You would need a paper trail for the purchase and the sale of the gold.  Receipts for the purchase and the same for the sale. The dollars would then be used for the down payment.  I doubt that any lender would accept gold for a down payment. Why do you need the paper trail? Will they ask to see whe...

You would need a paper trail for the purchase and the sale of the gold.  Receipts for the purchase and the same for the sale. The dollars would then be used for the down payment.  I doubt that any lender would accept gold for a down payment.

I agree with AlanW, banks mostly care about your income, other debt payments, and credit rating.  They also care about where the down payment comes from.  So if you'll need to sell physical gold to make a down payment, you'll need to keep good records so you can show where the money came from.  But...

VWINX has benefited greatly from the 30+ year bull market in bonds. Im not sure how well it will do in a rising interest rate environment. Not sure about the rising interest rate environment.  Even with rising rates, Wellesley still pays about 3%.  If I never sell, do I really care if rates rise. T...

Ad Orientem wrote: VWINX has benefited greatly from the 30+ year bull market in bonds. Im not sure how well it will do in a rising interest rate environment.

Not sure about the rising interest rate environment.  Even with rising rates, Wellesley still pays about 3%.  If I never sell, do I really care if rates rise.

Wellesley throws off a ton of dividends that are taxable, which doesn't make it ideal for taxable accts. With the PP you could keep most bonds and some stocks in tax deferred accts and hold your gold ETF's and cash in taxable, which is very efficient if you're not selling. My LTT's and VWINX along ...

What, you don't think gold in the form of an ETF wouldn't count as an asset?  Funny. Do banks even care about your individual holdings within brokerage accounts? I don't believe they do.  They just look at the total.  In general, lenders are not so concerned with your assets as they are with your c...

Yes. It uses a variety of bonds, a variety of stocks with an emphasis on large cap, blue chips, some gold and some cash.  Also, it was easy to explain; conservative without putting everything into one distinct portfolio.  Diversified without slice and dice. ER of .16. She thinks I'm a genius.

I think that this type of diversification is almost bullet proof under almost any circumstances. Not being that good with charts and math, I wonder how the numbers would work out for a portfolio of these three parts over the long term in terms of CAGR and MaxDD. Will leave that to one of the charti...

Possibly a diversification of the money you can't afford to lose into three different portfolios consisting of one part PP, one part Boglehead, and one part Vanguard Wellesley is a better way to go? All are low cost, proven over time and tend to complement each other well. I used this philosophy la...

Several years ago I was looking at the same SS situation.  After plugging in the numbers every way possible, I deducted that if you were not earning over the SS minimum and you did not need SS to live on, it would be better to take it early and invest it in the PP or another investment of your choic...

HB did not adhere strictly to rebalance bands of 35/15.  You could choose 30/20, 33/17, etc. or whatever suits your comfort level.
But you should probably stick to the one you choose or you could be guilty of market timing.

Even though my stock portion is still below 35%, I am getting ready to rebalance. Being newly retired, I feel that this will lessen my risk if there is a major correction (or worse). After all, it is almost "sell in May" time anyway. Besides, TLT and gold both seem to have settled down ni...

Given your 12 months worth of living expenses in the bank, I don't think I would lose a lot of sleep over this. VWINX is an excellent fund and for people who don't like gold it's one of my favorite recommendations. I also recommend VWINX to investors regularly.  Got tired of defending gold and LTT'...

Are you referring to the inevitable rise in interest rates that the investing community has been talking about over the last 5 years? Timing the bond market is as fruitless as timing the equity market or any other market for that matter. The allocation to cash lowers the overall duration of the fix...

One of my current concerns is the cash portion of the PP paying nearly 0%.  Reviewing the historical returns, the past down or minimal positive years were supported by a much higher percentage return on cash.  Now with the Fed holding short term rates near 0%, we don't have a return on cash to buoy ...

Coffee wrote: Can somebody much smarter than I explain why:

Today:
DJIA: +.82%
S&P: +.43
VTI: +.26

Why is VTI so much lower than the others?

VTI is the total US stock market which includes NASDAQ and Russell 2000 which were both in the red today.  The DJIA and S&P are only large caps.

And how likely is it that the active investor will stay in this investing style when the 30% appears?  This may work for some, but for most investors a passive style will have a higher percentage probability of achieving desired results.

One of the long term indicators I use to see general trends in the markets is the 17/43 Weekly Exponential Moving Averages crossover. This indicator has a higher than 70% accuracy and is a long term indicator.  The crossovers would have kept you fully invested during the great bulk of all bull mark...

In retrospect having a stop loss on our gold in February would have saved us a lot of grief. I'm reconsidering the no-stop-loss strategy Look at the chart on Gold since 2000.  At which dip would you have been stopped out and missed the next leg up.  In the long run, trying to time the market will f...

MediumTex wrote: Icarus taxis down the runway.

Let's hope it's a cloudy day.

With the Bernank keeping short term rates near zero for the next couple of years (allegedly), how high can the yield on the 30 year go before something snaps?  I was unable to find a site that showed yield spreads of short term vs. long term treasuries over time.  What I found was a spread of around...

MediumTex wrote:

Reub wrote: MT, did the downtrend coincide with the release of your book?

The release of a book is often a contrary indicator.

As Forrest Gump might say: "And that's all I have to say about that."

If I send my book back to Amazon, do you think the markets might turn around?

Holding a VP seems dangerous advice for most investors as it leaves a lot of room to make all the classic investment mistakes. That's probably true. But keep in mind that Harry Browne was a successful speculator, and the PP arose out of his desire to consolidate into something safe. There are many ...

Our only hope... Surely we aren't down to our last hope. Is it THAT dire? No, absolutely not. I am somewhat pleased with this recent decline as I now have a perspective on the portfolio that is difficult to attain through charts alone. It has certainly been a rough week for my other investment stra...