My brother lives in Bend. I've only visited. Is it expensive as compared to California coastal cities, or only as compared to say Toledo?

Bend, Oregon is a nice, smallish, hip sort of town.

What I tell myself to make myself comfortable with bank storage is that the gold is for re-establishing myself after the panic is over, which may be months down the road, when the banks presumably will have to re-open. The gold won't be much use during the panic itself. What you want during the pani...

There was a controversial guy who used to post on here whose portfolio was basically 50% stocks and 50% gold. He claimed it was less volatile than one might imagine. If you have a fairly long time horizon to ride out some volatility, you might consider that portfolio, since you seem to want to avoid...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... s-itfye706

Would this proposed regulatory change have any effect on small investors like me?

Hey InsuranceGuy,

How often do you have to check in on your portfolio with your new strategy? Is it monthly?

Kbg, I apologize, because I think I've asked this before, but could you please tell me again. If someone wanted to run one of these portfolios, like the 75/8/8/8 or the 50/17/17/17, how often would they need to check in on things and potentially do a re-balance? Is this something you have to check o...

I guess i'm nobody then, because i care about brazil. One thing they do really well is music. I say that any culture that can produce music that beautiful can't be all bad. As for the games, count me in as a new rugby fan. What an intense sport. Much better than american football, which i gave up fo...

Try comparing say 4-year trailing average real returns for the two portfolios with and without gold. I'll bet you'll find that the one with gold is consistently as good or better.

I like your PP2 for two reasons: 1. 25% gold just feels like too much to me for an asset that just sits there. I've played around with enough backtesting to see that you don't need that much gold to still get a good diversification effect. 15 - 20% seems about right for my liking. 2. With interest r...

ochotona wrote: Just as a general rule, 40% in any one asset is too much. It really doesn't matter what that asset is. Swensen maintains that any one class should be between 5%-30%.

Do you think the Golden Butterfly violates this rule by having 40% in stocks split 20% to large cap and 20% to small value?

With interest rates where they are now, you'd better have an awfully good crystal ball if you are seriously considering putting 40% of your dough in LTTs. I'm going the other way myself toward the Golden Butterfly approach. 20% in cash, gold, and LTTs seems just about right to me.

Try your model with 1/3 in each of stocks, long bonds, and gold. You'll probably like what you see. Although keeping some percentage in cash, maybe 10%, can help with rebalancing. Unfortunately this approach will give you a longer duration in bonds/cash which won't be pretty when rates rise.

I hold some electronic gold and some physical gold. I'm endeavoring to reduce the former and increase the latter. I agree that if nuclear war hits, gold probably won't be very useful for a while. But, I think it could be tremendously useful in re-establishing one's financial life after the dust has ...

For me, one big difference between different types of calories is that some types of calories make me feel satisfied, and other types of calories (usually the less healthy ones) just make me want to eat more.

Bedraggled, what kind of telescope(s) do you have?

I have a few, but little time to use them.  As for today's Mercury transit, it is cloudy here right now.  Astronomy can be a bit frustrating, because it seems that the weather doesn't cooperate very often.

Agreed 100%.  And not just a 3-year focus, but a 3-year focus on real returns, as you suggested.  That's where the PP differentiates itself from a lot of portfolios.

I think this thread is talking about two different kinds of wackos, and it might be helpful to differentiate them (although several commenters have already touched on several of these points): 1.  The first wacko believes in a living God who works actively in people's lives, even today in the 21st c...

Who said it was less whacko?  They are two sides of the same crazy coin.

What does this mean:  "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's"?  I am a born-again Christian, having received the Holy Spirit speaking in tongues just like in the Bible.  I have no interest in getting involved in politics, because it's just a distraction from what i...

So, the buy/sell signal has to repeat itself two months in a row before you act?

InsuranceGuy, can you give us some more details?  It sounds like you are testing a monthly checking strategy.  Is it a 12-month lookback period each month?  You mentioned some consistency tests to avoid whipsawing.  What are those tests?

How often have you had to rebalance since 2012, or whenever you started?

I'm not trying to make a cult out of it, but if there were a consistently better plan than the pp, Harry Browne seems like he'd be smart enough to find it and sell it. I mean, people expect this stuff to be hard and to be complex, and he probably could have sold a lot more copies if the strategy ha...

I like it.  I imagine it will be a bit more volatile than the PP, but with greater reward in the long run.

I'm doing something similar in my 401k, because it has a cheap bond index fund available, plus I feel stupid having a big chunk of cash in a long-term vehicle when I'm nowhere near retirement.