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	<title>indexfundfan @ indextown</title>
	<link>http://www.indextown.com</link>
	<description>Personal finance and investing in mutual funds and ETFs</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:55:32 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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	<item>
		<title>Portfolio Return for February 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

Comments: Rebalanced into INT EAFE. Moved 1% allocation from US SmallCap to US Timber.
Related posts picked by plugin: 

February 28, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for January 2010 (0)
January 18, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for December 2009 (0)
January 18, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for November 2009 (0)
November 6, 2009 &#8212; Portfolio Return for October 2009 (0)
November [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2010/03/02/portfolio-return-for-february-2010/</link>
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		<title>Portfolio Return for January 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

Comments: PrecMetal equity fell about 12% in January. This contributed to a fall of about 0.5% to the portfolio. International equities, EAFE &#38; EM, both also fell more than domestic stocks. These explained the under performance of the portfolio with respect to the benchmark (-3.23% versus -2.26%).
Related posts picked by plugin: 

March 2, 2010 &#8212; [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2010/02/28/portfolio-return-for-january-2010/</link>
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		<title>Junk fees in AT&amp;T landline service</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Like many people, I find myself using less and less of the land line phone. A few years ago, I reduced my land line with AT&#38;T from the &#8220;unlimited local&#8221; service to &#8220;measured&#8221; service. The current AT&#38;T bill amount is $15.01 a month.
When I examine the bill closer recently, I find lots of fluff and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2010/01/19/junk-fees-in-att-landline-service/</link>
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		<title>Portfolio Return for December 2009</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

Comments: The portfolio gains 1.95% in December.  The overall gain for 2009 is 29.49%. This is commendable considering the 28.2% loss in 2008.
However, when 2008 and 2009 were taken together, the portfolio&#8217;s performance is at a value of only (1-28.2%)x(1+29.49%) =0.930, i.e. there is a loss of around 7%.
2008 &#38; 2009 proved to be a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2010/01/18/portfolio-return-for-december-2009/</link>
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		<title>Portfolio Return for November 2009</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

Comments: Portfolio made a huge gain of almost 4.5% in the month.
Related posts picked by plugin: 

March 2, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for February 2010 (0)
February 28, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for January 2010 (0)
January 18, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for December 2009 (0)
November 6, 2009 &#8212; Portfolio Return for October 2009 (0)
November 5, 2009 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2010/01/18/portfolio-return-for-november-2009/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Refinance Completed</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My refinance was completed last month. My mortgage was refinanced from Bank of America (30-year fixed at 5.25%) to Star One Credit Union (30-year fixed at 4.75%). Because of the very attractive rates during this time, the entire process took a long time. In fact, from application to final funding, it took more than 12 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2010/01/17/refinance-completed/</link>
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		<title>Adios to Wells Trade</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As I was reviewing some old notes I had of  Wells Trade, the investment arm of Wells Fargo, I see a trend that Wells Fargo has been trying hard to make some money out of these &#8220;free-trade&#8221; accounts:

02/2008 : Introduced 100 free trades for PMA package with $25k or more.
08/2008 : Eliminated the respectable money [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2010/01/15/adios-to-wells-trade/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Reverting back to using checks instead of ACH</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ACH transfers (or better know as electronic funds transfer) is supposed to be the new method of money transfer in the 21-st century. But strangely enough, I find that I am reverting back to using checks for some of my transactions instead of using ACH. The following are some examples.
Depositing money at brokerages
TD Ameritrade offers [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/11/16/reverting-back-to-using-checks-instead-of-ach/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Portfolio Return for October 2009</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

Comments: Portfolio was on track to gain for the fourth month in a row until the last week of October. In the end, the portfolio had a small loss of 1.66%. Took the opportunity to rebalance out of US LargeCaps and PME into US SmallCaps, US Timber/REITS  and International EAFE equities.
Related posts picked by plugin: [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/11/06/portfolio-return-for-october-2009/</link>
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		<title>Refinance Still In Progress</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This is a short update about my refinance, which was started about one month ago. It is still in progress. The appraisal has been done, value came up to be OK but the credit union is swamped with applications.
According to the loan officer, they are currently processing applications submitted in the second week of September. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/11/05/refinance-still-in-progress/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Portfolio Return for September 2009</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

Comments: Sold off some PME to buy US LargeCaps.
Related posts picked by plugin: 

March 2, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for February 2010 (0)
February 28, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for January 2010 (0)
January 18, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for December 2009 (0)
January 18, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for November 2009 (0)
November 6, 2009 &#8212; Portfolio Return [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/11/05/portfolio-return-for-september-2009/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Reduce your California tax withholding to avoid an IOU next April</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As far as I know, California state has raised the tax withholding rates twice this year. The first was for payrolls starting from May 2009 and the second is for payrolls starting from November 2009. The latest increase is reported in this LINK.
If I remember correctly, the increase in May 2009 was due to the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/11/02/reduce-your-california-tax-withholding-to-avoid-an-iou-next-april/</link>
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		<title>Refinance Started</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have been watching the mortgage interest rates diligently for the past two to three weeks. Yesterday, I kicked off the refinance process.
I had already obtained quotes directly from the big banks (Bank of America, Wells Fargo &#38; Chase) but most of their rates included an one point fee (which I do not want). And [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/09/29/refinance-started/</link>
			</item>
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		<title>Portfolio Return for August 2009</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

Comments
Portfolio continues to recover. Sold off some US REITs to rebalance after their huge run up over the past few months.
Related posts picked by plugin: 

March 2, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for February 2010 (0)
February 28, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for January 2010 (0)
January 18, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for December 2009 (0)
January 18, 2010 [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/09/04/portfolio-for-august-2009/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Moved my web hosting out of 1&amp;1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[1and1 (1&#38;1) webhost is increasing the hosting fees by 40% from $4.99 per month to $6.99 per month. I made good on my promise to transfer my website out. I have moved the website to Arvixe Personal&#8217;s Class hosting which offers &#8220;unlimited storage and bandwidth&#8221; and includes one domain name registration. I made a one-time [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/08/21/moved-my-web-hosting-out-of-11/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Muni ETFs with in-cash creations</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Indexuniverse has an interesting article on in-cash ETF share creations for muni ETFs as opposed to in-kind creations. The article attempts to explain how in-kind creations can help to eliminate ETFs trading premiums in cases where the underlying securities are relatively illiquid.
The following figure shows the trading premiums of the two types of ETFs.


Clearly allowing [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/08/07/muni-etfs-with-in-cash-creations/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Does an asset class allocation of less than 5% make sense?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In allocating the asset classes in a portfolio, many &#8220;experts&#8221; recommend that to keep things simple, it does not make sense to sub-divide the portfolio into anything less than 5%. The usual cited reason is that it complicates the portfolio with very little increase in benefit.
For example, if an asset class has an allocation of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/08/06/does-an-asset-class-allocation-of-less-than-5-make-sense/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Portfolio Return for July 2009</title>
		<description><![CDATA[

Comments: Portfolio continues to recover from last year&#8217;s drop. The gain for the month was 7.13%. Current Equity:Bond ratio is 69.4:30.6, with the target being 67:33. If this run continues, I expect to have to rebalance out of equities to fixed income soon.
Related posts picked by plugin: 

March 2, 2010 &#8212; Portfolio Return for February [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/08/03/portfolio-return-for-july-2009/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>Squeezing out more tax efficiency from my portfolio</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My portfolio is currently allocated as follows:

US LargeCap 11%
US SmallCap 8%
US REITs 4%
US Timber REITs 4%
US MLP (PIK dividends only) 4%
INT EAFE 20%
INT Emerging Market 11%
PreciousMetal Equity 5%
Fixed Income 33%

The ranking of the asset classes, in terms of tax efficiency (based on historical dividends), are as follows (most tax efficient at the top):

US MLPs EEQ [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/07/30/squeezing-out-more-tax-efficiency-from-my-portfolio/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>1and1 web hosting hiking fees by 40%</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The current web hosting service that this blog is hosted on (1and1.com) has given me notice that they intend to hike the fee by 40%, from $4.99 per month to $6.99 per month. They were even pleased to announce this to me:
We are pleased to unveil the new 1&#38;1 Home Package with more web space [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.indextown.com/archives/2009/07/24/1and1-web-hosting-hiking-fees-by-40/</link>
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