What are you invested in? Target date funds, ETFs, individual stocks? Do you think of your portfolio as aggressive, neutral, or conservative?
It occured to me the other day in a discussion about lifestyle creep that a lot of discussions about retirement assume you earn at the 10- or 20-year historical average returns of the S&P500, but it would be very unusual to be 100% in the S&P500 for your entire working life. So, the effect of small changes in cash infusions (i.e. splurging on large but infrequent purchases) is lessened when you consider that most people will be invested more conservatively and real returns will be lower.
So what do you have setup?
Currently about 70% of my retirement account value is in a 401k, which is 100% in FFLDX, a Fidelity target retirement 2055 fund. I’m not as pleased with the returns on this. It says I’m up 11% 1Y but I frankly don’t believe it because it’s worth barely more than the cash that’s been put in to it in that time. Our fund picks for our 401k are kind of crap. The other 30% account value is in a Roth IRA, which I have distributed as:
55% FXAIX (FID S&P 500 ETF)
20% FSPSX (FID international ETF)
15% FSMAX (FID domestic whole market ETF)
10% FXNAX (FID bond ETF)
I would consider this overall rather neutral, maybe even conservative considering my age (31). What do you think?
25% US Large Cap
25% US Mid
25% US Small Cap
25% International
No bonds. Will reconsider at age 40.
Tax strategy - Traditional is more focused in Large and Mid. Small and Intl (higher expected returns) go in Roth.
Gonna set a fire in here:
62% UPRO 3x S&P500
11% UMDD 3x S&P400 MidCap
27% East Coast Strategic Credit fund (Credit Spread strip strategy)
Quarterly rebalancing with a 70% equity / 30% alternative “neutral” balance target.
Investment horizon ~50+ years
More or less:
- 70-75% US total market
- 25-30% international total market
My only bonds are in my efund, which makes my portfolio quite aggressive.
So mine looks pretty similar to yours, but I have a little more international and no bonds. I’m guessing our portfolios perform similarly.
Edit: tax strategy
My after tax accounts are in international funds for the foreign tax credit, my Roth accounts are in US stocks (highest expected growth), and my pre-tax accounts fill in the gaps.
I don’t make enough to max 401k + Roth but if I ever get there I’ll have to remember the foreign vs. domestic note. From reading this thread I think I definitely need to phase out contributing to bonds for a while.
