Basically, title. I am not bothered by the losses (well, bothered maybe, but it doesn't scare me). If it helps, I am 44 and this is my only retirement account. Next thing to research is a retirement account for self-employed folks. Thank you!

Screenshot of Portfolio

Warren Buffet mentioned that the current market is resembling a casino where most are gambling (to paraphrase what he said) AND Berkshire is sitting on a ton of cash. Do Bogleheads still recommend staying the course (“VT & chill”)?

My wife and I are both 56, have approx. $1.65MM combined with half in workplace retierment vehicles, and the other with a paid brokerage with a 1-1.5% AUM fee. I don't like that fee! We would like to retire at 60. Am I too late to the Boglehead way to really gain any useful traction on growing that half of our money? I venture a guess that saving the fee's alone would warrent a soft no to that question. The main reason we chose an active managed brokerage was so that we wouldn't have to worry about manually moving money around trying to capture the highs and soften the lows. But... I just can't get comfortable with the fees at this point of nearly $9500 a year.

Talk to me, comfort me, tell me what to do, give me a hug! = )

Seriously, am I too late to make a meaning full switch to a Boglehead approach?

Hi, I have started a new job about a year and a half ago. I was able to opt for the Employee Stock Purchase Plan at the beginning of this year at a 15% discount which I did. In July the stock options paid out.

The stock currently sits in my Fidelity TOD account and it's only a few thousand dollars. I wanted to move it to my Roth IRA account and re-invest in ETFs which out perform my company stock.

If I was to sell those stocks and move that cash to other accounts for reinvesting, what would be the tax hit?

I live in the state on Connecticut if that matters.

Thank you for your time.

I am 70 and retired. My priorities in investing are cash flow, safety, and preserving my principal. Growth is secondary.

About one-third of our income comes from my wife's and my Social Security benefits. (I waited until age 70 to begin collecting Social Security, so my benefit is larger than average.) Another one-third comes from rental property income and the sale of a small business. The final one-third comes from interest earned on a mix of short-term Treasury bills, CDs, municipal bonds, and a few agency bonds.

By God's grace, our income exceeds our expenses, and I am very thankful for that.

Regarding the last one-third of our income, I feel comfortable making reinvestment decisions as those investments mature. Again, by God's grace, I believe I have a good understanding of how to reinvest the proceeds, and I genuinely enjoy doing it—at least for now.

However, statistically, there is a good chance my wife will outlive me. She has absolutely no interest in monitoring our accounts each week or making decisions about where to reinvest funds as investments mature.

So here's my question:

Rather than hiring a financial advisor, if you were thinking long term, how would you simplify this portfolio so it wouldn't require regular monitoring or ongoing reinvestment decisions? Safety and reliable income are my highest priorities. As my current investments mature, where would you recommend putting that money to make the portfolio as simple and hands-off as possible while still preserving those goals?

TL;DR: Recently opened Roth IRAs for both myself and husband at Fidelity, all money currently still in cash. Then husband started new job with 401K at Vanguard. Trying to figure out if it’s worth it to switch the IRAs to Vanguard, for ease of rebalancing long term.

More detail:
I discovered Bogleheads last summer and read Bogleheads Guide to Investing. Since then, I have been working at getting my personal finances in order. We increased how much we are saving, increasing my husband’s 401K contribution, maxing out HSAs, and saving to contribute to IRAs for the first time since buying our house. I have a Roth IRA at Merrill edge (Guided Investing which I imagine is fee heavy) but wanted to go with Vanguard or Fidelity. I picked Fidelity because we already have a 529 there and I figured it would be easier. So we each opened Roth IRAs at tax time and make 7000 contributions for last tax year before filing our taxes. However in March my husband left his job and was unemployed for a few months before thankfully getting a job in a different field that he is very happy with. We found out in May when he started that his 401K is at… Vanguard. The thing is the money is all still in cash (I know, its bad as it’s been 3 months it could have been in the market but I was holding it as an emergency fund while he was unemployed and then frozen by decision fatigue about whether to switch brokerages before investing), so while it would be a pain I could still move it without any financial implications of having to sell/rebuy investments.

So my question is, how much more convenient is it to have most of the retirement accounts in one place? I know it’s definitely do-able even with them separate I just don’t know if I’d gain benefits like in terms of cross account assets allocation analysis that would help with rebalancing that would make it worth it.

Also- I want to move my Merrill money as well as again I’m probably paying stupid fees but intimidated by understanding the implications of moving money that’s invested. Any advice on either front is welcome.

I will probably open a 403b and/or 457 in the future and I think I have both Fidelity or Vanguard options for at least the 403b. But it is “managed” by a company called TSA Consulting so maybe what I’m seeing are just fund options? I’m not totally sure.

In my Roth I did a lump sum into a TDF to start the account, and now I added about 3 shares of VTI to the account! The TDF already has 50% invested into the US total stock market so was that a weird move?

Which fund should I add next to my ROTH? 😎

edit: Thank you everyone! I’m going to spend several days looking up your recommendations to make the best changes for myself and my family. I value your responses very much.
The “research “ I could have done on my own, without your guidance, would have been corrupted with advertising and would have wasted a lot of my time (and that would be the best case scenario.)

Hi there! I’m new here. I am currently invested with Ameriprise for retirement. They helped me back when I owned a business and had retirement funds for all of the employees, but I am coming to the conclusion that my relationship with them makes a less sense now.
Due to friend and family dramatics, I’m not going to close that account immediately. However, I am starting to read Bogle’s The Little Book of Common Sense Investing, and I’ve been lurking on this subreddit for months. I have some cash doing nothing in a checking account, more than what I need for an emergency fund. What website do you recommend that I use to invest? Vanguard? Robin hood? One of the many others?

I’m 26, make six figures, and currently save about $2,000 a month. Right now, that money is mostly sitting in a bank account earning very little interest, and I’d like to start putting it to work.

I’m not looking for random investment suggestions or to spread my money across a bunch of things without understanding them. I want to make informed, long-term decisions, so I’m looking for topics and investment strategies that are worth researching.

What are some areas you think I should learn about? For example, S&P 500, index funds, ETFs, real estate, retirement accounts, dividend investing, etc. I’d really appreciate any recommendations on what to research and why. Thanks!

My husband and I are looking for some advice on what to do with our monthly surplus.

We’re in our early 30s with one baby. We max out all of our retirement accounts, and after expenses and retirement contributions we still have about $5,000/month left to save or invest.

We currently have about $100k in a high-yield savings account earning around 3.5%. No debt and paid off vehicles. We live in a very high cost of living area where renting is still significantly cheaper than buying a comparable home.

We go back and forth on whether we should buy eventually. Having a baby makes the idea of owning more appealing for stability, but financially renting still seems to make more sense. We also don’t have a specific timeline for buying.

One other factor is that we expect to eventually inherit family property that we’d ideally like to build a home on, but realistically that may be 10+ years away, so we don’t want to base our current financial decisions on something that isn’t imminent.

Our question is whether we should continue putting our extra $5k/month into the HYSA to build a larger down payment, or start investing that money in a low-cost total market index fund instead.

My concern is that if we keep everything in cash, we’re missing out on years of market growth. On the other hand, if we invest it and decide we want to buy in a few years, we could be forced to sell during a downturn.
How would you approach this? Is there a point where an uncertain home purchase is far enough in the future that investing becomes the better choice? I’d especially love to hear from people in HCOL areas who continued renting or delayed buying while investing instead.

Edit to add: the 100k includes our emergency fund.
We currently pay $3,100 rent, and a house would cost us $700k+ but is complicated by living on the CA/NV border with differences in property taxes and housing costs.

Hi all,

I notice that some brokerages offer to match 3% or so when you transfer IRAs from somewhere else. Is there any reason not to just contribute up to the 7.5k max to a vanguard roth every year (I do it backdoor because I have a $0 Roth contribution limit) and then at the end of each year transfer the 7,500 to another brokerage for the matching? Any downside Im missing?

I work for the sate of CA. So I have a few options... Currently I am investing into a 457 with a roth option as well. I was thinking about separating the roth portion into a roth 401k. I am pretty sure I am able to do that? Mainly I just wanted to see if that makes sense? Currently in the 457 all money is combined between the pre tax and the roth. I have to dig in to see the individual amounts between the two. I mainly want to just make it easier to see everything by separating them. And lastly is there a huge difference between a roth 457 or roth 401k roth, just to make sure I am not missing out on anything if I where to try to separate everything?

Been tracking net worth since 2019:

$270K → $1.3M.

Set-and-forget index investor. Held through March 2020 (-17% quarter) and the 2022 drawdown without selling anything.

Cash went from 41% of NW in 2019 to 5% today as I deployed it into markets.

Current allocation (INCLUDING rental equity, EXCLUDING PRIMARY home and things)

Current Asset Allocation

Stock — 83%
Real estate — 11%
Cash — 5%
Crypto — 0%

Estimated US vs. international split

US stock — ~$992,000 (89-90%)
International stock — ~$87,000 (8-9%)
International is roughly 8-9% of stock
Bonds are another 1-2%

Accounts

Retirement (401k/IRA) — $757K
Taxable brokerage — $290K
HYSA — $68K
HSA — $20k

Current Contributions and Savings, ~$47K/yr (~20%)

Two Roth IRAs, maxed
Spouse’s 401k at 10%
Solo 401k — small right now, big unused capacity
HSA, maxed
Plus $500/mo extra principal on a 6% mortgage
8k annually in 529s (not included in any of my NW)

My Situation

Almost 39, two kids in daycare — expensive years
Targeting the ability to retire around 59-60
No bonds by choice — real estate and a healthy HYSA as ballast

The Question

I’m heavily overweight US. Counting the rental (which is also US exposure), I’m \~90% US across stocks and real estate, with 8% international. Global market cap is roughly 60/40 US/international.

I want to get to at least 80/20 on the stock side, possibly closer to market weight. Two paths:

*Option 1 —* Rebalance now inside retirement accounts. No tax event, a few clicks in a 401k. Gets me to \~79/19 immediately.

*Option 2 —* Shift new contributions instead. Feels safer, but $47K/yr against $1.05M invested barely moves the needle. Contributing at 90/10 changes nothing since that’s roughly where I already am. Real progress would mean going near-100% international in all new money, which feels rash.

Where I’m stuck: I’m a set-and-forget person and selling feels wrong even when the math says it’s free. But contributions alone won’t get me there in any reasonable timeframe.

Additional Questions

1. Am I overthinking the selling part when it’s tax-free inside a 401k?
2. For those who moved toward market-cap weight — all at once, or leg in over 6-12 months?
3. Does the rental equity change how you’d think about the international target, given it’s more US exposure?
4. Is 20% international enough, or should I be targeting 30-40%?
5. Bonds… should I look at these given other assets (REI and cash).

One constraint: \~25% of my US stock is VGT sitting entirely in taxable with large embedded gains from 2020-2022. Selling triggers 20-30% on the gain, so it stays put regardless. Any rebalancing has to happen in the retirement accounts

.

I think I'm probably what the kids call "Coast FIRE" - I have substantial savings for retirement from previous higher-paying work and a reasonably non-stressful job that pays my expenses. I'm in my late 40s. My paycheck income is around $70k/year pretax but a bit lower this year because I took some time off in between old career and new job. I file single and itemize my deductions but it's only a little bit over the standard deduction most years.

Over the past several years I've mostly been maxing out my work SIMPLE IRA and contributing to a brokerage account (high income + existing traditional IRA = no Trad/Roth contributions). My current breakdown by account type is approximately this:

48% Tax deferred (SIMPLE/Traditional IRA/a little bit of 403(b))
45% Taxable brokerage (almost all LT and held at a gain)
7% Roth IRA

I'm not sure whether it's worth it to try and shenanigan-ize more money out of taxable and/or into the Roth, especially given that I'm only 10-15 years away from being able to access all of it without penalty. I'm not really planning to actively save much more for retirement (which feels VERY WEIRD), and I'm planning to work at least a little bit (certainly enough to be able to contribute to IRAs) until at least age 65. I'm wondering if it makes sense to move things around some. Stuff like:

• use the dividends from the brokerage account to fund Roth IRA contributions (seems like a no-brainer)
• contribute to my employer's 401(k) to lower my taxable income and sell some of the brokerage investments at 0% LTCG to live off of? (this feels complicated, also I'll pay state taxes on LTCG)
• Roth conversion? But maybe wait for even lower-income years?

Any thoughts?

(Just saw this post from a few days ago and realize it asks some similar questions! https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/1ux1il6/strategy_during_periods_of_being_in_low_tax/)

My brother-in-law keeps telling me that his financial advisor has some kind of insurance that guarantees he sees at least a 6% return no matter what the market does. He feels like his portfolio is bulletproof because of this. I tried telling him that there is no such thing as bulletproof in the investing world. I asked him for info on the insurance he claims to have. He always says he will find out what it is, then he never follows through. Is there actually something like this out there?

Hey everyone,

Pretty much the title. I started working post grad and am currently receiving a 100k salary. I am stuck between choosing a traditional 401k or a Roth 401k. I currently have it set up as a Roth 401k as I heard that we are able to take out contributions from it.

Let’s say I already have an emergency fund, I am maxing out my Roth IRA, and cannot invest in HSA yet (on parents insurance still). Would it be better to keep it as a Roth 401k for the potential flexibility and no future tax or save on taxes now with a traditional and potentially invest a larger percentage since I am saving?

Hi there,

A while back, I started getting interested in investing (way too late, at mid-30s). Someone recommended The Litle Book of Common Sense Investing. After finishing, I quickly realized that passive investing is the way to go for a risk-averse person like myself.

I started doing research and made myself an investment plan. I want to follow Bogle's approach as close as possible, though I gave myself some flexibility due to personal circumstances. Most notably:

• I'm based in Taiwan, so I can't directly invest in the types of index funds that Bogle promotes.
• I've got varying monthly expenses and a kid, so I'm not able to consistently set aside a fixed amount of money.

Trying to keep true to the principles of time in the market, diversify, and minimizing cost, I came up with the following structure:

Some clarification about this setup:

• For tax purposes, all funds are based in Taiwan, including the one that tracks the S&P500
• I have 2-3 dividend-generation ETFs to generate income that I reinvest in my two auto-compounding funds. This is to offset the inability to set aside a set amount each month.
• I may re-evaluate (or cut out entirely) those ETFs in the future if I have more money available to dedicate to investing

Overall, how effective would this approach be according to Boglenomics?

Hey everyone!

I’m a new investor (25M) at ~$34k total invested in the funds below across my Roth IRA, HSA and Trad 401k.

Looking for advice on whether I should continue this split or go simpler.

VFIAX / VOO: 45%
DFSTX / AVUV: 20%
VXUS: 25%
AVDV: 10%

I additionally have some RKLB & CELH held outside of these allocation %’s.

So im a teacher in NYC, who is fortunate to have access to a plethora of tax advantage retirement accounts (one of the best 403b's in the country, a 457 plan, pension, and I pay into SS). I just want to know what is the best way to juggle all of them and still save to possibly own a house/condo. Should I limit contributions to accounts and put them in personal stock funds that I can use for a down payment, as tbh a lot of places here want an all cash offer if its like under a million.

Fund selection recommendations for 40 yo?

State Street Cash Series U.S. Government Fund - Class L
PIMCO Low Duration Fund - Class R
State Street U.S. Inflation Protected Bond Index Non-Lending Series Fund - Class
PIMCO Total Return Fund - Class R
Invesco Global Strategic Income Fund - Class R
PGIM High Yield Fund - Class R
BlackRock Global Allocation Fund, Inc. - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement Balanced Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2010 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2015 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2020 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2025 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2030 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2035 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2040 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2045 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2050 Fund - Class R
T. Rowe Price Retirement 2055 Fund - Class R
Calamos Growth and Income Fund - Class A
MFS Value Fund - Class R2
Fidelity Advisor Leveraged Company Stock Fund - Class M
Invesco Rising Dividends Fund - Class R
State Street S&P 500 Index Securities Lending Series Fund - Class IX
Victory Diversified Stock Fund - Class R
Calamos Growth Fund - Class A
T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund - Class R
Janus Henderson Enterprise Fund - Class R
Victory Sycamore Small Company Opportunity Fund - Class R
Janus Henderson Overseas Fund - Class R
State Street International Index Securities Lending Series Fund - Class VIII
Thornburg International Equity Fund - Class R3
Invesco International Growth Fund - Class R
Invesco Developing Markets Fund - Class R

Hello everyone!

Current situation is my wife and I are both teacher's saving 13% of our income for pension, plus an additional 5% by maxing out our Roth IRA contributions. The pension can be accessed at 60 but we are aiming to retire early (realistically 55 but hopefully 50). Essentially looking to create a bridge of retirement income until our pensions are available.

Based on my research I think the brokerage account would be best. Firstly our effective tax rate right now is federally 11% and 5% state which is very low making the after tax contributions less of an issue. Second, 403 b contributions have no match at our work. Lastly, if we retire at 50 or 55 we won't have other income which means the capital gains tax rate would be 0% up to $100,000 which higher than our take home pay now. I know 403 B has 72t and the rule of 55 to get access to the money earlier but it seems that the brokerage account would still act as the better bridge while providing flexibility for other expenses. Am I missing something?

I 22M currently have $13,800 of ANWPX in my Roth IRA through Fidelity. I recently started managing my Roth IRA on my own. (It was previously managed for me though Edward Jones) I noticed ANWPX is lacking in average growth when compared to other index funds like VUG, VOO, VTI, SPMO etc. I also noticed ANWPX has a high expense ratio of 0.71% which is significantly higher than the index funds mentioned. I plan to semi retire at 40 and I am looking for maximum growth potential, should I sell and move my money elsewhere?
Thank You!

So I just turned 25 a few days ago and I need some advice and ideas on what to do with my money. Here is what I have so far.

CD —> 64k —> APY 4.10% —> Maturity 1.7 yrs
CD —> 45k —> APY 4.00% —> Maturity 9 mos
401k —> 18.2k
ROTH IRA —> 7.6k
SAVINGS —> about 10k

As you can see I have a ton of money in my CD’s. This is because I didn’t know much about investing when I was younger so my dad advised me to start with those years ago since they’re safe and simple. I’ve been thinking about opening a brokerage but I feel like maxing out my 401k should be my priority. What do you guys think? I currently have 12% contributions and I want to bump that up to 70% and I already maxed my Roth IRA for the year. Fortunately, I have the luxury to live at home for all this time so I can afford to minimize my take home pay without stress. Any advice much appreciated

Bloomberg article

As stock pickers face greater challenges, passive investors (including us Bogleheads) will be exposed to more risk as asset prices become less efficient.

I'm not sure what Jack Bogle would say about this. Perhaps that the lesson is not to abandon indexing, but to understand it more clearly: as more capital moves into passive funds, the market’s own plumbing can create a drag on the most distinctive active portfolios, making it harder to separate skill from structural headwinds. The answer, as ever, would still be low costs, broad diversification, and a long-term discipline—but with a sharper warning that rising passive dominance can change the game for active managers, so investors should judge them with that in mind.

A more radical move might be to allocate a small percentage of the portfolio to active funds, if and when active managers finally outperform indexes.

Full paper can be found here.