Over the Thanksgiving holidays a friend asked me whether he should buy whole life insurance. He said an acquaintance had been pitching him this whole life insurance policy as a better way to invest in fixed income. The idea is it has no risk from the [...]
Transfer IRA From Mutual Fund To Credit Union For CDs
Ever since I bought the 3-year 3% add-on CD from Northwest Federal Credit Union in October 2015, I was hoping a similar deal would pop up. But no, there hasn't been any. After the Fed raised the rate once from 0% to 0.25% in December 2015, they [...]
Bonds Had Good Returns: Wrong In CDs?
Both stocks and bonds did well in the first half of 2014, especially bonds. Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund returned 3.9% in six months ended on June 30 whereas Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund returned 7% in the same period. If we get a [...]
2013: Great For Investments, Bad For Investing
This will be the last post in 2013. So far this year this blog published 134 articles and received 1,250 comments (350 of which were my replies to readers' comments). I didn't track the total hours I spent on producing these 134 articles and 350 [...]
Are Vanguard Long Term Muni Funds Really Long Term Or Just Long Term In Name Only?
Questions from some readers on my post about PenFed CDs versus bond funds in the next five years reminded me something I'd like to bring to the attention of all readers, not just those who follow the comments. Back in February I wrote Invest In Long [...]
Bond Fund vs CD In the Next Five Years
Last week's article was more about how to buy a 5-year CD at PenFed that pays 3% APY. This article explains why someone would want to do that instead of keeping money in a bond fund. Specifically, I want to answer this question: Under what [...]
Higher Yield On Brokered CD vs Early Withdrawal Option
Bond interest rates came up by about 1% after the Fed started talking about tapering Quantitative Easing. We are starting to see some higher rates in brokered CDs. This makes sense because brokered CDs compete directly with bonds. Brokered CDs don't [...]
When Will CD Rates Go Up?
I wrote several articles about CDs as a good alternative to bond funds a few months back. Diversify Bond Funds with CDs (Feb. 4, 2013) CD vs Bond Fund: A Case Study (Apr. 22, 2013) Why Investors Don’t Realize CDs Are a Better Deal Than Bonds [...]
Buy Bond ETFs At Large Discounts To Net Asset Value (NAV)
For reasons I don't completely understand, bond ETFs, especially ones investing in illiquid bonds such as munis, trade at a premium to the net asset value (NAV) most of the time. That means you will pay more to buy the ETF than the value of the [...]
