Dow -- Since 1990 -- July 26, 2025

Locator: 48690DOW.
Locator: 48690SCCO.

Personal Investing -- From John C Bogle -- Bogleheads -- Posted December 10, 2024

Locator: 48371INVESTING.

Tag: personal investing

Link here.

Financial Independence: link to the financial independence blog for the grandchildren,

Personal Finance -- Not Ready For Prime Time -- September 29, 2024

Locator: 48436PERSINV.

This is a personal note as part of a conversation with one of my extended family members. Four extended family members -- including the individual to whom this note was addressed and myself -- are undertaking a formal personal finance course.

Remember: I'm 73 years old and have been investing for decades.

To an extended family member, not ready for prime time, under the break.

********************************
Personal Finance

Dear _____

I've mentioned that "personal finance course" that four of us are taking.

You have no idea how helpful the "personal finance course" has been for me. Seriously.

Two big things:

1. It gave me an opportunity to take another look at how I approach investing and am now passing this information to [other extended family members]. From my blog as a direct result of the "personal finance course":

https://themilliondollarway.blogspot.com/2024/09/it-really-can-make-difference-comparing.html

2. The one thing I was missing was "Mint."  I was completely unaware of "Mint" but now I know that "Mint" is/was part of the large family of "account aggregators."

I found googling Rocket Money vs Mint vs Schwab quite helpful.

One of the hits was a "Reddit" hit -- I can't think of a much less credible site than Reddit (LOL) but it does provide a starting point for folks like me who don't understand a particular subject, in this case, "account aggregators" or "Mint" or Rocket Money.

As you know, I am very partial to Schwab and Schwab offers this service. From Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Schwab/comments/198dven/anyone_use_schwab_as_an_account_aggregator/

One comment that jumped out, of course, posted nine months ago:

I use Schwab for aggregation and have 30+ accounts linked. It works fine if you just want to see balances, your net worth, and positions for investment accounts. You can use the Portfolio Checkup Tool to run portfolio reports on your Schwab plus non-Schwab investment accounts. Also, the linked accounts flow through to your financial plan at Schwab, which is primarily what I use the aggregator for.

I was a devout Mint user for 10+ years, and I'm currently looking for a replacement for that. Schwab is nice if all you need is aggregation of balances and for running holistic portfolio reports and financial planning. But Mint was good at the micro-budgeting level--like aggregating transactions, too, and I used Mint's budgets and goals tools, so that's what I'm looking for. No brokerage firm is going to have the level of detail Mint had, since that's a full-time business keeping up with all the software issues for customers (and it doesn't make Schwab or any brokerage firm any money), so I imagine this needs to be a standalone budgeting site that's meant for this like Mint was.

Empower was also mentioned but I won't add yet another financial website if Schwab offers the same service.

 

*************************
Again, Not Ready For Prime Time
Audience: Extended Family Members

**********************************
Disclaimer
Brief Reminder 

• NOTE: content and typographical errors may increase due to a number of factors. I correct them when I find them. But if something seems wrong or doesn't make sense, it's likely to be a typographical error as anything else. (Updated: September 28, 2024).
  
• I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• See disclaimer. This is not an investment site. 
• Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them. 
• Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
• I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple. 
• And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia.  
  

Personal Investing -- November 27, 2023

Locator: 46185B.

Reminder: all posts are done quickly. All posts contain typographical and content errors. I never make any investment recommendations.

I used to share my personal investing information with some readers through e-mail but after losing access to my e-mail account -- long story previously posted -- I am now posting some of that same information on the blog. 

Market: early trading -- BRK-B down 1%; AAPL? Green.  MSFT: hits a new all-time high today.

S&P: just went green in early afternoon trading, Cyber Monday.  BRK-B remains negative.

Personal investing: 

• as mentioned last week, I'm fully invested, having added my last tranch for November, last week;
• early morning trading tells me three things:
• AI is still a strong long-term investment;
• OpenAI / ChatGPT is the 600-pound gorilla
• Microsoft has the keys to the gorilla's cage
• what does this mean for me
• my entire December investment allotment will go into MSFT
• The question: how to do that?
• several options
• more later, perhaps

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site.  Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. 

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.  

Again, all my posts are done quickly. There will be typographical and content errors in all my posts. If any of my posts are important to you, go to the source.

Note: MSFT will still be a small part of my overall portfolio, but my goal is to readjust my portfolio over the next six months. I started the process about two years ago, going slowly and staying within my strategic plan.

My current bucket allotments for new money, from November 20, 2023:

My bucket allotments will not change for the long term, but the allotment percentages may be adjusted slightly beginning in late 2024 or early 2025. I'm thinking of going 30% large cap; and 30% tech; and, leaving everything else the same.  

However, starting this next month, December, 2023, my entire "new money" allotment will go into MSFT and that will continue at least through February. 

Starting March, I plan to return to the allotment as noted in the chart above.

From Michael Fitzsimmons today:

I'm not sure what he means by an "ordinary investor." I do know that Warren Buffett has stated that the S&P 500 is his benchmark. If he hasn't said that specifically, he has implied it in his annual letters and it appears "all" analysts compare BRK with the S&P 500. See disclaimers.