Hey all!

I'm 51 not married, no kids and I've been thinking quite a bit about my retirement accounts and considering the New Year is right around the corner I decided it would be a good time to maybe make some changes.

Here's the breakdown of my accounts and what I'm invested in. I guess my goal is to get maximum diversity and simplicity while hopefully making good gains too obviously :)

Aside from my Roth account I like the idea of using TDFs as the great Ron Popeil would say "Set it and forget it!". I obviously do have the option in those accounts to pick up whatever sorts of funds I want, but when it comes down to it I'm really just doing what a TDF already does for me so is it worth it?

Schwab Roth ($165K) - I'm auto investing every month, but was debating about putting more here or in 401k?
SWTSX - US Total Market (~70%)
SWISX - International Developed (~20%)
SFENX - International Developing (~10%)

Schwab IRA ($150K) - Not contributing to this
Currently:
SWTSX - US Total Market (~70%)
SFENX - International Developing (~20%)
SWAGX - Bonds (~10%)

Change to: Schwab 2040 TDF - SWYGX?

TransAmerica 401k ($105K) - I'm contributing 7% Pre-Tax for max match. Might bump up contribution a couple points.
BlackRock Lifepath 2045 LIHKX

OptumBank HSA ($7K) - Recently starting maxing.
Vanguard Life Strategy Growth - VASGX (80% Equities / 20% Fixed)
Or maybe Schwab 2040 TDF - SWYGX for auto adjustment?

If you put it all together everything is very globally diversified, get a good bond mix from various sources including a locked in 20% from VASGX.

Am I maybe overdoing anything? Would it would make sense to maybe not use so many TDFs and possibly put money into some other kind of fund?

Just looking for any suggestions or if you think it's a decent way to go.

Thanks!

  • The only bad thing about having a mix of TDFs and not is that checking the overall asset allocation for your portfolio can be a pain in the butt. If you like them and they’re available to you, there’s nothing wrong with using them. It’s hard to tell from this what your overall US market/international market/bond percentages are.

    As far as contributing more to your Roth or 401k (assuming traditional), most people seem to go for maxing their Roth IRA over 401k contributions above the match. Some of it depends on whether you think your taxes will drop or be higher in retirement. Most of us really don’t know, so we do a bit of both (the other factor being 401ks have limited investing choices, whereas IRAs can be basically anything). If you’re talking Roth for both, I would definitely go IRA ahead of 401k.

    parent

    Yeah that's a good point. I'll have to add them all together to see where I land in each of the allocations.

    As far as the options I have available in my 401K they're not terrible and like I said I'm currently just in the BlackRock TDF for ease of use. Have to give the pre-tax vs post-tax money some more thought though.

    Thanks!

    parent root

  • Each account seems like it has a standalone reasonable plan in place. As u/Itu_Leona mentioned, though, the question becomes, how do you want your accounts to work together? What is your overall target asset allocation across all of your accounts? Doing some very rough approximating, I think your overall bond percentage is maybe 10-15%. Is that what you want?

    I'm a big fan of TDFs whenever possible, especially in tax-protected accounts. Just make sure you're comfortable with the glidepath, and of course feel free to adjust the target date to be earlier or later than your "true" intended retirement date, if you want your overall allocation glidepath to be more conservative (earlier TDFs) or more aggressive (later TDFs). In your case, if you don't have any major intended deviations from what a TDF would offer you anyway (e.g., a tilt towards REITs or small-caps, a higher US:international ratio than market cap weighting, etc.), then I think TDFs are the way to go.

    parent

    Good to know that going with a couple TDFs ins't a bad plan overall :)

    I'll have to fiddle around and see what my overall bond allocations come out to be, I'm thinking I want to be in the 20% range.

    Yeah I really don't feel I need to tilt things one way or the other, really just looking for overall diversification and simplicity.

    Thanks!

    parent root

    I ran some things through AI and it seems I'm right around 18% for bond allocation. Maybe the thing to do would be to pickup a bond fund in my 401K, rebalance with 5-10% of the money going towards that?

    parent root