The ETF picks look good. I hold IAU for my paper gold.

IMO, 30/70 total stock/total bond is a solid portfolio where the PP is unavailable.

Member since 2010, just shy of 1000 posts. 1. About what % of your investments are still in the PP, if any? Nearly 100%. DW and I each have a 401k and IRA, and each of the 4 accounts is a separate, conventional 4x25 PP. There is a small legacy retirement account in PRPFX. The only ex-PP assets are o...

Thanks, Craig, for years of gracious hosting.

And thanks, Xan, for carrying the torch forward.

Most of our funds are in plain 4x25 PPs, so those were in the ballpark of the 5.88% Sophie cited. DW also has a PRPFX holding which, I see, was up about 9% in 2016.

No plans to do anything different in 2017; we'll just keep chipping in and rebalancing as needed.

As cash vehicles go, FZFXX looks pretty good. It "...normally invests at least 80% of the fund's assets in U.S. Treasury securities and repurchase agreements for those securities" and 80% T-bills is a pretty good proportion. It's hard to find much better. The expense ratio is high but not ...

Also, a little birdie told me that there used to be torrents for these.

Back on topic, if gold and cash were interchangeable then 25x4 is equivalent to 50% cash, 25% long term bonds, 25% stocks. Note that the total bond market is mostly short term bonds. So the 50/25/25 allocation is very similar to a 75% total bond market, 25% total stock market portfolio. In other wor...

I prefer to rollover into an IRA instead of the new employer's 401k. With an IRA you can choose the broker, and change brokers at a whim, so you will always have a PP-friendly custodian. Even 401k's with a brokerage window tend to gave a few "gotchas" that cause headaches. For example mine...

The short take on PRPFX: it's a convenient, legitimate one-fund PP; expense ratio is quite high; the asset allocation is not 4x25, but is in the same ballpark; it does not always track the 4x25, but that's well explained by the asset allocation differences; returns and volatility are pretty close to...

I believe the Cash FAQ sticky thread on this forum has essentially the same contents as the Crawling Road blog post:
http://www.gyroscopicinvesting.com/foru ... p?f=4&t=17

The cash component: - Retains value during tight-money recessions, so that you can "buy low" on stocks, or even consumer purchases such as real estate and cars. - Prevents you from "selling low" on other assets when you withdraw from the portfolio (as Sophie has analyzed). - Perf...

The only wrinkle is that the age in bonds portfolio will get a bit of a head start through the young professional's retirement program. Not much of one though. True. What is the "default" advice for a young professional starting a PP from scratch? Browne said to maximize tax efficiency, b...

The comparison of the 60/40 returns to the 25x4 PP indeed isn't fair, because the owner of the 60/40 needs to hold cash. How much isn't clear, but most would recommend a sizeable enough chunk that it's a significant fraction of the stock/bond portfolio. Hear, hear. The time spent accumulating the c...

What's the advantage of a mutual fund over an ETF again? Price is less volatile - don't have to pay extra to ensure 'market' price is really 'market' price. Also, when you buy funds directly from the sponsor (Vanguard), there is slightly less counterparty risk since there is no stock exchange in th...

Their stated philosophy is to minimize complexity and transaction costs. They'd rather have you lump everything into one fund-of-funds, or maybe a three-fund portfolio. The only workarounds are things I expect you've already decided not to do: streamline to fewer funds, replace some of the individua...

Kbg wrote:I think it looks like breakeven to maybe even a bit more expensive to do the ladder vs. SHY given my likely trade size. And certainly SHY wins in the hassle factor category.

Yeah, that's my feeling. The ladder works and people who use it are not wrong, but for me it's not worth the hassle.

So when the portfolio goes down for a few days, people complain bitterly and need reassurance. And when the portfolio goes up for a few days, people complain bitterly and need reassurance. Maybe you guys need a therapist more than you need an Internet forum. :P I kid, but seriously: the PP is having...

Couldn't you just avoid that by only buying on the run issues? AFAIK yes, but I don't know whether any brokers allow you to buy bills at auction commission free. You can buy auction bills through Treasury Direct but that's taxable only. Also there's the issue of what you do with idle cash in betwee...

BTW, it's not through that Investing In Bonds site... that's just a click through to Morningstar where you can input your CUSIP. Now anyways, according to them, the last trade (on the day I bought it for 100.74) was 100.72. The day before it was 100.62, so it probably was trading between 100.62 and...

The Brexit affair, and the news coverage and market responses to it, are a good case study for a lot of Harry Browne's ideas.

Kriegsspiel wrote:What is the 1% markup in? The yield?

Please see the article I linked. When you buy a bond through a broker, the broker buys it from someone else and then sells it to you at a higher price. That markup is usually undisclosed, so it's difficult to know what exactly it is.

Unfortunately the markup is not so easy to find: http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/26/munis-spreads-markups-personal-finance_investing_ideas_bond_brokers.html Generally, a 1% to 2% markup is acceptable for retail buyers. Unfortunately, exaggerated markups (over 5%) occur more often with uninformed inves...

Essentially "yes." You can buy individual Treasury bills, either through Treasury Direct or through a brokerage with free T-bill trades. This approach has the benefit of avoiding the counterparty risk from a fund. The problem is that small retail investors pay a hidden transaction cost in ...

It's sad to see that the average investor would have done better to put all their money into 3 month treasuries and a house.  Harry Browne at one point suggested that very plan for people who couldn't cope with the Permanent Portfolio structure. This is the reason that I think Dave Ramsey's investi...

I agree with Sophie's analysis, but FWIW I follow Browne's advice, direct all contributions to cash, and follow the plain 15/35 rebalance rule. One reason is my desire to stay disciplined about not going down the slippery slope of changing the PP bit by bit until it stops being a PP. Another reason ...