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Sven
Lynn,
Thank you so much. I am planning on a 3-year ladder since I am a year away from retirement. Lots of spreadsheet work to calculate the income replacement needed. This ladder will create a steady income stream. So thank you for all your help.
I moved back to high quality bond funds this year. Some of which you covered in the SA article. For now, I will stay with agency bonds to the bond ladder. I will pick active managers for corporate bonds.
Sven
Is today’s market rational and so relies on the Magnificent Seven stocks ? Equal weight RSP, lagged S&P 500 by a wide margin last several years. Will the tide turn this year but I hope so?
@Art, NDNA NVDA, NVIDIA is one of the Magnificent …
Agree with @stiller on debt card. Electronic theft is not talk about enough. Thieves often set up “skimmer” on card readers outside the stores such as gas stations, and get the card numbers from the credit cards or debit cards. Knew someone who ha…
In term of cash flow, the cash bucket is secured based on your annual living expense minus social security and pension $ for say 3-5 years. Emergency house/car repair can be factored into that cash bucket and back fill that over several years.
S…
@fed495, I apologize and stand correct as @JD_co and BaluBalu noted above too. For a moment, I confuse muni bonds with US treasuries. I correct the above comment.
dividends are 99.9% tax exempt in my state
@Fred495, if I am correct, treasury bonds/ ETFs are federal tax-exempt, not state exempt. TFLO invests in floating rate treasury similar to that of USFR, WisdomTree treasury floating rate ETF.
Edits: …
Excellent suggestion. The cash bucket can cover yearly withdrawal for several years without worry the ups and downs of the equity bucket. And there are good options with T bill ladder, CDs, and high yield money market as the cash equivalent.
I use both for different reasons. Large liquid ETFs are okay whereas thinly traded ones can be volatile. Not everyone has a $1M to get into PIMIX, but Vanguard customers can get in with $25K. PLYD has a reasonable daily volume (189K) and it can be p…
At least you have income from social security and pension (?) and the rest of balance from taxable account.
We switched to Roth 401(k) when it became available. The market has been kind to us, so we are facing RMD with our traditional tax-deferr…
@hank and @Old_Joe, PYLD is the ETF version of Pimco Income, inst. PIMIX; run Dan Ivascyn and his team. Hank has picked one of the best multi-sector fund in this category.
Think @johnN is now driving a new Tesla with the huge run up on Tesla.
Personally we will not buy EVs due to their poor reliability in cold weather. Lithium ion battery performance drops precipitously at low temperatures as many dead Tesla failed …
Many great punch lines from Being There, and they seem to fit so well in various situations.
“I like to watch” with Shirely McClain in a bedroom. Chauncey likes watching cartoons.
Recent rapid rise in equity (16% since Oct 23) have us worry and US stocks are expensive. Rebalanced several % of stocks to short term junk bonds and cash equivalents. More T bills and CDs are maturing in coming months, but cannot see anything part…
Thanks all for the safety oversight info. Now I am getting very worry even though we fly moderately. 737 Max aircraft is widely used in major airlines.
Good article, indeed. Interesting that they even mentioned deglobalization and supply chain changes. If this change becomes permanent, the investable universe would becomes much smaller.
@Crash, Devo, our MFO contributor posted a nice article o…
TRP Global Allocation fund, RPGAX, employs about 10% hedge fund in its portfolio. Buried in the prospectus states:
The adviser generally selects hedge funds and other alternative funds, as well as any investment subadvisers, based on their investm…
@Old_Joe, thank you for the detailed diagrams and explanations. Cotter-pins I am familiar with on Honda and Toyota cars are self-locking that prevent sliding out from vibration. It takes some effort to open the pin, slides over several notches be…
@msf and @BaluBalu, thank you for your comments on hedged equity funds. Just want to better understand these strategies.
In the past, I have invested small allocation on alternatives and decided they do not add much value while incurring high ma…
There is enough space debris that the larger ones are actively tracked, so not to avoid unintended damages to the International space Station and other satellites.
By the way, the of the mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope got hit by a micro…
@msf,
The link you posted by Robin Powell stated the following:
1. Tactical allocation funds had an average expense ratio of 1.39% (they are very expensive) and an average turnover of 289% (trading costs are high and tax efficiency is low).
2. T…
Here is more info on 737 Max planes.
https://npr.org/2024/01/08/1223517098/door-plug-boeing-737-max-portland-ntsb-faa
Long time ago, an engine fell off a Boeing plane in flight near O’Hare airport. They found planes cracked pylon that holds the e…
Boeing is a component in the Dow Jones index and widely held in many funds. It seems to be the mechanics are not inspecting the planes thoroughly on a regular basis. There is no excuse to have loose bolts.
If I read the bond data properly, it appears investors are moving away from short term bonds toward core bonds which are intermediate duration. Falling yields now increase bond prices, and further appreciation is expecting when FED cut rates in lat…
@crash and @hank, thanks for the clarification. Tactical moves does require larger % to make meaningful impact on the overall portfolio. Large move for us was to exit (most) bonds in late 2021 to cash equivalent as inflation became evident. 50/10/…
@Crash said, I'm already at 61 stocks, 33 bonds.
Stock funds, right? How do you manage them? I am trying to considerate to less than 20 stock and bond funds/ETFs.
As to @Derf’s question, mostly no. I confess that my hand picked sector funds are all down this year, VPU (-8.4%), VDC (1.3%), and VHT (1.6%). I will stay with them until they recover next year. Otherwise, I will stay with diversified stock fund…
@yogibb said, I have noted elsewhere that FBALX is among the more aggressive moderate-allocation funds (nominal 50-70%). This shows in its higher volatility and higher effective-equity.
FBALX is actively managed and tracks Vanguard Balanced Index fu…
We invested with Andrew Foster when he managed Matthew Asia Growth & Income fund and followed him to Seafarer funds. SIVLX has a sizable exposure to smaller cap stocks. Really like their stock picking process. David has a real nice write up on…
Having money is good, but your health condition determines your lifestyle after retirement. We stay active when we were young. So far so good as our kids leave the house and return during holidays. Since last year we re-emerge post-COVID to trave…
Happy holidays to everyone! It is rainy and cold here in Pacific Northwest. Hopefully it will have a good snowpack in the mountains and ready for another dry year in 2024. We wish everyone to have another prosperous year.