Quiet board - time to buy?

[dualstow]

The permanent portfolio:
It’s for short-term money

[mathjak107]

it could be , it has a cash hoard and typically it has at least one asset class that is up and can be rebalanced to raise cash .

i wouldn’t use it for a bank account to pay daily bills , but if i need money for a wedding off a number of years or school off in a number of years , if would be fine for raising some cash .

again , i wouldn’t use it with the intent of liquidating it for a short term need but pulling some cash out for a specific use in the nearer future would be fine

[yankees60]

The permanent portfolio:
It’s for short-term money

That would be an example of an oxymoron in the dictionary?

[mathjak107]

Yep

Like jumbo shrimp

Pretty ugly

And happily married

[dualstow]

[seajay]

Yeah, the longer I live, the more I’m convinced that most if not all couch potato portfolios* are fine if one sticks with them.

Wellesley, 50/50 stock/bond, 20/80 Small Cap Value/PP (Golden Butterfly), 24/76 Mid Cap/PP (19% in each of the four PP assets) ... and each/any of those would have been 'satisfactory' for many https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/bac ... gWGUtjBbeT

[seajay]

The permanent portfolio:
It’s for short-term money

That would be an example of an oxymoron in the dictionary?

... and onyx room is a anagram of oxymoron

[Jack Jones]

you can disagree but you will never convince me i am wrong

An open-minded attitude conducive to discussion!

[seajay]

Mathjak makes a valid point. It's all a balancing act. They say you can never change anyone else, you can only change yourself.
So in that context, if your own comfort level stands in conflict with the returns you need for the retirement goals you have, it may not be a bad idea to look internally at your personal comfort level and work on it.

Not to say you should try and go from ultra conservative to a reckless risk taker, but if anxiety is an obstacle; instead of building a portfolio around it, maybe work on the root causes of the anxiety and see if you can reduce it enough to get into a healthier relationship with risk.

I have a friend who is a tax preparer. He is so ultra conservative that even the Permanent Portfolio would keep him up at night. So his investment strategy is to put his excess income into a CD ladder with a large bank.
Okay, so he sleeps at night. But the amount of opportunity cost he has incurred over three decades is ENORMOUS. You have to wonder how much wealthier he would be if he could have increased his personal risk tolerance even a notch or two. Will his inflated CD dollars lead him to an impoverished retirement?

my son and his wife are like that .

they are very high earners .he is a full equity partner in one of the top labor law firms in the country and she runs the tax dept for a world famous hedge fund and they are ultra conservative when it comes to what they do with their own money

it almost hurts me to see their opportunity costs pass them by .

but at least they can make up for it because they do save quite a bit .

it just doesn’t compound a lot .

but most americans are not in that category.

we needed that powerful compounding over the decades and accumulate as much as we could .

we always planned on trying to live as much as financially stressless life as possible we could in retirement.

so i used the power of diversified stock funds , but always 100% equities.

it wasn’t until i was 50 to where the really big real estate deals came in to play.

up until that point it was equity funds that did the heavy lifting

Many might have accumulated "enough", may own their own home so they don't have to find/pay rent each month, where the sale of that home value may cover late life nursing costs in a nursing home, alongside have enough 'safe' capital to perhaps supplement pensions income to levels that sustains their chosen quality of life. Missed opportunity cost/benefit ignored, are satisfied with just having enough.

You can achieve the likes of a 30 year 3% SWR with very little risk. To get to 4% you may have to dial up stock exposure from little/no levels to relatively high levels. Much of the measured higher averaged opportunity cost arise out of start date clusters following recent large stock price declines, in the median case actual individuals might have missed relatively little opportunity cost/benefit, far less than the all-samples 'average' would suggest.

Some might be content with something like 10% in each of gold, silver, bitcoin, 70% in cash deposits. Others may prefer the PP. The early 1970's onward time period was highly favourable for investors in general, more a historic exception than being aligned with longer term outcomes for opportunity costs/benefits. Higher stock weighting is inclined to induce higher volatility - that also reflects through to the likes of the volatility in 30 year Max withdrawal rate% outcomes (in some cases high stock portfolios achieved a lower MaxWR% than conservative asset allocation alternatives).

Some are content that they have-enough, others never feel they have enough and perpetually seek more.

[glennds]

Many might have accumulated "enough", may own their own home so they don't have to find/pay rent each month, where the sale of that home value may cover late life nursing costs in a nursing home, alongside have enough 'safe' capital to perhaps supplement pensions income to levels that sustains their chosen quality of life. Missed opportunity cost/benefit ignored, are satisfied with just having enough.

You can achieve the likes of a 30 year 3% SWR with very little risk. To get to 4% you may have to dial up stock exposure from little/no levels to relatively high levels. Much of the measured higher averaged opportunity cost arise out of start date clusters following recent large stock price declines, in the median case actual individuals might have missed relatively little opportunity cost/benefit, far less than the all-samples 'average' would suggest.

Some are content that they have-enough, others never feel they have enough and perpetually seek more.

The ongoing challenge with "enough" is the concern about inflation. At what point does 3% become 4%, 5% or more based on the purchasing power of the withdrawn dollars continually shrinking? Especially when we're talking about things like healthcare needs.

I probably fall into the perpetually seeking more category, but it's because I want the pie as big as I can get it, to deal with future inflationary trends (dollar devaluation?). Because these are factors I can't control.

Believe me, contentment is a good goal in itself. As you can see, I'm still working on it dammit.

[mathjak107]

perfect example .

my wife and i went to a local park on labor day to do some photography.

we were. about a mile from home when a guy ran a red light and totaled our 2023 lexus rx500h .

amazing thing is the guy next to us had his dash came running .

he showed us having a solid green when a guy came barreling down and went thru the red light .

the insurance company said no statement by me was even needed .

we reach a settlement on the car in 4 days .

so we never expected to go out and have to buy a new car after buying this one only two years ago .

there are a lot of costs too associated with this crash like. the insurance company only covers a loaner until they reach a settlement then give you 2 or 3 extra days .

so we will need it about a week on our own dime . she hasn’t been able to cook much so we are bringing food in .


we were both transported to the hospital by ambulance.

i had only a cut kneed but my wife was really bruised up .

no broken bones according to the hospital x-ray but there may be torn tissue so we are checking it out tomorrow.

there is always unexpected expenses. that easily blow the budget .

[dualstow]

Whoah! I’m glad you’re alright! Hope you and your wife heal soon.

[mathjak107]

thanks .

who ever thought we would be buying a new car today .

it wasn’t even a thought until monday

[boglerdude]

Post the dash cam vid. . .and get a cam

I'm supposed to pick up my Bolt today and get back 500 of what they hustled me on. I'll just be glad to be done with them

[mathjak107]

let’s see if this plays


i tried it as i would a photo but it didn’t work.

i will just do a link .

you can see my sitting at the light

then the light turns green , i hesitate for a second , and bang

if i didn’t hesitate that second he would have been at my door

the video was priceless to the insurance company and police


https://photos.smugmug.com/FAMILY/n-cK5 ... 8-1280.mp4

[dualstow]

You should take that dashcam guy out to dinner

[mathjak107]

i wrote him to thank him but i never heard back .

he certainly deserved something

[mathjak107]

my wife always yells at me for drumming on the steering wheel while waiting for lights . i am a drummer .

i was listening to zeppelin and there is an intricate part between the hands and feet bonham does. ,so i had to wait to finish that little riff before going

that delay saved us from being t-boned .

i am having the dealer install the lexus dash cam before we even pick up the car

[dualstow]

Saved by Zeppelin, I like it!
My favorite band when I was growing up.
Saving the Netflix special on them for when I see my brother.

A family friend was saved from a gas explosion when he went into next room to grab a Coke.
He never drinks Pepsi. We always tell him he should have made a commercial.

[mathjak107]

timing is everything .

i mean i can’t imagine. the devastation at that speed if instead of shearing the front off the car , he went directly in to the door .

i couldn’t get my wife out as her door wouldn’t open and she was complaining about not being able to even talk her chest hurt so much , so. i wouldn’t attempt to get her out .

what was funny was the car auto sent a distress call itself .

i was already out of the car by the other driver. so i never heard it .

my wife said a live person s voice came thru the speakers and asked if she needs emergency services .

she said yes


the voice said. , what do you need ?

she said I DONT KNOW , SEND EVERYONE.

i was. still on the phone with 911 when i see flashing lights off in the distance, little did i know the car. sent a distress signal and location .


it was the fastest response of the fire department, the police and ambulance i ever saw in nyc .

the fire dept must have used some kind of laser to get her out because they told her to look away .

the adjuster said the crash ripped a welded crash bar off the front which actually elongated the frame on my side which took some of the energy off me , but it contracted the frame on her side directing more of the energy to that side .

that’s why i couldn’t open her door .

the police said don’t bother wasting time getting the other drivers info .

just go to the hospital with your wife in the ambulance and get checked out and they will get everything i need and arrange to have the car towed and debris removed from the street .

just call the precinct later on and they will tell you where it was towed .

i couldn’t be more satisfied with the response of emergency services and geico , who. gave us a decent settlement offer all within 4 days

[mathjak107]

a few more shots .

i can’t believe the damage this guy did to the car nor the fact i walked away unscathed. my wife took a bit more of a bruising so we are still investigating what the pain she has in an area is from .

[Xan]

Wow, Mathjak. Glad you're okay and sure hoping your wife's injuries are very minor.

[mathjak107]

thanks so much

[dualstow]

Looks like airbags triggered. Were they in the way?

the fire dept must have used some kind of laser to get her out because they told her to look away.

I don’t think the jaws of life involves lasers. Maybe they just wanted her to look away in case of sparks or flying debris.

[mathjak107]

the doors don’t show any prying .

there are just two small dents in her door and the rear which may have been when the frame compressed .

so not sure what was done . you can see the two small dents in the photo on the dolly

both air bags went off but they weren’t in the way at all