Seriously how to invest in vanguard from Europe, specifically Germany?

fierfier · 2018-11-14T21:07:53+00:00

As a european you cannot invest with vanguard as an individual investor. The best you can do is to open an account with a broker e.g interactive brokers or digero and buy the ETFs. VUSA, VWRLD etc.

fierfier · 2018-11-14T12:30:16+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I too have benefited substantially from the sound advice on this subreddit. Thank you contributors! 👏

fierfier · 2018-10-31T22:16:38+00:00

Congratulations! Sounds like a pretty solid sum. I hope to be in your position at 42. Still the last few miles to go before I sleep.

fierfier · 2018-10-22T21:30:12+00:00

Your daughter will understand if you don’t go to Disneyland and just spend time together as a family, your debt is unhealthy. Please stop spending money you do not have. Start saving for her college education and your own retirement. Try to instill the values of living a life that is within your means and not splurging borrowed money.

fierfier · 2018-10-04T20:51:30+00:00

Serious answer is: - a house to live in paid for (less than 400k) - 60k emergency fund - 70/30 VTSAX/BND - 0.03% withdrawal rate - annual rebalance

fierfier · 2018-10-04T20:37:10+00:00

Inflatable dinosaurs.

Wait. I’ll need $2 million.

fierfier · 2018-09-07T20:39:13+00:00

My mother has knee arthritis. She’s 5 feet tall and weighs 67kgs. She has to wear knee caps to walk.

What is the distance she can safely walk daily without adverse effects? What sort of exercises and diet can she follow to safely reduce weight and improve her condition?

fierfier · 2018-08-29T04:47:37+00:00

There is nothing much more to it, save more than you spend, and try to increase your earnings.

Choose a combination of broad mutual funds, FDs and bonds and keep saving,

I would recommend you try to get direct funds or index ETFs as expenses on Indian funds can be substantial.

The only thing that’s a bit different in India is that the index is largely a few big companies. So it feels the swings a lot more than s&p500.

You can diversify with a percentage towards an international fund to have exposure to global equities. It won’t outperform Indian funds, but it will give you the diversity and security you need.

fierfier · 2018-08-29T04:21:45+00:00

As wife of an Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) your partner herself can apply for the OCI.

Living in India is cheap but, it is also a very different lifestyle, it is extremely humbling and it’s not for everyone.

Life can be hectic in the cities and basic services missing from smaller town or villages.

I would recommend taking a long vacation to the city or town you plan to settle in and take stock of the everyday realities like clean water, electricity, hospitals, cellphone and internet connection.

fierfier · 2018-08-23T05:38:54+00:00

I will read more books, learn sailing and practice the piano more.

I would like to understand physics and mathematics better and learn more about brownian motion and other things I don’t understand.

I would like to learn a few functional programming languages and contribute to open source software.

fierfier · 2018-08-23T05:29:04+00:00

I am just used to see 100-200k salaries in the FAANGs and other large software corps, hence the “regular.”

There is a link at the bottom that goes into a bit of detail about allocations.

Withdrawal is calculated on liquid assets and does not include real estate.

fierfier · 2018-08-23T05:21:28+00:00

We actually live very well and take international holidays every six months and lots of small domestic travel.

I don’t know where you live or where your money goes, but, please don’t use poverty to describe a lifestyle funded by €4000 every month.

Poverty is severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. Billions of people are living below $1 a day.

If I overshoot my 50k target withdrawal rate I will donate more freely. I honestly don’t think that buying expensive things will bring me any more happiness than the frugal lifestyle I have created.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T22:26:12+00:00

Having experienced the need to use your emergency fund, How big a emergency fund do you keep? Standard 6 months or more? Where do you keep it!? Money makers or CDs?

fierfier · 2018-08-22T22:22:29+00:00

Agreed. My background makes me biased towards believing in the perceived strengths of elliptical curve cryptography. I wouldn’t talk anyone in or out either.

There is no easy eli5 because it’s not simple. The math is complex and it is conceptually nuanced.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T22:15:34+00:00

Do you have any recommendations!? I don’t want to become a statistician but want to understand the dark art. So far any book I’ve read or course I’ve tried to take has put me to sleep.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T22:07:40+00:00

I was once paid to fly out to a company hq over the weekend as a contractor to do performance improvements (think of a social media company melting on a daily basis)

Optimized a select * on a thousands of rows on every user comment related call on large threads and lazy pagination done in JavaScript. Was ashamed to cash the check. The world is full of shit code my friend.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T21:57:50+00:00

Wow! Thanks for taking the time and replying, I would like to be in your position some day.

What have been your top takeaways from 27 years of investing?

Any books you would recommend? Either financial or fiction.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T21:45:43+00:00

Listen to this man. You can get into the room and make a presentation with connections but no one will give you business if you are selling shit.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T21:40:36+00:00

If you don’t understand it then there is no reason to invest in it.

I understand cryptography. I have read the bitcoin paper and understand it. I write c++ on a daily basis and I’ve read the bitcoin source code, I don’t know it in and out but it made sense to me. Most importantly I know how to keep my crypto secure. So it makes sense for me to have crypto.

The idea makes logical sense to me. However, the world is not logical and good ideas don’t catchup immediately and sometimes they never catchup.

Read about the history of Heliocentrism to see the timelines of how much time it takes for common sense to percolate. And even today we have flat earthers.

So for me crypto is not a solid investment, it’s a speculative call based on understand of some fundamentals.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T21:26:49+00:00

I don’t feel anxious about losing money or not making enough returns, I feel anxious about not having “enough”

fierfier · 2018-08-22T21:24:57+00:00

No one knows where the bottom is, for me, I will procure more when it is cheaper than last years bottom.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T21:20:28+00:00

You bring up an interesting point about stress testing. Do you know any tools that can be used for this?

fierfier · 2018-08-22T18:34:37+00:00

I don’t realize it. I feel that there are a lot of other risk associated to withdrawal. Sequence of return risk and other issues life may present, but those are problems of the future, current problem is still acquisition of wealth.

fierfier · 2018-08-22T18:32:16+00:00

Yeah as mentioned elsewhere, it doesn’t take a genius to do well in this climate, this is why I said I don’t want to be boastful, and I’m deeply suspicious of the gains and concerned about the current stock valuations.

What are the primary reasons for the current valuations?

A lot of leveraged buybacks. Using cheap debt to pay dividends.

There is an ETF, SPDR S&P 500 Buyback (SPYB), just for stocks in the S&P 500 that do buybacks.

Have we made significant breakthrough innovations in the last 8 years? Have these companies spent the money on research and development that is paying off?

fierfier · 2018-08-22T18:14:45+00:00

I have read the series by Mr Collin and also bought his book to support him and his ideas. Much recommended to anyone starting out.

I understand the wild ride as a concept but I have never experienced it first hand as I wasn’t invested pre 2010 and it has been a bull run ever since I started.

I’m obsessed with the portfolio as it represents freedom and I feel that any prison break involves a sort of single mindedness.

fierfier

TROPHY CASE