vinod1

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding of how Social Security works in a large economy. Not small national states. Social security could have $50 trillion in stocks and bonds and it makes no difference in reality to how much can be paid out. SS transfers the purchasing power from current workers to retirees. If SS taxes are not collected, it just leads to inflation. Someone has to work and take a pay cut (losing some of the purchasing power by paying SS taxes). Imagine 100% of the country is retired and on SS. SS fund is worth $200 trillion. The govt starts paying everyone and no one needs to work. Someone needs to collect the garbage, produce goods, etc. Vinod

Thank you!

Thank you! We use canola oil for cooking, would that be just as bad as vegetable oil? Do you recommend olive oil for cooking or something else? I kind of understood what you are saying at a broad level but do not really understand it well enough. Vinod

Hi boilermaker75, I am aware of the warnings about the other things, but am surprised at limiting vegetable oil consumption. Could you please explain why? Thanks Vinod

Not to nitpick. There is a subtle unintuitive mistake in this calculation. It would seem obvious that you would use net buybacks to calculate returns, but that is not correct. The stock dilution is already incorporated in the earnings calculation i.e. the earnings are penalized for the stock issued to employees/executives. So you should not be penalizing that again by only calculating net buybacks. You just have to use the total amount of buybacks. Vinod

Show me a person who calls the current environment "Everything Bubble", I can show you a person who has underperformed the stock market. Every.Single.One.Of.Them. Zero exceptions. Vinod

I always wonder about this: I know a couple of illegal immigrants from Mexico who cannot speak any english, do not have a permit to work legally in the US, are not qualified/employable in vast majority of the available jobs. Yet, they are able to earn enough money to not only sustain themselves, but send money to support their families back home. I believe this is fairly common. How is it then that someone who is born in the US, who is eligible to work, speaks the language, knows the system, yet is not able to support themselves? Outside of physical or mental health issues, I think anyone born and brought up in the US, should be able to live a comfortable life. On an entirely separate point.. Living paycheck to paycheck might be a very rational decision. Maybe those of us on the forum are the suckers? Every year of life counts as much as any other. Your happiness in the year when you are age 27 should have the same weight as your happiness in the year when you would be 77. So if someone is spending their entire salary to optimize for current happiness, why should that be looked down upon? Those of us furiously saving in younger years for presumed happiness from being able to spend in later years, might not be so different when happiness is weighted equally over all years of life. I was thinking about the above specifically from a children's education point of view: should children be working hard, optimizing for college admissions, later career payoffs, etc. but it also seemed applicable to this case. Vinod

The very fact that you ask questions means you are on the right track. I read several posts where you are missing something very fundamental. If interested read this book end to end, make notes, read it again, give it a few months, read your notes again. I spent 6 months on this book after completing all three levels of CFA and it was an eye opener. https://www.amazon.com/Investment-Valuation-Techniques-Determining-Second/dp/0471414883 The point is to understand the fundamentals very thoroughly. Saves you so much time the rest of your investment life. Good luck. Vinod

Let me change my suggestion a little. I was focusing entirely on monthly needs without considering any lump sum needs for unexpected contingencies. 1. If she needs long term care, do you have a plan to fund that? That is a significant risk. Might want to keep aside $150k to $200k for that kind of situation, if you are not able to get a cost effective long term care insurance. Plus you need something like $50-$100k for emergencies. You might want to use laddered individual TIPS (1 year, 2 year and 3 year should be enough) for this to protect from unexpected inflation. A sudden one time inflation of any significant amount would be a killer to nominal bonds. 2. No matter what, an annuity is a no brainer in this case. Only question is how much and who to get it from.

I ran the numbers a whole while back, but if they have indexed their bond and stock portfolio, they would have pretty much achieved close to that without that really stunning first year. The main thing is the model. Run an efficient P&C company -> Gather long term float -> Invest that float in stocks and bonds You dont have to be spectacular in underwriting and if you can just get the index returns for stocks and bonds, especially when interest rates are normal, you get outstanding results. Attributing performance is not straightforward. And take Fairfax claims of bond and stock performance with a grain of salt. It is basically an example of "How to Lie with Statistics". But I do not attribute that to any attempt to mislead, just plain enthusiasm. I would give Fairfax one thing, they did the right thing in sticking with cash when bond yields are low, resisting the institutional imperative (as many many investors on this board must have done as well), and invested in bonds when they normalized. Not easy, but they did that really well. Vinod

You did an outstanding job of asset allocation. Just great! Buy an annuity with a small portion of the portfolio. It would be perfect for someone like your grandma. If you buy a $150,000 annuity, she would get about $2700 per month payout for rest of her life. This should pretty much cover her remaining expenses after SS. Keep in mind this is not inflation adjusted, but she has 75% of the portfolio for growth and income. Use the cash portion to buy this. You should be getting $9000 in dividends from VOO, SCHD and FZILX which would be growing. So total you have $3450 in cash coming in per month and you have not touched about $90,000 that is still in money market.

Terrific post. Jerome Powell should get nearly as much credit as anyone else for Fairfax improved performance. Board members are very thoughtful and intelligent and I am not suggesting they fall for these things but there a terrific book that shines light on some of these things. https://www.amazon.com/The-Halo-Effect-Phil-Rosenzweig-audiobook/dp/B002C0CG2Q/?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=7FDQE&content-id=amzn1.sym.cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_p=cf86ec3a-68a6-43e9-8115-04171136930a&pf_rd_r=144-1873670-4288829&pd_rd_wg=jNneC&pd_rd_r=f125960c-d014-425f-a302-19a2dd4c96f4&ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk Vinod

A Shiller P/E of 34 (as of March 1st) is in the top 1% of history. Total profits (as a percent of almost anything) are at near-record levels as well. Remember, if margins and multiples are both at record levels at the same time, it really is double counting and double jeopardy – for waiting somewhere in the future is another July 1982 or March 2009 with simultaneous record low multiples and badly depressed margins. Jeremy Grantham So he is telling us somewhere in the future there would be a bear market?

I remember "law of large numbers" being thrown about when Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google were all in the $100 billion range. The reasoning was, trees dont grow to the sky; companies cannot possible be worth $500 billion which would be insane; competition would increase once companies get to $100 billion market cap; etc. Here we are.

Thanks for the recommendation. Ordered it.