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MathWizard

What is a good rule of thumb to follow to decide whether to buy a new car vs repair an existing car. I've heard that if the repair exceeds the value of the car, it's not worth it. Or if the cost of the repair is a certain % of the value of the car, then it's not worth it. But let's say your existin...

MathWizard

Just to be clear, is this an enclosed porch or a patio?
It does not sound like there is an enclosed, or semi-enclosed space.

For 2 porches, this sounds reasonable to me.

I can't say for patios, since we do those ourselves.

MathWizard

It also includes amounts which the advisor takes.
That is why expense ratios are important.

An ER of 1% means that the advisor gets one-fourth of your 4%,
so instead of thinking of this as only 1% of my assets, I think of
it as 25% of my spendable earnings. Low ERs are good.

MathWizard

If you and your wife both turn 50 before the end of the year, you can make catch up contributions to both 401ks and IRAs. That means $26K each (assuming you each can have that as a payroll deduction). It also means $14K each for IRAs. This is a total of $40K each, or $80K. You would have to do a bac...

MathWizard

typing "retirement calculator" into the search function of the wiki (the little house at the top of the bogleheads page) give me: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Retirement_calculators_and_spending There are a wealth of calculators there. I like i-orp myself, but there is also portfolio vi...

MathWizard

Just factor in a 50% drop now into your retirement estimator. (Devalue the stock portion of your portfolio by 50%). Then if it drops that much, you are still OK. If it does not, you have more than you counted on. I've been doing that for several years. Currently , I can retire and maintain my curren...

MathWizard

No, none of your top ten.

I had an urge to buy my first lottery ticket when it went over $1 billion this last week, but I resisted.

Emotionally , it has a strong pull . Logically it does not.

Of course,making 15% on my investments in 2020 is pretty good for being boring.

MathWizard

Just a small complaint, I chose to not have Vanguard mail me my year end tax statements to save $20. Now my rarely used crappy printer isn’t working. Ugh, does Fidelity charge for mailing statements? Not a deal breaker or anything but it would be a nice little service to include. A Brother B&W ...

MathWizard

Agree , work is getting harder.

Some of it work/life balance, some of it less organization by being scattered,
some of it that it is easier to threat people on the end of a wire, or email less
like people and more like machines.

MathWizard

Worrying about whether I have enough.

It's probably inherited from my widowed mother, and from her widowed mother, both of whom were poor all their lives.

MathWizard

If you go 100% stocks or nearly so, there is no drift. Now that I am not 100% , it does drift. I have contributions set to my target AA, and these keep it from drifting too far, but I did need to rebalance a week ago Who knew my portfolio would grow 15% in 2020 ? In March it looked like the market w...

MathWizard

When we asked our oldest to be a backup if we can't manage our finances, we informed him of our financial situation. That was about the time we passed $1million in investments. When I started talking about retiring in the next few years, the younger son guessed that we had about $1 million. I had ta...

MathWizard

It is in a MM fund at Vanguard.

In a few weeks I will have enough earned income to satisfy the requirements for Roth IRA for my wife and I.

I deciding whether to take a retirement incentive. If I take it, I plan to live on the MM funds and convert to the top of the 12% bracket.

MathWizard

And all those retirees who are creating their own paycheck are withdrawing at the
same time so that they can pay their monthly bills.

Somebody has to be on the other side of the trade.

They want to time it with the inflow of funds, or all their withdrawals would
cause the market to drop.

MathWizard

In a similar situation, I paid it off a quickly as possible after graduation.
It was not a financial decision, but I felt it was the right thing to do.

It was not so large an amount however, but did represent 6% of my net salary
that year.

MathWizard

I will be doing Roth conversions up to the top of the 12 then 15% bracket early on. There currently is no 15% tax bracket, but I will pass on that for a moment. (You are probably thinking about 15% for LTCG when you are in the 22% tax bracket up to about $400K in Taxable Income.) Your comment about...

MathWizard

I am on the cusp of retirement, and am pondering how exactly to withdraw from the various retirement accounts. Congratulations on your pending retirement. I like this guide that explains various approaches to the same problem pretty simply. https://retirementplans.vanguard.com/web/enc/pdfs/RILongBr...

MathWizard

I may treat this money differently than my normal AA, since it has been "encumbered" as accumulating for a future expense . In that since, it would seem to make sense to keep it in fixed income, either bonds or Roth CDs. If you are referring to a Roth IRA here, this does not make sense. T...

MathWizard

Congratulations on your upcoming retirement. Agree with the previous responses. Depending on your situation, You need a strategy for efficiently handling RMD‘s, Medicare premiums and When to start Social Security. To you answer your question, we take our annual expenses out in advance plus we have ...

MathWizard

This is really just a sanity check. I am on the cusp of retirement, and am pondering how exactly to withdraw from the various retirement accounts. I have estimated the amount that I should withdraw from tax deferred each year to manage RMDs and taxes, and estimated average expenses. Some expenses ar...

MathWizard

Yes, in IT, people expect computers to be up 24x7x365. I answer lots of questions off hours. It seems like the nature of the beast. I had to diagnose a storage server issue from a lobby in Rome, and kept tabs via email in Paris. Once I was in charge, I started having the team do cross training so th...

MathWizard

I don't know if he can stop the process if he has already applied for SS, but timing of SS benefits is a more effective tactic than whatever earnings you can generate from $200K. If delaying is possible, I would suggest first run some scenarios through i-orp.com There are other retirement calculator...

MathWizard

Local credit union.

Customer service is better than at a local bank, which more than makes up for the minor amount of extra interest.

I make my money in investment accounts. The money at the credit union is for easy access.

MathWizard

An hour a week on retirement planning. Next to nothing on Just personal finance. We have that pretty well dialed in. I've been doing personal finance since I was 18, and my wife and I since 24, some 38 years ago. I spend time on retirement planning because I haven't been retired. Going from accumula...

MathWizard

I chose A. I needed to gain ground quickly, so I went nearly 100% stocks through the 90's 2000's and half the 2010's. Then I had nearly won the game, so I have floated between 50 and 60% stocks. Being 100% stocks meant the AA did not change when stocks increases greatly,or vice versa. My wife would ...

MathWizard

I maxed the Roth when I could before maxing tax deferred. Tax deferred to match, then Roth to max, then back to tax deferred. This still only means the Roth assets are only about 22% of my retirement savings. Once my income grew, I made sure I stayed below the 25 (now 22)% bracket,until finally I wa...

MathWizard

Charity,. high tips on take out, same as you. We had a bathroom remodel done early on. We just stayed in the basement whole time that they were in the house. We had planned this, but didn't cancel it. We did some work ourselves on the back patio ,buying material. Bought some things that I had planni...

MathWizard

Have a lawyer draft wills. I handle almost everything DIY, but there is no plan B after you're dead. My wife and I had wills made when had a few thousand net worth. The primary motivator was our first child, however 30 years later, with one added codicil to change executor, the same wills still work...

MathWizard

I would suggest a small external battery bank. You could buy 2 or 3 and put one in the car, office and home. I bought quite a few and put them in Christmas stockings. I bought a few on clearance for $1 each at best buy. I see on ebay there are some 2600 milliamp hour ones for $1.70 plus shipping and...

MathWizard

Not a lawyer, but it sounds like the estate paid off the mortgage, or perhaps the loan had an insurance component that paid it off. If you got the title to the land free and clear from the estate, then your basis is stepped up to the value on the form used to figure estate tax, which is likely the f...

MathWizard

The first step is to get access to a university research library, which may require signing up for a class, even just an audit of a course. Then go to the library and start reading articles in a journal in your field. You typically will not be able to check out journals, but you maybe able to check ...

MathWizard

I was a gearhead when I was young. 8 boys in my family, all gearheads. I say good riddance. The cars rode rough, were horrible in the winter (rear wheel drive) cars were heavy, no ABS so you had to pump the brakes on emergency stops. I like my new comfortable car. As much fun as the cars were, I spe...

MathWizard

If I am unsure what to do, I do nothing. In general, I will rebalance when the market drops. In March 2020, there were daily swings of 10%. At the bottom, I was just at the rebalance band to rebalance into stocks. Due to the volatility, I decided to do nothing and just wait. My portfolio could have ...

MathWizard

Bad Apple! My usage is averaging 10 GB a month. And I use Wifi extensively and whenever I can. With 500MB data, I think iPhone is not the way to go. Maybe a flip phone. My wife and I both have apple phones, SE 2000 and iPhone 11, and neither use over 100 MB/month. We use WIFI almost exclusively. Wi...

MathWizard

Not that I am in the highest tax bracket, but I will be in a lower bracket in retirement. Roth conversions in retirement up to the top of the bracket I will be in during retirement makes the most sense. It will help my wife when I pass, since here tax bracket would go up, since she would have file a...

MathWizard

Most non-poaching agreements are illegal,not that it helps you. If you are not actively recruiting anyone, there should be no problem. If you let someone know about a job at your company, just make sure that person has a way to identify where they heard about the job, and uses it. For example, tell ...

MathWizard

With automated trading and leverage, it is pretty easy to get a huge correction almost instantaneously. (Think flash-crash). Market hits a limit which triggers a large automated trade. This depresses price very quickly. Another bot is programmed to interpret this as a harbinger of doom, and quickly ...

MathWizard

I would agree that it is easy to use, but I think that: The "how much do you spend a year" would be better if it was "How much do you need from this portfolio per year." If I ignore SS benefits, there is a high failure rate. If I include them, it is more like my own calculations...

MathWizard

Since the median network for household in each age group is about 250K or less, I would say that the median age does not exist, since more than half of households do not attain that level of wealth. Now perhaps you mean, of those households that attain $1 million NW. I would guess that is likely at ...

MathWizard

My current company ESPP only requires a six-month lockup w/ 15% discount, so I definitely have less time risk involved. That said, if I were subject to your terms at my current company (4 year lockup and 20% discount), I would definitely do it. If you are reasonably happy with how things are going ...

MathWizard

I would agree that it is easy to use, but I think that: The "how much do you spend a year" would be better if it was "How much do you need from this portfolio per year." If I ignore SS benefits, there is a high failure rate. If I include them, it is more like my own calculations,...

MathWizard

Are you figuring the percentage on your gross wages, including your deferred wages, or is the percentage just on your AGI? If I do it on gross, it is only 19% , if I do it on AGI, then it is 26%. Also, if you are self-employed? If so, you would be paying self-employment tax, which would double the S...

MathWizard

No. Both my wife and I have one. I do not put anything emotional in there, just straight facts (where to find the money, insurance, etc.) Since my wife knows where everything is, these are likely to be used by the kids if we both go in a car crash. My idea is that my wife knows how I feel about her....

MathWizard

Thanks! Can you put a link to the solar generator you have? https://www.rockpals.com/products/rockpals-350w-portable-power-station I got it on a Black Friday for $210. Rockpals has a portable solar panel, but it is expensive, so I got an HQST 70W https://www.amazon.com/HQST-Monocrystalline-Solar-Po...

MathWizard

3500 W dual fuel gasoline/propane champion generator

I have a small pure sine wave "solar generator" (350W) for running things like my router/wireless
for working from home on a laptop without needing to run the gas generator continuously.

MathWizard

QCDs reduce your AGI. Just to be perfectly clear, QCDs without either RMDs or other tIRA withdrawals do not reduce your AGI, right? I agree with you, BoulderBoy. I've heard people say this before, but really QCDs don't reduce your AGI, they just keep it from growing due to having to take an RMD. Po...

MathWizard

I try to avoid inflation estimates, and do everything om real numbers. For a small non-inflation adjusted pension my wife has, I use 2.5% to change the numbers from nominal to real. I also use 2% above CPI for medical, since medical expenses are a big expense in retirement, and in general rise much ...

MathWizard

I have owned lots of very old cars. I have two criteria, either of which I will chose to replace a car: 1. Cost of repair > 50% of value of the vehicle. Once you start getting big repair bills, you start to get many more repairs. At the point that a single repair exceeds half the price, you are head...

MathWizard

That would be great if it happened every year.

I expected 2020 to be a terrible year, but my 50/50 portfolio earned 50% more than my gross income.

That is just one year though.

MathWizard

In general,people get retired too early, but not by choice

On this board, with the "anything above 3% real for a WR is crazy talk" sentiment, almost everyone is going to die with more than they retired with.

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