A Bird In Hand
Recycles dryer sheets
- Joined
- May 10, 2012
- Messages
- 137
As someone who has been saving fastidiously since childhood, and maxing out my 401k since shortly after college, I have an embarrassing confession: I never really paid much attention to the allocation of funds in my 401k. I vaguely remember choosing some funds when I opened my account, and I think after one or two years I (foolishly) switched around the funds and added some new ones which had done exceedingly well in the prior year. Mind you, this was around 15 years ago when I was fresh out of college and didn't have a clue about...well...much of anything.
Years have passed, my wife and I have had numerous employers, and now we have multiple accounts in Vanguard, TSP, and TIAA-CREF. If that's not enough to keep track of, we have a large number of funds in some of our accounts -- especially Vanguard. I have 15 funds in my Vanguard retirement plan (through my employer) alone. Some are undoubtedly near duplicates of others.
For Vanguard stock I have Growth Index Signal, PRIMECAP Admiral, US Growth Fund, Explorer, Growth Index, Growth and Income, Institutional Index, Strategic Equity, U.S. Value, Value Index.
For Vanguard balanced funds I have Balanced Index, LifeStrategy Moderate Growth, STAR, Wellesley Income, and Wellington.
For Vanguard bonds I have Inflation-protected Securities and Total Bond Market Index.
Is there any compelling reason (beyond reducing complexity) to consolidate my Vanguard funds to just a few that align with my risk tolerance -- perhaps Wellington, Wellesley, and one or two others?
Between all our plans the allocation works out to be about 70% stock (very heavily weighted toward domestic), 15% bonds, 10% guaranteed (employer contributions -- can't change this), and the remainder a combination of real estate, short-term reserves, and others.
I'm not even sure how to get started in simplifying things. I actually don't know that simplifying things is a good idea financially; maybe it's worthwhile (risk mitigation) to have the $$ spread around through various companies/plans and funds?
We could probably roll over all our 401k's and 403b's into IRAs and park them in our Vanguard accounts. From an accounting point of view it would be nicer to have everything in one place. Can anyone think of a good reason to just leave the TIAA and TSP accounts alone?
Any other been-there-done-that advice about this situation?
Years have passed, my wife and I have had numerous employers, and now we have multiple accounts in Vanguard, TSP, and TIAA-CREF. If that's not enough to keep track of, we have a large number of funds in some of our accounts -- especially Vanguard. I have 15 funds in my Vanguard retirement plan (through my employer) alone. Some are undoubtedly near duplicates of others.
For Vanguard stock I have Growth Index Signal, PRIMECAP Admiral, US Growth Fund, Explorer, Growth Index, Growth and Income, Institutional Index, Strategic Equity, U.S. Value, Value Index.
For Vanguard balanced funds I have Balanced Index, LifeStrategy Moderate Growth, STAR, Wellesley Income, and Wellington.
For Vanguard bonds I have Inflation-protected Securities and Total Bond Market Index.
Is there any compelling reason (beyond reducing complexity) to consolidate my Vanguard funds to just a few that align with my risk tolerance -- perhaps Wellington, Wellesley, and one or two others?
Between all our plans the allocation works out to be about 70% stock (very heavily weighted toward domestic), 15% bonds, 10% guaranteed (employer contributions -- can't change this), and the remainder a combination of real estate, short-term reserves, and others.
I'm not even sure how to get started in simplifying things. I actually don't know that simplifying things is a good idea financially; maybe it's worthwhile (risk mitigation) to have the $$ spread around through various companies/plans and funds?
We could probably roll over all our 401k's and 403b's into IRAs and park them in our Vanguard accounts. From an accounting point of view it would be nicer to have everything in one place. Can anyone think of a good reason to just leave the TIAA and TSP accounts alone?
Any other been-there-done-that advice about this situation?