Search results

I am 50 and will be entering into partial retirement soon followed by full retirement. I plan on making reasonable pessimistic assumptions about various factors beyond my control to stress test my numbers. These assumptions are a) Inflation will be 0.2% higher than current inflation swaps...

Around 4% for the entire year

Some of the inflation might be delayed. For example, rental costs are shooting up but until more rental agreements are re-signed next year rental costs in 2021 I suspect are only slightly up when compared to 2020 when the "spot rate" of rents clearly shows that costs are rising rapidly. It...

Thanks. I guess argument is that REITs are volatile and this one is not. Of course I am suspicious that this is not the case

A friend of my suggested looking into something like fundrise.com which seems to allow one to buy into a cluster of real estate assets. His idea is that bond yields are too low and stocks too volatile. Any feedback on pros and cons of such an idea ?

I was 34 when I was still single. I got married the year after which added another $400K so I was destined to hit this milestone no matter what at 35.

Do You Make $400,000 a Year But Feel Broke? Video version of the same article. A hypothetical budget with a 400K income with very little left for savings.

I am meeting with an agent today that is selling LTC insurance. I really have enough assets to self-insure but I wanted to learn more about this. What sort of questions do people on this forum recommend I ask this agent.

See Obamacare Insurer WellPoint Sees Double-Digit Rate Rise - Bloomberg "Two months before health insurers must submit rate proposals for 2015 to government regulators, WellPoint Inc. (WLP) fired a surprising shot across their bow by predicting it may ask for “double-digit plus” increases."

As a part of my retirement planning xls I also simulate what my federal tax liabilities are. I would love to hear what part of people's taxable income that comes from equities (be it stocks, mutual funds, or etfs) ends up being qualified dividends/long term capital gains. Right now I assume...

I actually agree that chained CPI is a more accurate way of measuring cost inflation. My main point is that relative to current law, the proposal to use chained CPI should be seen as a tax increase as chained CPI tend to be lower than CPI by around 0.2%-0.3% all things equal any given year.

The plan calls for the elimination of AMT. It also will use Chain-CPI instead of CPI to adjust tax brackets. So that is a hidden tax increase over time.

At a certain level, it is hard to argue with this. Of course one should seek to optimize after tax income and for sure having the lowest effective tax rate is not the only way to do it. I am not sure for me the way to achieve this is for greater economic growth. Greater economic growth might...

You make a good point. I realized that as I was going through various simulation of the current tax code with the proposed one.

I did some simulations of what my taxes during semi-retirement and full retirement might be under the current system and under this proposed system. It pretty much confirmed what I suspected, that this proposal would shift the relative tax burden from earned income to passive income. Under my...

Obviously, high tax states like HI, NY etc etc would be out against it as well.

House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp released a plan for tax reform which is dead on arrival but it seems to be a statement of principles of a tax reform plan which has lots of elements that could alter the tax code in the future. See The Basics of Chairman Camp’s Tax Reform Plan | Tax...

CBO came out with a report http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/45010-Outlook2014.pdf Which had some insights on medium term medicare costs among other things. It projected CPI to be around 2% 2014-2017 and 2.4% 2018-2024. It points out "Under current law, spending...

You are right. Sorry, I missed that. Thanks for pointing that out. This is very useful information.

I agree with you. Although my understanding is that there is a difference between deductible and OOP. I believe the $6750 is the OOP and not deductible which would be lower. So the insurance would start paying at a lower number beyond the deductible which still could be a number that is too...

I see. Thanks for info. But if 2014 it is 6350/12700, and it is 6750/13500, it looks like a jimp of 6.3% which is way more than CPI-U.

It seems there is some legal cap of $12700 under the Obamacare law on how much the OOP can go. My question is going forward in 2015 2016 and beyond will the $12700 go up every year and be linked to inflation? Or will it stay at $12700? Or it will be indexed to some health care cost inflation...

I am not sure about the long term 2% inflation rate. Looking at inflation swap market the 30 year inflation break-even is around 2.81%

Well, not all people vote. Turnout are a lot higher at the higher end of the income/wealth scale. People with high NW also can influence politics via funding candidates or organizations pushing a particular policy. The net affect is the ability of high NW people to influence public policy is...

If this were to take place expect a surge in the art market as people shift their wealth into non-traceable, non-liquid, and difficult to value forms of wealth.