Archives for May 2013

Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Review (VGTSX, VTIAX, VXUS)

Posted on May 6, 2013 // 10 Comments

(See also: Vanguard Total Stock Index Fund Review)

The Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund is available both as a mutual fund (VGTSX, VTIAX) and an ETF (VXUS). Across all shares classes, there is currently around $90 billion dollars invested in this fund, making it one of the top 10 largest funds in the world. As the name suggests, this fund attempts to include all the investable companies from every single country in the world outside the US. From Indonesia to Morocco, from Luxembourg to Hong Kong. It also includes small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap companies, unlike many other “total international” index funds. Such a wide coverage area makes this fund very fascinating. Let’s take a look inside.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Investing, Reviews //

Live Below The Line Challenge: $1.50/Day Lessons

Posted on May 6, 2013 // 7 Comments

Last week I successfully completed the Live Below the Line challenge along with thousands of other people around the country, eating for 5 days on just $1.50 a day. Here are my takeaways from the week:

My challenge experience. In terms of doing the challenge itself, it wasn’t all that difficult. I planned my menu carefully to make sure I got at least 2,000 calories so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by hunger. My food was bland, but relatively nutritious. I usually drink mostly tap water anyway. To satisfy the somewhat arbitrary rule of only buying entire containers, I bought most of my ingredients from bulk bins and markets by the pound. If I was allowed to buy in bulk, I would have been able to eat even better.

I did feel a low-level hunger, which grew gradually as the week went on. I think this meant I was running a small caloric deficit as I kept up my usual light exercise routine. I lost roughly a pound. By the 5th day, the repetition of eating the same thing over and over was starting to grind on me. In other words: 5 days was fine, but 50 days would have been incredibly difficult.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Frugal Living, Giving Back //

$10,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Experiment Update – May 2013

Posted on May 2, 2013 // 5 Comments

Here’s a condensed May 2013 update for my Beat the Market Experiment, a series of three portfolios started on November 1st, 2012:

  1. $10,000 Passive Benchmark Portfolio that would serve as both a performance benchmark and an real-world, low-cost portfolio that would be easy to replicate and maintain for DIY investors.
  2. $10,000 Beat-the-Benchmark Speculative Portfolio that would simply represent the attempts of an “average guy” who is not a financial professional and gets his news from mainstream sources to get the best overall returns possible.
  3. $10,000 P2P Consumer Lending Speculative Portfolio – Split evenly between LendingClub and Prosper, this portfolio is designed to test out the alternative investment class of person-to-person loans. The goal is again to beat the benchmark by setting a target return of 8-10% net of defaults.

Executive summary. Six months have gone by since this experiment started, and the passive portfolio has ridden a hot stock market nearly the entire time. My speculative portfolio is catching back up a bit after my Apple holdings stumbled, while the P2P lending portfolio is still too young to make any firm conclusions. The details are below:

$10,000 Benchmark Portfolio. I put $10,000 into index funds at TD Ameritrade due to their 100 commission-free ETF program that includes free trades on the best low-cost, index ETFs from Vanguard and iShares. The portfolio was based loosely on a David Swensen model portfolio. Screenshot:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Investing, Monthly Updates //

Investment Returns By Asset Class – May 2013 Update

Posted on May 2, 2013 // 1 Comment

Here is my May 2013 update of the trailing total returns for selected major asset classes. Passive ETFs are used to represent major asset classes, as they represent actual investments that folks can buy and sell. Return data was taken after market close at the end of April 2013.

I’m trying out a new chart format, in the hopes of easier visual comparisons. Below is a chart of the all the trailing returns for 1-month, 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year periods.

If you focus on the blue and red bars, you can see that in the short-term the stock markets around the world have been on quite a tear. Meanwhile, gold has been dropping. If you’re holding gold as a diversification tool, this may not be a bad thing to see. If you focus on the 10-year trailing returns of the green bars, just about everything looks rosy at the moment. Unless you were making some manic moves like bailing out during the crisis, your portfolio should have done pretty well over the last decade.

In terms of bonds, they have been a relatively safe place to be over the last several years, but you can also can see the effect of dropping rates on their recent returns. Future bond returns are very likely to be lower than in the past.

Here is the usual table of actual numerical values for those same asset classes:

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Investing, Monthly Updates // Tagged:
« Previous Page