Seems like Trump was the last chance for the US to cut spending, and it’s NOT happening. So, I am really reluctant to rebalance by buying long term treasuries. Especially at my age, 69. I do remind myself that as much as I don’t trust bonds, they did save me in the 2008 crisis. I remember my broker...

I’m kind of skeptical that I’ll ever rebalance gold. l’m starting to think of it as part of its own portfolio. It’s not part of my retirement savings. It’s not to be touched except as a last resort. Added to when excess cash is on hand. Passed down to my children with these same instructions, along...

Does anyone here still hold some Berkshire stock? If so, how do you feel about the growing cash hoard that isn't being deployed? I was about to answer no but checked the components of two S&P 500 funds (FXAIX & SPY) and I see that about 1.67% of the stock my wife & I hold is Berkshire. ...

What about politicians selling naming rights for mountains? Maybe Denali could be Mount Doritos or Mount Lexapro.

If anything is learned from the pandemic I think it will be that putting a ton of money directly into the hands of citizens/consumers will reverse a potential deflationary scenario very quickly. Of course there's no guarantee that direct handouts will always be politically feasible. I am doing as Ma...

I only have a Fidelity account because they set up a Roth 401K for me back when Vanguard couldn’t. Just seeing this now, dualstow. Really? A Roth 401K and not just an Independent 401K??? If true I would be stunned as setting up a Solo 401K Roth account is something that I have been tryin to accompl...

Some good news to report, Vinny... if it comes to pass. I was on the phone with a Fidelity rep yesterday about another matter and we got to talking about Solo 401k and Solo 401k Roth accounts. This guy said that Fidelity is soon going to be offering the Solo 401k Roth option. He made it sound like i...

FWIW.... Fortunately there are still other options for Solo 401k accounts. My wife still has a Solo 401k Roth account with Etrade. That used to be with TDA but they didn't want to deal with the Solo 401k Roth accounts anymore after being acquired by Schwab, so we had to move it to Etrade a couple of...

That’s it, this is the top, folks. Aaaand, the market is down over 2% just before closing, Dec 18. S&P 500 ended up being down 2.95% on the day. Gold and Bonds took a beating as well as investors apparently were reacting to the announced expectation of only two quarter-point cuts in 2025 instea...

Schwab Bond Market Update for December 2024 "The market implied Fed funds rate for December 2025 has risen from sub 3% to the 3.75% to 4% area" If we stick a landing at 4% or just below... that's not so bad for us savers. T-Bills will be there, and I'm guessing most high yield bank bank s...

I was particularly disappointed to see little evidence of a flight to safety T bond gain during the Covid pandemic. There actually was a flight to safety in early March of 2020 as the following link shows: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS30 Change the dates at the top so that you are only loo...

35% Total Stock Market 15% Nominal Treasuries 50% TIPS All Treasuries will be in the form of individual bonds to be held to maturity. No funds. Need to decide how I want to spread the amounts dedicated to individual bond purchases spread over the years. It might be over 20 years but the first five ...

For my own personal situation I thought it was time to revaluate cash (or more specifically T-Bills) and fortunately remembered this great article from Tyler at Portfolio Charts from a while back: https://portfoliocharts.com/2017/05/12/understanding-cash-will-make-you-a-better-and-happier-investor/ ...

A caller into C-Span's Washington Journal just gave me more information. He is a CPA. He asserted these facts, which sound true to me. The top 1% pay 90% of the taxes. Half of the bottom 50% pay no taxes. The rich are already paying their fair share with many on the other end NOT! Those numbers are...

So we all want lower taxes but what spending can easily be cut? Here is a good Steve Ballmer video about the federal budget and taxes... where money comes from and where it goes. Not surprisingly, there are no easy fixes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQoh9jdRZPM&t=415s Or are folks here banki...

*** It's time to make permanent individual tax cuts. I honestly think corporations have had enough. They're highly profitable. This time, save individuals from the 12/31/2025 tax cuts expiration for crying out loud *** No tax on Social Security - Trump talked about this on the campaign trail - Reag...

I didn’t know about any of this. My wife and I buy our own health insurance out of pocket. Not on the exchanges, though. We’ve always gotten a better deal from a broker. This month might be the first time I use the exchange, because our guy is missing in action. Looks like 400% for a famliy of 2 is...

Yes, agreed that it should be criminal not to accept an ACA plan. So sorry to hear that. On your other point, are you maybe Roth converting too much, or at least planning to do conversions for too many years? From what you wrote a couple of posts up, you are in the RMD at age 75 cohort, correct? Obv...

I'm going to delay retirement a few months until we have more visibility into health policy. "Concepts of a plan"... you can't plan on that, not with pre-existing conditions. I'm going to use COBRA, but if something catastrophic happens to my ex-employer, or they just decide to not offer ...

dualstow wrote: ↑Sat Nov 09, 2024 10:25 am I’m very interested in seeing whether those tariffs really materialize.

Right, and ditto for the mass deportations.

I think we have a buyable dip in gold. The medium and long term prospect is more US debt, tariffs causing inflation, jawboning the short term interest rates down (or pushing Powell out and getting an inflation dove in who will tend to lower rates), all of this means a financial repression regime......

dualstow wrote: ↑Sun Oct 27, 2024 7:30 am Is she reading wenxuecity?

No, not reading wenxuecity. Just listening to commentators online but, as I mentioned, we have also gotten some info from recent visitors to the mainland that corroborates what she has been hearing online.

BTW, do you recommend wenxuecity as a reliable source?

They both print like crazy, why is china 2% 10-year rate and russia 16% 10-year? I have no idea on Russia but I believe that China has been in a deflationary spiral since they locked everything down after the 2022 Winter Olympics and kept everyone essentially shut inside their homes for 9-10 months...

I moved my money from Vanguard to bank so it will be there on Monday. What is the final thought here on buying in October or November? What I think I've seen predicted is that the calculated inflation rate will be lower and the fixed rate will likely be slightly lower Which sounds reasonable I boug...

I don't spend a lot of time learning details of things that don't apply to me, which means that somewhere along the line I had prior known (but, obviously forgot) that the gift box concept does not apply to a single person in terms of increasing the annual limit for a single person. Same for me. Fo...