Before the day slips away I just wanted to take a moment to wish you and yours…. A very Merry Christmas and a Wonderful Holiday Season Here’s to a Happy, Healthy(!) and Prosperous New Year!
Archives for 2020
How to give when you have a business
A few years back, three very different things happened and, to the best of my recollection they didn’t happen all that close together. First, in 2012, I wrote the post How to Give Like a Billionaire. In it I described how to use Donor Advised Funds (DAF) to maximize your tax deduction for your charitable… [Continue Reading]
Investing with Vanguard for Europeans: 2020 update
Please Note: If you are outside Europe and the US, please be sure to read thru the comments on the original of this post. They have become a valuable forum for investors from all over the world. Who knew? Certainly not I. This all started when I wrote a series of letters to my daughter… [Continue Reading]
Part XVII-B: ETF vs. Mutual Fund — What’s the Difference?
While I touched on it in Part XVII, the differences between ETFs and Mutual Funds is a recurring question here. Perhaps I should have covered it better. Let’s do that now. We’ll use VBTLX and its ETF version, BND, as examples since those were my choices in my most recent move. ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) were… [Continue Reading]
Reviewing the comments on my post of April 1st
Boy howdy. I’m going to have to be sure to look more carefully at the calendar before I put up a post with momentous news. Thank you for the outpouring of your mostly kind and creative comments on it. I’m impressed. Not one of you seriously believed I’d cracked the market timing code. Knowing how… [Continue Reading]
Why I will no longer be writing this blog
My ship has come in and I am riding off into the sunset. To mix a couple of metaphors. If you are a fan, you are likely a bit shocked and disappointed. I am sorry for that. If you are one of my detractors, like Bob here on twitter… Bob’s Backtested Bunker “the fact that… [Continue Reading]
My move from VMMXX to VBTLX
In my recent post Taking Advantage of Mr. Bear, I described how this current decline offered me the opportunity to move from VTSAX (stocks) to VMMXX (cash) in my taxable account while simultaneously moving an equal amount of VBTLX (bonds) to VTSAX in my IRA. This had the effect of maintaining my stock & bond/cash asset… [Continue Reading]
COVID-19: The unvarnished truth from Doc G.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. So I highjacked Doc G’s podcast. That’s him above. There is so much nonsense swirling around COVID-19, right down to the correct name, I was starting to get lost sorting it out. What I needed was guidance from someone without an agenda. Someone who had the education and training… [Continue Reading]
Chautauqua sits out 2020
Last week we sent the following message to our Chautauqua mailing list. I also wanted to share it with you: Sometimes it just feels like the Universe is speaking to you. If you are like me and it is telling you something you don’t want to hear, you can be slow to listen. Since moving… [Continue Reading]
Taking advantage of Mr. Bear
Updated June 15, 2023 Today (March 9, 2020) I decided it was time to cuddle up to Mr. Bear and let him help me avoid some capital gains taxes. As regular readers here know, for the past few years we have been homeless and nomadic. It is a lifestyle that agrees with us and… [Continue Reading]
