Recent content by ulrichw

I'd strongly recommend waiting until at least FRA (Full Retirement Age) to take your SS benefit, and I'd at least consider waiting until 70. You have enough money to bridge the gap, and SS gives you inflation protection that no other investment vehicle does. Your wife will also benefit from a...

I'll differ slightly with other people's advice - I think you may be relatively close, but that's if, and only if your spending assumption (42K per year) works out. My guess is that your SS benefit should be close to maximum - this means that if you hold off until 70 to collect, it should be...

I have to say that even though I'm a long-time Quicken user (20+ years), I'm getting close to the end of the line with them. I'm going to give the subscription a chance, but their regular pricing is above my pain threshold. As a public service - the best sale price I've seen for Deluxe so far...

I think you picked a good example of the articles documenting so-called money-laundering through Bitcoin. The article is a fluff piece written by some legal group (HG.org) likely trying to leverage the popularity of Bitcoin into getting some web hits. There's nothing particularly inaccurate...

Putting things into perspective: Those $6000 of capital gains are likely a very small percentage of the capital gains taxes you'll pay over your lifetime (I'm reading between the lines here: Your username implies you're fairly early in your investing career, and you seem to be doing well). I...

It's definitely not a medical expense. If your HSA custodian allows you to invest your money, there are strategies that can be beneficial to you where you don't spend any money from this account until after you retire. Why? Because it's tax-free if you spend it on medical costs when you retire...

I'm assuming for the moment that this was not meant rhetorically. https://www.investopedia.com/news/short-bitcoin/ TL;DR one way is that cryptocurrency exchanges let you do that. See, for example bittrex.com Futures will soon be available through the CBOE, so that's another.

There are two factors at play here: 1. I was under a misconception of how CAPE10 is calculated - Mea culpa. I thought it was a simple moving average of PE - it is actually the sum of inflation-adjusted earnings over the last 10 years divided by current price. This changes the strength of the...

Your logic is incorrect - you're not losing an average year - you're losing a specific year with a specific value. The spike is at about 120 - the low the following year is around 13. This means that about 100 extra points disappear when the spike disappears. These points are being spread over...

I'll take a different approach - I think the most "iffy" part of your plan is if you can continue to live on $25K a year (not counting health insurance). Heck - even if you will spend more in retirement (free time could mean higher spending), you should be just fine. Here are the layers of...

The IRS considers it to be an asset ("Property" to be precise): from https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-guidance

I've always objected to the amount of importance given to CAPE10: an evenly weighted 10 year average seems like an extremely naive way to model market potential. For one - why 10 years? Seems like someone just liked a nice round number. For another, why is the year 10 years ago just as...

I would venture that any legitimate 401(k) plan *does* keep these funds in separate accounts. Why? It's the law. Here's the excerpt from 26 U.S. Code § 402A (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/402A) In my current 401(k) account, the top-level views all show the amounts combined, but...

A couple of references I found. First, in response to Gayl: In addition to akck's correction (it's not a $1 for $1 reduction of benefits), there is also this paragraph in the SSA's explanation of WEP: (source: https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf) Second, I found a reference that suggests...

You probably meant this to be rhetorical, but I'll take the bait. Well, one possible answer is that not all government programs have to be redistributive - i.e., not all programs have to move money from richer people to poorer people. In this case the program is designed to artificially favor...