Settling on a plain old balanced fund

[W2R]

On a side note, I wasn't aware of the G-fund bonds fact you stated. Could you post a link that I could look at? I am a recently retired Infantry Officer with a TSP account and couldn't find that, which would be excellent information to have.

http://www.tsp.gov/rates/fundsheet-gfund.pdf

It is helpful to know what your main employment benefits are. Access to the G Fund is considered by many/most to be one of the major benefits for federal civilian employees and military.

 

[easysurfer]

So, if you invest in a balanced fund do you include this in your overall asset allocation or do you treat them separately?

In otherwords, say you have a 100K in a balanced fund that aims to have 60% equities/ 40% bonds. In your overall portfolio AA totals, would you add 60K to equities and 40K to bonds? Or just count them outside of your overall allocation.

 

[brewer12345]

I would break it out to the appropriate asset category, not leave it separate.

 

[W2R]

So, if you invest in a balanced fund do you include this in your overall asset allocation or do you treat them separately?

In otherwords, say you have a 100K in a balanced fund that aims to have 60% equities/ 40% bonds. In your overall portfolio AA totals, would you add 60K to equities and 40K to bonds? Or just count them outside of your overall allocation.

Periodically I check to see what the exact % equities in Wellesley is (38.62% stocks right now). From that I figure out how much of my Wellesley is in equities and how much is in fixed. Each time I compute my AA (45:55, equities:fixed), I add the corresponding parts of my Wellesley to the equities and the fixed portions.

 

[timwalsh300]

So, if you invest in a balanced fund do you include this in your overall asset allocation or do you treat them separately?

In otherwords, say you have a 100K in a balanced fund that aims to have 60% equities/ 40% bonds. In your overall portfolio AA totals, would you add 60K to equities and 40K to bonds? Or just count them outside of your overall allocation.

Our entire investment portfolio (i.e. everything except for our short-term cash reserves) is now 65/35 with about half of that in a balanced "one-stop-shop" fund. Over time, as we contribute more to the TSP and IRA's, the balanced funds will account for a greater share of our portfolio. Now only our taxable investments are broken up into multiple funds (muni bonds and total stock market).

EDIT: I'm keeping track of things exactly as W2R just said.

Tim

 

[easysurfer]

Come to think of it, when I had a 401K I used to invest in a balanced index fund (60/40) and did just that -- took a percentage of the total amount and add them to their corresponding equity/bond totals.

Thanks for keeping me honest!