Asset allocation tutorial?

[harley]

sorry, but I found just because they maybe Lower cost, they also ended being lower performers as well. An the way the Indexes are not true indexes anymore and how Devious Traders, Hedge Funds and many others have figured out ways to Circumvent and Manipulate them? Add to the fact that ( according to Jack Boggle ) Institutions control 80% of the money being invested now and less than 20% from private investors, when it used to be the otherway around...

"Investing in the future is going to be far more challenging than in the past..that most average and even above ave. investors will have problems & be taken advantage of..and disappointed, unless regulations are both enforced and changed.."

Show me the Money... Looking @ A per $10k invested Cost basis..
FYI- A Typical self managed 60/40 port of index's lost over -20% in 08 and now has only about $300 in tot. value per every $10,000 Invested after the past 10 yrs..most other mixes have a ave of less than 4% apy for the past 10 yrs or just barely enough to stay ahead of Inflation.. From 5/99- 5/09' = 10 yrs...Of Active Bal. Index Ports, VWINX ( 40/60 ) shows having the best Tot. Rtn and Tot value for the Same period with about $16,216 = + $6,216 for every $10k invested..not much better than Owning All Bonds.. And it only took 1 yr of loosing -10% for it to end up like this..and 9 yrs of gains.. While It's 60/40 Active Mge fund of VWELX shows about $15,141

Not bashing Indexes, just bashing Equities.. making 50-60% after 10 yrs isn't my idea of making my $ make the most and working for me in a Risk Enviorment as in equties..

Will we have another -20% melt down in the next 10 yrs? You can bet on it and maybe even more than just 1 with all the devious methods being created in just the past 5 yrs..from being able to Short it by a margin of 3-1 to Leverage it to Hedge it, a Hedge fund with just a $100 Mil. can destroy a Decent Co. in a Day..Now.. as they did in 08'...and nothing is on the books to stop this from happening again.. Yet.. Yet alone to force regulators to Enforce those Regulations..

All Methods of investing in the past did not have these kinds of Devious methods back then and thus do not work as well now , nor going into the future..

Wherever there is $, there will be Theives to try to steal it and After they do and even if they get caught, the damage has been done and Investors will end up not getting that $ back and Be the looser, Only the Lawyers and the Gov't will get it back into their hands.. Either Ban Hedge Funds or require them to be Mutual Funds and have them meet those Regulations and Regulate Short Selling..on margins of 2 & 3-1 leveraging..with Derivitives.. Until then? We Average investors haven't got a chance anymore..investing in equities...

What the heck are you talking about? Is this a response to a previous post? I think if you get one of those little air spray cans you might be able to fix that sticky caps key.

 

[Stevewc]

This is a great thread.
So much info I'll have to read as I get time.
So I'm tagging/bumping it to make it easy for me to find.
Steve

 

[gryffindor]

Thanks for the thread

I admit I'm a big believer in alternative assets as I have been fortunate to get good access to that through my employer.

As a result I've grown partial to thinking of the major decisions in assets categories in 4 buckets

Equities
Inflation sensitive (e.g., real estate, commodities, TIPs)
Deflation sensitive (e.g., bonds)
Relative value investments (e.g, long-short, arbitrage, etc. )

David Swensen who has taken the position that the typical individual investor should run away from alternative investments given that they don't have good access and can't do the right due diligence still recommends a different blend for investors.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/....refer=home


"Swenson told Mack that equity-oriented investors should allocate 30 percent of their money to U.S. stocks, 15 percent to Treasury bonds and 15 percent to TIPS. He recommended putting 15 percent into real-estate investment trusts, 15 percent into equities in non-U.S. developed markets and 10 percent into emerging markets"

So 55% to equities with 25% international bias
15% deflation sensitive - T bills
30% inflation sensitive - TIPs, REITs
0% to alternative investments

Major message for me is that people should just limit the world to stocks and bonds in a world that is likely prone to serious inflationary stimulus; stimulus that I could do without

 

[kyounge1956]

(snip)

One might say there are 3 general ways of rebalancing which are really based on the "when" of rebalancing:
1. Rebalance with every new addition to the portfolio.
2. Rebalance at a set time every year: your birthday, January, etc.
3. Rebalance when certain percentage trigger points are reached, such as Larry Swedroe's 5/25 rule. (snip)

Back to 'when' to rebalance:

If one contributes to their portfolio every paycheck or monthly or quarterly, then one can check their asset allocation and put the new money to work in the asset class that is underweighted from their written asset allocation plan. This is relatively simple to do now that you all have your portfolios set up in the M* portfolio tool and can easily "X-ray" it. This is also reasonably tax-efficient and you are not selling any investments to create a tax liability. This would be a classic buy undervalued securities or buy low strategy. It can be very difficult to be buying REITs now or small cap value. These asset classes have gone down the most in the past year.

Another method is to check whether rebalancing is needed based on some calendar date. I personally do not like this method because lots of opportunities can be missed in between. If something drops alot but goes back up before your 'rebalance date', then you may have missed a chance to buy low. However, I think this is certainly the simplist way.

Another method is to use trigger points. Swedroe advocates a 5/25 rule where one rebalances when as asset class percentage is changed by more than 5% of the total portfolio value or by more than 25% of its target value. Here's an example: You want 30% fixed income. So your target range is really 25% to 35% of fixed income for your total portfolio value. You do not need to rebalance if your fixed income percentage falls within this range. However, if your asset allocation calls for 12% fixed income, then a 7% to 19% range would be too large, since 25% of 12% is 3%, then the range would be 12% plus or minus 3% or 9% to 15% of fixed income.

With all the rebalancing that you might do, you should take taxes into account. You do not want to be creating a tax liability if you can avoid it. If you can't avoid it, you want to try to avoid short-term capital gains and get long-term capital gains. Rebalancing in a 401(k) or IRA has no tax consequences, so look at those accounts first. (snip)

Homework: Present here on this thread, the last act of rebalancing that you did.

After a lot of delay I am finally trying to get my portfolio to actually reflect my target asset allocation of 70% fixed income with the other 30% split more or less evenly between stocks and REITs. I have submitted several trades online in both my Roth IRA and my 457 plan that should get me a lot closer when they take effect on Monday.

The first thing I did, several months ago now, was find out which REIT index funds are available through my Roth IRA custodian. (No REIT funds are available in my 457 plan.) I requested a copy of the prospectus and after reading it decided to buy the fund, so yesterday I sent in an online order to buy 1000 shares of VGSIX in my Roth. That is most of the money that was in the account, and by a fortunate coincidence is also about 13% of my total portfolio, which is right around the correct amount for my target AA.

Then, last night and today, I checked the balances in my 457 plan. I had a large amount of Fidelity Contrafund (FCNTX), an approximately equal amount of "Stable Value Fund" (which I've never been able to find a ticker symbol for or much information about ), plus smaller amounts of PTTRX (called a bond fund but actually mostly cash), a small-cap index, a mid-cap index, and a Euro-pacific index fund. Some months ago after much number crunching, I came to the reluctant conclusion that there isn't any way I can hit the target allocation in my 457 using only the pre-selected funds . There is a self-directed brokerage option but it has extra fees and restrictions and I'm not sure it would be worth the hassle . About the closest I can get is Vanguard Target Retirement Income (VTINX), which is where I have been sending all my new contributions since March.

I have also been procrastinating on making these changes because the values of the funds had gone down so much and I didn't want to "lock in" my losses. But recently I thought of a way to trick myself into doing what I should have done anyway, which is to reduce my stock allocation and increase bonds by the only readily available means, namely buying more VTINX. So, I looked up the price on FCNTX, and by checking my back statements was able to determine that I had bought about 1/4 of the shares I have when the price was lower than it was when the market closed yesterday ($47.80). "Well", says I to myself, "I won't be losing any money if I sell those" . Then I looked again and found I had bought about half of my shares when the price was over $60, in fact for most of that time the price was over $65, and thought "it's no use holding my breath waiting for it to go back that high again" . The small and mid-cap funds were also down to about half what I had paid for them as one-time purchases . So, I sent in a trade order to sell all of the small-cap and mid-cap index fund shares plus about 3/4 of the FCNTX and about 3/4 of the Stable Value, and buy more VTINX. I decided to keep some of the Stable Value to balance the volatility of the remaining Fidelity Contrafund. If FCNTX goes up over $55, I'll swap half the remaining amount (and half of the remaining Stable Value) into VTINX, and if it gets back up to $60 (or I get sick of waiting for it to), I'll get rid of the last of both.

The Europacific index fund, also a one-time purchase, is worth about 3/4 what I paid for it, so I decided to hang onto it for a while to see if it gets back up to where I started. But if it doesn't within a reasonable time (whatever that is) it's outta there.

Then I ran a portfolio Xray. Before today's trades, I had about 60% of my portfolio in stocks: 55.8% in the stock funds, plus some of the VTINX is in stocks also. The Xray says that after the trades on Monday I should be down to about 44% stock, including the REIT fund which isn't broken out separately (about 32% U.S and 12% Europacific). The bonds will be just under 40% and cash about 15%.

That's not quite what I was aiming at, but it's a lot closer than I am now.

Next, I think I need to see if there is a TIPS index fund, or if I can buy individual TIPS in my Roth IRA. If so, I will split the money going into the Roth between bonds and REITs to increase the bond allocation and hold the REIT allocation about level. According to all the number crunching I did earlier this year, based on historical data a REIT allocation anywhere between 5% and 25% of the total portfolio (with stocks for the rest of the 30% non-fixed) will give me the return and standard deviation I'm aiming for, and it should be easy to stay within that range by directing the incoming money to bonds or REITs as required.

New money to the 457 plan will continue to go 100% to VTINX. The limit on the 457 is about five times the limit on the Roth, so eventually I may not be able to keep my allocation where I want it by just by by buying REITs and bonds in the Roth. If that happens, I suppose I could reduce my 457 contributions and buy more I-bonds on payroll deduction to be earmarked for retirement spending, but I'll worry about that if & when I get there.

 

[LOL!]

Several comments:

1. You have fallen into the behavioral finance trap of loss aversion. You need to get out of it. Please read "Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes".

Consider this:: If you sell your lower-priced Small Cap Index fund and buy a different lower-priced Small Cap Index fund have you really "lost" or "gained" any value? Same thing with Fidelity Contra: If you sell it and buy something that has also dropped in value (a REIT) have you really lost or gained any value. Read the book.

2. You have the M* tools to help you. You should create portfolios for BOTH the BEFORE and AFTER pictures of what you are trying to do. That way you can see the effect of what you are trying to do before you do it.

3. Stable value fund can be considered a cash account. CASH$ in Morningstar.

4. I myself would not enter trade orders or mutual fund exchanges on a weekend while the market was closed. It is probably OK, but it would be a terrible thing to do with stocks and ETFs because of the way the stock market works (or doesn't really work) at the opening of the stock market every morning.

5. NAV of fund shares don't matter so much because of various distributions and dividends that funds pay out. For example, suppose you bought contra at a NAV of $60 a share and the next year it was still $60, but the it paid a $15 distribution that you automatically reinvested. The NAV would go to $45 and you would have more shares, but the total value of your shares would be the same. Mutual funds are not like stocks and the NAV share price cannot be used to judge loss or gain or position much of the time.

Another instance of this is a bond fund. Many bond funds have monthly or quarterly dividends. The NAV of bond funds often does not fluctuate much away from $10 or thereabouts, so you cannot tell how much you have gained or lost by looking at the NAV: you must look at the total value of your shares (NAV X number_of_shares).

 

[kyounge1956]

Several comments:

1. You have fallen into the behavioral finance trap of loss aversion. You need to get out of it. Please read "Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes".

Consider this:: If you sell your lower-priced Small Cap Index fund and buy a different lower-priced Small Cap Index fund have you really "lost" or "gained" any value? Same thing with Fidelity Contra: If you sell it and buy something that has also dropped in value (a REIT) have you really lost or gained any value. Read the book. (snip)

I will see if the library has it.

I see your reasoning about selling a small cap fund that is down and buying something that is also way down in value. But when I checked VTINX it appeared both to have gone down less than my other funds did and to have recovered more to date, so selling FCNTX or the other funds and buying VTINX doesn't fall into the category of selling something cheap and buying something else cheap. It is closer to "sell something that has lost half of its value and buy something that has only lost one-fourth of its value".

4. I myself would not enter trade orders or mutual fund exchanges on a weekend while the market was closed. It is probably OK, but it would be a terrible thing to do with stocks and ETFs because of the way the stock market works (or doesn't really work) at the opening of the stock market every morning.

Weekends may not be ideal but that's when I have the time available. I don't have any individual stocks or ETFs, just mutual funds.

5. NAV of fund shares don't matter so much because of various distributions and dividends that funds pay out. For example, suppose you bought contra at a NAV of $60 a share and the next year it was still $60, but the it paid a $15 distribution that you automatically reinvested. The NAV would go to $45 and you would have more shares, but the total value of your shares would be the same. Mutual funds are not like stocks and the NAV share price cannot be used to judge loss or gain or position much of the time.

Another instance of this is a bond fund. Many bond funds have monthly or quarterly dividends. The NAV of bond funds often does not fluctuate much away from $10 or thereabouts, so you cannot tell how much you have gained or lost by looking at the NAV: you must look at the total value of your shares (NAV X number_of_shares).

If I had meant to make a valid analysis of whether I was actually losing money on the sales all this would apply, but in that case I would still be trying to figure it out and wouldn't have sold them yet. I would also have had to take inflation into account because some of those shares were bought more than ten years ago and $47.80 was worth quite a bit more then than it is now. But when I said I was "tricking" myself, I meant that literally, and a trick doesn't have to make sense or be financially justifiable, it just has to get me to do something instead of continuing to procrastinate. From that standpoint, I consider the trick to have been pretty successful, because it got me to sell a bunch of those shares and get a lot closer to my target allocation.

 

[LOL!]

The Bogleheads forum has been active with managing some simple slice-and-dice asset allocations of index funds, so I thought I would put a few links here.

Basically, the idea of holding
LB (domestic large blend)
LV (domestic large value)
SC (domestic small cap)
SCV (domestic small cap value)
ILB (international large blend)
ILV (int'l large value)
ISC (int'l small cap)
ISV (int'l small cap value)
REIT (real estate investment trusts)
etc
and fixed income in various proportions is a slice-and-dice portfolio. A Boglehead forum member, Trev H, has charted some theoretical returns from backtesting and compared to a total market weighted asset allocation in this thread: Bogleheads :: View topic - Ultimate Buy and Hold - 8 slices vs 4 .

Rick Ferri has a thread on ETFs to fill some of these asset classes: Bogleheads :: View topic - ETF portfolios in Money Magazine

Here's a thread on international small cap: Bogleheads :: View topic - Is Small Cap International necessary?

I know many of you already read the Diehards/Bogleheads forum, so I am just posting this for folks who don't visit there and for future reference.


And another thought: There is quite a range of reasonable asset allocations that one could choose. You get to pick the ratio of stocks to bonds and the ratio of US to foreign investments. You get to pick how much large cap and small cap you want. You also get to pick how much to tilt to value.

However, there are some pathological asset allocations that are easy to spot. IMHO, some would be asset allocations with less small and mid cap equities than a total market weight would give you. For example, if you had a large cap tilt, that's not near the efficient frontier of best performance versus risk ratio (i.e. Sharpe ratio). Another one would be a tilt to growth instead of blend and value. Another would be a tilt to small cap growth.

So check your Morningstar portfolio X-ray and 9-box style grid every so often and see if you still match your desired asset allocation plan.

 

[kyounge1956]

Several comments:
(snip)

4. I myself would not enter trade orders or mutual fund exchanges on a weekend while the market was closed. It is probably OK, but it would be a terrible thing to do with stocks and ETFs because of the way the stock market works (or doesn't really work) at the opening of the stock market every morning.

I have been keeping tabs on FCNTX and when I checked today it was at 54.66. I was planning to sell half of what I had left at 55 and I decided this was close enough, so half of the FCNTX and half of the remaining Stable Value just got swapped for more Target Retirement Income.

Please, would you say a little more about why not to send in orders for ETFs when the market is closed? I now need to buy some more bonds to get closer to my target allocation. I have been planning to include TIPs in my bond portion and my only option to do that is in my Roth; there is no TIPs fund available in my 457 plan. However, I have just gotten the prospectus for VIPSX, and it doesn't sound like it is designed to replicate the index, which is really what I am after and the other TIPs options available through my Roth custodian are TIPs ETFs (TIP and IPE), which on a quick look both say their objective is to replicate the performance of a TIPs index. So why don't I want to buy these over the weekend? Is it a major blunder or just a little faux pas to do so? Nights and weekends are the times I have available. I don't like to do retirement account transactions on my computer at work.

As an aside, this is probably a real newbie question, but when I was looking at the VPSIX info on my Roth custodian site, it was really obvious how to request a prospectus. I don't see "request prospectus" anywhere on the two ETF pages. Don't ETFs have prospectuses?

 

[LOL!]

Yes, ETFs do have prospectuses. My broker mails them to me whenever I make a purchase. I am sure you can find the prospectus online as well at the web site of the ETF sponsor. A google search with "prospectus TIP" turns up
http://us.ishares.com/content/strea...sitory/material/prospectus/tip_prospectus.pdf

As for entering market orders when the market is closed, that's dangerous because you will likely be on the opposite side of a limit order trade and lose some money. Let's take an example from just 15 minutes ago. Look at today's (9/22/2009) trading of the etf VSS. Some of first 500 shares today were traded at 3.5% over yesterday's closing price, but it is now trading at only 1% over yesterday's closing price. Somebody paid 2.5% more than they had to. There was probably a limit order to sell at 82.79 sitting there and no other lower priced orders. So if you come along and say "buy at the market", then you will pay $82.79 per share. 15 minutes later, more orders are available to sell at $81.00. Look before conducting transactions with ETFs. If you cannot look, then use mutual funds where you are guaranteed to the get the closing NAV for that day.

 

[kyounge1956]

Yes, ETFs do have prospectuses. My broker mails them to me whenever I make a purchase. I am sure you can find the prospectus online as well at the web site of the ETF sponsor. A google search with "prospectus TIP" turns up
http://us.ishares.com/content/strea...sitory/material/prospectus/tip_prospectus.pdf

As for entering market orders when the market is closed, that's dangerous because you will likely be on the opposite side of a limit order trade and lose some money. Let's take an example from just 15 minutes ago. Look at today's (9/22/2009) trading of the etf VSS. Some of first 500 shares today were traded at 3.5% over yesterday's closing price, but it is now trading at only 1% over yesterday's closing price. Somebody paid 2.5% more than they had to. There was probably a limit order to sell at 82.79 sitting there and no other lower priced orders. So if you come along and say "buy at the market", then you will pay $82.79 per share. 15 minutes later, more orders are available to sell at $81.00. Look before conducting transactions with ETFs. If you cannot look, then use mutual funds where you are guaranteed to the get the closing NAV for that day.

Is there a TIPs index mutual fund? I'll read the prospectus again. On a first look the description of VIPSX did not sound like an indexing approach, but maybe there is some other fund I can get through my Roth that would be. I haven't yet figured out how to ask my Roth site to show me all funds with certain characteristics. It is obvious how to ask about past performance and expense ratios and some other characteristics, but for asking "what kind of fund is it" the available choices aren't more specific than "stocks or bonds". I don't see how to ask "passive vs active management" or "index fund vs other types". More to learn, sigh.

 

[LOL!]

I would suggest that you do not get hung up on "index fund". What you want is "passively-managed". I think PIMCO now has TIPS index funds, but I don't know for sure.

I think Vanguard does a good job, but there are others as well. As examples, the Vanguard GNMA fund is not an index fund and neither is the Vanguard short-term investment grade bond fund.

A good place to look for investments worthy of buying is the Eric Haas's DFA vs. Vanguard where asset classes are listed and if you click on the "here" details you can see a list of funds and ETFs. A quick examination of that link shows several TIPS index funds are available.

 

[kyounge1956]

I would suggest that you do not get hung up on "index fund". What you want is "passively-managed". I think PIMCO now has TIPS index funds, but I don't know for sure.

I think Vanguard does a good job, but there are others as well. As examples, the Vanguard GNMA fund is not an index fund and neither is the Vanguard short-term investment grade bond fund.

A good place to look for investments worthy of buying is the Eric Haas's DFA vs. Vanguard where asset classes are listed and if you click on the "here" details you can see a list of funds and ETFs. A quick examination of that link shows several TIPS index funds are available.

I will check out the DFA vs Vanguard link, or go back to the library--there is a book on Asset Class investing that I had out and it also has a list of funds in it, categorized by asset class (now all I have to do is remember the name of the book).

I think I understand what you are saying about index fund vs passive fund. I am concerned about that because all the calcs I did to come up with my target allocation were based on data from indexes, and if the fund isn't an index, will it have the same growth rate, standard deviation & correlation that are presupposed in my calculations? Seems like getting away from index funds would be a risk of using apples in a recipe that calls for oranges. But maybe a passive fund will not differ significantly in those respects from an actual index fund.

However, I am looking at the "Security Selection" section of the VIPSX prospectus again, and it does not sound as if it is even passively managed. I see phrases like "the...advisor to the fund buys and sells securities based on its judgement about issuers...prices...other economic factors..." or "...the Fund's average maturity and mix of bonds may differ from those of the index...for example, when the advisor sees an opportunity to enhance returns..." or "the Fund is subject to manager risk, which is the chance that poor security selection...will cause the fund to underperform relevant benchmarks". This (especially the parts I put into boldface) sounds more like an active management approach to me--does it sound like that to you also? In the data given (covering 2004-2008) the turnover has ranged from 21% in 2007 to 73% in 2005. I would have expected the turnover to be much lower than this in a passively managed fund--is that correct?

Thanks for this thread! It's so informative.

 

[LOL!]

....
I think I understand what you are saying about index fund vs passive fund. I am concerned about that because all the calcs I did to come up with my target allocation were based on data from indexes, and if the fund isn't an index, will it have the same growth rate, standard deviation & correlation that are presupposed in my calculations? Seems like getting away from index funds would be a risk of using apples in a recipe that calls for oranges. But maybe a passive fund will not differ significantly in those respects from an actual index fund.
....

Guess what? The index funds that you select will NOT have the same growth rate, will NOT have the same standard deviation, and will NOT have the same correlation that you presupposed in your calculations. I am not trying to convince you to not use index funds, but I am trying to get you to see the apples for the trees (or vice versa).

 

[kyounge1956]

Guess what? The index funds that you select will NOT have the same growth rate, will NOT have the same standard deviation, and will NOT have the same correlation that you presupposed in your calculations. I am not trying to convince you to not use index funds, but I am trying to get you to see the apples for the trees (or vice versa).

I know they won't be exactly the same (growth, standard deviation and correlation all change over time), but I do expect them to be very similar, like substituting a Fuji apple for a Granny Smith would not be expected to drastically change the results of the recipe--unlike substituting an orange.

When you say that the index fund won't have the same results, do you mean the results should not be expected even to remotely resemble calculations based on historic data? ISTM that would mean that there is no way even to estimate how a portfolio will perform, and would make it totally impossible ever to have any amount of confidence that one won't end up really old and completely broke. Isn't the whole idea of FIREcalc based on the assumption that checking against historic data gives a reasonable estimate of what to expect?

Or do you just mean that I'm splitting hairs and there is not enough difference between index, passive, and active funds (within an asset class) to have a significant effect on the ultimate success or failure of the portfolio?

 

[LOL!]

You are splitting hairs. Have you read that new book from Jim C. Otar yet? (Search the forum for a thread or two on it.) It's about the withdrawal stage of your portfolio. You may be surprised at what matters and what doesn't matter.

 

[kyounge1956]

You are splitting hairs. Have you read that new book from Jim C. Otar yet? (Search the forum for a thread or two on it.) It's about the withdrawal stage of your portfolio. You may be surprised at what matters and what doesn't matter.

I have read the threads but not the book. My local library does not have it and they won't request a book on interlibrary loan the first year after publication, so I guess I will have to pay for it if I want to read it.

 

[kyounge1956]

If you want access to Morningstar's X-Ray without registering, try this:

Instant XRay entry page

I don't remember where they draw their lines between value and growth, large and small, but I believe they use different metrics than Fama and French, for example.

This instant Xray sure is quicker than going in via T Rowe Price if I only want to get a quick snapshot, and being on dial-up, that's a big point in its favor.

I did an instant Xray after my recent trades and I'm up to 47% bonds. If I do everything I can with existing money I can get up to about 55% bonds—to get from there to my target of 70%, I need to put all the new money going to my Roth into bonds as well. It will take years (in fact I think it would take longer than until my target retirement date) to hit the target that way, though. Maybe I need to look at that self directed option in my 457 plan again. What a choice—pay a bunch of extra fees or be stuck at 15 percentage points too high in my stock allocation. Or maybe I should just cross my fingers and be satisfied with getting as close as I can to the target allocation until I retire. Then I can roll the 457 into an IRA that doesn't have such limited fund choices and I can get the higher bond allocation I want from then on out.

But the cool thing is, I just realized that sometime this past summer the combined total in my two retirement accounts hit six figures.

It's actually more than that because I still have an Ameriprise VA sitting off to one side waiting for the surrender charge to come down to a reasonable level (or for me to bite the bullet and cash it in anyway).

One question, I don't see a slice in the pie chart for my REIT fund. Is it included in the percentage for stocks? There's not enough "other" for the REIT fund to be in that category.

 

[IndependentlyPoor]

Ouch!

This from The Big Picture

 

[REWahoo]

Great. Every gold bug on the planet is now registering here to say "I told you so!!!"