. I only did the $2000...

Open the hood and take a flashlight and shine it at the clear-ish plastic container in front of the steering wheel. That's the brake fluid reservoir. The fluid should be visible and you'll find lines with "max" and "min" written. Is the fluid down to the min or below? Or can you not see the level? That could indicate a problem that could cause a soft brake pedal. Seldom driven cars get all kinds of bad corrosion issues and rotors and pads are the most common. Wash your car and wheels and leave it till tomorrow. The rotors will be covered with surface rust and when you go to move the car, it'll not move, then "let go". That's because the pads have literally rusted to the rotors. Leave it long enough and it'll be...

MA charges an annual excise tax for all vehicles, including EVs. Is it a flat fee or based on miles driven? Once a system can be put in place that is similar in all states and at the federal level, many of the perceived economic advantages of an EV will start to disappear. MA excise tax is based on the MSRP of the vehicle based on the model and trim level. 2.5% of that value. All vehicle values are on a set scale year to year. So (from memory) 100% first year, 90% next and so on. There is a minimum. My trailer, for example is $5. In MA, I'd certainly focus on the "perceived economic advantages of an EV" because it's not difficult to find an ICE car that costs far less than an EV per mile to drive. Our electric bills are riddled w...

I would expect Northeastern to be way more expensive than your in state public college. Within Mass, it's about double what in state UMass costs. It's a private university and is pretty in line with other Boston private universities, cost wise. It also is a 5 year Bachelors with several term long co-ops along the way. Being a co-op veteran myself (not from NU), I know I learned some valuable things I never would have just sticking with on campus learning. I changed my specialty because of what I observed during my co-op. Of course, co-ops are paid. That's the upside. The downside? FAFSA now sees student earning if there's chance for need based aid. I don't know CS but DW graduated with a BSN from NU.

I was curious so did a max time period chart for VBR for small value and VTI for the rest of us. VTI healthily beat VBR. I learned about small cap value being a bad place from a Jack Bogle interview some time ago. He used it as an example of a sector where people find something that's outperformed for some particular time period and it becomes a rush to get in and continues being a rush for a while. Well, what happens when you get all this investment? It becomes overpriced and from what Jack said, that's where small cap value is now. So if you want to beat small cap value, use the entire US market. VTI or VTSAX work great for this.

Where I live, look down and all you're going to see are big stones. Mostly granite. I'd take some time and build yourself a stone wall in front of your lawn. Keep building it until it's big enough that no drivers walk over it anymore.

Thanks much for this info. I was unaware of the no penalty CD and since I'm hoarding cash pre-retirement (end of June), it's great to have that extra interest that even beats Redneck (4.25% with a $75k max). Opened and moved money from my Ally savings this morning.

When we had our detached garage built, the builder noticed that in the middle of our driveway circle, water would collect from water coming down a hill and from our roof. Before completing the drainage around the garage, he put perforated pipe with landscape fabric from the circle into the garage drainage. Since doing that, we've never had water build up in there despite having put in a sump pump in the house with an exit into that circle.

With as much of a slope as you have, I would do that and then top the pipe with crushed stone to prevent erosion. Even with the pipe, that steep of a hill could easily form big erosion pits during heavy rain. Perhaps even plant ground cover on each side of the stone to further prevent erosion.

Say you hold and the company goes downhill. Some time later, you're offered $50k for it. Or it's bought out and all stock holders are given 1/10th what it's worth now, no choice. Sell.

More research is in order. Somehow, you forgot New Hampshire that not only has no income tax, it also has no sales tax. What you should probably do in your research is find out how the state funds things. I'm next door to New Hampshire, in Massachusetts. Now, Mass tends to have higher house prices but some New Hampshire towns can have property tax rates much higher. I live in Hopkinton, MA ($15.81 per $1000) and like to look at Hopkinton, NH, which is $32.25, so about double. Or go west to Claremont and pay $41.68 per thousand. Looking up Austin, TX because people always talk about Texas property taxes being high and see it's only $31.80. So in line with NH. But Texas has sales tax of 6.25% (same as my state of Mass). What other taxes will ...

With patience and time, yes. I Bonds can become an emergency fund. I have paper iBonds worth about $450k and over the years, they've been more than just my emergency fund. They've been my savings account and part of my bond allocation. If you want them to be your emergency fund, buy some. Let them age. Buy some more as you can afford to with real cash as your emergency fund. As bonds hit a year, you can buy from your emergency fund.

You can trade it at a dealer who will pay off the car and that will be added to the new car loan minus the down payment. Happens all the time.

If you want to keep the 0.9% rate, you'll have to keep the Subaru.

This thread completely confused me. I got unconfused here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCtobhiw_0A

Keith is a broker himself and I plan to contact him in a month or so as I'll start Medicare in July.

I did the spread sheet using actual numbers and it came up with (without social security) 3% withdrawal rate of investable assets. Now, I did have to back social security for both of us out and then do my division against my investable assets. I already know how I stand as DW will start SS in May and we'll both be retired in June. Including SS with our invested assets only, we're now at 1.5% withdrawal rate using our "retirement spending" list. I will admit that having more to spend than what we "need" is sort of a problem as we've lived frugally...mostly all our lives. I have no idea how the OP got 5%. We're older and I used a 20 year horizon and based invested assets at $3.7M with a $67k spend. We have no mortgage, pen...

Of all the electronic locks I've tried, all brand names, all connected with the deadbolt, they all failed in under a year. I'm back to all mechanical. Keys are different on all the doors. I only need one key to unlock and get in. The other keys are in a locked key box.

Vanguard, Fidelity or Schwab will all cost you less than anyone selling American Funds. Around here, a lot of us nit pick on Vanguard because it seems they're using high school kids as their front line CSRs, giving wrong answers (why I left them). But they're going to cost so much less than Capital Group that it's worlds better. If this decision takes more than 5 minutes, flip a coin and just do it.

I've driven with Solar, Milestar and Douglas. Good experiences with all three. Probably average around 30-40k miles for each set and paid about 50-60 a tire. Never had any balancing or premature wear issues, unlike my Goodyear Reliants or Viva 3s. Solar has probably been the best of the bunch. Douglas had good traction but wore the fastest. Milestar lasted well but seem to be a little harder and sacrifice some grip. If money is plentiful, sure...get the Michelin ones and you won't regret it. Michelin defenders were the best tires I've ever used. Your mention of Milestar peaked my interest. These are the new kid on the offroad truck world. They jump all over themselves trying to make people think they're a US company. They're not. Not sure ...