Going for external-currency-bonds means to not keep to a real PP anymore. In the real PP, the own-everydaylife-currency-bonds are countered by gold and stocks concerning currency fluctuations. Going for external-currency-bonds means to put aside that kind of hedging, inherent to the PP and to specul...

Hi first of all I think it is deeply immoral anyways to tax labour at 40% and capital gains at ~26%. So blending tax rates somewhere in between is fine by me. If it does happen. The 0.1% have a big lobby in Berlin. All the people I know who skewed their allocations in regards to (deferred) taxation...

Hi Pfanni, I am a German PP holder since two years. The German PP was performing historically speaking bad in 2013 and very strongly recently. But the biggest issue of all is the taxation. With the Abgeltungssteuer you lose quite a lot of money with every rebalancing. It makes the PP quite inefficie...

The volatility of this "currency" is worse than that of tech stocks ...

Well, this is exactly the mental and practical framework presented extensively in:

http://www.amazon.com/Early-Retirement- ... 145360121X

Software development diversified so much in the past 50 years that it's difficult to compare the various areas. These days there are so extremely varying environments and applications, it's stupid to generalize. E.g. take some code-monkey business logic or web-dev implementation stuff against the la...

An equivalent at current prices of one year of your expenses in physical gold, in not too large portions (so no bars, only coins). An equivalent at current prices of one month of your expenses in physical silver (again no bars, only coins). An equivalent at current prices of one day of your expense...

I think, it is a good idea to have right at hand: An equivalent at current prices of one year of your expenses in physical gold, in not too large portions (so no bars, only coins). An equivalent at current prices of one month of your expenses in physical silver (again no bars, only coins). An equiva...

And so once again the terrorists have been successful. Successful in eroding civil and human rights as they intended, destroying the superiority of a society being born in and evolved since the Age of Enlightenment. And having a "nice", helping hand of their terrorist "brothers" ...

So Stocks are overvalued Gold and commodities are overvalued Bonds are already near 0% and thus historically totally overvalued Cash is flooded onto the market by the central banks and thus overvalued And certainly my PP of the mid of last week was overvalued compared to today (around - 4%) ... The...

Some quick thoughts. It's not just gold and silver. Stocks and oil are all taking a hit today. The economic data from China suggests a significant economic cooling. Our own most recent employment figures were disconcerting. Cyprus is being ordered to unload most the country's gold reserves and ther...

Gold reacts to currency collapse, hyperinflation, negative real interest rates, and a bad stock market. It doesn't react strongly to low-to-moderate inflation, especially when the economy is doing well. Why own gold when you're well-employed, your house is rising in value, your savings account is t...

Slashdot currently has a nice discussion about the topic http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/01/23/201257/recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs based on this article: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-051306434--finance.html Concerning robots repairing robots: it's ...

I always used to call him "Lance-needle Dopestrong" 10 years ago and it was always clear to me, how this would play out and that he was the greatest doper of all time. The only surprise for me was how long it took for the story to fully unfold. Just see him talking once and you realize wha...

"Younger Americans die earlier and live in poorer health than their counterparts in other developed countries, with far higher rates of death from guns, car accidents and drug addiction, according to a new analysis of health and longevity in the United States." http://www.nytimes.com/2013...

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason we need to think about the unconditional basic income ... soon! The society of labor is ending quickly. Disclaimer: I am heavily involved - understatement, it is actually my day job and I have a PhD in it - in intelligent service as well as industrial ro...

In another thread someone asked me why I believe that France will be the first of the large industrial nations to get into really nasty troubles. Above is the answer.

Only in decadence and complacency lies danger. When the mood is bad, usually bright times lie ahead. As the energy challenge is developing well with shale oil, new methods for natural gas, cheap wind and solar power, a lot of pressure will be lifted from the economy in the coming years. Furthermore,...

I honestly do not understand the reservations against hiding some portion of the PP-Gold as physical coins at home. If packaged the right way, damage by nature can be minimized as can be probability of theft. They take gold coins from the bottom of the sea, so flooding should be no problem and fire ...

To get back to the original topic: For a German PP holder, the capital gains tax ("Abgeltungssteuer") is the killer, because it scalps every rebalancing. In a high-inflation environment, the tax might even "take care" of all real gains. As the tax will certainly even rise further...

having a job that you love and/or believe in so much that you don't have any desire to retire? If you can find that, more power to you.  But I will wonder what is wrong with you... I had my first passbook savings account by the time I was 10 (they paid 5-1/4% interest at the time).  I calculated ma...

Please vote for the scenario you think will happen most likely next.

This is just a thought but I've often thought that if people that lived with extreme frugality funneled that time and energy into their career (or a new one, side business, etc), they could probably double or triple their income relatively easily.  Obviously if you're already making $100k+ that bec...

If you are planning to send kids to college, does the 1M affect financial aid? Seems that this should be considered. Options: Kids don't go to college Kids work and pay own way Loans To be fair, it seems that indicating that you could live off of 1M means that 1) you no longer work, 2) you are comf...

The median net income in Germany is 19000 US$/year (when accounting for purchasing power parity). So, 30000 US$/year should be quite sufficient for a household here around! You just have to play around with the investment portfolio, because health insurance costs actually depend on realized capital ...