Portfolio suggestions

**corn18** · 01-12-2018, 12:50 PM

I became a boglehead and I no longer fret over investing.

https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page

**LivingAlmostLarge** · 01-12-2018, 12:54 PM

I forgot the 401k options are

DFA US LG CAP VAL (DFLVX)
FID CONTRAFUND K (FCNKX)
VANGUARD INST INDEX (VINIX)
VANG EXT MKT IDX INS (VIEIX)
JPM SM CAP GROWTH R6 (JGSMX)
VANG EM STK IDX ADM (VEMAX)
VANG INTL GROWTH ADM (VWILX)
VANG TOT INTL STK IS (VTSNX)
VANG REIT IDX INST (VGSNX)
TRP INTL VALUE EQ I (TRTIX)
VANGUARD TARGET 2015
VANGUARD TARGET 2020
VANGUARD TARGET 2025
VANGUARD TARGET 2030
VANGUARD TARGET 2035
VANGUARD TARGET 2040
VANGUARD TARGET 2045
VANGUARD TARGET 2050
VANGUARD TARGET 2055
VANGUARD TARGET 2060
VANGUARD TARGET 2065
VANGUARD TARGET RET
PIM TOTAL RT INST (PTTRX)
VANG TOT BD MKT INST (VBTIX)
FIMM GOVT CL I (FIGXX)

**LivingAlmostLarge** · 01-12-2018, 12:55 PM

I'm moving to a 5 or 6 fund bogel but i'm trying to properly do it with limited 401k options.

**james.hendrickson** · 01-12-2018, 01:52 PM

Since everyone in this thread seems to be holding Vanguard shares, here is something you guys will appreciate:

Don't forget: if you have more than $10,000 in Vanguard products, be sure that you get "admiral shares".

On average admiral shares are something like 41% lower than regular investor shares.

From vanguard:

Admiral™ Shares are a separate share class of Vanguard mutual funds that were created to pass along the savings that result from larger accounts to the investors who own them.

Some things to keep in mind:

1) The limits for switching from investor to admiral shares are generally higher for funds that require human labor time. These are:

$10,000 for most index funds
$50,000 for most actively managed funds.
$100,000 for certain sector-specific index funds.

2) Admiral shares are only available at Vanguard. If you're holding your Vanguard products at a 3rd party brokerage like Schwab or Fidelity, you won't be able to get the share upgrade. If you use a 3rd party brokerage and you want the cheaper Vanguard product you can always consider Vanguard ETFs.

3) Vanguard's computers sweep their system about twice a year to check for upgrades. If you do get upgraded you'll see a little icon next to your account ledger entry that you can click to to upgrade the shares.

Vanguard is great - my wife and I have our house downpayment savings in their bond market index fund (VBMFX).

**corn18** · 01-12-2018, 02:04 PM

Originally posted by LivingAlmostLarge View Post

I forgot the 401k options are

DFA US LG CAP VAL (DFLVX)
FID CONTRAFUND K (FCNKX)
VANGUARD INST INDEX (VINIX)
VANG EXT MKT IDX INS (VIEIX)
JPM SM CAP GROWTH R6 (JGSMX)
VANG EM STK IDX ADM (VEMAX)
VANG INTL GROWTH ADM (VWILX)
VANG TOT INTL STK IS (VTSNX)
VANG REIT IDX INST (VGSNX)
TRP INTL VALUE EQ I (TRTIX)
VANGUARD TARGET 2015
VANGUARD TARGET 2020
VANGUARD TARGET 2025
VANGUARD TARGET 2030
VANGUARD TARGET 2035
VANGUARD TARGET 2040
VANGUARD TARGET 2045
VANGUARD TARGET 2050
VANGUARD TARGET 2055
VANGUARD TARGET 2060
VANGUARD TARGET 2065
VANGUARD TARGET RET
PIM TOTAL RT INST (PTTRX)
VANG TOT BD MKT INST (VBTIX)
FIMM GOVT CL I (FIGXX)

Awesome 401k funds!

Rules are basic:

3 funds portfolio of total u.s. stock, total u.s. bond and total international. View your portfolio as one big portfolio, not 4 different ones. For tax efficiency, put stock funds in taxable (no bonds in taxable).

If you want to tilt towards value, emerging markets, tech or some such, you can, but I would not own individual stocks. With the index funds, you own all the stocks.

I might take the time tonight to give you a specific recommendation if I don't fall asleep on the sofa.

**Jluke** · 01-12-2018, 05:13 PM

Taxable account: if you sell any of these funds it will create a taxable event. If you must sell and you have losers, sell them to offset any winners.

Taxable account: For any funds that pay dividends you should consider turning off auto reinvesting of dividends and use the SpecID method so you can take advantage of tax gain/loss harvesting when you want to sell (minimize tax hit for gains and take advantage of any losses).

You also need to watch the funds across accounts so you do not create a wash sale and lose the ability to tax loss harvest. One potential is VTI.

Funds that represent less than 5% of your total holdings do not really impact your overall portfolio (less power I guess).

In the list of 401k funds you want to look at the Expense Ratio (ER) to also help you choose appropriately.

I would hold onto both of the google stock.

If you are unsure of what to do with some of the existing funds you can always leave them there and just direct your future contributions to the funds of your choice. Eventually the existing ones will be a small portion of your overall investments.

**Like2Plan** · 01-13-2018, 04:07 AM

Originally posted by LivingAlmostLarge View Post

I forgot the 401k options are

DFA US LG CAP VAL (DFLVX)
FID CONTRAFUND K (FCNKX)
VANGUARD INST INDEX (VINIX)
VANG EXT MKT IDX INS (VIEIX)
JPM SM CAP GROWTH R6 (JGSMX)
VANG EM STK IDX ADM (VEMAX)
VANG INTL GROWTH ADM (VWILX)
VANG TOT INTL STK IS (VTSNX)
VANG REIT IDX INST (VGSNX)
TRP INTL VALUE EQ I (TRTIX)
VANGUARD TARGET 2015
VANGUARD TARGET 2020
VANGUARD TARGET 2025
VANGUARD TARGET 2030
VANGUARD TARGET 2035
VANGUARD TARGET 2040
VANGUARD TARGET 2045
VANGUARD TARGET 2050
VANGUARD TARGET 2055
VANGUARD TARGET 2060
VANGUARD TARGET 2065
VANGUARD TARGET RET
PIM TOTAL RT INST (PTTRX)
VANG TOT BD MKT INST (VBTIX)
FIMM GOVT CL I (FIGXX)

Without knowing what the expense ratios are (I am assuming pretty low), I would go with these 4:
VANGUARD INST INDEX (VINIX) for large cap
VANG EXT MKT IDX INS (VIEIX) for mid and small cap
VANG TOT INTL STK IS (VTSNX) for international
VANG TOT BD MKT INST (VBTIX) for bond fund.

Like Corn said, no bonds in taxable for tax efficiency. Also, I wouldn't put bonds in any of the Roths-- I would have the bonds in the 401K (assuming it is all pretax).

**Like2Plan** · 01-13-2018, 04:13 AM

Originally posted by james.hendrickson View Post

Since everyone in this thread seems to be holding Vanguard shares, here is something you guys will appreciate:

Don't forget: if you have more than $10,000 in Vanguard products, be sure that you get "admiral shares".

On average admiral shares are something like 41% lower than regular investor shares.

From vanguard:

Admiral™ Shares are a separate share class of Vanguard mutual funds that were created to pass along the savings that result from larger accounts to the investors who own them.

Some things to keep in mind:

1) The limits for switching from investor to admiral shares are generally higher for funds that require human labor time. These are:

$10,000 for most index funds
$50,000 for most actively managed funds.
$100,000 for certain sector-specific index funds.

2) Admiral shares are only available at Vanguard. If you're holding your Vanguard products at a 3rd party brokerage like Schwab or Fidelity, you won't be able to get the share upgrade. If you use a 3rd party brokerage and you want the cheaper Vanguard product you can always consider Vanguard ETFs.

3) Vanguard's computers sweep their system about twice a year to check for upgrades. If you do get upgraded you'll see a little icon next to your account ledger entry that you can click to to upgrade the shares.

Vanguard is great - my wife and I have our house downpayment savings in their bond market index fund (VBMFX).

That is a good point about the admiral shares. It looks like many of the funds that are available to LAL's DH are institutional shares which have the advantage of lower ER for everyone who participates in the 401K.

edited to add: This is a little off topic, but DH's 401k has a large cap institutional fund (FXAIX) which recently dropped the ER .015% (that is the lowest I've ever seen).

**scfr** · 01-13-2018, 08:28 AM

Originally posted by LivingAlmostLarge View Post

I realized the muck my DH has made of everything. A few years ago I let him have free rein in trading in stocks after our kiddos were born. Then 2 years ago he gave up after losing money (he had to learn the hard way

because his mom told him he could beat the index, he couldn't), so he began to leave things out of individual stocks and instead just buy index funds like I had done the previous decade. I always had him in index and etfs.

Now I'm taking it in hand yes 2 years later to properly allocate everything. Help me.

I'm going to approach your question from a rather different angle than the previous posters.

How are you going to prevent things from getting "mucked up" again in the future?

It sounds like the reality of your situation is one where you might want to consider just picking one of the Target Funds and letting it be.

I'm aware of the drawbacks of Target Funds such as higher expense ratio. I know that choosing a Target Fund isn't necessarily the optimal, absolute best choice. But I can't help but wonder for you it might not be the best PRACTICAL solution.

Let's say you choose a basket of funds and come up with the "absolute best" choice today. How are you and your husband as a team going to keep your choices updated? Will you remember to rebalance and revisit your allocation choices in a timely manner? Can you be sure that the 2 of you won't wind up working at cross purposes again? Will you be able to agree on how to adjust your asset allocation as time goes on and you get closer to retirement?

I sense lots of potential for recurring problems down the road, even if you get everything straightened out today.

If the 2 of you could agree on a Target Fund, you can just sit back and let all the other "issues" be handled for you by the fund managers. Yes, you'll still need to monitor the fund in case it changes strategy fund managers, but it will be more hands off, and there will be less potential for "really mucking up."

**LivingAlmostLarge** · 01-14-2018, 10:46 AM

I'm planning on moving towards just having a plan watching it and rebalancing maybe once a year. I'm semi-active and while I like bogel I'm also a fan of William Bernstein the intelligent asset allocator.

Right now I'm thinking
20% VTI DH 401k
20% International ETF
10% Bonds ETF DH 401k
10% REIT DH 401k
10% Individual Stocks (because we already own some about 10%)
10% Emerging market DH IRA
10% Dividend ETF (LAL IRA) VYM, DH IRA
5% Small ETF DH ira
5% Mid ETF DH IRA

That's the breakdown of our investments. Although I'm debating putting 20% in 401k DH into Bonds and using VTI outside to invest extra.

I'm looking at the lower expense ratios in the 401k and using ETFs for most of our investments otherwise. I'm also trying to minimize harvesting any losses or gain right now because I have no idea where we are taxwise.

I need to look back at what we have.

**LivingAlmostLarge** · 01-15-2018, 10:15 AM

BIIB tax
IJH tax 5%
VBR tax 5%
VEA tax 20%
VTI tax 20%
VINIX 401k 20%
VBTIX 401k 10%
VGSNX 401k 10%
VEMAX 401k 10%
Goog DH IRA
googl DH IRA
INTC DH IRA
PYPL DH IRA
UNP DH IRA
VYM DH IRA 10%
VXUS DH IRA 20%
DIS LAL IRA
IJH LAL IRA 5%
VBR LAL IRA 5 %
VWO LAL IRA 10%

Not Ideal but I'm leaning all taxable stuff alone. Then I'm leaving all individual stocks alone wherever they are for now.

Then I'm going to remix everything else into index funds and try to keep the portfolio something like this.

20% US stocks
20% Foreign stocks
10% US bonds
10% REIT
10% Emerging markets
10% Individual stocks
10% Dividend ETF
5% Small cap ETF
5% mid cap ETF

Right now we're low on the US stock so the 401k 18k will go all to VINIX and that will balance the portfolio as best as I can. As the year progresses if we have extra money I'll add to VTI in our taxable account as well.

This will eliminate so many overlapping funds. And streamline us down.

Portfolio suggestions