Author Topic: I'm a Teacher doing a FIRE Project...help me with Bonds Data:)  (Read 1189 times)

aceyou

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I'm a Teacher doing a FIRE Project...help me with Bonds Data:)
« on: February 06, 2019, 06:34:10 PM »
Hey MMMers

I'm a math teacher, and on Friday, I'm starting a 6 day project with my STEM Algebra 2 class on FIRE, using what we've learned about exponentials and statistical analysis to create retirement projections. 

For day 1, I to do their own analysis and determine the growth rate of Stocks, Bonds, Housing, and Gold, using historical data. 

I have data for everything...except BONDS.  Can anyone help by giving  me a link to a website that shows year vs bond price of some total bond index?  I feel like it shouldn't be hard to find, but I can't find it.  For example, Vanguard Total Bond...what price was it selling for on January 1 for the past 20 years?  Or something like that. 

I'll keep looking, but any help would be appreciated. 

Here's the Project Daily Plan, for those interested:
Day 1: Compare a few asset Classes....Stocks, Bonds, Housing, Gold.
Day 2: Explore the Trinity Charts and learn how to read them + the Shockingly Simple Math of Early Retirement Chart from MMM
Day 3-5: Pick two careers.  Find research their pay.  Run the numbers for a 10%, 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% savings rate to see how much you'd have to live on to retire in various numbers of years. 
Day 6: Present your data to the class for your two careers/savings rates, and explain what career/savings rate combo you'd pick if you had to choose today.

myrrh

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Re: I'm a Teacher doing a FIRE Project...help me with Bonds Data:)
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2019, 11:55:45 AM »
Find a bond fund abbreviation, such as Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund Admiral Shares (VBTLX).

Go to http://finance.yahoo.com/ and enter that symbol just left of the Get Quote button.  Click the button and then select Historical Prices or Basic Chart from the menu down the left side of the page to see historical prices. Change the time period to max and the frequency to monthly or yearly (you can choose yearly with chart, but not historical prices.) You'll get around 18 years of data, which isn't 20 but better than nothing. Good luck.

Boofinator

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Re: I'm a Teacher doing a FIRE Project...help me with Bonds Data:)
« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2019, 12:09:10 PM »
Here's a site for federal treasuries, perhaps it will be close enough for your purposes:

http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html

aceyou

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Re: I'm a Teacher doing a FIRE Project...help me with Bonds Data:)
« Reply #3 on: February 07, 2019, 01:24:29 PM »
Thank you to both of you.  I'm going to use both. 

myrrh, I'm using your idea to create the table for them to create a regression line. 

Boofinator, I'm using yours to show a visual of why stocks pair well with bonds.  You can see the inverse relationship between stocks and bonds.