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We should each get over $15K per year in S.S. Retirement Benefits. I will start drawing in about 9 years and my wife about 8 years after that. The system will have to be 'shored up' in about 2025, but being the political sacred cow that S.S. is I fully expect the government to screw those that have...

"If something cannot continue forever, it will stop."

I am just not confident that it will stop before I do.

My dad was virtually uninsurable, because he had had cancer at age 37, and later had to have his hips replaced. But he got group coverage for his tax and accounting business, that has a minimum of 2 enrollees, for him and my mother. It wasn't cheap, and the rates steadily have gone up faster than i...

JWR1945 wrote:Where we are now.

Nice post, John.

JWR1945 wrote: If I am not mistaken (IINM), wanderer should have said having been instead of being.

Either that or he is using 'in the hole' for 'debt owed with out regard to offsetting assets' as opposed to 'net worth negative'

I preferred BenSolar's wording to either A or B. I agree with WiseNLucky :lol: Again, I like the more diplomatic approach because the FAQ is the public face of the FIRE board. I prefer to not expose family squabbles to the public. :) Anyone who gets involved in any depth with these boards and the S...

As for the "swr research group" extending the precision or utility of swr, I am still waiting. I don't think that there is a methodology or a number. Lots of requests for people to thank hocus. Hocus's behavior aside, JWR has put up most of the posts over there and they include looking at...

Excellent work, ataloss!! A couple of suggestions: The fine print is, er, maybe, too fine. Especially the italicized fine print is very difficult for me to read. On SWRs you wrote: People seem to have different preferences on how to estimate a SWR (or calculate it with absolute precision in one case...

Some 401K plans allow in-service rollovers. I just don't understand why this is not made mandatory for all plans :evil:, say once each year (maybe at the time of all the benefit re-enrollments). You would obviously not be allowed to move un-vested monies. ... This does not address a LOT of issues i...

... And if SS goes we'll be balancing on a 1 legged stool !! And given the crummy investment options in many 401ks, that one leg is not nearly as robust as it could be. Mine offers only 1 index fund and has no options in the following asset classes: REITs, inflation indexed bonds, small cap value, ...

Hedge fund index fund anyone?

The whole concept strikes me as bizarre. Are hedge funds an asset class?

Thank you for the vivid post, W&L! Had me chuckling. In the 1970s I worked for minimum wage at Long John Silvers In those days, you worked free style with the grease. ... All of us working there had oozing burn sores up and down our hands and arms. EWWW! That is one gnarly image of the food prep...

Was confused by the data over here: http://www.nareit.com/nareitindexes/web3.htm All REITS, last year return circa 26%, dividend only 6%. Thought US REITS paid out 95% of net earnings in dividends, am I reading this data incorrectly or is this the quarterly dividend? No, that dividend is yearly. Th...

None of these would exist without Vanguard and its success. They were put in to stop the bleeding. Since these rates equal zero profit at Vanguard, they almost certainly equal zero profit at Fidelity (or, more likely, are loss leaders with the hope that participants will also put a few bucks in man...

if you look at the chart for vgsix, it pretty much went into a free fall around the time of the bernstein article in april 98 (2000 was a better time to buy :wink:) He was right to be cautious at the time Apparently 1997-98 was quite bubble-icious in the REIT industry. It's not as bad yet, but if i...

Vanguard's unique structure makes this possible. Vanguard is the leader and low cost provider due to the items you mention, but it's true there are other, for profit companies, with creditable and cheap index funds. Fidelity being the most obvious. Their Spartan S&P 500 index has an ER of .19%,...

I am wondering about US REITs. I forgot to mention: since you have access to the Fool boards, you might want to check out their REIT board. It is a truly excellent resource. Here is a link to the latest 'REIT Week' written by REITNut who is a REIT mutual fund manager and regular poster there. There...

I am wondering about US REITs. Perhaps you can weigh in here. I had a plan to allocate 26% of the portfolio to two property mutual funds, 5% sales load and 1.76% mgmt fee. Est. 6.5% gross nominal return. I do wonder how realistic that is for the US The Morgan Stanley REIT index (the RMS) yields abo...

I re-assesed the mortgage payoff question ... The issue seems easily addressed by determining what FIRE assets are needed to generate the mortgage payment. ... So retiring debt free means retiring earlier (by a factor of 2.5 for this example). Yes, I think it's clear cut that paying off your mortga...

I've added page of analysis of the Gordon equation if anyone is interested: http://raddr.freehostingpro.com/gordon.htm. It goes in to a little more detail than my original NFB post at http://nofeeboards.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1128. Better be careful raddr. Wasn't it along these lines that Dr. B...