Good customer service is worth paying for. I think everybody understands that. But in this age of easy price comparison, we sometimes forget. Fellow blogger indexfundfan is having trouble with TradeKing, an online discount broker. TradeKing is holding his money hostage for 60 days. According to TradeKing, it was rated #1 in customer service by […]
Latest Blog Posts
Diversifying Portfolio with Commodities Futures Fund
I first heard about commodities futures in the last bear market. In 2002, commodities futures returned something like +25-30% while the S&P lost 22%. People were saying back then commodities futures were a great investment because they had “equity-like” returns while being uncorrelated with the stock market. This characteristic would add diversification to one’s portfolio […]
Reforming the 401k: Good Ideas and Bad Ideas
When stock market crashed, people’s 401(k) accounts crashed with it. Needless to say people are not happy. They are saying 401k’s don’t work. Wall Street Journal published an article How to Fix 401(k)s by Anne Tergesen. It listed many proposals for changing the 401k’s (and 403(b)s and 457’s). I think some of the proposals are […]
Catch a Wild Ride with REIT
If the Vanguard REIT Index Fund (VGSIX, or its EFT share class VNQ) were a person, I’d say he must have bipolar. In the past few weeks, its prices changed from one end to another in rapid cycles. It could not make up its mind whether it wanted to go up or go down. One […]
Risk Tolerance Metric: Loss to Income Ratio
A common asset allocation advice is by the age of the investor. There is that rule of thumb “age in bonds” which says a 30-year-old should have 70% in stocks and 30% in bonds and so on. That of course does not take into consideration the investor’s risk tolerance. However, risk tolerance is somewhat vague […]
Joe Four-Pack
During the summer when food inflation was high, there were a lot of news reports about package shrinking. Instead of raising the price, companies just give you less and sell for the same price. That makes it easier for them to hide the price increase. This is still going on even though the inflation pressure […]
Old Money Versus New Money
If you make a change to your portfolio, say you add some more money into a fund, do you check the price the next day and see if your move made money? I do, and it doesn’t make much sense. If I have some money in a fund, I don’t check the prices every day […]
Too Many Banks
Do you think we have too many banks in the United States? There were 8,451 FDIC-insured banks as of June 30, 2008. Canada, on the other hand, with 1/10th of the population as the U.S., only has 81 banks, which can be listed on one page. On a per capita basis, we have 10 times […]
Solo 401k For Part-Time Self-Employment
Calculate how much you and the business can contribute to your solo 401k plan when you also contribute to a 401k plan at a different employer.
How Much Should You Put Into Flexible Spending Account (FSA)?
My company is doing open enrollment again for next year (for more info on what to choose in open enrollment, see previous posts). I’m not going to make any changes except I have to re-enroll for flexible spending account (FSA). If you use flexible spending account, you should be familiar with the use-it-or-lose-it rule. If […]