> Bonds are no longer recommended. Current research indicates 100% equities to be the best composition leading up to, and past, retirement.
Are you referring to Anarkulova et al? Might be worth mentioning that the fixed income part is replaced with international equity, not more domestic equity.
That’s been something I’ve started doing. The nice part of the bond chunk of my investment portfolio is the current income aspect of it, with monthly dividends that give an annualized return of a touch under 4% on top of the capital growth.
So there’s two ways you make money from any mutual fund: the first is that the value of the shares can go up (that’s called capital growth). The second is through dividends and distributions. Dividends will be higher with a bond fund than stocks just because the trend for the last few decades has been for corporations to focus on growing share price rather than paying out dividends to shareholders. Distributions are realized capital gains in the fund that are paid out to shareholders, typically annually or semiannually.¹ Stock funds usually pay dividends on a quarterly basis, while bond funds may pay monthly. In my case, I’m getting a monthly dividend of about ⅓% from my bond fond (Fidelity bond index fund), although checking my records, the share price has been relatively steady over the last few years so my IRR is not that much above the dividend rate.
Another good option for something that can give good current income is REIT stocks. The management fees on the funds that specialize in these tend to be high for my tastes (I like passively managed funds with management fees that could be rounding errors) so when I’ve had money in REITs, I’ve typically looked at the top stocks in the REIT funds and just bought those directly with dividend reinvestment. Note that because of the nature of REIT dividends and taxes, it’s better to use tax-advantaged accounts to buy these than to put money in a regular retail account towards them.²
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1. Back during the first dotcom goldrush when tech stocks were especially volatile (1999–2001 in particular), people who bought dotcom mutual funds in taxable accounts often ended up with a big distribution from the fund and a drop in share price greater than that distribution so that they would end up not only losing money on their investment but they also had a tax bill for their troubles since distributions will count as realized capital gains.
2. Important to note that I’m not a financial advisor and my advice is probably garbage.
Their definition of long run and your definition of long run are probably different.
Also, it should be noted, just because it's the optimal to have the most $'s that shouldn't be the goal. The goal should be to survive your retirement with "enough".
And it should also be mentioned, most people can't stomach holding 100% equities, for a very good reason. When the 40-60% market crash happens, people get emotional and make emotional decisions. Sure there are the lucky few that can hold out, but most can't. Are you going to be one of the few lucky ones? If you haven't yet been through it once(last one in the USA was 2008/9), how do you know for sure?
For most people, $VT (or VWRA) is optimal. You should have a U.S. tilt because most growth is coming out of the U.S. $VT will naturally rebalance into international equities on that growth. If you already have a U.S. heavy portfolio and want more international exposure, $VXUS.
Lots of confusion and misunderstanding in these comments. Not surprising, given the highly charged nature of the subject. I highly recommend Ray Madoff's book The Second Estate [1] to learn more about the topic.
I believe some of Ray Madoff's points are that the tax code and most tax intuitions kinda differ.
There's the idea that "wealth" gains tend to not be taxed for a variety of reasons. The common parlance of "Buy, Borrow, Die" category things. The "step-up in basis" category things - i.e. no capital gains tax realized on lots of inherited wealth. (The inheritance tax might trigger in some cases, but oddly the capital gains tax often might not be triggered on transferred assets because they were never sold and the new possessor will be taxed at the stepped up received value if they ever sell. So there's a chunk of appreciation that never received capital gains taxation.) Trust related things.
There's the idea that 501(c)(4)s allow wealth to be transferred untaxed while retaining control over the assets (particularly because those organizations can engage in political activity, but I'd guess generally some of the organizations exert lots of influence/prestige.)
So perhaps OP is suggesting that maybe there's some fungibility in income tax % and wealth tax %, but when you look at the tax code the equivalency looks pretty weak currently.
A lot of countries require you to declare your total wealth on your tax forms. Then once someone gets audited, that gets checked. Obviously it’s possible to hide it, but that in itself is a crime, and not everyone is willing to risk going to jail over paying taxes.
The first step we need to take is to invest in the IRS. Every dollar invested in the IRS returns between $5-9. Couple that with fines that offset the cost of auditing, and "hidden wealth" becomes a liability too expensive for people to bother with.
Looks terrific! I have a suggestion as you continue to add features and think about scripting. sc-im has lua external functions, but you cannot pass a range of cells, only the value of one cell. This severely limits the usefulness of external lua scripts. If/when you add scripting, hopefully you can overcome this limitation. If so, you'll have at least one more user!
> Most shoes have carbon plates in them now, they act as a spring, storing energy and propelling athletes forwards.
This seems unlikely to be true, although it is repeated in every article I read about carbon plated shoes. The people that study them in a lab environment seem to disagree. See some of the papers here:
Yes, most of the studies show there is a very large individual variation. The original 4% figure and similar studies were an average of something like 1-7% across runners.
Also interestingly, the shoe in this record uses much less carbon than past shoes, both saving weight and allowing even more super foam where much of the energy return comes from. Though there so much variance in shoe design and materials there are only theories on how much comes from the plate vs foam vs stack height vs weight vs other factors.
Yes, that's correct. There's a mistaken belief that it's the major source of performance improvements. It plays a role, but the bigger gains come from the stack height (limb lengthening effect) and the energy return of the foam. But that leads to very unstable shoes. The carbon gives rigidity to balance this out.
Quite possible there's a psychological benefit from super shoes, they certainly feel fast. Though there are enough plausible mechanisms it's unlikely to be the major factor.
There's an almost inhuman amount of mind over matter psychology when it comes to endurance running. Unless you can duplicate reality multiple times and swap out the shoes without anyone knowing to do properly scientific testing, we can't know for sure what did it. (The shoes probably helped.)
> - Late payment shall incur interest at 8% above the BoE base rate and a late fee of 100 GBP as per the UK Late Payment Legislation. Partial payments on invoices shall apply to late fees, interest, and then principal, in that order.
As I understand it, from our lawyer, is that this exact wording is automatically enforceable in UK courts and easiest in the event of a dispute. It’s also generally internationally accepted.
I've always wondered, in cases like this where 8%+2% (for example) can either mean 10% or 8.16%, why doesn't the contract just give a fictional example of how the maths would work out?
When used as a verb, it should be "set up," and when used as a noun, "setup."
Other examples (verb, noun):
log in, login
back up, backup
shut down, shutdown
break down, breakdown
warm up, warmup
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