IT professionals are rather far from being in Apple's target market, so given the disproportionate number of IT/engineering folks I know are here, our personal responses may be a bit skewed. Perhaps a more appropriate question might be, "Do any of your non-technical family members or friends u...

Funny story... Recently I attended an event where I met a researcher for an investment firm.  His company creates and actively manages mutual funds, and his job was to research companies to buy for their MFs.  I asked him if he'd ever heard of the PP.  He said no.  I told him about the 40-year track...

Apple owns the tablet space, the music player space, the cool computer space, the cell phone space, and the online music purchase space, just to name the big parts of its business.  It's a pretty impressive company with very loyal customers. I am admittedly not an Apple customer.  I have never owne...

This is a tough call.  The way things are going now, it feels like people are itching to get into stocks again.  S&P just hit 1,500, gold has been relatively flat for the past 2 years (bouncing around between 1,600-1,800), and a lot of money has been sitting on the sidelines.  Anything could hap...

Story from a couple of years ago that I just learned about:

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Swi ... /id/379238

That's why you're only supposed to check your portfolio a few times a year.  Helps you sleep better at night when you're only seeing the "big picture" and not being distracted by the minutiae of the day-to-day market gyrations.

Pointedstick wrote: I know what you want.

https://www.saberforge.com/hero-sabers/redeemer-saber

Dude, those are sick! 

I'm targeting a 40/60 PP/VP split within the next couple of years with a 15-20 year timeline to retirement.  I'll shift another 4% from the VP to the PP each year until I hit an 80/20 PP/VP split, and I'll maintain that ratio until retirement.  Once I'm officially retired, I'll shift another 1% annu...

Seems like they're expecting the worst, rather than simply being prepared for the worst. 

Personally, I'll take the Free State Project over The Citadel:

http://freestateproject.org/.

Another consideration that's been pointed out before is that most of the larger US companies also have a large foreign presence as well.  So a broad US index fund should also give you a certain level of exposure to foreign markets, albeit in an indirect manner.  In other words, if the economy is fla...

My take on it is that it's mostly a convenience factor.  ETFs are quicker and easier to buy and sell (at least that's my understanding, since I haven't bought Treasuries directly myself).  There was another post on this forum where the poster said that buying Treasuries directly was easy enough, but...

Yes, I think a US PP investor should use only total US stock market index funds. The PP book allows for 5%-10% in a broad foreign index fund as part of the stock portion of the PP.  I'm perfectly comfortable with 5% in a foreign broad index fund as a small hedge, but many others may not be.  I thin...

This looks pretty good. Personally I prefer to keep things simple so I'd probably use only 4 ETFs for your PP and 4 different ETFs for your wife. IMO there are good diversification benefits on having more than one fund for each asset, but the returns diminish after that point. I.e. I think having 2...

VBK and VBR aren't international small. They are U.S. Small. Sorry, I mixed up my posts.  Even so, that would violate HB's philosophy, which calls for US broad index or S&P 500 as the bulk of the stock holdings (my impression is that he warmed up towards foreign broad index funds towards the en...

Reading between the lines a bit, it sounds like your overall allocation is currently predominantly stock, perhaps as high as 90% (you say you're 5% cash, 2% gold, and have some long term corporate bonds). Sorry if I gave that impression.  We are 60% stocks, 24% bonds, 10% REITs, and 6% commodities....

So a foreign small growth/value fund would be permissible in the PP?  I like the idea, but I thought those would be more at home in the VP?  My impression is that we're supposed to keep each sector of the PP highly correlated, so that they can all do the "heavy lifting" together when their...

I just typed out a detailed response and then the forum experienced an error posting it so I lost the whole thing.  I'll try to summarize my thoughts again. I incurred commissions amounting to around $400 because I purchased 31 non-Schwab funds across 4 different accounts (average of 8 non-Schwab fu...

Here is my target mix of ETFs for my PP and my wife's PP, once I get them up and running.  Where 2 ETFs are listed, I would buy one for my PP and the other for her PP, for added diversification.  I should mention that our accounts are at Schwab, hence the inclusion of their funds where appropriate. ...

Thanks MangoMan.  I failed to mention that our IRA and Roth accounts are all at Schwab, and I've invested in many of their ETFs in my own accounts, but I've invested my wife mainly in the Vanguard funds in her accounts.  I felt it was best to diversify even between funds that track the same benchmar...

Forgive the lengthy post, but I wanted to throw the details of my situation out there to see what all you PP gurus think.  I've been lurking here for a while and posting occasionally here and there.  I recently read "Failsafe Investing", then listened to all the "Money Show" podc...

That link is no longer valid, but I have access to the Morningstar database through our local library, so here's an excerpt about SGOL you might find interesting: A share of ETFS Physical Swiss Gold Shares SGOL represents a 0.1-ounce ownership stake in gold bullion held in subcustodian UBS AG's vaul...

HSABank is down to 0.90%, so not much better there either. 

I use a Schwab brokerage window in my 401(k), and I have made commission-free Treasury bond purchases of only $1000 on more than one occasion. I have my IRAs at Schwab, and their glossary states that T-bills are sold in $1K increments (although I have yet to attempt to purchase any myself): Treasur...

I have the same problem: a 401K, a Rollover IRA, and a Roth IRA.  My wife has the same 3 accounts as well.  I originally tried tracking all 6 in a spreadsheet as a single master account so that I knew the overall proportions, but the rebalancing challenges proved too much for me so I resigned myself...