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...

"I am assuming that there has to be more than one person involved to do a gift box? But I'm also seeming to remember that gift boxing does not give you an additional amount in invest in iBonds? That is it is shifting limits around one year to another?" Correct on both accounts, Vinny, with...

Thank you so much, I've actually never used that calculator before, it's good to know about it. Yeah, the March 2021 cohort of bonds has a fixed rate of 0%, I need to at least sell them and buy with a higher fixed rate... while we have it. Again, using TD the calculator, it looks like a $1,000 Marc...

I have a I-Bonds redemption question... I think I know the answer, but I wanted to make sure... I have I-Bonds purchased in April 2020. If I sell them in April 2025 do I avoid the holding-less-than-five-year penalty even if the exact calendar dates of holding are less than five years? (bought 4/30/...

Seemed like enough of a push to get me to check. Currently: 37% Stocks 27% T-Bills 18% Gold 10% I-Bonds 7% TIPS 1% Cash Supposed to add up to roughly 50% in high-quality USG debt and the remaining 50% split up into 2/3 Stocks & 1/3 Gold. Alas, the latter two have done so well in 2024 that they a...

The reason I asked is because I have a relative who was very anti-Bush but who voted for Ralph Nader in the 2000 election. And I always think, How did that work out for you . But how it works out really depends on what state one lives in, right? I was a resident of New York State from 1987 to 2018 ...

I don't sell often, but when I do, I have always sold to a local coin shop. I've been hesitant to try selling via the mail with a dealer. It's nice to hear that some folks have had positive experiences with it. If you sent 5 coins and the dealer said you only sent 4 how would that ever get resolved...

Just an FYI that I had a good experience selling 20 coins to JM Bullion last week. Their price was about $600 higher ($30 per coin) than what Apmex was offering. About 1% above spot for Eagles, 1% below for Maple Leafs and 1.3% below for Krugs. Dropped my package off at 5:00PM last Wednesday and had...

I am curious if any on here have updated their personal narrative about what drives gold prices. Seems like the price of gold is responding to economic data more or less in lockstep with stocks. For example, a weaker jobs report gives people the hope that Fed rate cuts may happen sooner rather than...

I am curious if any on here have updated their personal narrative about what drives gold prices. Seems like the price of gold is responding to economic data more or less in lockstep with stocks. For example, a weaker jobs report gives people the hope that Fed rate cuts may happen sooner rather than ...

Of course, I made the mistake of going to inflationCalculator and looking at purchasing power. Not..quite…what it once was. Well, damn, that site provides a valuable - if somewhat sobering - point of view. Feels like we are doing great, but if not for savings from continued work, it looks like we w...