* Acronyms, abbreviations and Slang Frequently Used on the Forum *

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Jeb-NY

Recycles dryer sheets
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Standard Acronyms and Abbreviations You May Find on the Forum

This list will only grow if you submit acronyms you use or that need defining. I will up date this message, adding new acronyms as they are submitted to the list. It is always better to use the full words, but we know how much people like to type. A link at the bottom is supplied for stock and mutual fund symbols.

We don’t need all possible abbreviations just the ones used commonly on the forum. Two links at the bottom of the list will lead you to a bunch of standard web slang.

If you see mistakes or if there are alternative meaning please submit those to. I don't know much so I don't mind people telling me what I don't know.

AA = Asset Allocation
AFAIK - As Far As I Know
AFU - Acronyms Frequently Used
Avacado - Swahili for...see here
BB - Big Brother
BFO - Blinding Flash of the Obvious
BIL - Brother In-Law
BOHICA- Bend over, Here it Comes Again
BRICS - five leading emerging economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
BTD - Blow That Dough
BTW - By The Way
CAGR - Compound Annual Growth Rate
CalPERS - California Public Employees' Retirement System.
CFP - Certified Financial Planner
CLU - Chartered Life Underwriter
ChFC - Chartered Financial Consultant
CHP - Cocktail Hour Post
C Fund - Common Stock Index (S&P 500)
CC - Credit Card
CCRC - Continuous Care Retirement Community/Facility
COLA - Cost of Living Allowance
DB - Defined Benefit
DC - Defined Contribution
DCA - Dollar Cost Averaging
DCM - Defenders of the Conventional Methology or Dont Care Much
DE - Differential Equations
DFA - Dimensional Fund Advisors
DH - Darling Husband (Hubby) is the nice version or D*** Husband
DH - vanguard DieHards, see diehards.org
DMT - Dirty Market Timer
DQOTD - Dumb Question Of The Day
DR - Downside Risk
DRIP - Dividend Reinvestment Plan
DW - Darling Wife is the nice version or D*** Wife
Dryer Sheets - See here and here
EBITDA - Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization
EM - Emerging Markets
EMH - Efficient Market Hypothesis
EMT - Efficient Market Theory
ER - Early Retirement
ER - Expense Ratio
ESR - Early Semi Retired
ETF - Exchange Traded Funds
EWP - Early Withdrawal Penalty
F Fund - Fixed Income Index
FA - Financial Advisor
FBAR - Foreign Bank Account Report
FAQP - Financial Advisor Quality Paradox: If you know enough to identify a good advisor vs. a bad advisor, you probably don't need one.
FERS - Federal Employees Retirement System
FI - Financially Independent
Fido - Fidelity
FIL - Father In-Law
FIRE - Financially Independent Retired Early (or T-Al's alternative: F*** It, Retire Early)
FOMC - Federal Open Market Committee
FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out
FRA - Full Retirement Age
FT - Full Time
FUBAR - Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition (or words to that effect)
FWIW - For What It's Worth
FYF - First Year Frugality (common tendency to severely limit spending during the first year of retirement)
G Fund - Government securities
Gone Traveling = No longer a member of ER.ORG
GPO - Government Pension Offset
Harvest Gold - Swahili for...see here (small print)
HOTs - Higher Order Terms
I Fund - International Index
IANAL - I am not a lawyer
IIRC - If I Remember Correctly
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion
IOW - In other words
IRL - In Real Life
IRMAA - Income Related Monthly Adjustment Amount (Medicare adjustment for higher income)
ISO - In Search Of
L Fund - Lifecycle funds (2040, 2030, 2020, 2010, Income)
LBOM - Living Below/Beneath Our Means
LBYM - Living Below/Beneath Your Means
LC - Large Cap stocks
LG - Largecap Growth stocks
LTC - Long Term Care
LV - Largecap Value stocks
M* - Morningstar
MENSA - Making Elucidating Nonsense Sound Authentic
MF - Mutual Fund
MIL - Mother In-Law
MM - Money Market
MOOP - Maximum Out of Pocket
MYGA - Multi Year Guaranteed Annuity
NAV - Net Asset Value
NIRP - Negative Interest Rate Policy
nm - Never Mind
NPV - Net Present Value
NW - Net Worth
NYDB - None of Your Damn Business
OMY - One More Year
OOP - Out of Pocket
OP - Original Poster
OPM - Office of Personnel Management
PDEs - Partial differential equations
PITA - Pain In The A$$
PM - Precious Metals, often stocks instead of physical
POV - Point Of View
PSA - Public Service Announcement
PT - perpetual travel; perpetual traveler
PTJ - Part Time Job (normally considered a derogatory comment on this board)
RE - Real Estate
RE - Retired Early
REHP - Retire Early Home Page
RIF - Reduction In Force
RMD - - Required Minimum Distribution
ROFLMAO - Rolling On The Floor, Laughing My A$$ Off
ROR - Rate of return
S Fund - Small Capitalization Stock Index
SC - Small Cap stocks
SD - Standard Deviation
SG - Smallcap Growth stocks
SGOTI - Some Guy On The Internet
SHTF - Sh!t Hits the Fan
SIL - Sister or Son In-Law
SIRE - Secure Income, Retired Early
SMH - Shaking My Head
SNAFU - Situation Normal, All 'Fouled' Up
SORR - Sequence of return risk
SPIA - Single Premium Immediate Annuity
SV - Smallcap Value stocks
SWR - Safe Withdrawal Rate
TINA -There is no alternative
TIPS - Treasury Inflation Protected Securities
TIRA - Traditional Individual Retirement Account
TLA - Three Letter Acronym
TLDR -Too long didn’t read
TLH - Tax Loss Harvesting
TSP - Thrift Savings Plan (The 401K-like plan for the federal government and the military)
TU (also Tango Uniform) - t*ts up
USD - US Dollar
VA - Variable Annuities
VG - Vanguard
WADR - With All Due Respect
WEP - Windfall Elimination Provision
WR - Withdrawal Rate
YDBIYDB - Your Damn Business Is Your Damn Business
YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary
YTD - Year To Date

Some standard investment acronyms:
Terms starting with Acronyms
Link to a lot of standard net slang:
AOL Lifestream : Login
If you think it might be a stock or fund symbol try:
Yahoo! Finance

If you have a suggestion for a better format let me know.

Thanks for all the contributions.

Jeb
ER Forum "Acronymonialist"
 
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Re: Acronyms

VG - Vanguard
Fido - Fidelity

AFAIK - As far as I know

IOW - In other words

ER - can also mean expense ratio (instead of early retirement)

PT - perpetual travel; perpetual traveler

As an added tip - sometimes the generic acronyms can be explained if you google <acronym> aol speak.
 
Re: --- Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum ---

DCA - dollar cost averaging
DRIP - dividend reinvestment plan
LBYM - living below/beneath your means
ROFLMAO - rolling on the floor, laughing my a$$ off
EBITDA - earnings before interest, taxes,depreciation, and amortization
 
Re: --- Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum ---

NYDB - None of your damn business
YDBIYDB - Your damn business is your damn business
MENSA - Making elucidating nonsense sound authentic
 
Re: --- Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum ---

Jeb-NY said:
Standard Acronyms You May Fine on the Forum

MF - Mutual Fund
Jeb
ER Forum "Acronymonialist"

Those angry looking guys were calling me a "Mutual Fund?" Wow, who'da thunkit?

Ha
 
Re: --- Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum ---

DH: secondary meaning: vanguard DieHards, see diehards.org

ER: IMO, the main meaning is expense ratio, but no biggie which is listed first.

RE: secondary meaning: real estate.

There's lots of generic acronym lists on the net, for things like IMO, WTF, etc.
I suppose to make life easier, Jeb, you could either copy & paste the generic acronyms into your list, or only include specialized acronyms in your list and put a link up for the generic ones.
Example list: http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_slang

Also, for 3 letter or 5 letter acronyms not in the list, we could point people directly to try a website like http://finance.yahoo.com/ to see if it is a stock or mutual fund symbol. (I don't mean anything fancy, just giving a simple link like above for getting quotes.)
 
Re: --- Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum ---

TLA - Three Letter Acronym
FWIW - For what it's worth
FIGMO - old Army term: F____ it, got my orders (i.e., it's too late for you to mess with me)
FUBAR - Fouled up beyond all recognition (or words to that effect)
BFO - Blinding Flash of the Obvious
 
Re: --- Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum ---

dory36 said:
TLA - Three Letter Acronym
FWIW - For what it's worth
FIGMO - old Army term: F____ it, got my orders (i.e., it's too late for you to mess with me)
FUBAR - Fouled up beyond all recognition (or words to that effect)
BFO - Blinding Flash of the Obvious

Are we going to include STFU? :)

JG
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

I appreciate all the contributions, but some seem beyond what is used on the forum.

If you see abbreviations definitions being asked for please define them if you know. I'm just the scribe at this time, I don't know most of these.

Jeb
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

I always liked T-bone Al's alternative for FIRE: F*** It, Retire Early.

NAV as in net asset value, is often used here.

M* for Morningstar
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

EM - Emerging Markets
EMH - Efficient Market Hypothesis
SC - SmallCap stocks
SG - Smallcap Growth stocks
SV - Smallcap Value stocks
LC - LargeCap stocks
LG - Largecap Growth stocks
LV - Largecap Value stocks
PM - Precious Metals, often stocks instead of physical

Here's a list of investment acronyms: http://www.investopedia.com/categories/acronyms.asp
I suppose you could link a list like that instead of having to define things like TIPS and REIT, which are really basic. And to cover infequently used things like ROI. (Unlike Martha's NAV which is more common on this board.)
Just an idea; I don't think you should feel obligated to take any suggestions, unless you're being paid. :)
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

The MENSA entry in the list is funny, but may actually misinform some people...here's what Mensa really means:

The word "Mensa" means "table" in Latin. The name stands for a round-table society, where race, color, creed, national origin, age, politics, educational or social background are irrelevant.
http://www.mensa.org/index0.php?page=10

As I see it, Mensa is a social club for the somewhat intelligent. Many, but not all, members are social misfits. A few have emotional intelligence quotients below 70. But it is a fun group if you like to hang around fairly smart people. Including a few who are truly brilliant.
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

lazyday said:
The MENSA entry in the list is funny, but may actually misinform some people...here's what Mensa really means:
http://www.mensa.org/index0.php?page=10

As I see it, Mensa is a social club for the somewhat intelligent. Many, but not all, members are social misfits. A few have emotional intelligence quotients below 70. But it is a fun group if you like to hang around fairly smart people. Including a few who are truly brilliant.

Based on the history of this forum, I think my definition is more accurate. :D
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

Here's one I don't know, from a post by Uncle Mick today:


"At 12 years into ER - more concerned with asset allocation to get my Norwegian widow cut along with proper asset balance to run the slot between reasonible inflation effects and damping SD enough so I don't scare myself enough to pee my pants - 2002 dip was thus normal market fluctuation."

SD? 
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

Standard Deviation

Funny, my posts are doing weird things. I posted the above when no further posts showed in the thread, and in another thread I posted a response to someone and noticed later that my post appeared above theirs in the thread...
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

Or Laurence using SD for San Diego, when I am thinking "South Dakota?"
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

Hey Martha- how about a trip report. Where are you? Are you having fun?

Is Greg surviving without you?

Ha
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

IIRC - If I remember correctly
 
Re: - Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum -

DFA : Dimensional Fund Advisors. Usually referring to one of their mutual funds. Some slice-and-dice members like these guys for their generous selection of sector play funds, but you have to use one of their advisors to be able to buy into their funds.

BTW (or unclemick's BTY I think) : By The Way

DH or DW : Dear Hubby or Dear Wife

REHP : Retire Early Home Page. May refer to the website, its attached forums or a board by the same name at The Motley Fool website. Many board members found their way here from one of those before this place became Google- and press-worthy.

Not sure if DCM belongs in the list. A Google search shows the term appearing in two threads, and the person who would use or inspire that term no longer posts here. IMHO
 
Re: * Acronyms Frequently Used on the Forum *

nm = Never Mind
 
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