Simple Bond Ladder

[Gumby]

This has been mentioned many times before, but for what it's worth, Fidelity has commission-free trades on all Treasury securities bought or sold online:

https://scs.fidelity.com/other/offers/p ... hedule.pdf

[Tortoise]

Thx Tortoise for the info.

From the Schwab "Fixed Income Pricing" page http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/inv ... me/pricing ,

if I'm comprehending this correctly, there IS a $25 commission when you sell the T-Bond, since "sell orders must be placed thru a broker", & the "Broker-assisted fee" is $25.

Sure enough, it looks like you're right. I haven't had to sell any of my LTTs yet, which is why I wasn't aware of this mandatory $25 broker-assisted fee. All my trades have been purchases thus far.

That's kind of tricky of Schwab, because a couple of their web pages on commission schedules and pricing seem to imply free purchases and sales unless you read the fine print.

I concede that given a large enough BOND allocation, over a 10 year period (assuming no rebalance) this $25 sales commission could be trivial compared to the expense ratio.

Cumulative 10 year expense ratios for the relevant funds, using [ [1 + expense ratio] ^ 10 ] - 1 .

EDV 0.13% exp ratio, 1.31% over 10 yrs
TLT 0.15% er, 1.51% over 10 yrs
VUSTX 0.22% er, 2.22% over 10 yrs

Yes, the $25 should be trivial assuming you sell in good-sized blocks and don't sell very often.

I'm kind of irked about this mandatory broker-assisted LTT sale nonsense through Schwab, since it seemed hidden in the small-print footnotes, but in the grand scheme of things I suppose it's a relatively tiny expense.

[WildAboutHarry]

#4 The prices is schwab are shown just like a regular bond fund.

The Wall Street Journal lists quotes for all outstanding (I think) treasury notes and bonds:

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2 ... nav_2_3020

And for TIPS, although I know no one here is interested

http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2 ... nav_2_3020