Note: TBB is on vacation at the Canadian Rockies in Alberta, Canada. Until his return, this blog site will likely not have any of the usually legendary Buzz posts:-) TBB is taking the opportunity to do his own filler posts. The eclectic journey through the blogosphere may return after vacation is over, stay tuned! This upcoming week will be very light, mega hiking expected to be done!
Left Hinton in the morning and started driving south east towards Calgary. Stopped at Jasper, drove on 93A road and made several stops, including Sunwapta Falls and Peyto Lake. Also took a drive to Kananaskis Village. Today’s wildlife included another bear, too many elk and deer to count, including a caribou (we think). And this amazing mountain goat who gave us a show (see pic below). We stopped at Banff at this tiny place and splurged on some amazingly delicious sushi brought to us in a little choochoo train! We almost ran out of gas on the highway and the sight of a Petrol Canada gas station never looked better. We almost had a mutiny against me in the car but…I prevailed…again (barely this time!). We arrived at a nice two room suite at the sharp Country Inn & Suites at the Calgary Airport. Here on Club Carlson points with the 2nd night free! Exploring Calgary City all day tomorrow. Mrs. TBB wants to find some authentic Asian food, open to suggestions.
I am so so behind on everything, including my blog here! I have a major project ahead of me to catch up when we get back on Sunday night. Thanks for the ride and for continuing to read me! I must say this has been a superb vacation, great memories! Sad that it is almost over.
I am changing the size of the pics I post to make them smaller to see if this solves some severe issues I had with my site!
Should people think of their houses as investments?
People shouldn’t think of the houses they live in as investments. Doing that can fog up their thinking and lead them to make decisions that aren’t optimal for their well-being. You should buy a house because you and your family enjoy living in it, the schools are great and you enjoy being part of the community. The tax advantages certainly come in handy, too.
Yale economist Robert J. Shiller has found that homes in the U.S. appreciate about 1% a year above the inflation rate. You shouldn’t buy a home if you don’t plan to live in it more than four or five years as it becomes extremely difficult to break even after sales commissions and other selling costs. If you do own a home, you should be paying more than the minimum mortgage payment every month to reduce your overall interest owed and become debt-free faster. In my career, no one has ever regretted paying off the mortgage earlier.
first again!
You are rolling!
Second 🙂 Thanks.
You can beat Jeff:-)
3rd
Come on Kathy, you can do better:-)
Wrong blog, but since you brought it up {wink}… (And I have been SO enjoying your travel reports! On my bucket list, fer shure!)
Been reading up on Vanguard, per your
suggestionsearlier discussion. I am (alas) giving up a 6.6%-interest (pre-tax IRA, decades-old ex-401(k) funds) CD in Jan when it matures. Value is ~$29,300 at the moment. I’m planning on moving it to Vanguard VTSAX (Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund) or VBTLX (Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund). (The REIT scares me.) On what basis does one decide which one to go with? Flip a coin? (Tempting.) On what basis does one decide Admiral or ETF (ETF? Soooo much more expensive than Admiral…) My second 6.8% CD (alas for the good-old-days of *actual* interest earning!) around $29,500 (matures in Mar next year) could go in the same or the other. Any basis for choosing?Obviously, I’m not asking for a ‘beginner’s class in investing.’ (Well, maybe I am… I’m trying to self-educate by reading around online. {wince}) But, is there a resource I should be looking at to help me make this (these) choice(s)?
6.6% and 6.8% CDs, those were the days:-)
The decisions where to invest must be done on a total portfolio basis. Meaning: you must have a plan how to allocate your portfolio. And the plan is solely based on your goals, your age, your risk tolerance and any unique requirements. So, you can not just pick the VTSAX or VBTLX! They are two completely different animals. Bernanke wants you to go for the VTSAX and it appears many many people have been picking the stocks lately over the bonds with such punitively low yields! The way portfolio decisions should be done is based on this overall portfolio contest! So, if your allocation was supposed to be, say Stocks 60% Bonds/Cash 40%, and your stocks are at 65% already, perhaps you should not buy more with the VTSAX! I’ve been a little more lax in rebalancing over the last year due to the unique position of the whole bond market but no more than 5% differential than the initial asset allocation plan (different for every client!). So, it is not one or the other! People make specific investment decisions like this all the time and you will go nuts making decisions this way. I have no idea what to tell you as I barely know you and your situation and the state of your current portfolio! Or I can tell you this: Go for the stocks and you may make more but you must be prepared to lose a chunk at some point. Go for the bonds and you won’t be making much but the ride will be much much smoother:-)
As far as the Admiral or ETFs, for the buy and hold long term investor, go for the cheaper one!
Vanguard does have good stuff on their site. Look in the Insights section:
http://personal.vanguard.com/us/insights/investingtruths
Hope this helps
Thanks TBB, it does help…
Except when you say “depends on my portfolio”? Those two CDs ARE my portfolio… {sigh} (Well, my late husband got ‘caught up in a wild recommendation’ and I let him put my $30k savings into a single medical/future drug stock {double sigh}, which is now a penny stock. {triple sigh} Reading books by “the Daniels” (Kahnneman and Ariely) have convinced me that I’m stupid to hold it, hoping the clinical trial will pan out… but I haven’t yet built up the emotional strength to sell and take the nearly-60% loss… (Figuring, “oh hell, I’ve lost so much of it as it is, and it WAS my husband’s fervent wish and belief that this stock would be worth it…” So there’s a psychological reluctance, but barely any hope…)
But I guess then, you’re saying I should consider putting one CD in the VTSAX and the other in VBTLX — which then gives me some of each (stocks and bonds) — and maybe balance out the amounts (stocks and bonds) based on my age and situation. (Do you actually have a money-related blog? I don’t see how you could when this one takes so much time — and I’d actually rather you’d keep this one up than spread your attention! {wink})
Buzz, looks like you won the Wife Lottery….Όμορφος!
He bought a lot of lottery tickets—was his first investment strategy!
For the record, I only buy a lotto ticket once a year on my birthday. I know the odds;-)
“The lottery is a tax on people who cannot do math” — smart guy from my old job that made millions in startups
Gracias. Yeah, I am a lucky guy…I am not worthy:-)
So glad you have been having such a fine trip. Lovely photo of you and your wife. We spent our 30th anniversary in that part of Canada; luckily my H had a conference at the Banff Conference Center at just the right time. Enjoy the last few days and we look forward to more blogs on your return.
Saverocity had a long (so what else is new?) and helpful piece on whether to pay off/down your mortgage just this week. Want my H to read it and help me think it through for our situation. But I do continue to use any excess money laying around in my BB account to send the bank principal curtailment payments. Still, we should have more strategic approach.
Met the minimum spend on the Ink Bold card and probably should do another round of card apps, but we leave in two weeks for a month away and I think I will just take a little vacation from apps, recon calls, and juggling minimum spends for new CCs as well. Plenty of time to get back to churning in September.
We were advised by friends to hire a guide for our time in Istanbul. The only times – twice – that we’ve had a private guide were when we were invited go along when someone else had already hired one. But maybe it is time to do so on our own. Amazingly my frugal husband is actually considering it seriously! I am pretty frugal too but less of a spend-thrift than him. Developing….
I prefer “Saverocity had a long and helpful piece (so what else is new?)” on…. 🙂
Glad you managed to read it, my site has been hammered by the problems with hosting this week and still spending hours on the phone trying to sort out the server.
Your re-design made Saverocity show up in my RSS feed (and feedly) for the first time. So congrats on that.
Thanks Harvson, been quite the adventure setting it up thus far. The feed is pulling from multiple blogs so was a little finicky at first…
Yup, I did read it and so did H, just a little while ago. He agrees and now to figure out the specifics.
If I could edit my comment I would!
Turkey is one of those countries where “the hassle factor” can be very high. I would certainly recommend a guide.
We went to Marrakech a couple of years ago and that is another place where the guide is essential. At least, for the baptism. After a couple of days, you may feel braver and go for it on your own. My 2 cents.
@TWA44:Every trip is special. And this one will be remembered for a while too. Thanks for the compliment. I usually totally suck when I am facing a camera lens but that pic of me is almost halfway decent!
Ok, I went to read Saverocity’s piece. He needs to cut down on the size of his posts; they make my trip reports resemble a piece of cake:-) Well, it is a whole different perspective when you have to advise real people about this stuff and your license/livelihood is on the line. You mentioned a key word “strategic”. THIS is what most people lack and, of course, executing that strategic plan! This is where we come in and make sure they take the steps necessary to stay on track! If there is excess cash flow, I never prevented a client from paying even a little more towards principal (they always do, it’s the principle of it)…wow, that kind of rhymes a bit principal vs principle:-)
In this game (yeah it is a game for many of us)…there is always plenty of time to get back in it;-) There is always a deal happening! Take your time, do this at YOUR pace and be careful…pretty soon you may feel like an expert and start your own blog too:-)
If time is short and you are not very experience in moving around in foreign cities…hiring a guide may be good for you! One day I am going to post my Istanbul trip report… I think it is a pretty easy place to move around. I did the tour bus thing that makes stops at several places and it worked out great. And all the Agia Sofia and main mosques are within walking distance of each other. And do not miss the Cistern across from Agia Sofia!
@bluecat – We thought of that too, that is, hiring a guide for the first 2-3 of our 8 days there.
@TBB – maybe a bus tour is a good compromise. We usually avoid them.
Since we are pretty lucky and tend to have the luxury of time when we travel, we usually DIY our sightseeing. We did not do that exclusively in China where we also took some great small, specialized tours offered by the Chinese Cultural Society (or perhaps it was called the Chinese Cultural Club) during our 3 weeks in country. Ditto for some of our month in Costa Rica. We are old hands at traveling in Israel and managed Petra nicely too. My daughter and her husband did quite well following Rick Stieves in Istanbul but it was off season, which does make things like dealing with lines at tourist spots easier. Still developing.
Sound like you have it down pat! I only had two full days in Instanbul, bus tour was perfect;-)
On another topic, how is it that you saw so many bears up close? From the car? When we were in Newfoundland, driving all around the island, we were constantly on “moose patrol” because hitting a moose crossing the road can be really dangerous. Did you ever feel afraid of the bears?
Yes from the car. We got really good stopping when we saw cars stopped ahead of us. The first one with her baby we got really close too. I have another two photos standing next to a moose (or elk) with giant antlers…I admit that was such a stupid move by us. Guess we got really lucky!
@Matt:
If I have to spend hours on the phone to sort out some technical issues I might as well stab myself to oblivion right now to save me that kind of torture, yikes! Interesting development in your multi blog approach. If you want to hammer your readers with my trip reports I am open to reposting them there…you know, your readers are already conditioned to read long posts:-)
Hey George,
Unfortunately reposting material is a big no-no. Have to use all number of ‘no-follow’ and other tags to make sure google doesn’t think you are scraping. Plus your trip reports are a bit long even for me – two different photos of you with a scarf on a hill? Come on son!
Just working through some final kinks now, looks like the site is operational, and now looking to bring on a few more people to work with, just ensuring that I can roll them out and in cleanly before I take this step.
Kewl on the reposting material policy, makes sense.
I should have chosen just one pic of me with that darn scarf. Good point!
Interesting to see how you do with the new direction. Right now Boarding Area is on a roll!
My only problem with quoting Shiller is that the national index doesnt mean $%^& to anyone and where they live. So he claims that house prices rise 1% above inflation “average” and this doesnt mean anything to parts of FLA AZ NV and most of California. These places dont move in small increments. I also dont like the concept of send the mort company more than your minimum. It doesnt earn you anything in present time.
We disagree…again. I respect your opinion.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say what you did (about how stupid it is to send the bank more than the minimum mtg payment required) and then did NOT carry out as intended or lost a bundle on investing it…I would be really filthy rich:-)
There are delegators, validators and do it yourselfers. You are a do it yourselfer. Do it yourselfers don’t change for the most part. Some do! The change happens when they surpass their own threshold of pain trying to do it all themselves:-)
Then again you might deal with a lot of financially illiterate people. So I imagine your view of people might be quite different.
You would not believe the scale of financial illiteracy in this country, really!
I deal with successful people, all millionaires (except one on his third marriage who got cleaned out twice already lol). Half became millionaires after they hired me. And they are smart enough to realize they need help.
FT types are not my target market, they think they can do it all AND get a deal:-)
What I do is not rocket science, it can be done if you have the time and interest AND you can control emotions and brain cells in general. Behavioral finance is very fascinating subject!
Now I need to catch up on them darn blog posts. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
One point I did not address for the sake of brevity… not paying down your mortgage and keeping money liquid would be very smart should we see escalating interest rates in the future. Would be an arbitrage dream to have a fixed loan at 3-5% with interest rates paying out at multiples of that…
@MileageUpdate writes “I also dont like the concept of send the mort company more than your minimum. It doesnt earn you anything in present time”
This is just not correct. You make a guaranteed rate of return equal to the rate of interest on your mortgage.
A guaranteed bad idea though is to read MileValue. He is so full of himself, the thinks he invented hanging up and calling back to get US Airways agents to ticket itineraries that aren’t strictly within their rules. And how do you get US Airways miles, he asks? Why by signing up for the US Airways credit card that pays him a commission and offers you fewer miles and without annual fee waived the first year of course! Sleezebag.
I agree:-)
Thats why what I said is correct. My Mortgage rate is 3.5% if paying my mortgage early earns me a 3.5% rate of return then I am not doing a very good job. Earning 3.5% on your money over long periods of time is hazardous to your long term financial health.
See my point above about what happens in real life. The vast majority of people who say that do NOT follow through! And yes I agree earning 3.5% over long periods of time is hazardous to long term financial health…in general!
On Monday, Gary wrote this:
http://boardingarea.com/viewfromthewing/2013/07/29/how-to-earn-the-most-miles-and-biggest-rewards-possible-when-booking-travel/
This morning, TPG has:
http://thepointsguy.com/2013/08/how-can-i-earn-miles-from-buying-my-sisters-ticket-on-a-delta-flight/
The only real difference is that TPG has 10x the credit card links. WTF?
I just got back, trying to catch up…I am buried!
Crappiest flight ever: 26 passengers with gastroenteritis make 13 hour flight a living hell
From From NEWS.COM.AU
Last Updated: 3:33 PM, August 1, 2013
Posted: 10:57 AM, August 1, 2013
Thirteen hours in the air, eight toilets and 26 passengers violently ill with gastroenteritis.
That was the scene when an international flight became the trip from hell after 26 passengers fell sick during a Qantas flight.
The group, believed to be a tour group traveling together, were sick before they embarked on the 13 hour and 51 minute flight from Santiago, Chile yesterday.
Ouch, that just sounds awful!