Bogleheads.org

Bogle7

Copper
Easy on the west and gradually more difficult as you move east.
20+ years experience there.

Breck is also very good.
Has real town.

I am a Colorado bigot.

Bogle7

Right now I have a Platinum ACA plan with Kaiser, which while very expensive, has worked out very well for me... However with Medicare it seems Kaiser only offers Medicare Advantage. Are folks with Kaiser Medicare Advantage happy with it? 1. Here is the link to Kaiser Colorado's Medicare Advantage ...

Bogle7

Ages 72/63 $1.96M in retirement funds. House is owned. It felt good to not have a mortgage. Hindsight says we should have kept money in market. Oh, well. 86% low-cost stock index funds 10% bonds, but I view them as cash paying a tiny bit of interest. The bonds will go to zero as we do Roth conversio...

Bogle7

Go with a small local custom cabinet maker.
We did for our kitchen remodel in 2017.

Bogle7

Today.
Landscaping— as growth takes time.

Everything should be left to the last minute so it is fresh.

Bogle7

Husband and I had Medicare Advantage plans that worked fine, till they didn't. It depends on the Medicare Advantage provider. I had/have Kaiser and my total out-of-pocket costs for my colon cancer were $2500 for everything— doctor visits, surgery, port installation/removal, chemotherapy. I have the...

Bogle7

Ours has been working for 10 years.
I have no idea what brand/model it is.

Bogle7

Our Sonicare is 19 years old.
When it dies I am going to Costco to buy a new one.

Bogle7

All the insurance companies are paying for subscribers because Medicare is profitable . I have a friend who has brokered Medigap policies for 15+ years. He makes a decent living. Medicare is confusing. My neighbors (ages 60 and 63, college educated, $3M+ in retirement funds) do not understand how it...

Bogle7

What is your scheduled death date?
The “when” is trivial after that.

Bogle7

Simplify. No ETFs. 3 low-cost index funds. Absolutely agree with you. Which three do you recommend? How should I allocate? (I will post her specific investments in original post.) Well, at age 72, I am a stocks (not bonds) guy. I have our money in: S&P 500 NASDAQ Russell 2000 and a short-term b...

Bogle7

Simplify.
No ETFs.
3 low-cost index funds.

Bogle7

... If I acquire something... then two things have to go. I do the same with my files. If I file something, I have to remove two... As 94.37% of my files are PDFs, I am throwing almost none of them away. They occupy zero physical and [for me] mental space. Marginal cost of multiple backups is zero$.

Bogle7

I started retirement with $400k in cash and am glad I did. We’re using these funds for aggressive Roth conversions over the next few years (living expense and taxes). In hindsight I wish I’d set aside even more in taxable for this purpose. +1 For us, it was $320K and higher would have been better. ...

Bogle7

1. A house is not a home. 2. Sell it. 3. After 24 years of living in our dream house (we did a huge renovation to a small house) we woke up one morning at ages 62/53 with ants in our pants. 4. Sold the house. 5. Bought a new house 7 miles away ten years ago and have fallen in love with the new neigh...

Bogle7

Switch to DCU. I can see front and back of every check I've ever written. Well, as far back as I have needed to go, anyways. I've been there since about 1980. I have been with DCU since 1976 (before it was DCU). I am very happy with all of DCU’s services. I write 4-5 checks a year. Everything else ...

Bogle7

1. Get a permit. If you have a fire and no permit, then your insurance company will not pay. 2. Pay a pro whose work can pass inspection. 3. Have the pro do more work while there. For example, whole house surge protector, changing breakers to arc fault, installing an outlet behind the toilet in the ...

Bogle7

When COVID first hit last year, I read articles advising us to help our favorite restaurants ... stay in business by purchasing gift cards. I had compassion for the small business owners who were shuttered by the lockdowns I bought $500 worth of gift cards (and 2 lifetime beer club memberships for ...

Bogle7

All our money is at:
1. Fido - 99% of semi-liquid assets
2. Credit union - DCU.org 1%

I am a strong believer in KISS.

Bogle7

Take a look at OfficeTime.
I have used for 12+ years.
https://www.officetime.net/

Bogle7

It's a 4 bedroom house with 3 kids, and 2 of them are sharing a room ... It's not especially uncomfortable now but I think it will start to get that way. You might try some historical perspective. Families in the 1930s with 3 kids in a 1200 sqft house. Somehow, my mother survived/thrived and went o...

Bogle7

As a parent who sent our daughter to college, I think a purely cost focus is not broad enough. I feel that there are 2 important non-finance aspects to potential schools: 1. Brand name. A "better" brand name (e.g., Stanford) is more helpful to the graduate than a "weaker" (e.g., ...

Bogle7

Does it matter? I don't even count our house in our net worth. Our semi-liquid retirement assets (mostly stock funds) are $1.95M and our house has a market value of $0.9M. So, our house is 1/2 our nest egg. Or, 1/3 depending on how you measure. But, we only paid $480K for it. Which matters even less...

Bogle7

In other pressing issues.
How many angels can you fit on the head of a pin?

Me, I am more of a one-more-month guy.

Bogle7

1. You can do it. It just takes time and energy. 2. Add an electrical outlet behind the toilet for the [some day] washlet. 3. Replace all the plumbing with modern. Either PEX or copper. If copper, read this — https://www.bobvila.com/articles/copper-pipe-types/ 4. Go down to the studs and sub-floorin...

Bogle7

I don’t love my family-owned tax prep firm, but after 40 years I feel quite confident in them.
I am happy to pay them $400/yr.

Bogle7

1. Earn the most money at the youngest age. Your Social Security payout will reflect that.
2. Put as much money as you can into Roth and tIRAs as you at the earliest opportunity.
3. Wake up one morning and realize that you have hit FU money in retirement funds and can do whatever you want.

Bogle7

I went to a local shop and they did a piece by piece examination.
I was satisfied.
They had good Yelp reviews.

Bogle7

Look at both the FAFSA and CSS forms and see what is not counted as money available for college.
For example, retirement funds.

Your goal, in your child’s junior year, is to have:
Zero assets (both you and child)
Zero income.

Zero as defined by the forms.

Bogle7

Leveling in Michigan.
Levelling in Britain.
Just saying.

Bogle7

My biggest frustration is that you cannot have variable tax rates.
We will be in the 30% marginal bracket (fed + state) for the next 6 years due to Roth conversions.
Then it will be 15% average for 24 years.

Bogle7

It depends. If the hiring manager is someone who thought Covid was a serious threat, then voluntary quitting should be a non-issue. If the hiring manager is someone who thought Covid was a hoax, then quitting for health reasons is a huge red flag. As someone who had friends of 40 years bury their 33...

Bogle7

0. After you gather all your ideas into a document along with images, hire a designer. They are way better at this than you. 1. We have a concrete patio and a paver patio. Our next door neighbors have a ceramic tile patio. a. The most important factor in any patio is ground prep. The minimum is comp...

Bogle7

Carmax offered $4900 online for our 2007 Audi A3.
Insane. A 14 year old car with 56K miles.
I did not follow through. We are only putting 2K miles per annum on this car.
We plan to buy/lease a BEV in 2023 when, I presume, there will be a decent selection.

Bogle7

Backblaze.
Worth the $60/yr in my opinion.
Don’t cheap out, young Boglehead.

Bogle7

According to this reviewer, there is a page counter in the printer. After a certain number of pages it won't let you print... I just checked the details on my Brother HL-3170CDW printer. Which I paid $180 for. The life page count for the belt is 45,004 pages. The fuser unit and paper handler have h...

Bogle7

If you are leaving the workforce, then notifying your manager on Friday that you won't be in on Monday is OK.

Bogle7

1. When you buy a cordless drill, you are really buying into "a system" as batteries are not interchangeable. So, make sure you are content with the selection from whatever brand you choose. 2. Regarding the table saw. There are models for homeowners and models for pros. Pay close attentio...

Bogle7

Some of you may be interest in this deal from Babbel - Babbel Language Learning Lifetime Subscription (All 14 Languages): $199
https://www.macobserver.com/link/babbel ... uages-199/

I have never used Babbel.

Bogle7

GerryL wrote: ↑Thu Apr 01, 2021 5:56 pmLaser printers used to be a lot more expensive.

My first home office color laser printer in 1997 was. $2700 Tektronix.
The cartridges were $700 a set.

I have had Brother lasers for over 10 years and at $300 are throwaways.

Buy this
Brother HL-L3270CDW Compact Wireless Digital Color Printer

Bogle7

The absolute second best way to learn Français is thru the https://afusa.org in your city. But, not cheap. The teachers and methodology are great. For less money https://www.memrise.com works for me. Pro is $30/yr if you start out with the free version and then wait for the 50% discount offer. Renew...

Bogle7

Plug your data into Fidelity's retirement calculator — https://www.fidelity.com/retirement-planning/overview You can do it as a guest. It shows 3 scenari. One is very pessimistic. That scenario subtracts 20% from our portfolio as a starting point. Of course, I also used other models: IORP, cFIREsim,...

Bogle7

Buy your own domain.
My email is first@lastfamily.com
Good forever.
One friend uses lastclan.com
I have 2 friends with first@last.com—pays to have unusual last name.
Consider lastcity.com

Don’t be a cheapskate. A domain costs $15/yr.
You can also free aliases such as firstbogle@

Bogle7

Time for a bathroom renovation.
Why else have you been frugal?

fsrph wrote: ↑Wed Mar 31, 2021 1:19 pm And if I break the arm connection behind the wall the shower would be unusable.

Giving you the excuse to do a renovation.

Bogle7

At age 62 I paid cash. For "peace of mind".
If I were doing it again at that age, I would have gone for the small mortgage.

It is not really a financial decision.

Bogle7

gwe67 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 27, 2021 6:18 pmAll retirements are resignations. Not all resignations are retirements.

Not sure about that.
What if you die on the job? Right at your desk, for example. At age 60 say.
You have retired, but you did not resign.
Edge case, I know. Just being picky.

Bogle7

"I have a plan in place to achieve my goals" This presumes you have goals. Not sure that I have goals. So, I guess I would answer NO. "I have thought about it in great detail" YES. But, I am always 'thinking'. "At what point in the process did you start to relax?" When ...

Bogle7

Move north.
Maybe by hundreds of miles.
The roaches in Toronto are small.

Bogle7

1) How long have you had showerguard and do you think it has "worked"? 2) Fan: Generally, I've been told to put in the highest CFM fan the ducting will allow - was the panasonic considered to be the best? 1. We had the add-on Showerguard applied as the shower glass was already installed. ...

Bogle7

Wine (all colors). We keep upping our average cost per bottle.
Food. We buy locally. Meat and seafood.
Travel to Europe.
Charitable giving thanks to QCDs.

Those 4 total $50K/year.

Search found 988 matches