Investments

I went to a financial planner once. All he wanted to do was sell me an annuity or failing that, take 2%-4% of my portfolio annually as a management fee. I never ran away from someone as fast as that guy.

I've been somewhat of a Boglehead for many years. My portfolio is 2/3 Vanguard Total World Market ETF, 1/3 cash in a CD.
 
frank2009 said:
I went to a financial planner once. All he wanted to do was sell me an annuity or failing that, take 2%-4% of my portfolio annually as a management fee. I never ran away from someone as fast as that guy.

I've been somewhat of a Boglehead for many years. My portfolio is 2/3 Vanguard Total World Market ETF, 1/3 cash in a CD.
Click to expand...

You did the right thing.

BTW, you don't have to look very far to find people attempting to sell all kinds of things for much more than they are worth.
 
It's not a coincidence that so many people on an early-retirement board are Bogleheads.

Learn it. Love it. Live it.

boglehead-guide.jpg
 
I used FAs and brokers when I was busy earning money. Then I opened a discount brokerage account about 20 years ago and started my own investments. After 5 years I moved everything to the discount broker.

Now if I wanted to get into the newsletter business, I would write one. But it seems too much like a job. The best way to get cured is to find a few dogs and watch the number for Buy ratings for them. Or watch Mad Money.
 
I have a hard time stomaching mad money. He is never right. I play my own hunches and blue chips. DCA a bit. Day trade some. I try hard not to lose money. Seem to make but probably more effort than worth. Could just do the index funds at some point.
 
Totally disagree. Gotta say I have spent the last 2 days reading the bogglehead stuff and though I see how it works, not sure I see the full value. I actually like investing and it's a hobby. Yeah, I have a pretty extensive portfolio with and I just counted, I own 38 different accounts which hold about 144 different assets, stocks, funds, bonds, cash, real estate.

I got no issue with performance numbers.
This past year is around 15%
Last few years have been 16,15,41,27 and 8 percent respectively.
So I am not doing anything wrong in my view.

Now that I am almost 58yo and thinking about retiring I am just looking at what I should do to get income because to be honest, I don't need 15%, I need 5%
If I take $4mil and get 5% I can live quite well!

So I just did a year end analysis and I should adjust my portfolio concentration.
When I back out my DW company stock which I am limited at selling and just look at liquid assets my breakdown is 45% stocks, 15% bonds, and 40% cash. Yes, cash is high, too high, so what do I do? I am thinking about starting to buy bonds, but with prices dropping pretty rapidly perhaps I should wait. I just put a decent amount of cash into 3% CD at AFCU. But still have some to invest and plenty to live on if I need to tap it which I won't since DW is still working.
 
djr59 said:
Totally disagree.
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This board thrives on disagreement! :D

It's clear you enjoy keeping all those investment plates spinning and you don't want to give up your hobby, so no more recommendations here for less labor intensive investment options. Have fun and good luck keeping up those nice annual returns!

And on we go...
 
djr59 said:
Totally disagree. Gotta say I have spent the last 2 days reading the bogglehead stuff and though I see how it works, not sure I see the full value. I actually like investing and it's a hobby. Yeah, I have a pretty extensive portfolio with and I just counted, I own 38 different accounts which hold about 144 different assets, stocks, funds, bonds, cash, real estate.
Click to expand...

I think the only person qualified to give you advice is yourself. There are a few stock pickers on here, but the indexing folks aren't qualified to give you advice. Go on over to the stock picking forum and you'll have more joy.

I will offer one bit of advice......5%/year is too much income to be taking from your portfolio.
 
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djr59 said:
.....Yes, cash is high, too high, so what do I do? I am thinking about starting to buy bonds, but with prices dropping pretty rapidly perhaps I should wait. I just put a decent amount of cash into 3% CD at AFCU. But still have some to invest ....
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You might consider target-maturity bond ETFs as a CD substitute. They are like buying a proportional interest in a diversified corporate bond portfolio that matures in a stated year. They pay a terminal distribution for the maturity value of the portfolio in the maturity year. The 2023 corporate version is probably fairly comparable to your 7 year CD and pays 3.1% based on the most recent trading price.

I own both the corporate and high yield flavors. YMMV.

Product List - Exchange Traded Funds | Guggenheim Investments - Investment Management for Financial Professionals
 
braumeister said:
I think he meant he just needs 5% return.
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Correct. 5% return plus ss income will be. Ore than enough.


Also thanks for the Guggenheim funds. I will take a look. I have some corporate individual bonds. I also think I would benefit from some tax free funds. I was in the vanguard New York tax free bond fund but got out as it started to drop. yield for a tax free was very decent.
 
90% invested in individual stocks. Have had 2-3 advisors over the years but their service wasn't worth the cost. We live off of the dividends + SS and the investments have been stable for a long time so very few costs. I am in the early stages of migrating to ETFs for simplification - DW has absolutely no interest in investing so need to position accounts so that they are set and forget.
 
djr59 said:
Correct. 5% return plus ss income will be. Ore than enough.


Also thanks for the Guggenheim funds. I will take a look. I have some corporate individual bonds. I also think I would benefit from some tax free funds. I was in the vanguard New York tax free bond fund but got out as it started to drop. yield for a tax free was very decent.
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...So what percentage of your portfolio will you take as income each year?
 
If I can get a 5% yield I would t take any or just what I need to cover expenses. I have 2 goals. One is to make sure my wife has enough to live on as she 11 years younger and two to leave a decent amount to my 2 kids. If I can pull $150k a year out and not touch principal then I think I will have a nice retirement!
 
djr59 said:
If I can get a 5% yield I would t take any or just what I need to cover expenses. I have 2 goals. One is to make sure my wife has enough to live on as she 11 years younger and two to leave a decent amount to my 2 kids. If I can pull $150k a year out and not touch principal then I think I will have a nice retirement!
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Dividends are useful in retirement, but I think you need to do a bit more reading about safe withdrawal rates and schemes.
 
travelover said:
Anyone that could consistently beat the market would not waste their time writing newsletters or giving seminars. Think about it. :cool:
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Not really true at all. I could be a psychic but I'd still need capital to take advantage of my gift. Writing a newsletter would be easy guaranteed money and would probably be a fun thing to do.
Now I do agree that most of those guys are more hype than substance but I just don't think the "If they were good they wouldn't need to write a newsletter" doesn't hold water.
 
nun said:
I will offer one bit of advice......5%/year is too much income to be taking from your portfolio.
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+ 1. If your withdrawal rate is truly 5%, then you are taking on a degree of risk that exceeds nearly all conservative norms. If you are comfortable taking that gamble then you will find few like minded souls on this forum.



Sent from my iPad using Early Retirement Forum
 
i guess I am one of the few like minded souls, i find morningstar discussion forums very helpful, i followed the link to boggleheads and spend a minute there and didn't see the appeal, appears like random discussions one could spend days reading. I tried to do a search for CEF focused investors, didn't find any. Morningstar has focused forums, the CEF forum and the Fidelity forum, recent buy and sells appeals to me.
 
perrytime said:
i guess I am one of the few like minded souls, i find morningstar discussion forums very helpful, i followed the link to boggleheads and spend a minute there and didn't see the appeal, appears like random discussions one could spend days reading. I tried to do a search for CEF focused investors, didn't find any. Morningstar has focused forums, the CEF forum and the Fidelity forum, recent buy and sells appeals to me.
Click to expand...

Almost by definition you won't find many bogleheads using CEFs in their portfolios.
 
I carry and trade many different investments. Though the boglehead concept holds some merit I think it is not diversified enough. These days there are more ways to diversify and still limit risk. In fact, I am starting to think in my old age that the market is too risky for me. One of the reasons I am looking at real estate funding and preferred stocks. Both have some sense of security against the original investments and have a lower chance in my view of principal loss.
 
djr59 said:
........Though the boglehead concept holds some merit I think it is not diversified enough.... .
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I would be hard to be more diversified than half Total World Stock Market and half Total Market Bond fund portfolio that is frequently mentioned there.
 
What I am saying is your not exposed to other forms of investments like real estate.
I think real estate deserves a place. Whether thru reit or crowdfunding and i like the crowdfunding right now.
 
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