The tax treatment is a good point.  I am a tax-sheltered investor so I forgot about that.  The convenience factor of the cash coupon payments is valid, too, but that seems less compelling to an accumulator such as myself. I was reminded of zeroes because I was revisiting the possibility of using Van...

One issue that's holding me back from embracing the Permanent Portfolio completely is my view that both the cash and gold allocations should have an expected yield of 0% over inflation in the long term.  Each is intended to be a store of wealth, rather than a purchase of a productive asset.  Common ...

The title says it all: why not use long-duration zero coupon Treasury bonds ("STRIPS") for the bond allocation? I have a hazy recollection that Browne said in one of the radio shows that he analyzed this issue at great length, and concluded that zero-coupon bonds were too volatile .  That ...

After Vanguard made this announcement I thought about this topic on a hypothetical basis, and came to exactly the same conclusion as you did: VTI, VGSH, TLT, and GLD/IAU.  Total expenses with this approach are reasonable under the $50k threshold and extremely competitive above it. One caveat is that...

My opinion is that VT is an excellent component for a Boglehead style portfolio, but doesn't add much except expenses to a Permanent Portfolio. A pure Boglehead portfolio is built out of Total Stock Market, Total International Stock, and Total Bond.  The international stocks are absolutely necessary...

The big one-stop-shop brokerages tend to have commission-free ways of trading in three of the four assets: stocks: an index mutual fund or commission-free ETF bonds: individual treasury bonds cash: money market fund, short term treasury fund, commission-free ETF, or individual bills/CDs This is true...

I "hack" the system and buy indexes which are essentially derivative of the work of people who do try to invest professionally, and capture their average results without any real effort or meaningful expense on my part. I have mixed feelings about this.  Buying an index fund makes you a f...

Disclaimer: since this is a business matter and you're apprehensive, it would be wise to consult an intellectual property attorney, and I'm not one. That being said, the spirit of copyright is that you can copyright written documents and other media, but cannot copyright concepts or procedures.  So ...

Some thoughts from outside the box: 1) Use an individual IRA to hold all the gold.  If you max out a 401(k) and IRA, the IRA will be more than 25% of your contribution limit, so this can work OK. 2) Hold the gold in a taxable account with a very wide rebalancing band.  At 25% plus-or-minus 15%, you ...