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The father of a dear friend and colleague passed away last night due to COVID-19. Both of my friend's parents were positive for the virus, and my friend had to be in quarantine due to exposure to them (he had delivered groceries to them.)

At the core of my question is whether I should be willing to pay any sort of premium for a cumulative preferred over a non-cumulative. While it is not a huge factor, I think it is even less so for REIT preferreds.

Does a cumulative provision on a REIT preferred really offer that much protection? Because the law says that REITs have to pay out earnings as common dividends, and preferreds are senior to common stock, it seems that REITS cannot merely make the business decision to temporarily suspend...

I do think that a very valid point you make is what the impact of passive investing is on price discovery. How can the market possibly be pricing in differences in the future prospects for companies if most people are just putting in money in a way that is blind to those differences? I get my...

I did find an old poll on here that showed that the people who had decided not to buy it outnumbered those who did by about 2-to-1. My hope it that this thread isn't so much right v wrong as it is sorting through the considerations one ought to work through, much as the list in your post...

In a low interest rate environment, holding a mortgage that is offset by cashflow doesn't seem like a universally bad idea.

That is a big issue, to be sure. That exactly the issue I was thinking about when I typed "more predictable" in my post. It is surely not 100% predictable and anyone who is considering LTCI and believes that it is the case is mistaken.

While my post count reveals me to be a newbe here, and I may not be as skilled with the search feature as I might be, I am not finding as many threads on LTCI as I thought there might be. It is a potentially huge financial decision, and people in their 50's are at the right point in life to be...

Late addition to the class roster. My 33 year career wraps up at the end of the month. DW will keep working some, but has enough flexibility that we will be a lot more flexible in terms of travel and activities.

One of my financial rules is to never invest in an instrument I cannot fully understand. The primary reason is that my counterparty (whoever is selling it to me) probably does understand it completely because they wrote the contract and is using that differential understanding to their...

Call Fidelity customer service and tell them your goal is to consolidate accounts--either at them or someplace else. Perhaps the risk of losing your account entirely will create some flexibility.

It absolutely is risk arbitrage. I have minimized the risk by having nine different bond holdings, with the largest being Southwest Airlines at $25K and a couple of sketchier ones being only $5k. And given that the bonds all mature at dates certain around the time that the mortgage is paid off...

I appreciate the humor that other people have brought to the discussion; I had hoped that the title of the thread might create the space for that. This is not a huge make or break decision for us. I did annuitize the pension account balance from an employer for whom I worked for about a decade...

I sometimes think that some of my colleagues think that I am admitting failure/"can't hack it any more" by leaving at straight up 60, even though I am getting an ER incentive equal to about 35% of my compensation package.

If a title like that doesn't get a thread opened, nothing will. My wife and I were blind pig lucky about 6 years ago when we bought our current house and got a 15 year mortgage at 2 5/8%. (Do you remember the days of 10 and 12% mortgages?) Current balance on it is about $140K. Now that we...

I appreciate OP's honesty and candor. Here are some thoughts, for what they are worth. You can take your foot off the savings rate a bit. You want a life partner, not a subordinate. Encourage her to develop skills and become less dependent on you to be the responsible one for both of you...

I'm thinking that life insurance sufficient to maintain the current standard of living for the next decade (until the 11YO launches) has merit. Should the beer truck get you, hopefully there will be enough $$ to allow your survivors to focus solely on that loss, and not have to make other...

Thanks for all of the input. This illustrates the cognitive and emotional components of retirement decision making. Cognitively I see the numbers as clearly as you all do, and they don't change regardless of the income forecaster (like firecalc) I plug them into. Mathematically, I got this. But...

"Cresting the summit" may be right, but I feel like my headlights are still pointed up and not giving me much of a view of the other side yet. And my firecalc runs all turn out fine.

As a longtime lurker on this site, I have been impressed by the quality of advice regarding retirement finances that the members offer to one another. So while my decision to retire is a done deal (irrevocable and happening at the end of the month,) and I think I have things pretty well lined...