Recent content by pumpkineater

If anyone already has a cell plan and just wants to keep their old land-line number, you can port the land-line number to a voip company like voip.ms and configure voip.ms to forward all the calls to your cell plan phone number. I think that costs me about $1/month extra to do.

I see. I ended up replacing ooma with voip.ms. They have servers located all over the USA. I configured my software to use the closest one and have been very happy with the results. For anyone wanting to get their geek on with an old pc or by renting a server in the cloud, here is a site...

How does the ooma do for latency (the delay between when you speak and when the person hears you)? I tried ooma 10 or so years ago here in Michigan and found I couldn't live with the latency: it was like talking on a walky talky (for anyone who remembers those!). I eventually decided ooma...

Zinger147 - the Obi will let you plug your traditional house phones that you may have all over the house that all ring at the same time, if you want to keep using those. It probably also offers less expensive international rates to many countries (compared to using your cell provider for...

Newegg had a coupon code to get the latest Obi for $39.99: http://m.spoofee.com/polycom-obi200-voip-telephone-adapter-with-google-voice/deals/934912

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/271892/warning-leveraged-and-inverse-etfs-kill-portfolios

I think it only turned out that way, because the approximately 6 month period from 9/30/2011 - 3/12/12 saw a terrific equity rally of 22.4% even as volatility declined from 43% to 15.6%. I'm not sure whether it's the average volatility or the decline in volatility that affects the results...

Glad to help. I have Bloomberg available here at work. It might also be do-able using other free tools available on the web.

Let me back up my statement with a time period when you can see what I mean: During the nearly 3 year period from 11/5/2008 thru 9/30/2011, volatility averaged 27% as measured by the VIX. During the same time, the Direxion Daily S&P 500 Bull (3x), returned 7.1% but the S&P 500 index itself...

The fundamental problem with holding the leveraged etf's longer term, is that you also end up short volatility. In layman's terms that means every day the market goes down, the funds must sell stock to maintain the 3x leverage. Every day the market goes up, they are forced to buy more stock...

I have some ibonds and tbills too at Treasury Direct (electronically) and just finished naming a beneficiary on each of them (it only allows naming 1 single beneficiary per "lot" of bonds, but you can divide your bonds into as many lots as you need). It might be easier to hold the bonds through...

I still use Microsoft Money with an excel plug in that extracts the transactions into a spreadsheet I created to track the budget. I have 20 years of budget data available in Money

As a child doing this very task for my elderly mother who became bedridden and has a little dimentia but still wanted to live in her home, the jointly titled bank account is far easier to use than a power of attorney ever would have been. A lot of institutions didn't want to accept power of...

I didn't realize that. It seems like if you get really sick sometime, someone besides you should be able to pay your bills with your own money for you....

I understand that most investment accounts can be handled through beneficiary designations, bank accounts you might consider handling by titling them joint with a younger, trusted relative in addition to yourself. That leaves the home and automobile(s). There is something called a quit claim...