Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Ha, perhaps I spoke too soon. I should say, they are out of style for me :D Well, it was 10-15 years ago. My tailor suggested pants should touch the top of the soles at the heel when standing, and my experience is that is the correct length. I wasn't aware there were Bangkok tailors that cut the cl...

@unemployable: What specifics would you research before buying a nice suit? Big thing is the fit around the neck and shoulders. When you shrug your shoulders or raise your arms the jacket collar should remain snug with your shirt collar. Other things that signal "class" are French collars...

Welcome. I've been all over NC including living in the two big metro areas. I've been looking to move to the mountains for some time.

Back when I had a job I would go to Bangkok once a year to buy business clothes. I would drop about as much as the plane ticket there cost me. Since then I've thrift-stored maybe 75% of what I bought. I had no problem spending the money because it was for my actual appearance. A good suit ran around...

We're doing this? OK. A bit more than half in a portfolio of stocks and REITs that yield 7%. They're out there; quite a few of them in fact, although I suspect you're running out of time on XOM. Principal should roughly grow with inflation. This gives me about $100k/year after tax. Call it eight gra...

Within the next 3 or 4 years I will likely be able to apply for medical retrieval jobs: getting paid to jump out of helicopters onto cargo ships with sick passengers, or pick-up wounded people from the bush... What a blast! :D That actually sounds fun. I mean more fun than doing the same old doctor...

Hi. I wrote this a couple years back: (By the way, does anyone else not envy doctors? You show up at the same damn hospital or practice every day for 30 years and deal with sick people. Your reward is you get to drive a two-year-old BMW home. You don't get to take business trips to hospitals in like...

I don't think mean reversion has gone away. But I do believe the mean we're supposed to revert to can see changes in its inputs. The mean P/E in the 1950s-70s, when we had fought two World Wars and suffered a Great Depression within people's memories, doesn't have to have the same assumptions underl...

He left out Level 10, where a neighbor complains to the HOA that they've gone too long without cutting the grass and have unapproved structures in their yard and have to take everything down.

If you can internalize ERE (or vanilla RE) you have the work ethic to escape minimum wage one way or 'tother.

Japanese bonds have been in the 1-handle or lower since the mid 1990s, very different from Treasuries (for now). But it doesn't really matter what you use for bonds. The important thing is that some part of your portfolio wasn't in NKY. Four percent in all-NKY would've failed by 2002 for any startin...

The economy and the market are complex evolving systems, so strategies have to change. At some point previous benchmarks must be abandoned. Probably most importantly, the Greenspan put didn't exist before 1987, although some previous crashes were accompanied by a fair amount of intervention by priv...

I think Jacob made good points with other market possibilities. The inconvenience/inefficiences of transacting in such markets is what makes it possible to turn a profit. You want to be buying from forced sellers and selling to forced buyers. Regarding the latter, I do some casual flipping and ebay...

b) They were more interested in my math skills. Whenever I mentioned that I was studying for the CFA, they're were like "Why?! You should spend your time practicing brain teasers and learning C++". I think one is better off just getting a grad STEM degree or maybe even busting your balls ...

@unemployable but why would someone want to take the CFA exams? So that you can work in finance? So you can move ahead and improve your employability in finance. It's a "you don't need it but people have it" thing. The CFA is roughly equivalent to a MBA concentrating in finance, coursewor...

Re: CFA and exams/studying. There are three exams and traditionally they were given once a year on the first Saturday in June. In this century first Level 1 also was administered in December, then the June date was moved back to the end of the month, and now post-corona all the exams will be moving ...

See http://earlyretirementextreme.com/startup-curriculum-for-finance-economics-investing.html (start with Bodie) I'm just noticing this now, but several of those books are in the CFA curriculum. Or at least were when I took the exams in the early 2000s; they have at least partially moved to in-hous...

Last quarter T's operating cash flow was $12bn, investing (mostly capex) was $3.4bn and dividends were $3.7bn. They sold about $2bn in stock, not sure why (executive options?) and ended up with over $8bn of free cash flow, $6bn if you don't count the stock. That's after paying the dividend. They're ...

Cool, an ERE speedrunner!

You can cut your entertainment to zero by just running spreadsheets and watching your numbers all day

That's exactly what I've been doing the last few weeks, buying T and XOM. T's ex-date is Friday. Also hold VZ, which I plan to sell throughout the year when I need the funds. T's dividend is super super safe; XOM's is a position on oil staying above $50 or so. You know what high-dividend stocks have...