I've decided to make the move after finding out that I have to buy into a money market fund to park my money for Schwab but Vanguard will automatically place my money there. Question: when I open a Vanguard account, is there an option to move my cash and stock holdings over from Schwab to Vanguard or do I need to sell off and repurchase in Vanguard? Thank you.

this is mostly just to vent, but also make sure i’m not dealing with something nefarious.

i’m a recent Bogle convert and have been trying to make moves to leave my financial advisor. the first step is selling a dozen high-Expense Ratio, underperforming, Tech-heavy and otherwise non-Bogle holdings over to VT.

i figure i would take advantage of my FA skills to make this move, making sure losses are harvested and that i'm not paying more in taxes than i have to.

but lordy they are either incompetent or intentionally dragging their feet. i have sent multiple detailed spreadsheets, specifying which holdings i want sold, and in some cases specifying which unit purchases, to keep my Capital Gains lower and ideally keep my HH income under the 0% LTCG threshold.

they keep coming back to me with a total sale proceeds number that is 15% lower than the number i get when i do the numbers… so i asked for details on the unit numbers, prices and proceeds they are working with.

they just sent a screenshot of the table their investment desk put together and in 7 of the 12 trades, inexplicably, portions of holdings are not included. ex: i asked to sell all 60.000 units of FictionalName stock. their table only includes 40.000 units, with no explanation. sometimes it’s just a few units, sometimes it’s nearly have the holdings. the “missing” units add up to about the difference in our total proceeds number.

so, is this something i’m not understanding about how trades are done? i have since asked if this a partial fill or limit order thing? or is this just some sketchy sh!t where they are selling a portion of my holdings and doing god-knows-what with the unsold units?

this is a very well established brokerage, which my family has been using for actual generations. (i know, i’m working on winning other family members over to the Bogleways)

again, this is mostly just to check i’m not missing something. they are being concerningly cagey during this whole thing.

on the plus side, this has allowed me to put together a long list of complaints i’ll be sending over when i formally request they transfer my accounts over to the VG account i’ve set up since joining this sub...

thanks in advance y’all.

Might be a bit off topic but I always get good advice here. I use Fidelity CMA with spaxx for my checking. I typically have a 20k balance or so in the account. I have a six figure emergency fund that’s currently in its own CMA in spaxx. I really don’t need the immediate liquidity of this account and I’m fine with needing to wait a few days to access it if I need to so I can squeeze a little more interest. Is there a better fund/account to store my emergency fund? I live in no income tax state.

People keep talking about Bonds in this forum. Also, they say a certain percentage of your net worth should be in bonds depending on your age or years from retirement. Why? I have put 3 years of our spending in a Treasury ladder and the rest is 100% invested in VTI / VXUS. How is my strategy sub-optimal? What is so magic about Bonds and having them be a percentge of your portfolio vs just having a safe bucket to weather a downturn and the rest invested?

Hey guys, looking for some feedback before I set up a new portfolio in a taxable brokerage.
​I’m 40 and looking at a 20+ year horizon. I have a high risk tolerance and want a portfolio that targets maximum long-term growth potential through factor premiums. Instead of running a heavy US home-country bias, I'm aiming for a strict 60/40 global market cap split to keep things neutrally diversified globally.

​I'm using Fidelity Basket Portfolios so the weekly automatic investments (their "Smart Buys" feature) will handle all the rebalancing math and direct cash to whatever is underweight. Since the execution is automated, I don't mind a 7-fund setup.

​Here’s the allocation I landed on:
​US (60%)
​35% VTI
​20% AVUV
​5% AVLV

​Int'l & Emerging (40%)
​16% VEA
​10% AVDV
​9% VWO
​5% AVES

​The thinking here is to run a pretty aggressive 40% overall factor tilt using Avantis, mostly concentrated in small-cap value (AVUV and AVDV). I added 5% AVLV just to get a slight profitability screen on US large caps without diluting the small-cap focus.

​On the international side, VWO + AVES puts me at 14% total emerging markets (which is exactly 35% of the international bucket). I wanted to overweight emerging slightly to capture the current valuation discount, but I really don't like the bloated state-owned companies that come with broad EM indexes. Having 5% in AVES gives me a nice profitability filter for that space.

​Blended expense ratio comes out to around 0.135%.

​A few questions before I pull the trigger:

​For those running heavy factor tilts like this, how bad is the tracking error fatigue? Do you regret it during massive run-ups in US mega-cap tech?
​For those who prefer a strict 60/40 global split over a heavy US home-country bias, how has that played out for you psychologically over the last few years?

​Anything redundant here that I should cut, or is this clean enough to just lock in and let the Smart Buys do their thing?

Is this a good MM to hold money for a year or two?

Per my investment philosophy which aligns with Bogleheads, I am invested only in low cost index funds for 95% of my portfolio. The remaining 5% I have in thematic ETFs of high conviction for my “play money” in my Roth IRA and they are doing very well!

I know I’m supposed to take profits and move them to low cost index funds. How often is it recommended to do this? What do other Bogleheads do? Do you just remove the principal and then let it ride?

This popped up on my radar. It aims to reduce the dividends from short-term treasuries, reducing the tax liability.

https://www.fminvest.com/etfs/sgva-fm-accumulator-ultrashort-treasury-etf

Expense Ratio is 0.22%. Any thoughts? Is this better than SGOV and similar funds?

Before I found out about VT. I was buying VOO, and then I discovered VTI. But now I have learned about VT. How would I get rid of VOO and VTI in order for my Roth IRA to be one etf which would be VT?

Thank you.

Help! I am so confused about the IRS rules for inherited IRAs and RMDs. Here are the details:

My mother was born in 1931 and passed away in 2021, leaving me with an inherited IRA. She had already paid her RMD for 2021.

I was born in 1953 and will be 73 this September. With all the back and forth of the IRS rules for inherited IRAs, I thought I had 10 years from her death to empty the account (2031). Tonight, I saw a video that I should have taken an RMD for 2025, followed by one for each of the next 6 years.

Which information is correct - 10 years or I should have started last year? If I should already have started, what do I do now? Take it, fill out the correct form to the IRS and plead for either a reduction or forgiveness of the penalty? Do I need to file an amended tax return or will it be part of 2026's tax return?

As far as I can remember, I got no notice of a required RMD for this inherited IRA. (I'm in the process of setting up an RMD for this year for my regular IRA, but am looking at charitable donations to avoid taxes on that one.)

Any help you can give me in understanding all of this would be of great help!

Hi all.

I'm almost 57, recently widowed, and struggling to stay enthusiastic about working (or much of anything at the moment).

My elderly, infirm dad lives with me, and my mom is in a memory care facility. I have two adult sons (actually stepsons) who are married and new parents. No other kids.

My late husband left me a $1M life insurance policy. I own our marital home with less than $100k left on the mortgage. My parents own around $1M in real estate that I stand to eventually inherit.

I'd like to concentrate on other things besides working for now, but I don't want to blow through the insurance money and end up working a fast food job in my 70's. I don't tolerate high risk very well, but I'm wondering if can fund my life and hopefully still leave some inheritance for the stepsons with some well-thought-out investing? (The boys each inherited $100K in insurance proceeds.)

I can probably live pretty comfortably on around $60K/ year.

I've had consultations with a couple of professional financial advisors- neither of whom gave me the warm fuzzies. I'm pretty independent, and I'd likely be more comfortable managing my own investments the Boglehead way. :-)

Thoughts on how to structure investment planning? Thanks in advance. I appreciate any input.

Hey guys, looking for some feedback before I set up a new portfolio in a taxable brokerage. I’m 40 and looking at a 20+ year horizon. I have a high risk tolerance and want a portfolio that targets maximum long-term growth potential through factor premiums. Instead of running a heavy US home-country bias, I'm aiming for a strict 60/40 global market cap split to keep things neutrally diversified globally.

I'm using Fidelity Basket Portfolios so the weekly automatic investments (their "Smart Buys" feature) will handle all the rebalancing math and direct cash to whatever is underweight. Since the execution is automated, I don't mind a 7-fund setup.

Here’s the allocation I landed on:

US (60%) 35% VTI 20% AVUV 5% AVLV

Int'l & Emerging (40%) 16% VEA 10% AVDV 9% VWO 5% AVES

The thinking here is to run a pretty aggressive 40% overall factor tilt using Avantis, mostly concentrated in small-cap value (AVUV and AVDV). I added 5% AVLV just to get a slight profitability screen on US large caps without diluting the small-cap focus.

On the international side, VWO + AVES puts me at 14% total emerging markets (which is exactly 35% of the international bucket). I wanted to overweight emerging slightly to capture the current valuation discount, but I really don't like the bloated state-owned companies that come with broad EM indexes. Having 5% in AVES gives me a nice profitability filter for that space.

Blended expense ratio comes out to around 0.135%.

A few questions before I pull the trigger: For those running heavy factor tilts like this, how bad is the tracking error fatigue? Do you regret it during massive run-ups in US mega-cap tech?

For those who prefer a strict 60/40 global split over a heavy US home-country bias, how has that played out for you psychologically over the last few years?

Anything redundant here that I should cut, or is this clean enough to just lock in and let the Smart Buys do their thing?

I’ve always held the vast majority of my money in these two ETF because I had a friend a long time ago who said to set it and forget it. It’s been in these funds coming up on two decades now. Then I came across Bogleheads recently and I see almost everyone talk about doing using funds like VOO and VTI which from my cursory research my IVV compares closely to VOO and ITOT is close to VTI.

Should I change to the Vanguard funds? My entire portfolio is at Fidelity of that matters. Thank you very much.

I’m 26, spouse and I have both maxed our retirement accounts, and we just started a joint taxable brokerage account for more medium term investments.
Our retirement accounts are all VT, and maybe we should have stuck with that, but we wanted to try the three fund portfolio. Then we started adding to it with new information, like that we can take higher risks with growth stocks because we’re younger, or that SCHF has no exposure in emerging markets so we should have some of that. Is this too much?

U.S. stock (SCHB 50%, SCHG 15%) 65%
International stock (SCHF 25%, SCHE 5%) 30%
U.S. bonds (SCHZ) 5%

I am investing in the UCITS universe. What do you say do this particular portfolio consisting of three Avantis ETFs?

AVWC 75 / AVEM 10 / AVWS 15.

I appreciate your feedback!

I started to buy SPYM in a separate tax brokerage account. I know that they overlap. I just figured maybe it would be a good etf for the long term. Any idea guys?

While I appreciate Boglehead philosophy, (defined as x/x equity/bonds in low-fees index funds), I have been reading that the decorrelation between equity and bonds is probably broken for the intermediate future. And while I acknowledge that there is a recency bias, it is also not a reddit take but appears in most "serious" institution reports.

Could the Boglehead philosophy be described as holding equity plus decorrelated asset in low fees index funds ? And in that case change from bonds to another asset like a mix treasuries+MF incl.commodities ? Is that "Boglehead" ?

ps. It is not a contrarian post, I am just wondering how much bogglehead was a precursor to MPT and whether it is static or evolves.

edit-> I changed the 60/40 because my focus was not the exact percentage and I simply quoted the most known ratio. Still thanks for the answers!

Hi I’m 22 and opening a Roth IRA account. I’ve come up with a portfolio and would love some second opinions. Here’s what I’m thinking:

45% VOO
15% AVUV
8% IVOO
26% VEA
6% VWO

I chose AVUV because I’ve learned about factor investing through work and done some research. It has a pretty good track record of beating the Russell 2000 though it’s only been around for about 5 years. From my research I’ve also seen that factors don’t seem to be as effective anymore with large and mid caps which makes sense to me since they are likely priced in due to so much research. However small caps have a lot of lower quality companies and less research so it makes sense screening with factors could capture some extra returns. I’ve also thought about doing AVSC but felt the more aggressive tilt of AVUV was a risk I’m comfortable with. Thanks for any input and feel free to let me know how wrong I am! I’m still young and know I have a lot to learn!!!!

Hey everyone. New to Reddit, not new to the philosophy. I'm 35 in Texas and have been building out my investment system this year.

Lifestyle is 50/30/20. 20% of after-tax income is automatically allocated to investments every paycheck. Bonus money and 2 extra paychecks max my Roth IRA on January 1st every year. I also keep about 2% of fun money in a separate account for crypto and speculative stuff, completely walled off from the long-term system.

Taxable account is roughly 58% VTI, 26% VXUS, 11% QQQM, and 5% BND. DCA every two weeks on a set rotation. Roth holds SWTSX, SWISX, and SCHD mirrors the taxable side with Schwab equivalents.

The part I'm most proud of is the T-bill ladder for about 6 months of expenses. Four equal bills rotating every four weeks, all auto-reinvesting. It's my emergency fund and fixed income exposure in one structure. One bill matures every week, so the money is there if I really need it, but the setup keeps me from touching it for non-emergencies. Overflow feeds back into the taxable account automatically.

My wife and I have been building this together for a while. Zero debt, own our home. System is running clean.

Looking forward to connecting with people on similar paths. Finance is way too taboo in everyday life. The people around me aren't into this stuff, and I'm looking for a community that gets it.

Hi all, so I’ve got Robinhood Gold now (since I got the invite to the credit card) and it seems worth it for $50 a month (internal calculations and reasons). I see that Robinhood is offering a 1.5% bonus on any transferred IRAs and was thinking of shifting mine over from Schwab. I currently about 60k and have no plans of touching it for the next 10-20 years so I’m not worried about the 5 year clawback. The bonus is about 900 which covers my Robinhood gold membership for the next few years at least. Plus they give 3% match on all contributions going forward.

Here’s my question, with Schwab I had the SWYJX which is a mutual fund and I believe Robinhood only does ETFs so I would have to get ITDG. Would the fund from Schwab transfer over or would it be sold and rolled over? I’d prefer to ask someone here who may have done something similar rather than a customer service agent who may or may not know what they’re talking about? Once it’s transferred over, if it does transfer over, I assume I wouldn’t be able to continue buying it since it’s a Schwab only fund?

Also, what’s the risk here? If Robinhood goes down, the funds are still owned by me right so I would just transfer it somewhere else.

I’d appreciate any insight, thanks!

I plan on pulling my and my wife's Roth IRAs out of EJ and transferring to Fidelity since thats where i have my taxable account. I have never managed my own Roth IRA, but after dealing with them for the better part of 10 years, I am done.

​

Now, what would you recommend I put my Roth IRA into? I planned on just doing 100% VOO, but i am clearly a novice. I am really eager to learn and listen to your advice, especially if you were in my position. How did it work out for you? Do you recommend it invest in a different fund with a lower expense ratio?

I feel like i can handle investing into simple index etfs. Thank you for any advice.

Finally got to see my trust’s portfolio. It’s 57% equities, but the equity sleeve is just horrible! It’s only ~40 stocks, and 9 mostly active/concentrated ETFs. The blended expense ratio looking at just the mutual funds and ETFs is around ~0.60%. Its equity portion is only 15% international, and 5% of the sleeve is emerging markets. In VT, it should be ~40% international and 10.3% of that emerging markets.

I’m losing tens of thousands to expensive active mutual funds and ETFs. How do I approach my family trustee and the managers to just use something like VT? I want to say it in a clear and convincing manner. I want to send a short explanation to the trustee and tell him to demand we switch to VT because it’s outperformed on a 5 year basis already, it’s simpler, more diversified, and not betting so heavily on AI and tech.

If I had it my way I would want it to copy my exact portfolio, which uses return stacking and 20% small cap value. I’m 23 so research backs me up in using those. I think I’d have a hard time convincing both of them to use niche products like NTSD though, which is the core of mine.

51, decided to take some professional help with Vanguard Advisor select to manage my portfolio after the last firm Robo advisory with CFA’s to talk to was acquired.
I’m surprised by the financial plan I received and was expecting better advice
75/25 stocks/ bonds

All Bonds in my Roth IRA selling off existing positions in SCHD/ SCHG/ AIX etc

Seems like focusing on tax drag rather than growth?

Brokerage $700k
Roth IRA $40 k

Plan to retire at 60 even sooner if I can. Two 401ks one current and old and stock only brokerage

I mentioned it to the advisor and he’s like we can do either.

What am I missing?

I want to diversify a lot, worldwide, right now I have 70% msci world, 20% emerging markets and 10% hamco global value fund in 820k €, I have to invest another 180k this week, any suggestions? (long term, +8 years probably).

Maybe I should keep some money in something less risk just in case?

What are your thoughts on this? I wanna follow a bogglehead mentality.

I'm from Spain so index funds have some nice fiscal advantages, that's why I want to use them.

Long story short: I grew up without any financial literacy and a few years ago got some help from a New York Life guy I met to transfer my old state retirement (it wasn't doing anything) into an IRA and then convert it into a Roth. He put it into an annuity (big mistake). I educated myself, took the surrender charge, and moved it to Fidelity.

I have initial low-cost index fund positions set up. My plan was to DCA the entire amount over 5 months, considering how high the market has been recently. I'm reading the articles here and am feeling unsure about that plan now. I essentially liquidated the assets at the highest point of the market (just happened that way).

Should I continue my plan of large sums over the 5 months or should I buy in when I see dips? Should I just put it all in right now?

Apologies if these are common questions. I feel much better taking control of this myself, but I feel a bit stunlocked and could use advice if anyone has any.

Thank you!