Please take a look at my retirement portfolios
...and blow holes in them, if they need it. I'm reading the investment section in Making the Most of Your Money, and I realized something critical was missing from my portfolios: international stock funds! All the times I sat down with planners, they never mentioned them--or emerging market funds, for that matter. I still don't have any emerging market stock funds picked; I'll look into those soon. A reminder: I'm 34, married, no kids, no planned kids. Here's what I have:
Fidelity plan
Stocks:
Large cap 50% (split between Fid Contrafund--a growth fund--and Spartan Total Market Index)
Mid cap 12% (Fid Low Priced Stock--a growth fund)
Small cap 10% (Fid Small Cap Growth--"domestic equity mutual fund")
International 13% (Spartan International Index)
Bonds:
15% (Fid New Markets Income--primarily invests at least 80% of its assets in debt securities of issuers in emerging markets)
Tiaa-Cref plan (I had a lot less to choose from here--it had the effect of making me a bit more aggressive with my allocations)
Stocks:
50% CREF Stock (82% Large Cap, 14% Mid Cap, 4% Small Cap)
30% CREF Global Equities (86% Large Cap, 12% Mid Cap, 2% Small Cap)
Bonds:
10% CREF Bond Market
Other:
TIAA Real Estate 10% (73% directly owned, 20% short-term investments, 5% REITs, 2% other)
Do these allocations make sense? Any comments, suggestions would be MUCH appreciated. Once again, I realize how much I have to learn.
NOTES: I have two separate accounts because my employer would only contribute money on my behalf into the TIAA-CREF account. Upon employment I began the Fidelity account with my own money in case that would prevent my having too many eggs in one basket (I really didn't know what I was doing back then, by the way). Just last month I started contributing to the TIAA-CREF account as well as the Fidelity account because it seemed to be doing a little better. I'm not sure if I'll keep that up.
One thing I still need to make sure of is that I'm not duplicating anything across the two accounts--e.g. I need to look extra closely at the Large Cap funds to make sure I'm not investing in the same companies across two different accounts.
posted by SMB @ 7:05 PM
3 Comments:
I would consolidate. That would make it easier on you. As for whether or not you are diversified, it certainly looks that way.
In the meantime, I wouldn't worry too much about it. I'm no expert but nothing here strikes me as terribly wrong. It looks perfectly fine to me. Just make sure you aren't paying for any funds that have very high expense ratios. And keep contributing.
Thank you, thank you! I was hoping someone would answer. :)
I think I will be consolidating sooner rather than later. The trouble with my plan is that my employer ONLY contributes to the TIAA-Cref one, which is not really where I'd want to put all of my own money. It's not bad; there just aren't many fund choices. But, I don't expect to be at my current job too much longer.
SMB,
I just went through a huge overhaul of my accounts. Like you, I've got TIAA-CREF for workplace accounts but use Fidelity for my personal accounts. This post tells you where I ended up with my Fidelity accounts, and this post shows my TIAA allocations. I am far from knowing what I'm doing, so I won't venture to critique your accounts, but you might find my process a little helpful. Especially look at the comments on my posts, because some really knowledgeable folks helped me out.
If you can deal with sitting on hold for ten million years and then spending an hour going through their questionnaire, you might want to talk to a TIAA consultant. Be aware, though, that they are NOT ALLOWED to recommend that you get rid of you TIAA Traditional annuity. So if you're like me and stupidly put money in TIAA Traditional, you may have a hard time getting rid of it. Also, the consultants are NOT ALLOWED to recommend anything other than what their computer program spits out.
Also, TIAA-CREF is in the middle of a big overhaul of their system. My current employer offers all the snazzy new funds. But my former employer, where the bulk of my 403b money still is (they won't let me roll it over) only has the old fund options. So depending on how hip your employer is you may have new options you didn't know about.
Anyway, good luck. I hope this has been a little bit helpful. If you get any significant help from other PF bloggers, you'll probably get yelled at like I did for looking at your accounts in isolation. But sometimes you have to just keep it manageable.
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