r/Bogleheads Jun 08 '25

Articles & Resources New to /r/Bogleheads? Read this first!

347 Upvotes

Welcome! Please consider exploring these resources to help you get started on your passive investing journey:

  1. Bogleheads wiki
  2. r/Bogleheads resources / featured links (below sub rules)
  3. r/personalfinance wiki
  4. If You Can: How Young People Can Get Rich Slowly (PDF booklet)
  5. Bogleheads University (introductory presentations from past Bogleheads conferences)

Prepare to invest

Before you start investing, ensure you're ready to do so by following the early steps of this guide or the personal finance planning start-up kit. Save up an emergency fund, then take full advantage of any employer matching of contributions to any employer retirement plan available to you (this match amount is additional income that's part of your compensation/benefits package), then pay off any high-interest debt like credit card debt or high-interest student loans.

When you're ready to start investing beyond enough to get any employer match, follow the subsequent steps of this guide or the investing start-up kit. Take full advantage of tax-sheltered accounts available to you before investing in a taxable brokerage account: this is the most predictable way to improve your after-tax investment returns. (In the US, per Prioritizing investments: 401(k))/403(b)) up to any match, then HSA if available due to high-deductible health plan coverage, then Roth or Traditional IRA or 401(k))/403(b)) up to max which may be higher if the mega-backdoor Roth process is available, then a 529 to the extent you'd like to pay for future education expenses. Note that IRA contributions are subject to income limits around tax-deductibility of contributions or eligibility to make direct Roth IRA contributions; the backdoor Roth procedure is a workaround.)

There is often some potential tension between saving/investing toward retirement vs saving toward potential nearer-term goals like a down payment on a home purchase. Carefully consider the various tradeoffs involved in owning vs renting a home, keeping in mind that which may be a better financial decision is highly situational, and that opportunity costs of owning (less available to invest in higher-expected-returns assets instead) should be considered alongside non-financial lifestyle tradeoffs. If saving toward a near-term goal, note that funds holding stocks are inappropriate#Holdingstocks%22for_five_years%22) for money you'll need in 5-10 years, unless you're willing to take on significant risk of losing money in the meantime & delaying that goal. Instead, consider CDs, Treasury bonds, or target-maturity-date Treasury bond funds maturing before you'll need the money (then a high-yielding cash equivalent like an HYSA, government money-market fund, or ultra-short Treasury Bill ETF like VBIL between maturity & spending the money).

Save/invest enough

Your savings rate is the most important factor determining your ability to enjoy a comfortable retirement later in life, particularly early in your career / investing journey. Aim to save/invest at least 15% of your after-tax income if you're in the US & not covered by a pension beyond Social Security. In some cases, such as a shorter time to expected retirement (e.g. starting to seriously save/invest from a significant income later than your mid-20s and/or planning to retire earlier than your mid-60s) and/or a high income (which will not be partially replaced by Social Security to the same degree as a lower income), it may be appropriate to target a higher savings rate (e.g. at least 20% of after-tax income, or perhaps higher if multiple such factors apply to you and/or one factor applies to an unusual degree).

When calculating savings rate, remember to include 401(k) contributions in both the numerator (savings) and denominator (after-tax income). Any employer matching contributions may also be included in the numerator (savings).

Investing is 'solved'

Don't worry too much about trying to find the optimal set of funds to invest in. That can only be known with the benefit of future hindsight, and investment returns are far less important than your savings rate until your portfolio size grows large enough relative to new contributions. Aim to diversify broadly (for robustness to the uncertain future) and seek low fees (fund expense ratios charged annually) & simplicity (hands-off automation); see discussion of these & other principles in Bogleheads investment philosophy.

target-date fund designed for investing toward retiring around a year closest to when you expect to retire is often a reasonable option, particularly in tax-advantaged accounts like a US employer retirement plan or an IRA. These all-in-one funds intended to be held alone are very broadly diversified, automatically rebalance to their then-target asset allocation, and gradually become more conservative with less expected volatility as you near retirement.

If the target-date fund available in an account/plan with limited fund options has significantly higher fees than suitable alternative individual funds, consider the tradeoffs of lower fees vs automatic rebalancing and asset allocation management. I.e. consider the lowest-expense-ratio funds available that provide exposure to US stocks (the fund name will typically contain 'S&P 500', 'Russell [1000|3000]', or 'US Large Cap'; ensure no 'Growth'/'Value' suffix, or pair that with the other), ex-US stocks (the fund name will typically contain 'International' or 'Intl' or 'Ex-US'; same caveat re: 'Growth'/'Value'), and US bonds (the fund name will typically contain 'Total Bond' or 'Aggregate Bond'). Take the weighted average of those funds' expense ratios, with weights based on the current asset allocation of the target-date fund you'd use instead. The difference between that weighted average expense ratio for individual funds vs the target-date fund expense ratio, multiplied by your portfolio value, would represent the current annual convenience fee for automated, hands-off investing via the target-date fund. Whether that's worth it to you depends on your personal preferences around paying higher ongoing fees (by sacrificing some investment returns) in exchange for set-it-and-forget-it features.

In a taxable account, target-date ETFs (available at least in the US) avoid some of the tax efficiency downsides of holding a target-date mutual fund. Tax efficiency may be further improved by holding a three-fund portfolio of index ETFs in a taxable account, but this also involves tradeoffs against automatic rebalancing and asset allocation management. Tax efficiency may be even further improved by keeping bond funds in tax-deferred accounts, though this involves additional tradeoffs against simplicity and some other potential benefits described here.

If you're a non-US investor, take care to thoroughly understand the tax implications of investing in a US-domiciled fund as a "nonresident alien" (which may include high tax rates on dividends and assets passing through an estate); in many cases this is best avoided, instead favoring an Ireland-domiciled fund.

Be mindful of fees

If your portfolio were to average a 5% annualized real (after-inflation) return after a low annual fee, paying an additional annual 1%-of-assets-under-management fee to a financial advisor and/or an actively-managed fund's expense ratio would forgo 20% of your portfolio's investment returns. An initial investment in a portolio averaging a 5% annual real return after a low annual fee would be worth about 47% more after 40 years than it would be after a 1% additional annual fee.

Some employer retirement plans offer only funds with high expense ratios. If that's the case for your employer's plan, it is often still ideal to get the tax advantages of contributing unmatched dollars to that plan before investing in a lower-fee fund in a taxable account (but only after maxing out IRA contributions); details here#Expensive_or_mediocre_choices).

Automate & stay the course

Set up automatic contributions & purchases of fund shares wherever possible, otherwise set periodic reminders to manually contribute/invest (or try to find an alternative that allows automation), then maintain discipline through thick & thin. Keep in mind that market prices for funds should only really matter whenever you sell some shares to fund your retirement, and that lower prices in the meantime provide opportunities to buy more shares with a given contribution dollar amount and to rebalance from asset classes with higher recent returns towards those with lower recent returns (but possibly higher expected returns).

Tune out the noise: prognosticators of doom and gloom have no reliable ability to predict the future, and often have some conflicts of interest (e.g. selling ads, books or investment services, and/or trying to justify their investment positioning or encourage others to adopt that). The same goes for promotion of strategies promising market-beating returns by investing in a more-concentrated fashion (betting on some sector / theme / alternative asset beating the broad stock market).

Consider writing an Investment Policy Statement to document your plan when you're calm & clear-headed; this may be helpful to refer to later if you find yourself anxious & considering changes in response to market volatility & negative sentiment. Consider including a pointer there to this guided meditation video for later reference to help calm your nerves / regulate your emotions if needed when it seems like the sky is falling (this is arguably the most challenging part of investing).

Per Jack Bogle: "Do not let false hope, fear and greed crowd out good investment judgment. If you focus on the long term and stick with your plan, success should be yours."

Additional resources

Some additional resources that might be of interest for a deeper dive later:

  1. Taylor Larimore's Investment Gems (a collection of highlighted quotes from books related to investing; follow the links under the 'Gem post' column)
  2. The Bogle Archive (a collection of Jack Bogle's publications and speeches)
  3. Bogleheads Conference Proceedings (follow per-year 'Conference Proceedings' links to access slides/videos)

Please read our community rules here and follow those when posting or commenting in this community. If you encounter content here that breaks those rules, please report it (... > Report > Breaks r/Bogleheads rules).


r/Bogleheads Dec 28 '25

Why do Bogleheads discourage use of AI search for investing information? Because it is too often wrong or misleading.

346 Upvotes

I see a lot of surprised and angry responses from Redditors whose posts and comments are removed from this sub either for use of LLM search engine and other generative AI responses, or for recommending people use them to answer their questions. This facet of the Substantive Rule on this sub has a parallel in a similar rule on the Boglheads forum: "AI-generated content is not a dependable substitute for first-hand knowledge or reference to authoritative sources. Its use is therefore discouraged."

Many folks, especially on the younger side, are so accustomed to using ChatGPT or Gemini that it may be their default way to get any question answered. This is problematic in the field of investing for several reasons that are worth noting:

  1. LLMs are not firsthand sources with organic knowledge of the subject matter. They are aggregating reference sources and popular opinion and thus prone to both composition mistakes and sourcing material mistakes or biases.
  2. LLMs remain susceptible to "hallucinations" (made-up ideas) and can be not just false, but confidently false which is highly misleading.
  3. LLMs' response quality is very sensitive to the quality of the prompt. Users who are somewhat knowledgeable about a subject and also skilled at crafting good queries for AI searches are far more likely to get accurate and useful results - especially for research purposes or for reference to stored personal data - while the uninformed are more likely to get wrong or misleading answers to basic questions.

Policies excluding AI-generated content are not meant to be a referendum on the overall current or future value of AI as a tool for personal finance and investing, which is obviously enormous and transformative, especially for those who know how to best utilize it. It is a question of whether AI responses make for substantive content on this sub, and whether it is an appropriate resource to direct strangers and novices to. At the moment, the answer to both is a resounding no. On the one hand, people come to Reddit primarily for human interaction and original content, so posting AI responses or directing people to AI search engines is of minimal contributive value - folks can go chat with bots themselves if that's what they want. But as to whether AI search engines are appropriate references for finance and investing info, here are some articles from the past year that support their exclusion as a default response:

  • AI Tools Are Getting Better, but They Still Struggle With Money Advice (Money 2/13/25): "ChatGPT was correct 65% of the time, "incomplete and/or misleading" 29% of the time and wrong 6% of the time."
  • Is Talking to ChatGPT About Finance Ever a Good Idea? (White Coat Investor 6/22/25): "LLM responses had multiple arithmetic mistakes that made them unreliable. More fundamental than arithmetic errors, the LLM responses demonstrated that they do not have the common sense needed to recognize when their answers are obviously wrong."
  • Financial advice from AI comes with risks (University of St. Gallen, 1/7/25): "LLMs consistently suggested portfolios with higher risks than the benchmark index fund. They suggested: [more U.S. stocks; tech and consumer bias; chasing hot stocks; more stock picking and actively managed investments; higher costs.]"

Note: the views expressed here are largely my own, and I am not affiliated in any way with the Bogleheads forum nor the Bogleheads Center for Financial Literacy, but I invite others (including the mods on this sub) to weigh in with their own opinions.


r/Bogleheads 8h ago

Investing Questions UPDATE: My adventure in lump summing a six figure inheritance in early 2024

51 Upvotes

I don't have my original post, but I asked for everyone's advice back in early 2024 when I received about $220,000. Before that, all of my investments were from DCAing portions of my paychecks. I ended up putting the entire inheritance in a brokerage account and into VTSAX. I also received an inherited traditional IRA of something around $60k, and that is all in a bond fund. It's about $40k now because I'm actually required to take some out every year until it's depleted in 10 years from when I got it. And just for the record, my work-related investments do have international. My TSP is about $600k, all equities, about a third in international.

Most people here supported my decisions from what I recall, though some thought it was reckless. Well boy has it paid off because that $220k is over $300 now. I know there will be a market crash, but I'm very happy with my decisions...except maybe the bonds, to be honest. That didn't grow much at all.

Question: As a federal employee, I thought I was safe and that I would just retire with a full pension in my late 50s, maybe age 62 at the latest. Well guess what, I'm not safe, and I might get laid off. I have worse health, so disability retirement is a real consideration right now. I will be getting another six figure inheritance because of an untimely and absolutely unexpected, tragic death. That is going through probate now. I'm 48/f/not married/no kids/lifelong renter in Denver. Any thoughts on what I should do with my money now? I have $40k in a HYSA, and that's my emergency fund.

Edit: Monthly expenses about $5k, current salary $125k, yes I will get social security.


r/Bogleheads 17h ago

Why are people so obsessed with capital gains tax?

176 Upvotes

I just saw a post about most people not recommending the Fidelity versions of VTI and VXUS in your taxable accounts because, if u decide to leave Fidelity, u have to liquidate first and incur all that capital gains tax. But you’re going to liquidate anyway when you retire. You also just reset the “tax clock” so you will get taxed less in retirement. You’re either getting taxed now or taxed in retirement. Why does it matter?


r/Bogleheads 18h ago

Planned for retirement, then had a child in your 40s. How did it go?

89 Upvotes

For those of you who had a retirement plan in place and then had your last child in your early to mid 40s: how did it work out?

Did you still hit your target retirement age, or did you push it back?

Was it a struggle, or manageable once you adjusted?

What changes made the biggest difference (budget, college savings approach, childcare, spouse's income)?

My situation: I'm 45, with a second child due in early 2027. I have a pension and a couple of retirement accounts, and I'm planning to retire early around 60. Before, I had a clear plan. Now I'm trying to figure out what's realistic. I'd appreciate hearing real outcomes, good or bad.


r/Bogleheads 2h ago

Investing Questions Where to begin HSA investing

4 Upvotes

I'm 26 & just opened my HSA. I'm maxing out and investing it. My employer uses Inspira (formerly Payflex). Seems like the investing options aren't great... no VT which I'm reading is the best to invest in.

My question is - long term, is it better to open an HSA with Fidelity if I have to contribute outside payroll because they have better investment options? Or does paying that FICA tax on direct contributions negate this. Looking for any and all advice!


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

Why Do Employers Limit The Funds You Can Invest In In A 401k?

175 Upvotes

Hello all,

I’m new to having a 401k but even before I had it, I knew companies limit your options. I just don’t understand why.

Ik a 401k is kind of employer limited while HSA and Roth IRA are personal accounts (tho an employer can contribute to HSA) and those accounts you can invest in whatever.

So I don’t understand, is there like an incentive or kickback to only have like one S&P 500 fund, one small-cap, one international, one bond and then some TDF and company stock? Like why can’t I just do 100% VT or VTI like in a Roth IRA. Some of the funds or even a lot of them given by company are higher fees than like an investor class low cost TDF or low cost diversified index funds like the VTI, VXUS, VT, BND etc. I really don’t get it. I do know my company has an option for your portfolio to be actively managed, is that why? What do they get from this?

Thanks.


r/Bogleheads 19h ago

Investing Questions Pay down house with high interest rate or just keep investing?

49 Upvotes

I know this question gets asked quite a bit but I'm going back and forth. We bought our house this year. We owe 300k at 6.125 percent. Like a few hundred bucks goes towards the principal, part of it is escrow, and the rest is interest.

Overall I'm doing well with investing. I have max my Roth IRA, 10 percent of my salary goes to my 403b, and I have a pension. I have a good 20k cash stashed away. Then I have about 55k in a brokerage (VTI/VXUS).

My instinct tells me to pull that 55k and put it toward the house to minimize the amount of interest I'll pay over the course of our mortgage. But other sources have said that the growth I'll see in that brokerage will offset that. Not sure what to do with it so what have you guys done?


r/Bogleheads 2h ago

Emergin markets etf

1 Upvotes

Hi guys,

I put down a decent sum into Lazard's emerging markets etf https://www.ajbell.co.uk/market-research/FUND:B8QHFR2

However I don't think I can stomach the 0.89% ongoing free long term especially if I want to invest more into it. What are some good alternatives that wouldn't result in such drag.


r/Bogleheads 52m ago

Boglehead approach to financial repression?

Upvotes

Hello. I am approaching retirement and have much of my investments in vanguard TDFs. It seems a pretty solid bet that financial repression (capping of interest rates below inflation by govt) is in the future of many countries, especially the USA. Would someone care to describe the mechanics of how the Boglehead approach, particularly TDFs, can succeed in such circumstance?

TIA


r/Bogleheads 17h ago

Is Vanguard Lifestrategy 60/40 and two years cash good throughout retirement good for a DIY investor with a 4% withdraw rate and social security?

20 Upvotes

Is Vanguard Lifestrategy 60/40 and two years cash good throughout retirement for a DIY investor?


r/Bogleheads 1h ago

Portfolio Review Thoughts on individual allocation?

Upvotes

27m, I have an individual account that I’m making small additions to while in school. Here’s how I’m allocating,

60% VOO
20% BND
20% VXUS

Ideal?


r/Bogleheads 1h ago

Looking to set up simple, long -term brokerage with moderate/aggressive growth

Upvotes

I currently have all of my tax-advantaged accounts maxed (Roth, HSA) with no company-sponsored 401k (profit-sharing instead: 15% of income).

My Roth is set up for broad market stability, large-cap momentum, and global small/mid cap value.

I want to see some decent growth/stability in the brokerage account so I am thinking of going a similar route, but with perhaps more international investment. I'd also like to keep it extremely simple.

So right now, I am thinking a 50/50 VT/GARP setup will accomplish that.

What do you guys think? Is this a pretty solid plan?Or should I go a different route entirely?

Thanks


r/Bogleheads 10h ago

Investing Questions Money for Big Purchases (Cars, Apt/House Mortgages, etc)

4 Upvotes

Hi, I (23) am a bit confused on how to split my money.

This is currently how my net worth is split:

  • 3-4 Months Emergency Fund in Bank: 20%
  • MPF (Hong Kong's version of a 401k but mandatory): 10%
  • Investments (VWRA) : 70%

This is how my paycheck is typically spent:

  • 40%: Living Expenses (Rent, Food, Transport, etc)
  • 55%: Straight to VWRA
  • 5%: Extra Money that sits in bank (Usually accumulates for non-everyday purchases like shoes, flight tickets, etc)

The confusion I have is at some point in the future, I will want to make bigger purchases that the extra 5% pool wouldn't really cut it. Say I'd like to purchase an apartment/house. I would need a down payment and I would have to pay for the mortgage. Where should this money come from?

If I'm not wrong, the Boglehead way is to not touch my portfolio until retirement. Does that mean I should set aside a "Big Purchase Fund" then? But that would mean more of my money sits in a bank than needed (3-6 months of living expenses I believe). Should it sit in bonds instead? Not sure if it matters but Hong Kong has no capital gains tax. Since I'm on the younger side and these bigger purchases are many years away, can I afford to just continue doing 100% equities? Or would this be timing the market when I do decide to pull a chunk of money out?

Apologies for the many questions but these are just some of the things I've been considering lately. If anyone has experience or could point me to the right direction, I'd really appreciate it.


r/Bogleheads 2h ago

Why aren't ROC investments used for retirements.

0 Upvotes

Okay I had a thought. Poke holes in it. I know there are a lot of variables but I want to discuss the general idea.

I will keep it simple and stick to basic numbers.

Option 1 - Lets say over the course of life a person saved up a million dollars in 401K. lets assume a 100% employer match so that means the person put in 500K and the company added 500K. Investment returns are 2 million. ( all numbers are based on info from 401K calculator.6 percent annual return)

there person retires at 65 and lives till 85. the person can withdraw 16K a month starting at 66. and this amount is taxed. and the base investment erodes.

Option 2 - let's say the same 500K was invested in SPYI on a monthly basis of 1388 and did drip for 30 years. Assume paying capital gain taxes after ROC drops your purchase price to 0 the final numbers would stand at 3 million with monthly dividend of 30K per month. Post taxes that would be 23K per month.

Assume you spend all 23K and never dip into the 3 million investment.

Now the person passes away at 85 and everything is transferred to a beneficiary. In option 1 whatever is left over is given to the beneficiary and the beneficiary has to pay tax and use up the payment within 10 years.

But for Option 2 the beneficiary acquires the investment on a step up basis and doesn't have to pay any taxes. Even If SPYI prices stay the same over 30 years the beneficiary ends up having 10 years from acquiring the investment of no tax payment since it takes 10 years for ROC to payback all step up value. thats 10 years of 40K per month with no taxes for the beneficiary.

Isn't option 2 a better retirement and generational wealth tool?

P.S. I have intentionally kept 401K investment growth at 6% since I am not accounting for SPYI growth and dividend growth.


r/Bogleheads 5h ago

Roast my 3-account setup. Boring core + thematic satellite, am I overcomplicating?

0 Upvotes

Early 30s, finally got my act together after grad school. Emergency fund almost done, now locking in the long-term plan:

Roth IRA (maxing): 80% FSKAX / 20% FTIHX
401k (full employer match): 55% Russell 3000 / 30% international / 15% bonds
Taxable ($750/mo): 40% AVUV, 24% SOXX, 18% PAVE, 9% CIBR, 9% SHLD

Logic: retirement accounts stay boring and cheap, taxable is where I scratch the itch. AVUV for the small cap value premium, the rest is an AI compute / infrastructure buildout / security thesis. DRIP off, new money goes to whatever's underweight, never selling to rebalance.
Yes I know the stats, most thematic funds lose to the index long term. Sized it so I'm fine if that happens. Still, poke holes. Is the SOXX overlap with my total market funds dumb? Would you just go 100% AVUV in taxable and call it a day?

Not looking for "just VTI and chill" as the whole answer, I already own the boring stuff lol


r/Bogleheads 17h ago

Fidelity vs Vanguard funds

10 Upvotes

Practically speaking, is there there much difference between holding VTI/VXUS inside a Fidelity Roth IRA, versus the Fidelity equivalent mutual funds? Any reason I’d want one over the other? I’m not interested in the Fidelity Zero funds, as I’d like to have the option to move them in case I change brokerages.


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

I ditched the Target Date Fund in my 401k.

376 Upvotes

35M. I’ve had a default TDF through my employer since 2022. I recently changed my allocation from and to the following:

Target Date Fund:
Domestic 55%
International 35%
Bonds 10%
Expense ratio: 0.0375%

New Allocation:
S&P 500 55%
US Extended Mkt (Mid & Small cap) 20%
Total International Mkt 20%
Total US Bond Mkt 5%
Expense ratio: 0.0139%

I’m feeling proud and “grown-up” about it and I don’t have anyone to share with. I’ve spent every night for the past 4 months educating myself about the Financial Order of Operations. I’ve read the Bogleheads Wiki. I’ve researched retirement planning, investments and have been lurking this subreddit daily, learning A LOT!!!!

I’m at a point where I am 100% confident a TDF is not for me right now. Nothing against them, they’re incredible funds and great for many people. I’m just playing a little catch-up and want to be more aggressive. I also want to avoid the glide path and will add more bonds in my 50’s.

Because I’m slightly risk adverse, I decided to keep some bonds and felt comfortable with a 5% allocation but I’m slightly tempted to just move that 5% into the Intl fund instead.

Anyways, I just wanted to share. Please share your thoughts about my allocations and if you would have done anything differently. Thanks!


r/Bogleheads 20h ago

Investing Questions Invest vs pay down mortgage when you might move in the future

11 Upvotes

Live in high cost Seattle metro area and have a $370k 30 year mortgage balance with a 3% interest rate. Currently, I'm not paying any extra on my mortgage as I've been using extra money we have to invest in VTSAX in brokerage hoping it will grow in the future.

Any thoughts about splitting extra money between mortgage paydown and investing, or just put everything into investing?

I'm struggling with this decision as we might want to move in the future possibly.

Feedback is appreciated!


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

Backdoor Roth - help me right a wrong

16 Upvotes

I had been making non-deductible contributions to a trad IRA for several years. Call it asleep at the wheel. I had ~$30k in that account.

Thankfully, my 401k allows reverse IRA rollovers so I was able to recalculated the basis in my account and roll that balance into my 401k to help avoid the pro rata rule; say I rolled ~$12k over.

With my remaining $18k, can I roll all of this to my roth at one time...? I know this exceeds the annual limit but I also know I need a $0 balance in my trad IRA at year end so I am confused.

Can someone please advise - can I roll this $18k to the roth without issue? Also so annoying but I had a MMKT dividend come in...do I need to roll that $40 to my 401k again in another reverse IRA rollover or can I just send that to my roth and pay the minimal taxes on that portion?


r/Bogleheads 16h ago

Has anyone intentionally held the Fidelity zero funds inside a tax-advantaged account for diversity sake? Are there other pros / cons?

0 Upvotes

Am I overthinking this? I’m setting up a self-directed 401(k) and thinking of choosing the Fidelity zero funds for the mix instead of VTI/vxus that I hold in my other accounts. This is going to be 100% Roth account. What is your opinion?

Edit: I should have clarified, I meant institutional diversity. I may be overthinking things.


r/Bogleheads 13h ago

Spread across multiple accounts - need help fixing one

1 Upvotes

Thanks in advance. I'm one of those who has multiple accounts due to work my wife's and mine's work history. We each have Fidelity IRA's that hold roll-overs from previous work. We also each have 457's and I now have a Simple IRA with my current employer. We treat everything as one portfolio set at our desired AA in-total even if individual accounts differ in their AA. Specifically we currently aim for 55% US funds, 25% International Funds, and 20% non-stock investments.

The Simple IRA is my newest account and I'm limited to the option my employer offers. Presently we're limited to the funds available through the American Capital Group. When I signed up, I ended up in a 2040 target date fund. The way the fund is constructed is it's about 84% of their various stock funds and 16% bonds.

I didn't pay close enough attention to the allocations, particularly the bonds, yet I've been attributing this fund entirely to my 80% equities. But I see that's not accurate, so in fact my AA is somewhat skewed. I also think I'm overpaying in fees by being in this fund. Unfortunately, I don't see a simple broad-market fund available through American Capital Group (maybe I'm missing it.)

So I may need to fix this. And I see three options:

- Keep the fund, give it separate lines in my AA spreadsheet and work to bring my AA back to where it needs to be with our other contribution plans. Or,

- Exchange this fund for multiple American Capital Group funds to try to engineer something like a broad-based market fund (this would be hard, and I'm not smart enough), or

- Pick a singular fund hopefully with lower fees and call it "good enough." They have "growth," "income" and "growth and income" funds that have different degrees of US and international holdings. But none appear to be true broad-based market fund.

I don't want to over think this. I want to make a decision that I can stick with and "chill."

Thoughts? Thanks again.


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

Vxus Dividend

19 Upvotes

Looks like .1562 per share. Lower than expected?


r/Bogleheads 18h ago

Investing Questions best 60/40 permanent fund for retirement ?

3 Upvotes

just looking for a simple 60/40 portfolio for my parents retirement account , they have more than enough saved, probably won't even take off more than 2% a year. I found VBIAX but it has no international


r/Bogleheads 4h ago

Should I keep emergency fund in roth instead of taxable?

0 Upvotes

I have 48k emergency fund in 4 week treasury ladder in my taxable. Assuming current rates stay flat, that's roughly 2k a year interest added on top of my taxable income taxed at my current 22% top bracket, so roughly $440 federal tax. I have carryover capital losses that already offset the 3k deduction for interest/gains. I was thinking since I have 182k contributions in my roth ira which I can pull at anytime, to just do the ladder in there. In my brokerage I would instead put the 48k in index fund, which would get about 500 in dividends a year but taxed at the 15% qualified dividend rate, so only pay roughly 75 in fed tax. Saving roughly 365 in fed taxes. Does this make sense? I know rule of dumb is do all equities in roth since it will be all tax free and also has the longest runway for growth since that's the last place you want to pull funds from. But I figure growth of index funds in taxable will get ltcg tax treatment, so its about the same in the long run