My understanding is that the Post Office is forced to do a job that is probably inherently not profitable or on very thin margins these days. Only a government agency could have a complete monopoly and yet still fail to break even, much less make a profit.  The USPS's level of ineptitude is astonis...

Here's something that makes me sick whenever I think about it.  Back in 2002 I was just starting grad school.  I was old enough to have fathered the students I was taking classes with.  Soon I started seeing more and more of the other students carrying these little white devices connected to earbuds...

In my opinion, it's almost impossible to really experience an event if you are preoccupied with "capturing" it on video. I imagine that someday in the future we'll all be wearing mini-cameras on our clothing, or in our glasses, or there will be some other technology that records everythin...

I really dislike this increasing obsession with capturing or recording every event.  It strikes me as the height of sheer self-absorbed, egotistical selfishness. I'm with you there!  Although, I am an amateur photo enthusiast (my undergrad degree was in Cinema & Photography), so I like taking v...

Windows.  I've been using Windows since 3.1, and XP Pro is still the "sweet spot" in terms of OSes, imho.  Ah, the good old days...  ::) I disagree.  Server 2003 was the sweet spot.  Faster and better in every way!  I still use it on an aging Celeron I laptop with Pale Moon and MailNews. ...

The most radical part about going PP is foregoing any predictions about asset class returns. Easing into it through predictions will not set you up emotionally to handle an agnostic portfolio IMO. If you finally reached the PP you would likely not stick with it because you will have trained yoursel...

The pain of seeing my net worth fall has been much worse than the pain of imagining my net worth rising a little bit farther if I'd sold at the peak. There have been psychology studies on precisely this phenomenon.  Namely, we feel the sting of a loss more than we feel the joy of a gain.  It's just...

I was in just that situation last year when I sold a bunch of AAPL in my VP that then continued to rise. I felt okay about it because I'd still made out big on what I sold. But I held onto the rest too for too long and now it's gone down a ton, and I feel pretty bad about that. The pain of seeing m...

I too have met money managers that preach active management, but use indexing as their core investing style when you press them on the topic. I think it's much more common than many will admit. That reminds me of another similar story from way back when.  A guy I went to college with (back in the 8...

I'm no Apple fanboy, but most of your stories are many years out of date. Macs have come with multi-button mice for years, and the "double file" issue is a relic of the Mac OS 9 filesystem, which has been dead and buried for a decade. That antiquated, funny-looking iMac from 15 years ago ...

Re tablets:  Don't forget--listening to music, watching videos (including mobile TV),  reading books, taking pictures, Skypeing.  I use mine to read books and .pdf files on the train commute to NYC, and sometimes to watch videos I've downloaded from the web.  With an iPad, you aren't limited to the...

I used to think that the whole Apple thing was a little overblown, but when I started buying and using the products I came to appreciate Apple's leadership in basically all of its product lines. Hey whatever works for you.  I've only used Macs in a hands-on capacity twice:  once when my parents had...

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...