Thank you for posting such articles, Machine Ghost. You do so much research work for me!

The first thing we bought was a four-plex, which allowed us to pay the mortgage using tenants' money. While we have since moved on, that same four-plex now pays our property taxes and utilities on our primary residence, plus the four-plex mortgage, which will be paid off the same year our first kid ...

Wow, WiseOne. That's...alarming.

It's not clear if you're concerned that YOU may be laid off. If there is such a chance, how much savings do you have to tide you over? Otherwise, while I'm not a believer in market timing, there is no harm in waiting until you've finished more reading on the PP, and if it makes you feel better to se...

Doesn't it seem that taxes on 401K withdrawals of gains should also be tax-free instead of at regular income rates?

As it turns out, they still had my account information, although I thought I'd canceled the account in 2010, and therefore I'm probably not eligible for the promotion. I'll email or call to find out for sure. Boo! Medium Tex, that sounds like a fun little investment in Sirius!

I thought I'd share this promo I found while looking at the Sharebuilder website -- you get a $200 bonus if you open an account with $10,000 by 12/13. That's a 2% return! The money gets deposited into your account 4-6 weeks after you open the account, and the $10,000 (minus any losses) must remain i...

Yes, I would certainly consider it and I would appreciate it.

Laughing about your "extreme" idea for the cell phone. That's not extreme - it's awesome! When my contract ran out about a year ago on my iPhone, I decided to go down to a "dumb" phone w/o a contract - with the understanding that I could always go back to a smart phone at any tim...

Good news!

Complicated, but interesting. If you could find investments that paid dividends, that would be super cool. i.e. buy $30,000 of Vanguard utility fund and use the nearly 4% dividend to pay your utility bill. Long ago, I thought about doing something like that with APPL stock - buy some and then use th...

Bean, I, personally, would eliminate #3 in favor of paying down debt or building a greater emergency fund. We: 1. Pay into pension system. 2. Fund Roths. 3. Save in taxable for short term and long term goals. Doing it this way allowed us to accumulate enough to pay off our mortgage, pay cash for car...

These are all interesting perspectives. And I suppose, in truth, cash would not necessarily be what I'd use first if I needed to tap emergency money - for instance, I have some I-Bonds bought in the early '90s that would be the LAST thing I'd sell, because of the interest they earn. I'd also avoid s...

I'm in the midst of reading Craig's new book, which is VERY well-written and I suspect will be around as long as HB's books, and I have a question: My PP will be about 20% taxable and 50% tax-deferred and 30% tax-free (Roth). Should the 20% taxable be part of my cash allocation, seeing as it's also ...

How about this - if I do decide to start doing it again, I'll post what I do and we can see where it leads.

[/quote] Isn't this really just gambling?  [/quote] "just" gambling? I don't know. It's buying something at one price and aiming to sell it for a higher one, preferably soon after purchasing it in the first place. Closer to what any of us is attempting with the PP than Vegas-style gambling...

Every time I think about getting an hourly job, I remind myself of the modified day-trading I did while on maternity leave with my first kid. Over the 8+ years I'd been with the company I was with, because we all had stock options, we watched the stock price obsessively. It was fascinating to see ho...

I just really, really like having things "outside the system."

I was highly, highly influenced by Your Money Or Your Life back when I was just out of college, and credit it with allowing me (us) the lifestyle we have now. Nearly mid-forties, no mortgage, one parent works and the other (me) is home for the kids (now tween/teen) and gets to work in a creative (wr...

How did I miss that interesting thread? A small response to your points, the money could be in the PP mutual fund and never rebalanced, or a mutual fund such as Wellesley with all dividends reinvested. I guess I'm wondering lately what price we pay when we give up flexibility with our money and lock...

Say I decide not to save/invest in a Roth IRA, but in taxable accounts instead. Say that I save/invest in such a way that I don't take any dividends or capital gains along the way, so that at age 60, for example, I have $500,000 saved and no income from a job. I'd be in the lowest tax bracket with n...

I just signed up and am now looking forward to receiving my mail today to opt out of a few things - thanks!

RE: Endorsements - This probably isn't logical, but I don't necessarily give much weight to what endorsers say - especially with fiction -- but if a book has no endorsements, that makes me suspicious, too. What I think would work really well is to have the e-book version have a VERY generous sample ...

Have you done this, and has it worked?

I would like the ability to "like" comments without having to reply to them, fyi.