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aspiringboglehead

Thanks. There was an insurance agent on the boards that highly recommended maxing out car insurance. It seems logical to me that a moving vehicle is the most likely cause for liability insurance. My own local insurance agent doesn't even sell lower-limit policies, essentially as a moral matter, bec...

aspiringboglehead

Has anyone personally known anyone where their Umbrella policy had to paid out? What do you have to do to have an umbrella policy kick in? I've taught legal cases where it happens (I'm a law professor), but fortunately it's never happened to friends or family. Usually it's just a bad car accident w...

aspiringboglehead

The best general approach here follows from a recognition that insurance companies have a fiduciary duty to settle reasonable claims for the policy limit when it's in your interest to do so. (This duty is framed differently from state to state, but a typical formulation is along the lines of: if you...

aspiringboglehead

Yes, you are crazy to take a risk for six months when the additional return is not significant. You’re probably right, but it’s a bit hard for me to determine what’s “significant” (we’re talking about 7-figures so even 60 basis points translate to big money). The corresponding risk is greater then,...

aspiringboglehead

Yes, you are crazy to take a risk for six months when the additional return is not significant. You’re probably right, but it’s a bit hard for me to determine what’s “significant” (we’re talking about 7-figures so even 60 basis points translate to big money). The corresponding risk is greater then,...

aspiringboglehead

Effectively it's a short-term, specially secured loan. Formally it's structured as a sale of something today coupled with a promise to buy it back soon. For example, if I own Treasuries worth $100, I might promise to sell them to you for $100 today (for cash) and promise to buy them back at $101 in ...

aspiringboglehead

I am confused about a trust. Many people here suggested a trust. I didn't really see a good explanation for what a trust would do for our family? One mentioned estate taxes, but with the current estate tax limit being around $11 million, I don't think that will affect us (not now at least.) I certa...

aspiringboglehead

The most important thing is, or at least should be, choosing and formally naming a guardian for your children in a will. For most people, that addresses the main concern in the unlikely event that you both die before your children. If nothing else, reading Dickens (and more modern literature in whic...

aspiringboglehead

At least over past periods, "identical performance for all practical purposes" would probably be the best description. http://quotes.morningstar.com/chart/fund/chart.action?&t=XNAS:VWIUX&region=usa&culture=en-US&cur=&dataParams=%7B%22zoomKey%22%3A9%2C%22version%22%3A%22...

aspiringboglehead

The lifetime exemption is currently scheduled to fall as a matter of law to a level that many people in this forum will hit, or at least may hit. (It is of course also subject to change by legislation.) Therefore, it's not a waste of time to try to figure out ways to structure a gift so that it fall...

aspiringboglehead

I understand that $15,000/year is excluded from the gift tax and that we can give away $11.18 million/lifetime tax free. We'll never come close to that number. The easiest way is to transfer them $100,000. I have no idea why people are suggesting splitting it into two transactions just to avoid fil...

aspiringboglehead

My wife and I are considering making a $100k cash gift to some friends to help them buy a larger SF house for their family of 7 in our neighborhood. We have been very close friends for over 15 years, our kids go the same school, etc. I understand that $15,000/year is excluded from the gift tax and ...

aspiringboglehead

Agree with comments that this just means the prevailing rate of interest was around 4%. It turns up a lot in Jane Austen as well. But another point is That This was effectively a “real” rate of interest as the pound etc was backed by gold I agree that, in context, it's the expected stable interest ...

aspiringboglehead

You should talk to a tax adviser, but, just speaking in general and not as legal advice, it may help to clarify what you're asking: As a general matter, if you've set up a single-member LLC that is disregarded for tax purposes and have received K-1s from other entities for income that "the LLC&...

aspiringboglehead

Also, the statement that you dont have limited liability of your own actions is kind of not true. IANAL but my own lawyer was quite clear about this: an LLC doesn't shield you from liability from your own actions. But the OP is best advised to consult her/his own attorney to get a definitive answer...

aspiringboglehead

Hi everyone, I would like to know if there is any taxe impact in this particular situation: I'm french living and working in the US (US resident). My parents are french, living in France. My grandparents recently passed away and their assets (including cash) were inherited by their kids (including ...

aspiringboglehead

I find, honestly, that the simplicity of VUSXX is attractive. I live in a no-income-tax state, so I don't get the tax benefits from Treasuries, but I still sleep better using it because I understand clearly what it holds. (It's literally a rolling collection of a small number of Treasury bills.) I h...

aspiringboglehead

The SEC's perceived relative risk of massive redemptions is what led to the gating requirements for "retail" funds (like VMMXX) and the exemption of "government" funds (like VUSXX) from those requirements. Judging from the SEC's document explaining its final rule, the agency's th...

aspiringboglehead

If your goal is to have the money end up in a Roth IRA, it can be better to consider rolling over the money into an IRA and then converting it to a Roth IRA. This would cause the same $4500 to be included in your taxable income. The reason it can better to do it as a rollover plus a conversion is th...

aspiringboglehead

There's a lot of confusion on this point. First, to be clear, the risks are minuscule, so the debate is largely academic. But though people commonly say that Treasuries are "safer" than an FDIC-insured bank account, I believe that is technically a mistake. The FDIC (though it is indeed an ...

aspiringboglehead

A retail money market fund has no price risk, since the share price is maintained at $1.00, even though there is some fluctuation of the value of the fund's holdings (daily market share price has fluctuated between $1.000 and $1.003 over the last six months, with an average of $1.001). First, just ...

aspiringboglehead

I've been wondering about a similar question: Does anyone have a sense, historically, of how Treasury bills have compared to savings-accounts rates at banks? I wasn't able to find good data about this online. In the extremely low-rate environment after the 2008 financial crisis, good banks tended to...

aspiringboglehead

You’re entitled to only what people decided to defer to you, which in this instance seems to be nothing. I can’t imagine why you feel you’d be enetitled to more. Just being honest. Thank you for your honesty. I feel I was entitled to as much as my sibling was. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe I’m ...

aspiringboglehead

This doesn't seem like an intolerable outcome. This can be, but is not necessarily, true. For some people, a wide range of asset allocations can be acceptable, and it's hard to say that any one particular allocation is optimal. That is equivalent to saying that rebalancing is not necessary for some...

aspiringboglehead

"that Nisi Prius nuisance, who just now is rather rife, That judicial humorist-- I've got him on my list." it just popped into my head at a moment when I was trying to think of a screen name that had no particular connection with my real world identity. It's a line from a song in a Gilber...

aspiringboglehead

I've long been committed to Vanguard because of the low cost and the ownership structure, but recent customer-service failures have led me to question my faith in the organization's ability to adapt to the growth it has experienced. They have done unbelievably incompetent things in my accounts over ...

aspiringboglehead

Yes that write off becomes a tax tool to cut the cost of business as insurance companies. It's a tax loophole for huge insurance companies. I call it a loophole, but not sure that's the right term. I'm guessing some other businesses also win here. I fail to understand how this can be a tax tool to ...

aspiringboglehead

Oh, just to be clear, Blue Cross's website often shows "Your responsibility" to be $0 while the claim is processing. When that turns into another number, that is likely to be what you actually owe. As long as Quest is an in-network provider, your responsibility is likely to be much, much l...

aspiringboglehead

The insane costs at the rack rate are well known. But even if the insurer doesn't cover it, I assume it is in network and you should get network rates. And I must ask, what kind of insurance policy do you have that wouldn't cover thyroid testing? PPO with HSA :P literally covers nothing but routine...

aspiringboglehead

It's possible that even though it's an uncovered service, an in-network provider will be limited to taking a particular negotiated fee. It's at least worth asking Blue Cross Blue Shield if there will be such a limitation in this case. That will, unfortunately, probably need to wait until their initi...

aspiringboglehead

I'm not your lawyer, but (1) the form on which the earning is declared does not dictate your tax liability, but it may of course raise red flags for the IRS or increase the likelihood that they will challenge your return, and if the winnings were in fact gambling winnings, then part of them should h...

aspiringboglehead

One possibility if you're restricted to a UK-bank withdrawal is to set up an account in an Isle of Man bank. This requires some paperwork but is generally easier for nonresidents than setting up a proper UK account, and yet the Isle of Man accounts are functionally within the UK banking system and c...

aspiringboglehead

But hasn't history shown that many Americans own too expensive a home? :) Bogleheads can't have it both ways. We accept that we cannot time the market; that we cannot determine a fair price for a security better than the millions of buyers who make up the market. Why would we think that we know bet...

aspiringboglehead

Right, that makes sense: it's not style-neutral in the sense of fixed weightings; it's "whatever style the market has chosen." Nor is it "neutral" (in the sense you appear to mean) with respect to industry, sector, or (in the case of TSM) domestic location; it's "biased"...

aspiringboglehead

I will note that the median value of housing units cost $186,200 according to the 2010 census. I know this is Lake Wobegon and everyone here is an outlier that skews the average, but that just shows how out of whack 2.5x (or 2x) is with what's going on with all the millions of people in this countr...

aspiringboglehead

The three stock styles each account for about one-third of the total free float — so, by definition then, the Total Market Stock Index can never be anything other than a large-cap blend fund But isn't that true of almost any categorization of assets you could come up with? Those from Fama and Frenc...

aspiringboglehead

Factor investing rests on two claims, and they both fall in the range of "there might be something in it... or, then, again, there might not." One is that in addition to the risk story, small-cap and value benefit from behavioral errors that a) can be exploited by a simple, robotic formul...

aspiringboglehead

Interestingly, though, 2.5x salary does sound conservative to me too, particularly for otherwise frugal people. It's certainly not profligate or irresponsible to buy a home that it would take you six years to pay off, rather than three. :) A figure like 2.5x salary isn't far off, but I wouldn't thin...

aspiringboglehead

It's really great how you're approaching this. I think the clearest, most helpful bits of advice that have been given are (1) scholarships, because they can be fun to apply for and are just free money regardless of what else you do, and (2) public vs. private schools, which will also associate with ...

aspiringboglehead

I think one insidious thing the real-estate industry has done (and I don't mean this as a conspiracy theory, just an unfortunately result of collective marketing over the years) is to get people to think in terms of the maximum home they can "afford." Why not look at all ranges of homes, i...

aspiringboglehead

Most Bogleheads appear to accept that it is appropriate to divide assets into percentage-based allocations between stocks and bonds. I've been wondering recently whether this is really true for many or even most people. For example, isn't it likely that as people get wealthier, many ought to prefer ...

aspiringboglehead

There is generally no such consequence, but there's a small wrinkle with IRAs: you cannot contribute more than your wages and other earnings. So it's fine if the practical source of the funds is from dividends, distributions, interest, or gains ("unearned income"), but the contributed amou...

aspiringboglehead

I already dealt with conversions, and I like my AA. Are those few 5%'s necessary...no, but I like them. My question: If I have money in account A, and want to keep it in that account, how do I realize the gains with the minimum time out of AA. I assume I could sell it all, exchange it into another ...

aspiringboglehead

The root of the problem is Vanguard's 10 character limitation. That quite simply puts Vanguard far from where they should be in the area of online security. This isn't really a problem; brute-force attacks on online systems can be easily monitored and prevented, and they're significantly slower tha...

aspiringboglehead

"Efficient markets"
Probably overstates things,
But what else is there?

aspiringboglehead

"No, ten words are too few to summarize anything important."

aspiringboglehead

Additionally, in the "supplemental" accounts, you have what amounts to a free option to update your "vintage" by simply withdrawing to the CREF money market and then, after some period elapses (I think it's 90 days, though I may be misremembering), redepositing the money into the...

aspiringboglehead

Even taking TIAA's claims-paying abilities for granted, I've been wondering how long they'll be able to keep up a guarantee of 3% for new contributions under current conditions. I've asked a few TIAA representatives whether the 3% rate for new contributions might change anytime soon, and they all th...

aspiringboglehead

Broadly speaking, your insurer has a legal obligation to settle when it's in your best interest to settle. The general idea, though the law varies from state to state, is that it's not permitted to take risks at your expense in order to minimize its own expected payouts, precisely because of the dif...

aspiringboglehead

A good academic analysis of the drawbacks of share repurchases, along with a proposal for how they should be regulated, is in an article by Jesse Fried entitled "Informed Trading and False Signaling with Open Market Repurchases." It basically is a legal-academic elaboration of nisiprius's ...

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