paul merriman has some excellent portfolios for every risk level .

https://www.paulmerriman.com/best-in-cl ... tions-2025

https://lookerstudio.google.com/reporti ... qmha3-AK5k

but still holds true . the base rate is always based on a guess about the future inflation . so no guarantee you will beat inflation , especially one’s own personal rate of inflation which is very different from just the cpi which is a price change index . it has no calculation in it for how many t...

but still holds true . the base rate is always based on a guess about the future inflation . so no guarantee you will beat inflation , especially one’s own personal rate of inflation which is very different from just the cpi which is a price change index . it has no calculation in it for how many ti...

if you read tyler’s take on them they are not guaranteed to beat inflation because of how they work and in fact it was almost a coin toss as to whether they beat inflation. the base base rate is set by a guess as far as future inflation. as guesses go they only guessed right about half the time if t...

not a fan of tips for all the reasons tyler wrote about

absolutely timing matters . we delayed selling something one year and they raised the capital gain tax from 15% to 23.5% on that level gain . it was 20% plus the surcharge on investments it was a crazy extra amount of taxes . tax loss harvesting is a double edged sword . you really are just kicking ...

after a while it’s like trying to be a little bit pregnant . if you aren’t following the portfolio as designed then you can do as you like . that’s a call no one else can make for you . most who are waiting for that proverbial fall in stocks gave up so much over the years they won’t ever get back to...

if you are holding long term bonds then the cash represents the other half of the barbel, that brings down the volatility and duration of the long term bonds

HODL only makes sense as an investing strategy for income producing assets. If you never sell non-income producing assets, you never make any money. the dividend doesn’t mean you made money . it means you made withdrawals of your own money . dividend payers have paid dividends out right in to the b...

if you google it ,intermediate is generally defined as short as 3.5 and as long as ten years ief is considered an intermediate term bond fund tlt has a duration of 15.7 years . ief has a duration of 7 a 50% split between tlt and cash is pretty darn close to 50% in ief so it all depends what funds ar...

20%-25% long term treasuries and 20% -25% cash have about the same duration as 50% in intermediate term bonds . they form a barbel that plays out about the same

decent returns on gold really started about 20-35 years ago .

once gold etfs came on the scene gold became more main stream .

you would be hard pressed to find any time frame the last 25 years a combo of equities and bonds beat equities and gold

it’s only a problem if it goes down

what i find is when you have big positions to sell the spreads on gld are smaller than the cheaper etfs .

it can actually cost more in spread difference than expense difference.

gld is a more liquid for big positions.

many times i had only a portion go in gldm and the rest went at lower prices

well let’s see , this year

upro up 36%. , vs a total market fund or s&p at 18%

tmf is flat vs about 4.45% for tlt

pff 5.17% vs sgov 4.15

gold the same at up 71%

portfolio charts does not go back far enough to even pick up on all the time frames that failed. the worst time frames to have retired are 1907 , 1929 , 1937 , 1965 and 1966 . we have not had anything as bad since 1966 the trinity and safe max go back to 1926 , firecalc goes back to 1871 so it picks...

no one actually spends like a robot so typically a safe withdrawal rate based on a certain percentage applies to our first year . there are many reasons why i would not use what’s called the constant dollar method of withdrawal which is what the 4% swr is based on , for a lot of reasons . personally...

i would argue 4.7% for a 30 year return is a draw rate , not a safe withdrawal rate since it has failed already to last enough times to achieve a 90% success rate based on what we already saw in america . it already failed to last 25 time frames for a mere 80% success rate while it doesn’t have gold...

i meant rate wise compared to cash investments falling .

there is a good chance you could see some capital gains too.

at this level of rates now i see more risk in equities than long term bonds .

when rates were so low long term bonds were not a good choice in my opinion but that’s different now

ibit is 2% of the portfolio.

i wouldn’t sit on more than not no matter whether i thought it was headed up or down .

its more like a tech stock then alternative now

correct , i bought them at EMS back then . it cost me 1k back then for the shell , the down liner , and the shell pants and fleece pants . everyone thought i was nuts . well i am still wearing it decades later .. been camping out in snow in tents and hunting in it for years one year it was so cold w...

These are the kinds of stories I find a lot more interesting these days than the general rate of inflation. There's this phenomenon that's starting to be named "luxury poverty" to describe a sort of inversion of the historical norm; now poor people can now afford the latest iPhone and a n...

what you have to understand is time and inflation can be the great equalizer . when i bought my first home it was 35k in suffolk county long island in the 1970s . that was an amazing amount of money to me back then and way more in cost than my rent was . well , today i don’t own that house but if i ...

big difference buying tlt today then when rates were in the 1% range . we are up near historical averages today not way below them like back then. we saw rates soar in 2022. i am not a fan of long term bonds but i can see tlt today with the fed more inclined to lower rates or hold them as opppsed to...