Search found 18 matches
- Thu Jul 22, 2004 9:14 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Getting of the hamster wheel
- Replies: 16
- Views: 23361
Hey Ben, As a fellow single 30-something, I'm going to advise against pulling the trigger too soon. You are earning a great income, and be careful about giving up such a good gig. Yes, working is hard. But you are benefiting greatly -- each additional year you work has a dramatic effect on your fina...
- Thu Apr 08, 2004 5:37 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Portfolio advice sought
- Replies: 13
- Views: 20011
Wanderer, What you should do depends a lot on your tax situation, so here goes a little advice not knowing the specifics of that: I like the choice of VEIEX over EEM due to the lower expense ratio I have chosen to forgo the international small cap due to the high expense ratios, and also lack of tax...
- Thu Feb 05, 2004 11:36 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Vanguard VIPER ETF launch
- Replies: 10
- Views: 23357
- Wed Feb 04, 2004 10:49 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Vanguard VIPER ETF launch
- Replies: 10
- Views: 23357
- Sun Oct 26, 2003 8:41 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Are you on track to retire rich?
- Replies: 34
- Views: 29459
Kenm wrote: 30K per year in the U.S. is not that hard to come by for S.S. - My wife and I each had 6 figure incomes and paid the max into S.S. for over 15 years. We should each get over $15K per year in S.S. Retirement Benefits This is indeed the case. You can download the benefit calculator from t...
- Fri Oct 10, 2003 6:25 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Nobel prize for fat tail theory
- Replies: 9
- Views: 9923
Yep, this does not affect my buy and hold strategy during either accumulation or during retirement. But it is central to long term survivability of diversified portfolios, and how much you can withdraw out of them over time, and what assets they should consist of. These economists don't have to worr...
- Fri Oct 10, 2003 4:54 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Buying Private Health Insurance
- Replies: 16
- Views: 19608
caseynshan wrote: I just got my 2004 Kaiser Info, Wanderer - FYI - for a 43 old single male HMO is 220.00 a month (drops to 166.00 if you drop maternity and prescription drug coverage) Thanks for the detail, Caseynshan. Just curious, do you put this under your business, or are you and your family j...
- Thu Oct 09, 2003 9:59 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Nobel prize for fat tail theory
- Replies: 9
- Views: 9923
Nobel prize for fat tail theory
One of the recent discussions was about leptokurtic (yep, it was the correct word) or fat-tail distributions of stock market returns. Combined with the tendency of the stock market to exhibit return to mean behavior over long periods of time. This makes it difficult to use monte carlo techniques for...
- Sun Oct 05, 2003 11:28 am
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: New Issue of Efficient Frontier by William J. Bernstein
- Replies: 7
- Views: 7866
Thanks for posting the quotes, Oliver. Oliver wrote: I have been giving some thought to how TIPS should be evaluated in the portfolio and SWR. How important is the SD if you are okay with the original YTM and intend to hold until maturity a security issued by the US gov't? I think the part that is i...
- Sat Oct 04, 2003 10:23 am
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Russell vs S&P SmallCap / BARRA Index?
- Replies: 2
- Views: 3856
- Mon Sep 29, 2003 6:27 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Emerging Market Bonds
- Replies: 33
- Views: 62158
Petey wrote: I am interested to hear more on slice and dice of bond funds. Could you elaborate on that please The idea is to expose your fixed income assets across different fixed income asset classes and risk factors (as opposed to investing in fixed income primarily for portfolio security). This w...
- Sun Sep 28, 2003 9:19 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: My new website is up...sorta
- Replies: 33
- Views: 24352
Raddr, thanks for sharing the info on your web site. I found it very informative. I have been running some of my own Monte Carlo withdrawal scenarios. What I found most interesting about your approach was the following: From raddr web site: What I did was create a random number generator where the s...
- Sun Sep 28, 2003 5:50 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Emerging Market Bonds
- Replies: 33
- Views: 62158
Hi Petey, I won't attempt to completely answer your questions, but just throw in a few thoughts. Emerging market (EM) bonds are denominated in dollars so there is no currency diversification effect like there is with developed market bonds. So I would put EM bonds below developed market bonds in por...
- Thu Sep 25, 2003 4:48 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Gold and Energy
- Replies: 20
- Views: 17376
If Gold shares perform better than Gold, the hard asset, I would like to be able to view data from a selected bunch of return dates to see how it has done. Morningstar only has 5 year history on gold funds and gold mining funds. The William Bernstein info doesn't really provide anything other than ...
- Thu Sep 25, 2003 12:47 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Gold and Energy
- Replies: 20
- Views: 17376
I used to make the case for real estate (in the face of the moronic argument that the CAGR was lower for real estate than for equities) on diversification alone. her second point explains, exactly, why we have been reluctant to invest outside vanguard. waiting on that gold etf. ***** did anyone eve...
- Wed Sep 24, 2003 8:22 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Gold and Energy
- Replies: 20
- Views: 17376
Precious metals, as in the actual hard asset, in the long run return about zero. Precious metals stocks, on the other hand, seem to have a decent real return, albeit probably not as large as broad based stocks. It is difficult to use historical data because past performance has been distorted so muc...
- Mon Sep 22, 2003 7:39 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Spread sheets for Personal Financial Planning
- Replies: 18
- Views: 15255
I recently purchased MATLAB, a modeling tool for engineers and mathematicians that I used in school. I use this for a graduate class in signal processing that I am taking. Anyway, MATLAB is an incredibly useful tool. Think of it as something like Excel on steroids, and with much better performance a...
- Mon Sep 22, 2003 7:04 pm
- Forum: FIRE Board
- Topic: Spread sheets for Personal Financial Planning
- Replies: 18
- Views: 15255
Hi Chips, Kramer here, I'm a big fan, and am honored to reply to your post. I use some standard type spreadsheets that I find invaluable: Holdings -- (eg, net worth) divided by asset class for my slice and dice portfolio. It compares my current asset allocation against my asset allocation plan. It a...