Your opinion please?????

[roger]

Hi:
In your opinion,is this the "ideal"portfolio for today's
circumstances and for a 62years old retired person,with
300K's in my name:50%stocks-50%Bonds.
Portfolios concisting of:Taxable one:
Vanguard Total Stock market Index
" International stock index 28%
" Short Term Corporate Bond
IRA
Vanguard Windsor 2 Fund
" US Growth 12%
Vanguard Explorer
" Strategic Equity
" Intermediate-term bond Index
" Long term Corporate fund
" High Yield Corporate Fund
I'd need to withdraw 16K's a year to supplement my SS
Income.

Taxable Portfolio in US stocks
Vanguard Total Stock Market(70%)
" US Growth Fund 28%
" Vanguard Windsor 2
Mid/small US stocks.
Vanguard Total Stock Market (30%)
Vanguard Strategic 12%
Vanguard Explorer

International Stocks
Vanguard Total International Index 10%

Bonds
Vanguard Short Term Corp 18%
"Intermediate Term 17%

Vanguard Long Term Corp
" High Yield Corp 15%

Too risky,wrong in this economy,love to hear your
opinions............Many thanks and I hope I did not make
too long or complicated..........roger

Too complicated.

John Galt

[unclemick]

First question - why do you have a portfolio? What's the mission? Is it the main source of retirement income or the third leg after pension and SS. I.e. - provide a lot of income with a little inflation buffer or a little income with a lot of inflation buffer or something in-between? For instance our portfolio is going to morph when SS kicks in - at 1.5 yrs from now.

[Bob_Smith]

Roger, I'm having a hard time following your list. Can you just post each fund once, and include the percentage of each fund relative to your total portfolio?

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Great googly moogly. Lot of funds. Lot of overlap.

You might want to consider instead a lifestrategy, a target retirement, and/or the vanguard Star fund, the latter which holds many of the funds you listed. Maybe a combination of the three in some proportion.

[WilliamG]

Hi Roger - About your portfolio:
1) Although placement of various funds (taxable account, IRA, Roth, etc) needs paying attention to, the most important thing is an overall allocation plan by asset type. Therefore I second Bob Smith's suggestion that you document it that way.

2) These funds look suspiciously like the ones recommended to a friend of mine by Vanguard's planning service. I was absolutely fabbergasted that they were still recommending US Growth after all it's performance problems and most lately questionable management practices. Read the two articles on US Growth in this link -

http://www.adviseronline.com/

3) Except for US Growth, I believe the managed funds you have listed are good ones. Personally, I have decided to stay strictly with index funds (for stock) and concentrate on trying to build a portfolio of assets that are relatively uncorrelated; i.e., including REITs as well as international while overweighting small cap and value.

Regards, Bill

[Michael]

16k is 5.33% of 300k. This is too much to withdraw safely with a 50/50 stock bond ratio. Personally, I would look at where I could cut expenses to bring down the withdrawal rate a bit.