The allocation I was given is broken down into the following asset classes and percentages. The funds involved are given later in the document but are in the form of dollar amounts, not percentages.
- 21% US Large Cap Stock
09% US Mid/small Cap Stock
20% International Stock
14% US Short-term Bond
14% US Intermediate-term Bonds
07% US Long-term Bonds
15% International Bonds
Note that the 50/50 stock/bond split was MY INPUT that started this whole thing off AND I also said I wanted to include international in the allocation. The only things original are the US/International splits.
There are three more pages to identify which funds to put into which of my three accounts (Taxable, IRA, Inherited IRA) and specified by exact dollar mounts instead of percentages making the advice out-of-date the very next day. I had to calculate the percentages of each fund in each account as that was not listed anywhere.
It seemed deliberately designed to be complex and confusing to encourage further help from Vanguard using their Personal Advisor Service (PAS) for which they included a TWELVE PAGE sales pitch.
Once deciphered, the plan is a straight-forward four-fund portfolio, almost exactly what I would have done on my own. I expected this but simply wanted to hear it from someone else to make sure there weren't some clever things I hadn't thought of. What I didn't expect was the convoluted presentation.
Another thing I didn't expect: they did not offer to make the trades needed to implement this without my buying into the PAS. The last time I went to VG for similar advice they DID offer to implement the trades but there was a catch: the advice did not consider any assets not held by VG. Even if held by VG they needed to be VG funds or EFTs -- not any non-VG stuff in the accounts.
On a more positive note, there were some complex things to do involving individual bonds that their bond desk (and also their SENIOR bond desk) did do for me but that was quite independent of their free advice/planning service.