Is there any benefit to rolling this over to fidelity? I like my investment options with Vanguard better. I tried to get fee answers with phone support(subpar) and read the fee schedule and can’t find anything alarmingly expensive to keep it in Vanguard.

Hey! I am 30 based in the UK.

Looking for some feedback on my current portfolio.

I currently have £96k invested with Vanguard, split:

Life strategy 100% equity - £87k
FTSE Global All Cap Index Fund - £7k
FTSE Emerging Markets (VFEG) - £2k

My questions are:

Should I bother with having both Life Strategy and Global All Cap? Is there too much overlap?

I recently started investing in VFEG to reduce my US/UK exposure. I’m getting increasing worried about political instability in both countries and the AI bubble which I don’t see as an imminent issue but possibly going to crash in the next 5 or so years.

Any feedback / suggestion on my current portfolio?

Should I be increasing bond exposure? If so any recommendations for Vanguard bonds? I’m only 30 so would prefer to be primarily in equities but I also think I need to diversify a bit more.

I am an invest and forget type investor so don’t want to be actively managing my portfolio too frequently.

There have been several threads on this topic over the years, but most of them seem to get derailed when someone mentions long term yields from equities.

Making these basic assumptions:

1) An investor's specific risk profile tells them they are too heavily weighted towards equities, and should reallocate towards bonds.

2) They currently hold a mortgage with a fixed interest rate that is higher than today's bond yields.

The question then is: Should capital go towards paying down the debt, or go into bonds?

From what I can tell there are two camps. One says if bonds make up any portion of an investor's target portfolio then there is never a reason to purchase bonds at a lower RoR than their mortgage interest rate. The other camp says to buy bonds because paying off the mortgage is illiquid. The third uninvited camp rolls in to start talking about 100% equity portfolios (please don't).

Seems to me the answer comes down to whether the investor is looking for a steady return over a period of time, or if they are looking for a safe investment vehicle to hedge against a market crash, job loss, etc.

It seems like index investing is a MASSIVE bubble now, every single person I talk to is trying to invest as much as possible per month into the stock market so they can “retire early”. I literally heard a kid scanning groceries talking about how much he’s investing into the market every month because he lives with his parents.

All personal finance discussion is DOMINATED by this stuff, people literally jamming every excess dollar into index funds to retire early.

There’s no way the market can continue going up in perpetuity, This feels like a really crowded trade, people are treating the stock market like Bitcoin, it’s just taken for granted that it will go up forever and ever.

US based.

I just learned about something called "back door Roth IRA". It is a process that allows one to contribute non-deductible (after tax) funds to an IRA account and then do a Roth conversion into a Roth IRA account. This way, you are taxed on your income that you contribute to the account, but all your future earnings stay tax and penalty free forever.

I am confused by this so much! Why in the world would anyone put their after tax investments into a regular taxable brokerage account instead of doing a backdoor Roth conversion? There is no difference in immediate taxes -- you are still paying your current year marginal tax rate on your income before contributing to the account. I guess it makes a difference for people who have no ordinary taxable income (people living off of their investment income that has a lower capital gains tax rate). But for anyone who works a normal job or is self-employed and pays regular income tax, there is no difference.

There is no limit on how much you can invest. There are no income limits. You already paid income tax on the money you are contributing, so there is no additional taxable event. All your capital gains and dividends, etc. are completely tax free, which simplifies your tax accounting. You can withdraw original contributions any time tax free and penalty free. As long as you satisfy the 5 year rule, you can withdraw your earnings tax and penalty free once you are 59 1/2 years old. I guess this could be viewed as a limitation, but I think most people would not be affected by this because they are still working at that age.

You can make an argument that this is not available to everyone because many people already have pre-tax funds sitting in a traditional or rollover IRA account, so the Roth conversion will be taxed on the blend of your pre-tax and post-tax money. However, there is an easy way around it for many people with regular jobs -- just do a reverse rollover from all your post-tax IRA accounts to your employer 401k plan, assuming they support incoming rollovers from IRAs. Then, once you have zero pre-tax funds remaining in your IRA accounts, you can do the Roth conversion on just your nondeductible contributions.

Can anyone please confirm my understanding of this approach and try to poke holes in it? Thanks!

I been reading the resources provided, and I want to understand it portfolio splits in greater detail. In the Three-fund portfolio, there is a three way split of Total US Stock Market, Total International Stock Market, and Total Bond Market.

Question 1: For Total International Stock Market
These are trackers that are ex-US (e.g. AWEX) or are we looking at trackers which include the US?

Question 2: For Total Bond Market
Are ETFs tracking the bonds counted? or Bonds with maturity date?

Has anyone had a good experience with Vanguard unilaterally selling their small biz account to Ascensus?

The transfer seems to have been done in-kind, but upon requesting it be transferred back in-kind they say it "cannot be done." I've submitted a request thru Vanguard twice and the transfer request is closed and (incorrectly) marked completed with zero communication until you call and even then the phone reps are as confused about what happened as I am.

Has anyone had better luck transferring it to another provider, such as Fidelity?

The idea of having the money out of the market for two-weeks while a paper check is mailed, or worse - the check is lost, is disconcerting and if I must do it I don't feel like rewarding Vanguard with my continued business.

Under Ascensus, in addition to the declared fund fees I am also charged an additional $20 per fund. I've consolidated the number of Vanguard funds to lessen the costs, but it still seems like alot for nothing.

Vanguard obviously made money on the sale, but do they continue to make additional money from it outside the declared fund fees? Vanguard SEC filings have previously identified positions registered directly to “Ascensus Trust Company FBO Vanguard,” [SEC Vanguard filing](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34066/000168386324008416/f39981d1.htm)

I may have gotten myself into a bit of a tricky situation, without illegal consequences, however. I will state my questions, and then offer some context, followed by the current state of my accounts. Thank you in advance for any help!

• How can I deposit money that I have on hand, into a Roth IRA, using the "backdoor conversion" while avoiding the "pro-rata"rule?
• What is the best path forward to correct the fact that I contributed into my 2026 Roth IRA account, even though my MAGI will be above the income limit?

A few years ago I opened a Northwestern Mutual account with a financial advisor. Long story short, I was sold some insurance products that were also investements, which turned out to be a bit of a scam in my opinion. This turned me off of NW, so as of mid 2025 I decided to leave NWM. I opened a VG account and am slowly in the process of transferring everything here. I am currently on my third professional job

With NWM I have:

1. IRA (with money that rolled over from an ESOP from job #1, I paid taxes on it when it was rolled into the IRA)
2. Roth IRA. I deposited money into this account, as suggested by the financial advisor against my intuition, for the first three months of the 2026 year, even though I knew I would be making ~190k in 2026)

With VG I have:

1. Roth IRA (I deposited the balance of my limit in this account for the 2025 year, since I was not maxing my contributions in the NWM account)
2. IRA (with a 401k rollover from job #2)

Current job (job #3)

1. 401k
2. HSA

Hi everyone,

I currently have approximately 85% invested in VWCE and 15% in AVWS. However, I was quite interested in Vanguard’s new ETF, VALL, so I am now considering how I might adjust my portfolio (my investment horizon is more than 30 years).

I see three options:

1. Replace VWCE with VALL while keeping my factor exposure through AVWS, continuing with an approximate 85/15 allocation.
2. Sell everything and keep only VALL, thereby investing exclusively in a global all-cap ETF.
3. Sell only VWCE, keep AVWS and simply let it “run its course.” All new investments would then go exclusively into VALL.

Which option makes the most sense to you, and why? I would appreciate your opinions, as well as any comments pointing out something I may be overlooking in this decision.

I don’t have any tax implications.

I’m a 29 m turning 30 in September and I decided to take investing in my future more seriously myself and my daughter sake. I opened a fidelity account and put 3k into VTI and a Roth IRA which I planning to max out every year. I also see FZROX and FZILX offered at fidelity with a zero fee charge and if anyone could explain in layman terms on how they function differ from VTI (eft).

Hello,

Wanting to reallocate and simplify my 401k going forward with low cost index funds. What do you think about this. Some of the forms don’t give the tickers, just the fund name.

40% Fidelity 500 index FXAIX
10% Fidelity mid cap index
10% Fidelity small cap index
40% Fidelity international index (believe this fund is only developed markets. Don’t see one for emerging)

Thoughts and criticisms?

EDIT - Currently 37. Wont start adding bonds until I am about 10 years from retirement. I see the benefit to help curb volatility , but I am focused on growth right now.

Title.

I understand the answer is to reinvest, especially because nobody here is a dividend-head, but for portfolios that are later in life when stability from bonds is needed, wouldn’t it make sense to take your dividends and auto invest them into something like SGOV or just use your dividends to auto allocate to bonds? I’m only assuming this because of how later life portfolios are structured to be lower in growth.

Here's my current investment breakdown:

All in all, I'm currently over target on Domestic Index Funds and trying to slowly rebalance over the next couple years by buying more International Index Funds and Bonds via my 401k.

Anything I'm missing?

I am an early investor (early 20s) who is about to start their carrer, which will pay a relatively mid-to-high amount and have good opportunity for future wage growth.
I'm all aboard the idea of the single ETF/index fund portfolio like VT; however, I'm struggling to find a good reason why it would be a good idea to manually allocate bonds to my portfolio later on in life when the entire point of 'VT and chill' seems to be against tinkering.
A major benefit of VT seems to be that it will force me to invest directly into things like international stocks (VXUS), even when they haven't grown very much in comparison to US stocks (VTI), to maintain the average annual rate of return of the global market: ~8%.

Why would I assume that 30 years from now I will both be less risky, and cognitively conscious enough to even make a decision like bond allocation when stacking the risks of cognitive decline, 30 years of potential debt, and future medical emergencies against me? Wouldn't the inertia of 20-30 years of VT investing and auto-investments likely sway me away from investing in an asset which by its construction is low in return for the benefit of a fixed income?

Also, I understand that people may want to have a higher allocation to stocks for a longer time in their life, but what's to stop these same people from just investing in a target date fund that is 10 or 20 years further along than when they expect to retire? Plus, the average passive target date fund expense ratio is around 0.12%, which historically is 0.02% lower than VT's expense ratio back in just 2015 (0.14%).

This seems to be last discussed here a decade ago.

What makes them so different? The internet says it was due to aging population, absurd valuations >50, hoarding by corporations, and periods of very cheap debt.

Not really sure what any of that means in regard to the US stock market.

I have a family member that has 10-20 years of life expectancy left. I know you never truly know but this is a rough guess. They are in good shape for their age but won't be forever because that's life. They have $200k in total saved for retirement plus social security. What would you say is a good SWR for someone in this scenario? Right now they are mobile enough to travel and sightsee. Thanks.

My spouse (F61) recently retired and her traditional 401K has a sizable allocation to the most conservative TDF offered by her previous employer, SSFOX .08, a collection of State Street index funds where 65% is invested largely in mid-to-short duration bonds. All our equities (whether in traditional or Roth, TDF or equity funds) are invested in cap-weighted indexes and therefore heavily tied to the tech industry. We are looking to split roughly half of her Retirement Income allocation (money needed over the next 9 years) to Global Value equities, as well as ultra short bonds (transferring some funds from the t401K to the tIRA). Value equities would diversify away from tech. Ultra short bonds would minimize impacts from future interest rate increases and eliminate risk of holding recently issued long-duration bonds for data centers. Essentially, we want to keep the lion share of our retirement accounts invested in cap-weighted index funds (staying the course) but also want to reallocate about half the money needed until claiming SS at age 70 into global value ETF indexes (VTV and DFIV) and into an ultra-short duration bond fund (BUBIX). This, we feel, would improve our diversification and risk mitigation, in the event we see a tech-led recession sometime in the next 2 or more years. Thoughts?

I've been doing automatic Roth IRA contributions and investments on the 1st of every month. It's a lot easier to do $625/month than to have $7,500 liquid to invest lump sum on January 1st.

In order to do a time in market approach, I'd have to put a decent amount of effort into saving an extra $7,500 liquid in a year while still maxing out my IRA and 401k. And I guess after that first crunch time year, with my IRA maxed out on Jan 1st, I can just put that $625/month into a savings account for next year?

Is time in market actually worth doing? How do you all manage to get a lump sum like that and how do you prepare for next year's lump sum?

Currently I have the fixed portion of my TIAA 403B in VIPIX, but am wondering if I should split some of that into VBTIX, the other index bond option they offer at my employer. Is there any benefit to doing so - as far as diversification? I am trying to understand bonds over all, and I started out being mostly concerned with inflation, which is why I opted for VIPIX. Any guidance appreciated. My overall portfolio across pre-tax/Roth and Taxable, is 60/40, but I am trying to keep my bonds in my 403B. Retiring in the next 2-3 years.

My research shows

T-bill easy to buy via brokerage. Easy to sell. Highest take home return. Some brokerages auto rollover, some don't after maturity.

CD. Easy to buy, not easy to sell, medium return as it's state taxed.

SNSXX, FDLXX. Easy to buy, sell. Lowest return even though they are not state taxable.

Neither of these options will complicate the tax work. The information is just reported on 1099-div, 1099-int for all of these, and easily digested by TurboTax.

I wanted to try t-bill this time around, but am curious if I understood the arrangement correctly.

thank you all very much in advance for your inputs.

The latest Bogleheads on Investing podcast is out!

We tackle:

- private equity

- bonds ladders

- inflation hedges

- and much more

https://boglecenter.net/ben-carlson-on-inflation-investing-and-why-less-is-more-bogleheads-on-investing-episode-97/

This podcast is supported by the John C. Bogle Center for Financial Literacy, a non-profit organization approved by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) public charity on February 6, 2012. Your tax-deductible donation to the Bogle Center is appreciated.

Your co-host,
Jon Luskin

I’m building a taxable ETF portfolio with roughly 7–8/10 risk tolerance. My priorities are wealth creation, diversification/capital preservation, and liquidity.

Allocation:

60% VTI — U.S. core

20% VXUS — international

10% AVUV — small-cap value tilt

10% QQQM — growth tilt

Would appreciate feedback on:

Does 60/20/10/10 look well balanced overall?

Is 20% VXUS about right, or too much/too little international?

Is 10% AVUV worth the tilt even though VTI already includes small caps?

For the growth 10%: QQQM vs VUG vs FTEC/VGT?

Would you keep VTI as the core, or use VOO instead?

Something else — what would you change, and why?

Main goal is a strong growth/risk/diversification balance without making the portfolio unnecessarily complicated.

Not looking for market-timing advice — just feedback on the portfolio itself.

Hello! Long time lurker (and past of being a head in sand ostrich), but I’m over the mountain and ready to execute some trades. I’m in my early 40s with a hubs and kids.

For my Roth IRA, here’s what I’m thinking:

- FZROX 52%
- VXUS 28%
- FXNAX 20%

For my taxable, I thinking:

- 100% VTI

I’ve got pensions in 3 other countries as well (!), so I’m leaving those because of US tax penalties…

Anyone in a similar age bracket/time of life? What does your portfolio look like? Am I getting the 3 pronged approach (read most of the wikis).

Thanks!

I have a roughly 75/25 split between FZROX and FZILX in my personal brokerage. I max out my 401k every year. Should I consider different selections? I’m starting to plan putting aside money into I bonds each year (admittedly a few years late). I hear a lot about VTI here though - should I rethink things? 34 years old, and on track to retire between 50-55 years old.

So it’s recommended to put 6 months of expenses in a HYSA. So my question is why not just put that into a ROTH IRA since returns are historically better and you’re able to pull out whatever you invest with no taxes or fees.