Reub wrote: Who will take care of your physical gold when you are 90 and possibly in a nursing home?

It will be sitting in the bank safe deposit box waiting to pass to our heirs via our wills.

My wife will be 60 before too long.  Her Roth IRA is invested as a 4x25 HBPP, but of course the gold is in an ETF.  One of my goals is to increase our amount of physical gold, because most of our gold is in ETFs in our Roth IRAs and in my 401k.  I'm thinking that when she hits 60, maybe we should se...

With a lot of these crummy 401k plans, the best you can do is try to minimize fees and minimize portfolio management.  As a first cut, I would look at the funds available and see what is available with a low expense ratio (hopefully less than 0.2%) and what is available as passive funds (not activel...

Tyler, You mentioned that much of the emerging markets great performance was prior to 1994.  I think a really good addition to your charts, which would help see such trends over time, would be a chart with the portfolio real CAGR on the y-axis and years on the x-axis.  It would have say three lines ...

How frequently are you checking and trading?  Weekly?  Monthly?  Quarterly?  Yearly?

I'm thinking about getting a bit more aggressive with my overall portfolio, as I still have about 20 years to retirement.  I've been playing with various ideas involving higher allocations to stocks over at portfoliocharts.com.  I know it may not be the best time to get heavier into stocks, so maybe...

I need to make a decision for my 401k plan.  There is an S&P500 index fund available called the Vanguard Employee Benefit Index Fund, and it has a super low expense ratio of 0.01%.  Unfortunately, it is actually a collective investment trust.  I've read some disparaging comments about such trust...

I believe that a lot of homosexuals are born that way They are ALL born that way. The notion that it is somehow a choice is a myth perpetuated by the church.   i am not sure that is true..... it is a premise taken on to strengthen the case for rights, but biology being what it is, i suspect the rea...

Tyler, Would there be any chance of adding another asset to your charts:  zero-coupon long term treasury bonds (e.g., EDV or ZROZ)?  You would probably have to do some kind of synthetic calculation to get older data.  I'm not certain on the details of such a calculation, but it may not be very diffi...

Bill Bernstein's book "Deep Risk", addresses your issue about gold.  We talked about it here: http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/permanent-portfolio-discussion/considering-pp-have-questions/msg83163/#msg83163 My conclusion from Deep Risk was that gold doesn't really respond very well to...

Melveyr, Good to hear from you again.  The way I look at the gold allocation in the PP is that about half of the allocation makes sense in terms of providing a nice, non-correlated asset that can help to counterbalance the portfolio, and provide some rebalancing opportunities, when both stocks/bonds...

I like the Mt. Everest analogy. I also like the 35% rebalance band, which keeps me from having to rely on skill and fortitude. Here's a question that's been discussed before.  If long bond yields are below a certain percentage (say X percent) and we hit a 15/35 rebalance band on any asset, instead o...

Also, what would TLT be at if the long bond rate were at 1%?

Jafs, you probably think that you are arguing with a bunch of heartless people.  You are not.  We care about other people just as much as you do.  However, the answer to helping people doesn't come through government policy on wages, etc.  If you want to help people, then get off the couch and go vo...

I liked the book "Economics in One Lesson" by Hazlitt.

jafs, you missed your chance.  If you wanted to live in a centrally planned economy, you should have moved to the USSR while it still existed.

Did you never take an economics course?  If Walmart has to raise its prices to pay its employees more money, guess what happens to the demand?  It goes down.  This is called the law of supply and demand.

Can't you see that if you have to pay each one of the cashiers more money, then you won't be able to hire as many cashiers?

Nobody is stopping businesses from paying employees $10/hr if they think they are worth it. What we are trying to say is that businesses shouldn't be forced to pay people $10/hr who are not worth it.  All that does is cause price inflation and less employment at the lower end. The question is who g...

Nobody is stopping businesses from paying employees $10/hr if they think they are worth it.

What we are trying to say is that businesses shouldn't be forced to pay people $10/hr who are not worth it.  All that does is cause price inflation and less employment at the lower end.

You don't think that one can be coerced into compassion?  Isn't that what the New Testament is all about?  You know, be nice to each other or you will suffer for eternity. The New Testament is not about coercion.  It's about hope that there's a way to overcome the animal nature that you mentioned e...

Reub wrote: So what is the best way to invest my future winnings?

Math education for the poor.

Their website says that they won't pay if your gold just goes missing (i.e., if there is no sign of break in).  I'm not an expert on safe deposit box burglary mechanisms.  Does anyone have an idea what the chances are of an inside job versus an outside job?

I sent you a PM to ask some questions privately.  But for public consumption, do you mind saying if your taxes are high solely due to your investments?  Because that is definitely fixable, with one big modification to the PP. But if you have ordinary earnings putting you in the top bracket, that's ...

I think people not much older than ourselves would say it feels strange to talk in all seriousness of having all of your money stored as a bunch of ones and zeros on some electronic machine thousands of miles away from you in an unknown location.