One among many things to be grateful for

I'm spending some of this first day of the new year catching up on 2011 and doing some planning. Three years ago we threw in the towel on our complex and supposedly conservative slice-and-dice investment allocation and converted to the Permenent Portfolio.

It took me a year before that of reading and mulling to come around to accepting this allocation and it's exceeedingly contrarian approach. It didn't help matters that the porfolio's creator was also a famous Libertarian and that some who subscribe to it probably have two year's worth of MRE rations and a gun collection stashed in a culvert in northern Montana. Still, it works, and after looking at finance boards full of far smarter and wealthier people than me posting year end results that are break-even or worse, I feel blessed. Here are the numbers for the PP and a good overview of the broader market:

http://crawlingroad.com/blog/2012/01/01/permanent-portfolio-2011-results/

Now if we can just stop squandering our returns on moves!