WildAboutHarry, thanks for the reminder on the savings bonds. I knew that they could "be replaced" but had forgotten that they are actually insured. Will now go find something else to worry about!

Thanks for the link, rickb. Sounds like a pain in the butt. I actually have EE Bonds, I Bonds and a few gold coins in my safe deposit box. I have a record of the serial numbers of the bonds but don't like the idea of them going uninsured either. I realize that all assets have some risk but do folks ...

I am looking for input from folks who have safe deposit boxes and have insurance on them. Both my bank where by box is located and my insurance company have told me that they will not insure it. What the hell? Thanks in advance for your help.

Agreed on that, iwealth, but we'll all be looking at cash differently if interest rates go up considerably. It's just so hard to know what the next "economic cycle" will be. We are all obviously used to (tired of?) no returns on cash but that is not the historic norm. I am hoping to start ...

Thanks for posting those charts Tyler. I have printed them out so that I can review them periodically from time to time when I am 100 years old and trying to remember what a SWR on the PP is.

Damn you, Moda! I thought I had this all figured out because my numbers "felt" right but now you have me thinking that I should really run some scenarios.

Anyone care to speculate what drove the price of gold up so sharply earlier today? One big buyer? Program trading in gold ETFs? PS finally dropping his analytical demeanor and going all in? I'm still relatively new to this asset having only implemented the PP at the beginning of this year.

25 X income strikes me as really high because it violates my rule of not being worth more dead than I am alive (don't want to give anyone incentive to expedite my decline). My wife and I have rather low life insurance policies (250K each). Our main financial concern is - perverse as it may seem - th...

Roll out the mail-order brides and pussywhipped beta males!

Best line so far in 2014!

What are these people thinking? Dualstow, did you see the one with the Hawaiian couple that had a $1,000,000 budget? His priority was "quality countertops" and hers was a "shower with no door" (so that she could move her mop around in there unobstructed). One would think that fo...

Quote from the article: So over the 30 years from QAIB’s inception to the 2013 market close — a period encompassing the crash of 1987 and subsequent market booms and busts — equity fund investors earned an average annual return of 3.69% compared with the S&P 500’s 11.11% return. I have been tryi...

Didn't see the show, Reub.

It also gets into the possibility that we don't have the gold that we say we do.

Does this mean that gold ETFs are not really holding gold?

82.4% give or take a bit depending on the day. I'll eventually have everything set up as PP so that I don't have to think about investments all the time (unless I change my mind!).

I don't think Cortopassi is "screaming" about gold but maybe there should be another thread entitled "The Gold Serenity Room." We could all post there when long bond or stock gains are alleviating any pain gold is inflicting.

The housing market here has been slowly heating up, but it wasn't until just recently that there was a shift from apartments going for less than the ask price (happened just 3 months ago to a friend selling a 2 BR, she had her place on the market for several months) to apartments being snapped up w...

This is totally anecdotal but, yes, it seems that most folks are living beyond their means. I split my time between Manhattan and CT. In CT I see lots of house with four or five cars in the driveway. Went to Long Island on business yesterday with my wife and we were one of the very few cars in the H...

Let us not forget that great symbol of Canadian pride the beaver. Would love to see The Mighty Beavs face off against The Ostriches!

What has this thread come to? Perhaps someone can skillfully tie it all together.

That's why we microwave pizzas sometimes instead of washing green leaf lettuce and making a nutritious salad. That's all I meant. Plus, let's face it, dualstow, after eating that leafy-green "nutritious salad", we are still hungry. On a side note, it astounds me that folks order gold to b...

Regarding the "gold as hedge only," that simply can't be true in the PP.  Would you risk 25% of the value of your car or home every year just to insure it? When insuring your home or car, that theoretical 25% payment would be "an asset that went to zero" which I don't think anyo...

Thanks Ad Orientem. Because it's the asset I understand the least, I need to be talked down from a ledge every few days on the LTT's. Appreciate the help.

Just came upon this old thread and I wanted to ask for advice. I just started a PP this year and grabbed all 11/15/43 bonds (3.75% coupon) for the 25% LTT allocation. Any problem with doing that? I mean, do I need to ladder them or just sit on my backside for the next ten years? These are all in tax...

Based on 9%, I'm calculating a 39% hit to the bond portion of the PP between now and late 2017.  A 25% PP allocation to 10-year treasuries instead would only lose 18% over the same time frame. Are these numbers from Fragile Bill correct? For me the LTTs are the least well understood asset of the PP...

The PP's performance has been pretty robust over 40+ years.  However, I don't think we're a bunch of kool-aid drinkers.  If it stops working (which to me means ~ 3 years of negative real returns), people will bail. TennPaGa, don't you think that would only be true if it were poor performance of som...

I also started a PP this year and went with equal parts despite the fact that I didn't want to buy 30-year bonds. My investment record has to be worse than Cortopassi's. We should really find out who the worst VP investors are on this forum so that we can all figure out what not to do. tnt, that sti...

Tyler, Thought the painter brother was going to actually endorse the PP directly but I guess that is why it's a "parable." Not a bad analogy. Thanks. PS, Thanks for reminding me that I need to go see the dentist. I'll be thinking of my long term treasuries when I'm getting work done on my ...