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I suppose things are different by region, but I have a basic home phone service through Quest. I can piggy back on that with high speed internet by signing a contract to use them for two years at $26.95 per month. They promise not to internet raise rates for the rest of your life (I suppose...

I've been following a few of the recent threads that express some trepidation at a 4% withdrawal rate and are tending to favor 3% or lower. I may be a little new at this but.... Let's say you are 55 and have an expected draw of about 30 more years. If you are keeping equal to inflation you can...

In early 2007 I'll qualify for a small pension and decent health benefits 'til 65. Plus my nest egg with which I'm figuring will call it a last call for working days. I'll be 55 and probably will be on a comfortable but slightly tight budget and modest income. My nest egg will be my primary...

I have both Fidelity and VG. I have something about having everything in one place. A coupe of years ago I had to transfer an inherited IRA from the benefactor account to a new account. I called both Fidelity and VG for advice and finally ended up with Fidelity. The transfer proved pretty...

It's amazing to see how many people and companies this has happened to. We went through the same corpobabble anouncement. In our case they talked about how other companies are doing the same thing and the pension benefits were reduced to stay competative. Not a bad line actually, as it probably...

Charlie and ATS, those are examples of exacyly what I'm thinking about, thanks. I do have Thau's bond book and will have to do some further research. I guess mostly I was wondering if this type of idea sounded reasonable and if anyone else was doing something similar. And a big point being that...

Thanks. I'll have to print out the article to fully digest it, but it does look interesting and helpful. I also looked up what Berstein might have to say about this in the Four Pillars book. He pretty much discourages investing in individual corporates because of default risk and the impact to a...

About two years ago I realigned my portfolio and put a significant percentage into short and intermediate bond funds. Needless to say, they have not really performed up to my expectations. I was wondering if it would be possible to improve things by purchasing several quality corporates on the...

X-files isn't on any more?! I went TV-less for about 5 or so years and about a year ago I brought it out of storage. I don't mind turning my mind to mush a couple of hours a week (golf is great for this) and there are a few fun things to watch. One thing I've noticed has changed over the five...

I guess if you're a buy and hold sort it might not be such a bad deal. I bought equal amounts of VG short term and intermediate term bond index funds about a year and a half ago. This was when many weres predicting that rising interest rates would hit longer term bond funds pertty good. The...

I'm certainly not a bond expert, but as close as I can figure long term rates are bound to inch upwards, or the yield curve for bonds will become inverted. Check my logic. The yields for short term and intermediate term CD's per ING and other sources seem almost flat. Greenspan has continued to...

Well, I'm not sure about T-bills, but my guess is that the Fed is aware of the threat of an inverse yield curve and will start slowing down the increases in short term rate for this reason.

It isn't just you, but I might add to your list that the younger workers I see spend a whole bunch of money on worthless electonic gizmos, have no concept of saving, don't realize that there could be a hundred people in foreign countries willing to do their work for a fraction of their wage...

Re: Generic ER:  Any takers? We had some "readjustments" of our benefits at work and received some advisory literature and consulting with our 401K provider, Fidelity. If I recall correctly, the Fidelity literature said that a person of 55 paying for "reasonable" self-insured health insurance...

Re: Generic ER:  Any takers? I'm pretty much Mr. Generic and won't be much help with a split vote, as I'm undecided right now. I can recall a wiser and younger time when beyond the basics, incremental costs were translated into six packs of beer and pairs of jeans as the basic units of...

I think that many of the folks requiring the use of Medicaid to cover health care costs are those facing huge bills for rest home and long term care. Few would argue the wisdom of health insurance, but the crowd is probably split on LTC insuance. While the rules for Medicaid do seem a little...

I don't have CD's and am not retired, but for my shorter term investments I've purchased I-bonds in smaller amounts but have other money in money market accounts and am holding off on longer term fixed rate investments til things settle down a bit. I've found some local banks that are paying a...

I think I saw somewhere that two thirds of the heads-of- households between 55 and 65 are still working. I guess if you beat similar odds you are statistically retired early. Most of my peers in thier late 40's or early 50's who have average sized families, two incomes, a good job, and live a...

Sorry if this has been discussed, but the income the calculator tells me I can acheive with a 95% success rate is quite a bit less using the assumption of commercial paper for my fixed income holdings compared to using 5 year treasuries? I would think that commercial paper pays more interest...

Several months ago I got an email on eBay format asking me to reverify my user name and password. I know it was dumb, but it was just when all these phishing things were getting going, and I filled out the information. Next thing you know, someone in Italy is trying to sell computers using my...

As far as AARP being a lobby group, I don't agree with everything they do, but I figure us older folks need someone to represent our issues. I think I read somewhere that they are the biggest lobby in the country, next to the NRA. I won't be joining the NRA, but do belong to AARP. I get $2.00 a...

I found this article from The Journal of Financial Planning to be very enlightening. I've printed it out and given it to several of my peers. It is an older article, but as I understand it has be offred recently as one of the best of the Journal in the past 25 years of articles...

Hey, I've got a stove exactly like yours! If you can remember those harvest golds and avocado greens that were popular a few years back, you might think about the trends that could change reagarding those fancy Corian and granite counter tops people are going with these days. I am giving my...

The rugged individual approach certainly has a romantic image attached to it. Right now, corporate profits are somewhat strong and real wages are stagnating. I suppose it would be worse if corporate profits were weak. But stagnating wages are not good for the economy as a whole. A couple of...

John G..... I'm not sure it's unfair at the local level or if there's much I can do to change things. It does make me unhappy. Reduced corporate pensions, overcompensated CEO's and merger lay-offs are the trend for anyone in corporate America. The management rhetoric on this is that they are...