Bogleheads.org

Watty

Fixing things that are actually broken usually makes sense because if a potential buyer sees even little things that are broken, like a doorknob, they may take that as a sign that the rest of the house has also been poorly maintained. Be very cautious about spending a lot on other cosmetic improveme...

Watty

I am also considering getting a new Forester this year. I got a monthly subscription for Consumer Reports and their top rankings and scores are; Forester 89 Mazda CX5 83 Honda CRV 82 Kia sportage 81 You may want to check the most recent US News auto ratings. CRV is ranked number one, and the Forest...

Watty

One thing to watch out for is that a lot of the new advanced safety features have been phased in over the last few years so a 5 year old used car may be a lot different than a new car with it comes to safety. Toyota made a lot of advanced safety features standard equipment in 2018. Even ten+ years a...

Watty

What to do next for our savings after maxing out everything? With a user name of "Workaholic" you might want to consider if you are currently saving enough and if it might be time to consider if you should spend some of the extra money on the "now" side of the Now vs Later balan...

Watty

SlowMovingInvestor wrote: ↑Fri Apr 16, 2021 4:26 pm but the check airbag light is on

Be sure to check if it was in the big airbag recall. You may be able to get the airbag replaced for free.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls

Watty

One advantage I saw in spending down cash is that my income in those years would be next to nothing--ergo, hardly any taxes. That could mean that you are in a low tax bracket which could make it a good time to do 401k withdrawals. Most likely the best choice will be to spend money from a mixture of...

Watty

The desire is to do 4.5% WD ($135,000) ..... Tax Rate: 24% Federal, No State Income Tax ..... Expected Social Security: $59,000 (Both of ours combined, I’ll claim at 70.) Be sure to look at your retirement tax brackets. The way Social Security is taxed will complicate it but I doubt that you will h...

Watty

Don't forget your state taxes too. When I have had to file an amended return the tax software handled my federal return pretty painlessly. For the state tax return it was pretty much useless and just printed out instructions on how to file the amended return myself using paper forms. But to make sur...

Watty

Moving out to another state is an option we are considering, but I should expect a decrease in my annual pay as well. That varies widely with the area you are looking at living in and what field you work in. I retired out of corporate IT and I moved around the country a few times and the salaries d...

Watty

A couple of points; 1) I am not sure of the details of the current rules but having the money in her name could reduce any college financial aid that the might qualify for. 2) It might seem obvious but make sure that she knows about and understands the account. People have posted about situations wh...

Watty

(dont' worry i keep electronic copies of the return and some key documents like my 5498 to prove roth ira contributions/conversions) Be sure to also keep copies of your W2s at least until you start Social Security. People have posted about finding out that they their Social Security earnings histor...

Watty

Why give Murphy's Law a chance to cause problems?

Doing the refinance should only take around month so I would put the rollover on the back burner until that is done.

Watty

Yes to both your questions. But be forewarned, those contractors that work for big box stores are generally not the top shelf type contractor so you may not get the job you were hoping for. Generally, those that do good work, soon move on and open up their own business where they have much more con...

Watty

I do not see where it makes any sense because it is impossible to predict what the ACA subsidy numbers will look next year, much less 8 years from now. It might not even exist 8 years from now, which could be either good or bad for you.

Watty

Just for some perspective I have a Corolla that I bought new about three years ago. It is a nice car but it is about as uncollectible a car as you could think of. After hearing how crazy the used car market are out of curiosity I got a quote from Carvana to see what they would pay for it and they of...

Watty

31 y/o, 300-400K/year salary. anybody have any issues with my order of the cyber truck at 70K? One big issue is that from what you said your net worth is pretty low relative to your income. Unless you have a lot of other assets that you did not mention then you need to really figure out just where ...

Watty

There is a wiki on how to handle a windfall. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Managing_a_windfall A big point is to just park the money someplace very safe for six months to a year while you come up with a long term plan. I would pay off the car loan and HELOC before doing that. You may also want to ...

Watty

You are making this too complicated.

If you have a fixed stock and bond asset allocation then you will automatically be selling bonds to buy stocks after a stock market crash.

Watty

As long as you don't care when you retire, it might make sense. You have no assurances that you will "hit 25x" in the timeframe you desire. And being at 100% equity implies a higher level of volatility. Another risk is that you may not be able to control when you retire if something happe...

Watty

Here is a post I did about buying a new car a few years ago by getting offers on the internet. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=239526 There is also a long ongoing car buying thread. https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=124638 You can likely find a forum about th...

Watty

There is also a non-zero chance that if you do not sell them soon that one of you could die and the survivor would be in the higher single tax brackets when they sell the houses. This is especially true if you decide to not sell them for 5 or 10 years or more. Isn’t the cost basis stepped up on the...

Watty

We cannot talk about politics or proposed legislation because of the board rules but one risk of not selling them this year is that there could be tax law changes which could mean that if you delay the sale the tax rates could be higher when you do sell them. There is also a non-zero chance that if ...

Watty

Travel. We did not spend much compared to what many other people here spend and some of our other expenses categories have been more but we have spent a significant amount on travel and I do not regret that. I am really glad that we did that when we could because; 1) Before the pandemic over tourism...

Watty

One possibility is that they could be an employer's phone number that you do not recognize.

JS-Elcano wrote: ↑Wed Apr 14, 2021 12:05 pm ...but today I found two telephone numbers that I don't recognize on two of my reports.

You can google the numbers on the credit reports to see if that gives you any information.

Watty

Another option would be a target fund like Vanguard Target Retirement 2060 Fund (VTTSX) which has a $1000 minimum. +1 Getting him on path with target date funds is good choice and he could even stick with those forever and still do better than most people. Starting early and getting on a good autom...

Watty

Desired Asset allocation: 70% Stock/30% Bonds - open to different allocation recommendations in either direction (current 54%/46%) and interestingly, through only random luck and no planning, our current total portfolio sits right on the efficient frontier with a 15-mo return of 11.2% and St. Dev o...

Watty

Have you used various tools (opensocialsecurity.com in particular) to evaluate this? One nice thing about that website is that you can also use it to compare the optimal strategy to an alternative strategy to see what it calculates ad the difference in value. For me the difference between the optim...

Watty

It would be good to check this web site to see what it suggests for a Social Security claiming strategy. https://opensocialsecurity.com/ Should I be concerned about carrying a mortgage (see notes above) into retirement (2.9% rate), even though it is factored into my yearly spending ? There are lots ...

Watty

As a cynic, I would automatically assume that anything written was fake and specifically designed to sway me. +1000 An additional problem with these is that they will often reveal that potential buyer is a protected discrimination class(or not) so that if you the house for a lower price then you co...

Watty

It never hurts to ask. The worst they can do is say no, and you’re in the same spot you would be if you didn’t ask. +1 If I was the job candidate though I would have these concerns about the job so you should address these upfront. 1) Maybe the first candidate was fine but the job sucked and they l...

Watty

Does it make sense that a car dealer needs to do a hard pull if you pay in full by check (cash)? Yes if it is a personal check. In all the paperwork you sign there is likely something that allows them to set up a car loan for you if your check bounces. Part of the credit check is also go through so...

Watty

One thing to keep in mind is that if you are planning on renting it out then that might not be allowed. Even normal condos often have a restriction on the percent of units that can be rented out since if the percentage of rentals goes above a certain level future owners cannot get normal mortgages. ...

Watty

2. Any other thoughts on tax efficient portfolio set-up or activities? Her beneficiaries are all set-up and we're working through some estate planning activities. We talked last weekend about DAF's and am going to run through some tax scenarios with her in the near future. She is doing great financ...

Watty

I am hoping to retire around age 55, and after a largely stressful multi-decade career of non-stop grind, am still about 10 years away. Likely to hit my number either way, but wondering if doing a high-stress, high-pay job is worth it: I am retired now but over my career one thing I saw over and ov...

Watty

Of course, safety has been important to us, but we probably haven't appreciated it enough. And with a teenager coming of driving age soon, it's definitely another factor to weigh seriously. In another recent thread someone pointed out this link about used cars for teenage drivers, but it is from la...

Watty

Rolling the 401k into an inherited IRA at Vanguard and putting into a target date fund would be a good safe choice. Later on she can move the money into something else without any tax issues if she wants to. She can contact Vanguard and they should be able to walk her through the process. There is a...

Watty

One thing to watch out for is that snakes, especially copperheads, apparently love cicadas and will even feed on them on warm nights.

https://www.ajc.com/life/why-brood-x-ci ... TX54EJGHY/

Watty

If you sent the email to an individual you knew they may no longer be working for the company or they may have gotten married or divorced and changed their name and be using a new email address. If you are sending it to a generic HR email address they may have changed that to something else. As othe...

Watty

Sell the rental. Not only are the numbers bad but if you own the rental and buy a house to live in you will have way too much of your net worth in real estate which would be a diversification problem. Get family and/or individual counseling you have a lot going and if you have kids that will only ma...

Watty

Would love to hear your definitions! It can mean anything. There was a post a while back where someone mentioned an older relative thought they were well off because of their extensive Beanie Baby collection. :oops: I've followed the Boglehead philosophy before I knew there was a name for it and ha...

Watty

2 car leases between the 2 of us, both up in late fall of this year so we have a chance to make a change at that time With the used car market being so crazy buying the car at the end of the lease will likely make sense even if you then just sell the car. You can check CarMax and Carvana to see wha...

Watty

After Tax Accounts: 339k ...... How much house can we afford? I assume that after tax account is just in a brokerage or bank in what most people would call a taxable account. If that is correct then you can afford pretty much any of the houses that you posted about by selling off a lot of that and ...

Watty

Just to frame this in another perspective - both of these numbers are a tiny fraction of 1 million. By upgrading to the newer Silverado, your death odds decrease to 0.003% from 0.015%. Your survival odds in either case are essentially 99.99%. The difference is material in rigorous statistical analy...

Watty

2002 Chevrolet Silverado 2500HD Duramax Diesel - 96k miles (original injectors...knock on wood!) According to some here, I probably have a death wish because I have a vehicle that's older than 3 years old and doesn't have 30,000 little nannies watching over me. Doesn't phase me. Can't live life in ...

Watty

There have been a number of articles and posts about how the used car market has gone crazy with the pandemic and people not wanting to take mass transit. A lot of people are also buying used cars because of tax returns and the stimulus checks. Some people are not able to take vacation in 2020 or 20...

Watty

CygX1 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:03 pm We will freeze our credit reports.....

Everyone should really keep their credit reports frozen all the time and just unfreeze them when they need to apply for credit.

Watty

38, Married, 4 kids (6/3/1/1).... One thing to consider is what living there will be like for your kids when they are gown up and ready to move out on their own. You are likely only about 16 years from your oldest being at that point. :shock: It was a long time ago but when I was right out of colle...

Watty

Following. Any gotchas to paying off early? Will the mortgage company try to squeeze you somehow? It is just a clerical transaction. You need to call them to get the payoff amount and instructions and not just send them the loan balance. The exact amount can be a be a bit different depending on the...

Watty

There are lots of threads about considering a mortgage as a negative bond that you can look up. Something to consider is if you do get a mortgage is how you will count that in your asset allocation. Some people will want around a 50/50 asset allocation when they retire so if you get a $500K mortgage...

Watty

I know my rate of return is essentially locked in at 3.7% and I can invest my mortgage payments from both starting immediately and grow that way using more of a DCA. Given this is close to the 4% rule I'm leaning pretty hard in this direction. Investing the money and earning a higher rate of return...

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