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Told em I was 11-15yrs from retirement, would need the money for 15 more years after that answered the other questions implying that I was fine with risk, but had only a moderately stable income I did the 11-15 yrs to retirement, 15 years+ of need, with all other sliders centered, and got a perfect...

Clear, concise, and actionable. What ese could I want?

You have short term goals (the "move out" fund), and long term retirement goals. They need to be considered separately. Money intended for use in under 5 years should not be invested in the stock market, but long term investing should include a significant allocation to stocks. Short Term ...

Welcome to the forum :) . Its great that you have no debt, And you have made some good selections for your reading. Your planned savings rate is excellent, which is very important at the beginning of your investing career. Savings Rate Discussion . I think you will have to call for the expense ratio...

Age 26 . . . . . Desired Asset allocation: 80-90% stocks / 5 -10% bonds Desired International allocation: 50-70% of stocks No target EM, just know I want to overweight - I should probably think about that. I think you can greatly simplify your holdings, gain better diversification with less overlap...

From watching Vanguard's webcasts and reading their research reports, it appears they are heading in a direction of increasing the international equity percentage's in their Target & Life Strategy funds over time. I think that's reading way too much into small diferences in how they phrase esse...

Bad Monkey , by Carl Hiaasen. A tourist deep sea fishing near Key West reels in a severed human arm. A Sheriff's deputy is loses his job because of his unusual attack on his girl friend's husband, and becomes a restaurant inspector for the County Health Department (aka assigned to "roach patro...

Any obe of these:
The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing, or
Common Sense on Mutual Funds, or
The New Coffeehouse Investor: How to Build Wealth, Ignore Wall Street, and Get on with Your Life.

The only real question going forward is how to maintain the AA I'm striving for as my 401k is growing at a rate 2x my IRA. Pretty soon the 401k will be much bigger, throwing the AA out of whack. Whoever is doing the fund selection seems to like Dreyfus. Ask whoever is in charge of the 401k if they ...

Check to see if ther is a brokerage option, that would let you get to Fidelity's Spartan funds. Otherwise if you want to continue your old asset allocation: (1) put everyting in the 401k in Dreyfus Basic S&P 500 Stock Index Fund (DSPIX) er = 0.21%; and (2) adjust the other retirement accounts at...

Age: 27 (him), 27 (her) Desired AA: 81% Stock, 19% Desired International: 25% In my opinion your desired asset allocation is within the range of what is reasonable. (But why the odd numbers, 81 & 19?, In my example portfolio I'll just use 80/20). You mention wanting a "3-4 Fund Lazy Portfo...

Do you have anticipated needs for that money, say during the transition from your low-income to your higher-income phase? If you think you might need the money within 5-10 years, it's advised you just park it in a high-interest saving account, a savings bond, or a CD. Also, do you have debt? If so ...

I now fully understand why you suggest I use the taxable portion of my portfolio for increased exposure to international stock and not bonds. Do you think it would be feasible to get more exposure to mid/small caps in the taxable portion of my portfolio as well? I assume this would cause a need to ...

was thinking of going with the following allocation: 20% Melon Capital Mgmt Bond Market Index 20% Principal International Equity Index 45% Principal Largecap S&P 500 Index 7.5% Principal Smallcap S&P 600 Index 7.5% Principal Midcap S&P 400 Index the 401k plan provider charges a .5% main...

Welcome to the forum :) . Congratulations on your engagement. Its good to see you are doing some reading. Here are some reading ideas for you, start with the section on General Investing: Bogleheads.org Investment Books . Two of my favorites are Bernstein's The Four Pillars of Investing , and Ferri'...

I believe the high yield bond funds component matches Mr. Ferri's recommendations...... He also suggests emerging markets bonds, I wouln't want those either. Your almost to retirement portfolio is 60/40 stocks/bonds. The more important qualification in my response was "provided that the $70k/y...

ruralavalon, duckie, and everyone else: thank you so much for your replies. Ok, so I went with the Self Managed Plan and 403b for now. Here is the breakdown: Self Managed Plan: 70% Spartan Total Market Index Fund $8,766/yr 30% Spartan US Bond Index Fund $3,842/yr 403b: 100% Spartan Global ex US Ind...

I wouldn't use the high yield bond fund. But otherwise looks reasonable to me, provided that the $70k/yr from SS and pensions will cover most of your planned post-retirement living expenses.

There is a self-directed option that I had essentially just written off, I'll look at that more closely. I don't believe I'll be at the job for much longer than the 2 year vesting period (if even that long), so it would make sense to invest in the 401k. Given our tax situation the dividends from a ...

I still think your initial reaction is correct, that is to choose the Self-Managed Plan (SMP) from among the three SURS options. You indicated perhaps an additional $10k/yr to invest, and the 403b offers some very good fund choices so use that as well. You have not stated a desired asset allocation....

What is the motivation for getting away from the target retirement funds in my 401K and IRA's? Generally: If you have enough assets, it's cheaper to replicate them yourself, as you can get better (lower expense ratio) share classes (e.g. Admiral Shares). Also, you have more control over your asset ...

neurosphere wrote:Now I have have to decide whether to respond at all. The prudent answer, is of course, no, do not respond. But I'm itching to . . . .

Just tell him no thanks, you don't owe him any explanation and will be wasting your time.

toyotaman1 wrote:I have all of my 401k money invested in Pimco total return bond fund. . . .

Not enough information to answer, please see:
Financial Planning
Asking Portfolio Questions

Have had only a few occasions to call or e-mail Vanguard, and almost always recieved a prompt and satisfactory response.

The only exception was when I e-mailed a complaint/question about Vanguard Portfolio Watch®.

Ages 42 and 40. . . . . . Desired Asset Allocation: 70-80% in equities and 20-30% in fixed income. Of the equity portion, 80-90% Domestic and 10-20% international. (I am open to suggestions on allocation) Your desired asset allocation is within the range of what is reasonable, in my opinion. % Stoc...

If you go with the Self-Managed Plan (add $7.0k/yr, plus about $5.7k/yr from employer), in my opinion these are probably the better funds to use: Spartan U.S. Bond Index Fund - Institutional Class (4-651) 0.07 Spartan Total Market Index Fund (4-397) 0.07% Spartan International Index Fund (4-399) 0.1...

donall wrote:To duplicate a pension one needs to fund at about a 20% level.

What is the source the 20% figure you refered to, and how was it calculated? Not doubting you, just curious.

Yes, the system is actuarily neutral, meaning that for you personally, it doesn't matter when you take it. But your wife is younger than you and is a female, together making it highly likely that she will outlive you by a number of years; each one of which she will collect your signifacantly higher...

Title of article: "For Retirees, a Million-Dollar Illusion". About 2/3 of the article is given over to a really poor hypothetical, being a couple with a one million dollar portfolio that is 100% in munis. Doesn't their "typical" couple have any tax protected space? Can't their hy...

The Lost Bank: The Story of Washington Mutual - The Biggest Bank Failure in American History , by Kirsten Grind. I haven't finished yet, only about 60% thru this book. Its readable and not overly technical, and seems very thorough and without an agenda. For a less serious book, I am also reading Th...

(1) Is there an employer match in your spouse's 401k plan? If so what is it? (2) What are these expense ratios, as offered in spouse's 401k, for these funds: DODGE & COX INTERNATIONAL STOCK FUND GLOBAL/INTERNATIONAL SSGA S&P 500 INDEX SECURITIES LENDING SERIES FUND CLASS II LARGE/MULTICAP DO...

I have edited my previous posts to answer your valid questions. Thanks for your suggestions. I still don't see any current work based account, do you not have a 401k (or 403b, 457) at a current employer that you will be using? Have you included all long term investment or retirement accounts of you...

By the way, what measuring stick do you use to rate the quality of funds? Morningstar, US News, Fundmojo etc. Any? Non? Do you ignore what the "experts" are saying about your funds? For bond funds, look at credit quality of the bonds held (as well as bond duration, and the expense ratio)....

Self-Managed Plan wrote:Employer amount: Equal to 7.6% of your annual
salary, of which at least 6.6% goes toward
retirement benefits, and up to 1% pays for the
disability insurance.
Employee amount: 8.0% of earnings

Question -- in the past has the employer always made the promised contributions in the Self-Managed Plan?

Very Tax-Efficient --
Tax-managed stock funds
Large-cap and total-market stock index funds

Wiki article link: Principles of Tax-Efficient Fund Placement .

jcholstein wrote:The funds for the 401k that I am wondering about are under his 401k.

Thanks!

Are those all the funds offered in his 401k? Or just the ones you are currently using?

This is what I see so far for long-term (retirement) investing (total = $217.9k): Roth IRA @ Vanguard (19%; $40.4k) Roth IRA @ TD Ameritrade (18%; $39) Rollover IRA @ Vanguard , just rolled over from 401k (47%; $103k) Rollover IRA @ TD Ameritrade (11%; $25k) Rollover IRA @ Scotttrade (05%; $10.5k) D...

Cash: $170k in MM (100k for emergency, 25k for the next car, 10k vacation fund, 35k and growing saving for a house). While I think it's nuts to have that much cash sitting with virtually no interest in a MM account, my wife wants to keep these assets safe and liquid. I welcome other ideas (TIPS, sh...

What really irks me is that of the 3 index funds my 401k offers, two are in the same Small Cap asset class. Sounds like so far the general consensus is to rebalance my portfolio into the lower cost Index funds as best as I can, move my bond position into the INVESCO fund and get my international ex...

The Roth is a targeted fund, is this suggestions to reinvest those contributions into the VTSMX and VGTSX? The suggestion is to sell the Vanguard Target date 2055 you have in your Roth, and instead put that monrey and future Roth IRA contributions into (1) Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Inv...

Welcome to the forum :) . Congratulations on your marriage, the new job, and the new baby. So my questions are: 1) First and foremost, which SURS plan should I go with? (This decision has to be made by July) 2) If I do go with the self-managed, which funds/stocks/bonds,etc would you recommend? 3) Ar...

Here is an idea to think about, using an 80/20 stock/bond allocation, with 30% of stocks in internatiuonal. It gives you very low expense ratios, eliminates the unneeded overlap and still gives very broad diversification, Wiki article link: Three-fund portfolio . It uses the very broadly diversified...

Front page of today's Wall Street Journal: Needless to say, the pressure is building on active managers to compete with the indexes. This article is about Wally Weitz of Weitz Funds in Omaha, NE (the second oracle of Omaha besides Warren) whose actually outperformed the S&P 500 by 1 percentage ...

Welcome to the forum :) Congratulations on your recent marriage. Can't make a recommendation about just one account (her 401k), we would need to look at all accounts as a single unified portfolio. That way you can use the best available funds from the limited choices in the 401ks, and use the IRAs t...

. . .we are trying to decide on where to put that 9% next. We were debating on the following: -Apply all 15% to the 401k, until annual max is hit -Apply that 9% to the rental mortgage and working on getting it paid off . . . . . Sorry for the lack of details. Here is more info: Me: 29 yrs old, wife...

I would use the same funds, but more bonds.

Keep being aggressive on those student loans, but I do think its a good idea to continue to max out your 401k since it has such a good match and a nice selection of funds to choose from. Roth IRA as well, since it gives you good flexibility on withdrawal of your contributions if needed, and can even...

Age: 32 Desired Asset Allocation: *Not Sure* Desired International Allocation: *Not Sure* You need to decide the asset allocastion that suits you . On asset allocation, please see -- Wiki article link: Asset Allocation ; and regression, http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1217243#p12172...

I recently was allowed to sign up for the company 401k. There is ONE Index fund offered and the balance of the funds are all high expense ratios. . . . . . I could post the different funds in my 401k for you to see, but I have decided to just release myself from this frustration and give up!!! It w...

-Apply all 15% to the 401k, until annual max is hit -Apply that 9% to the rental mortgage and working on getting it paid off In my opinion it may turn on: (1) how good the investment options are in the 401k; and (2) the interest rate on the rental mortgage. But in general if the 401k choices are re...