Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Hey, jp. I agree re normal, which is why I threw in the "some semblance of". All I meant was that businesses reopen and people start going back to work and for those that survive, life goes on. It has to. So far the biggest potential change I see in myself is I feel myself retreating to the same sor...

I believe you are right regarding the exchange of investments within a given tax-advantaged retirement plan. I've never had a 457b, but I've never heard that ongoing dividends and capital gains are taxable. Is this your first big drop since paying attention to investing? This is my fifth (I count 20...

I was intending to wait a while before starting up a new log. In another thread I mentioned that my plan for ER was conceived during the swoon after the financial crisis, a couple years after the stock market bottomed out, but still a time when a lot of midlife professionals were still unemployed or...

classical_Liberal wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 28, 2020 4:19 am

Minus 4 ERE points for a male who does not cut his own hair.

That's probably my smallest points deduction yet!

Alaska and Hawaii both require anyone arriving in their respective states to undergo a 14 day quarantine. Failure to do so can result in a misdemeanor, a fine up to $25,000 in Alaska and $5,000 in Hawaii and one year in prison. Edited: fine amounts Does that include US persons? It could get messy i...

IOW, they are symptomatic due to a cold or bacterial pneumonia, but also have COVID. I was wondering about that. Is it possible that covid-19 can't establish in the presence of another infection? Otherwise it would seem that it hasn't spread nearly as much as I speculated. I guess we really won't k...

My god I can't believe that your work has not taken steps to arrange for staff to work from home. That is completely negligent. Personally I would take charge myself and proceed to work from home. I don't think the homeowner's association would let me get away with operating a laboratory that large...

I don't even know what a JGB is, but I'm very sorry it's spouse might wind up a widow.

I have no idea how they'll try to manage the mess, much less how to bet on the fallout to make money. Central banks seem pretty good these days at managing deflation, but presumably there are limits.

They told us at work the folks in the hazmat suits would be in yesterday evening to perform a "deep cleaning". Story is that someone who works on the campus was in contact with someone covid-19 positive. The person is in self-quarantine without symptoms but hasn't been tested. Because of HIPAA they ...

I had this conversation yesterday with an old friend I correspond with. He's a few years older than me and we share an employer. Even though his AA was only about 30% stock going into this, and him being older than me stands to get him a much larger monthly annuity payment (even though I have a few ...

Note that the rally is not particularly wide-based nor strong (strong in the context of "we're saved"), being very concentrated on the DOW 30 and some of the S&P 500. I think the main response was yesterday (~+10% or so) and the response was pretty solid across the board, at least in terms of Morni...

About 23.4 years expenses still left for me (but over 100 if offset due to outside retirement income considered). Total portfolio down about 13.5% for the year, which includes contributions (so losses are higher by a percent or two). But the loss number tends to fluctuate wildly these days.

My older dog is sick. The medicine isn't working and they need to do tests on her that require her staying at the vet. We don't know what to do. We have been strict in our quarantine and don't want to risk any contact at the vet's office. OTOH, she's losing weight fast and isn't going to be able to...

I'm watching the gold market closely because I made a really big bet on gold (for me). I suspect demand will surge even further when China and other Asian countries come back online since retail sales account for 50% of gold demand during normal times. Does anyone think the stimulus is going to wor...

My state of residence (Alabama) is seeing it's first shelter-in-place orders rolling out at the municipal level. My city has not taken that step yet. SIAP. Not actionable but interesting. Temps in my area are supposed to get into the 80s this week and frankly I'm hopeful that covid-19 has seasonal s...

I'm the tail, tail end of the boomers and I'm buying into the decline, but only very modestly. Boomers who hold appreciably investment portfolios probably aren't doing all that much different than other cohorts. They should already be (like me) lowering, or have already lowered, their equity exposur...

For those interested in the testing saga as pertains to the US.
TL;DR (my takeaway) Our bureaucracy face-planted a little.

https://thedispatch.com/p/timeline-the- ... latorsthat

Any sort of self-reliance is invaluable in these situations. I have little to add to what's been mentioned when looking at it from an individual perspective. I've been thinking about it on a larger scale. Some of the self-reliance principles that contribute to individual robustness might also be app...

So far not much impact for me. Most of my confinement is voluntary. Restrictions here have been pretty mild, but in the city they have banned on-premise sales for restaurants and bars and similar. Mayor ordered all schools closed, but for the most part they had all closed on their own accord more th...

Stock market has circuit breakers so I think it's more likely it would get closed down mid-session. Short-term unemployment is going to surge through the roof. That should surprise no one, but panic will ensue anyway, I'm afraid. Seems like the plan is to lay the groundwork for the eventual recovery...