I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours

[ESRBob]

Hi Jarhead,

The weather has been so incredible here that I've been outdoors much of the past 2 or 3 months. We made a few trips to South Dakota too. My youngest daughter started college in August, so between delivering her to campus, visiting her, and spending time with my parents and siblings, we've been on the road a lot. It has been a great fall.

Bob,
great to have you back on the Board, though it should come as no surprise, I guess, that in a group of ER'd people, some of us will go 'walkabout' for long periods of time, enjoying the fruits of our freedom, right? (Do we need to pitch in and buy Bob a blackberry?)

On your point, I lump everything together and do one asset allocation, then just try to be smart about what assets I buy in the Roth and what I buy in the taxable funds. (Although the conventional wisdom on what is smart seems to shift from time to time) Can't imagine it makes sense to have searate allocations in different buckets.

ESRBob

 

[Bob_Smith]

Hi ESRBob,

Yep, I'm afraid you're right - I don't have a blackberry, and to be completely honest, I had to do a Google search, because I didn't even know what a blackberry was! But now I do, and I want one!

 

[charlie]

I originally posted on this thread in mid July. Since
then I have made a few changes ......

My wife's IRA is now in Wellington and our after tax
money is in Wellesley with approximately the same
in each. These two funds compose about 1/3 of our
total portfolio.

My IRA containing the other 2/3 follows a modified
"coffeehouse" approach. The equity portion is 60%
split equally among Large Cap Index, Windsor II,
Small Cap Index, Small Cap Value, REIT, Total
International and International Explorer. The 40%
FI allocation is 10% Inflation Protection, 10% Intermediate Term Bond Index and 20% Short Term
Investment Grade.

My YTD total return is 5.62%, which is better than any
of Vanguard's balanced funds. This is mostly due to
buying the REIT and TIPS funds at the right time. Pure
luck. I have since rebalanced and taken the profit from these 2 funds.

Cheers,

Charlie

 

[WilliamG]

I have made some relatively small changes also. I surely hope that I can leave this alone! I know constant re-thinking and fiddling with a portfolio can be a killer! All funds are Vanguard...

20% Total Stock Market
15% Value Index
5% Small Cap Value Index
5% REIT
10% International, equally split in EM, Europe, Pacific

16% Intermediate Investment Grade
8% I Bonds
16% Short Term Investment Grade

5% Cash

 

[Cut-Throat]

I have  made some relatively small changes also.  I surely hope that I can leave this alone!  I know constant re-thinking and fiddling with a portfolio can be a killer!  All funds are Vanguard...
   

Yup, Berstein says the the selection of specific asset classes is not as important as staying with the ones you selected.

 

[WilliamG]

Cut - Throat,
Yup, I agree with you and Bernstein. Constantly changing allocation is not too dis-similar to market timing. Have just turned 59 1/2 and am beginning to withdraw from IRA. Believe I have finally settled in on what I can stay with. Guess it has been good to have had since retiring at 55 to noodle on it! This latest allocation reflects the fact that I'm not comfortable enuf to go with larger small cap overweight. Glad I finally realized that... bill

 

[haha]

Re: I'll Show You Mine -Update

In July I posted the allocation of my invested assets. Many others did the same on this thread. At that time I wrote "I may sell more US stock, buy more energy. The rest is a pat hand for now. " This has pretty well been the way it turned out. The best part is that in spite of having 47% fixed income on July 16, all the markets sectors have been reasonably strong, so that the overall portfolio value has increased by 5%.

This is a portfolio that has to stand periodic withdrawal, as it my only support.

I'll try a table to present today's allocation, compared to that of last July 16.
Date11/19/20047/16/2004
Energy17%13%
Gold7%3%
Put Options1%1%
US Stock22%25%
Foreign Stock8%8%
Foreign Bond6%7%
REIT1%3%
Cash37%40%

All the fixed income is short maturity- the foreign bonds average 3 years, the US fixed is cash and I-Bonds.

Bob Smith was kind enough to tell me how to format columns. Could he or someone else tell me how to get rid of the white space above my table? I left no space in my text.

Thanks, Mikey

 

[wzd]

The white space problem was hunted down by BigMoneyJim and is due to line breaks inserted by YABB. Try the tool I recently wrote at http://home.earthlink.net/~wzd3/YABBtable.html for producing YABB tables and let me know if it works for you!

For your table put this in as input

Date   "  11/19/2004"   "  7/16/2004"
Energy   17%   13%
Gold   7%   3%
"Put Options"   1%   1%
"US Stock"   22%   25%
"Foreign Stock"   8%   8%
"Foreign Bond"   6%   7%
REIT   1%   3%
Cash   37%   40%

and you get this table as output.

Date​

11/19/2004​

7/16/2004​

Energy​

17%​

13%​

Gold​

7%​

3%​

Put Options​

1%​

1%​

US Stock​

22%​

25%​

Foreign Stock​

8%​

8%​

Foreign Bond​

6%​

7%​

REIT​

1%​

3%​

Cash​

37%​

40%​

You can also do some table layout using the code tags (the # sign in the YABBC tag area).

I'm still looking for someone else to try out the table formatter, so if anyone has an excuse to post some tables, please give it a try. My usage instructions might need some tweaking....since I know exactly what I mean they seem fine to me

Wayne

 

[Bob_Smith]

Wayne, very cool! I used your table generator and got this:

TIPS21.07% VANG INTL GROWTH17.70%VANG TOT STOCK MKT11.34%

This makes it MUCH easier. Any way I can get that from you?

 

[John Galt]

Oh what the hell, here it is again, with small holding
corp. lumped in with taxable and non-taxable, since I
have no tax issues to be concerned about at present.

Cash and personal property 5%
Improved real estate including residence 45%
HY corp. bond fund 16%
Long term gov. backed notes 14%
Long term corp. bonds 20%

The lowest rate I get on anything other than a small MM is 5%. This does
NOT adjust for inflation. Yeah, it's pretty simple.
I like it that way.

John Galt

 

[wzd]

Bob -

The code is javascript, so you can simply do a "view source" and see it, or just save the page on your local computer and invoke an editor. I think I have a free to use/copy statement in the header in lieu of any copyright stuff, but if not, this note serves as the same thing.

If no one finds any bugs with it, and I get any enhancements done, I plan on asking Dory to copy it to somewhere on his website, maybe with a link to a "table helper" from the compose page?

In any case, feel free to use it, or copy it. If you copy it, you won't get any updates, but thats not much of a problem. I'm thinking of adding some options to the style section for font, centering table, centering entries, etc. but waiting to see comments first.

Wayne

 

[Bob_Smith]

Bob -

The code is javascript, so you can simply do a "view source" and see it, or just save the page on your local computer and invoke an editor.

Wayne, thanks! I just copied the source and saved it as an "html" file on my desktop. It opens in Internet Explorer and works great. There are some spaces I must remove (in front of each piece of data). This is much faster than the way I was doing it.

 

[wzd]

Bob -

Be careful removing spaces. Without spaces, yabb inserts line breaks and messes up the table. Usually it seems to just show up as a bunch of white space at the top of the table, but I have seen it take lines out of the table.

This info was courtesy of BigMoneyJim doing a bunch of experimenting.

I just changed the program to put the space before the [ t d ] tag instead of after, if that was bothering you. It seems to still work right, see if it works for you. (and I stuck in bold header options while I was at it). Don't hesitate to ask for modifications - I have some time to do them.

(sorry about hijacking this thread. Bob - maybe more questions should go on News/new way to generate tables)

Wayne