Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
You're going to be taxed on the distributions whether you reinvest or not. So from a tax perspective, you're sitting with a tax bill (from the distributions), some cash, and fund shares. The question is: what do you do with the cash that was dis…
Just returning from a multi-week history/art tour through northwestern Europe, specifically Belgium, Luxembourg, northern France, and Holland.
From Waterloo to Omaha Beach (hundreds of years more if one includes the Bayeux tapestry detailing the…
Third, mutual funds are increasingly finding that they can generate income from nonfee sources. In fiscal 2017, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund earned more than 63% of its expenses by lending securities. ...
Such lending is not without …
I'm a bit tied up now, but will review the links. Thanks for the clarifications and focus.
In the meantime, here's another example of a perverse incentive - the way pharmacy benefit managers (the companies that administer insurance drug programs,…
Since insurance premiums are obviously, so obviously, a subset of overall healthcare costs,
It's not at all obvious from your citations. The cited pages don't count premiums as a subset of overall healthcare (except to the extent that they're use…
Few would argue with the idea that everyone should get the health care they need. There are at least two different areas of concern: (1) who pays for that health care, and (2) how much does that health care cost.
Nearly all the links you have pro…
I do have it delivered to my Kindle e-reader for $12.50 a month. Good paper. My first choice for U.S. news.
Do you know if the "Basic Digital" subscription, which says it includes "Unlimited access to washingtonpost.com on any device" really doe…
DODIX and MWTSX. Needless to say, they are underperforming so far this year.You may need to say, because DODIX is at the 14th percentile so far this year, MTWSX is at the 42nd percentile. They have outperformed AGG (a proxy for the domestic invest…
Not pushing Treasuries here (I rarely use them), but they're about as easy to deal with as CDs through a brokerage. Unlike any other type of bond, Treasuries are also just as simple as CDs. Buy a 2 year CD, you get the promised yield for two yea…
Interesting that the federal govt is phasing out Plan F (most popular) and Plan C Medigap plans starting in 2020 where you were covered 100% for all expenses and deductibles. They want to make sure you have to PAY something.The high deductible Pla…
Love the board and the discussions.
Never owned a T-bond direct. Intriguing thought. Is it as easy as it sounds? Just go to the U.S. Treasury site and pay via checking account withdrawal? Minimums appear low. Would $1,000 work? How about using you…
If what one wants is two year treasuries, why not just buy them directly? Virtually zero credit risk, zero cost to buy, zero cost to own.
Just missed this month's auction:
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/instit/annceresult/press/press_secannpr.htm
>> The writers you cite are ... just focused on bits and pieces.
So you have studied all of those articles and that's your conclusion: it's trees not forest?
They never talked about "health costs" - you did. That was your term, your synthe…
THDAX (and its other share classes) started 12/16/09, so the only peak to trough period to compare is the later one:
04/30/11 to 09/30/11: THADX -25.3%, peers -26.1%, APHEX -30.9%
FWIW, the relative performances over the extended flat period, 4/29…
At the risk of sounding like a soak-the-poor lunatic, let me say that I am not in favor of simply removing the cap on wages subject to FICA taxes. By design, there is a coupling between amount paid in and size of benefits - the more you pay in, th…
Some remnants of SS may well still be around for the next few decades. However, I wonder if SS will even cover rising health insurance premiums (medicare b, d, + supplemental).
I wonder how many Americans realize what a burden HC costs are becomin…
Discard the past half year (since October), and the two funds are neck and neck. Since you have long lamented how ARTZX has been treated, certainly you lamented that back in October.
Does a relatively hot hand for a few months renders one fund su…
@davidrmoran The writers you cite are not misguided, not misinformed, just focused on bits and pieces. They never talked about "health costs" - you did. That was your term, your synthesis of what you read.
I'm not wriggling out of describing…
Before I take more than a cursory look at the links, what do you mean by "health costs" - the average actual cost of providing care (e.g. drug X rose M% last year, appendectomies rose N%, etc.), list prices, the total national spending per year? So…
Not only that, but many of these workers pay into SS while being ineligible to draw benefits. While that sounds like theft to me, the current push to deport them and terminate this source of revenue simply increases the SS shortfall.Unauthorized i…
Correlation is not causation. Nor are total dollars spent the same as cost of health care. The former is a product of health care costs and health care utilization.
Here's a PWC report, projecting slightly higher increases in medical costs in 20…
I'm not clear on what your point is here.
Normally small funds have higher ERs, but often the management company (not the manager him/herself) takes a hit by waiving fees to attract assets. ISTM that's a sign of support by the company for the fun…
One day residents are living peacefully in their quiet neighborhood. The next day all hell breaks loose as Mother Earth rises from the depths threatening their homes. How many of these folks have ““volcano insurance” ?
... Relationship to inves…
I am one of them. Frankly I don't expect it to be around when I retire ...
PS - Warren Buffet is on record saying he does not claim SS benefits.
As JoeD observed, some SS will be around for decades. Not just some, but 75%.
Currently, the Social S…
One question - does this analysis take into account possibility of starting to take the benefits at say 62 and putting them into a diversified conservative allocation fund (say) till 70, and assume a reasonable return (say 6%)? Well phrased question…
I have no issue with the utility companies reading their meters remotely to save on monthly billing costs. It's crazy for the utilities to stomp their feet and say that if you don't like them monitoring you minute by minute, you'll be stuck with th…
The utility companies are making their move with smart meters. To "help" you, of course. After they install them, they'll be just like Santa Claus:
They'll know when you are sleeping (low power usage),
They'll know when you're awake (increased …
Kenneth Weiss coined the term, but two factor authentication goes back at least as far as the mid 60s, when James Goodfellow patented the combined use of "what you know" (a PIN) and "what you have" (a physical object) to conduct secure financial tra…
I assumed there would be a drop in benefits once the delayed payback was met. Incorrect assumption based on what you are saying.I was delighted to run across the Fidelity page, because it seems to be very hard to find anything about how SSA recalcu…
SS bases COLA on CPI-W figures (covering about 28% of the population), not the more familiar CPI-U figures (covering about 88% of the population). It uses 12 month figures from the end of Q3 in one year to the end of Q3 in the next. For example,…
Lastly, no calculation is included for C.O.L.A. adjustments over the years of draw.IMHO that means that the comparisons are automatically fair.
Wimpy may have offered to gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today, but the rest of us know that a …
It's great to read someone describing how reduced SS benefits while working are not really lost. In effect, the reduction in SS is a forced deferral until full retirement age (FRA).
The simplest situation is if you earn enough to completely wipe…
I've refrained from substantially commenting because it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle, and my reaction is largely one of blaming the victim. In short, where has everybody been for decades?
Organizations like EPIC and the ACLU have be…
It looks like numbers 2 and 3 are just variants of the tax cut theme:
Help companies make more money (raise foreign drug prices, cut domestic corporate income taxes), and they'll pass this largesse through to the little people (customers, employees…
Let me suggest a modified analogy that I think will satisfy dryflower's concern. Consider a membership library.
I sneak in and read a book in its private collection. If I make a copy, even for my own use, I've violated the copyright. But what …
From the Boston Globe article:
Q. Do companies have a social duty to minimize environmental impact?
A. I don’t believe in social duty. Companies have many duties: ... to provide employment to a lot of people
Even if they could produce more at low…
The average price of electricity to the average residential end user in Massachusetts in January 2006 was 17.41 cents/kWh. See Table 5.6.A on pdf p. 116 of this US Energy Administration report. (All sectors average was 15.69 cents.)
https://www.e…
In 1999, commission schedules were all over the map, but few charged extra for odd lots. (See survey cited below.)
My own recollection of Schwab and Fidelity is that they charged a flat rate up to 100 shares, and prices went up from there (though …
If I place an order for a buck and a quarter's worth of a $100/share fund, the fund company (or brokerage) will take my $1.25 and hand me a 0.012 shares, worth $1.20.
If I place an order for a buck and a quarter's worth of a $10/share fund, the fun…
