Agreed on the point about doing it for themselves. Of course, today's military is a volunteer force, versus the drafted force in Vietnam.  People like me who never served do feel great appreciation for those who choose to serve for honorable reasons (no matter how dishonorable the whole scheme is), ...

I'm already saving over 25% of my gross income, and supporting a family of four on my own.  I'll have to doublecheck on my marginal tax rate.  I can't recall offhand, but I think we may still be in the 15% bracket after all the deductions. I won't be able to increase my savings rate, which I think i...

I'm running a fairly pure 4x25 PP, spread across my 401k, Roth IRA, and non-retirement accounts.  I'm 47, and my current total portfolio is about 4 times my annual salary.  One thing that concerns me is that my 25% gold is only about 2% physical and 23% paper.  I hold paper gold in both the 401k and...

Consider using Treasury Direct for buying non-IRA T-bills.  And also consider buying I-bonds with cash that is not part of your emergency fund ("deep cash").  I-bond interest is tax-deferred, so it's kind of like a traditional IRA except using post-tax money.  I-bonds will pay as much interest as th...

Gold prices went up considerably from 2002 to 2013, and inflation wasn't very high during that period.  The thing I like about gold is that it's uncorrelated to stocks and bonds.  If you try some backtesting on various portfolios, you'll start to see that once you add a good chunk of gold in (say 10...

Are there any Fidelity funds that are similar to Vanguard's TRI or Wellesley?

dr ratdog, I have a few thoughts for you.  The PP is great for a conservative investor, especially one who doesn't want to be an active manager.  You aren't going to hit a lot of home runs with it, but you should get a lot of base hits, and without spending a lot of time on batting practice.  That l...

Below is the link to the previous thread I mentioned.  I may have mischaracterized what it was about a bit, but you may find some helpful ideas if you didn't see it earlier.

http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/va ... /#msg60872

Mountaineer, You might consider the Wellesley income fund also, which has outperformed TRI by about 2% annually on average, and with a $50k investment has almost the same expense ratio.  There was a thread a while back about simple PP alternatives for people in your situation.  I think somebody reco...

He does have a point, although he overplays it quite a bit, but that's how you get hits on your website. The fact is that boys would be better off if there were more male teachers. I'm glad my son and daughter are home-schooled, but I wish I could do more of the teaching of my son, instead of my wif...

frommi wrote: i really don`t want to be in gold when it drops below 1000$.

That sounds like a good time to buy gold.  Shouldn't the idea be to buy low and sell high?  That's what the PP is based on.

My advice? Don't trade paper. Its damn near impossible now. Buy physical and hold it. Don't own the etf, don't own futures for non speculative purposes. For the PP buy physical and make sure YOU have access to it. This house of cards will one day get really ugly and I wouldn't want to own paper whe...