I’ve been trying recently to try and make some minor adjustments to the target asset allocations of my portfolio. I want to create something that I won’t be tempted to change again for many years. While attempting this, I keep noticing how hard it is for a beginning investor to try and figure out where to put their hard-earned money. So many websites, books, magazines, television shows… and the amount of information being thrown at you just seems to multiply daily. Everybody has an opinion, including me. Am I right?

Who knows? I don’t. I’m simply doing the best anyone can do – read a steady stream of books, academic studies, participate in discussions, and then making a decision based on that information. I try look at the bigger picture and draw conclusions based on historical studies going back from the 1920s and not five-year historical returns. But none of us can predict the future.

What is accepted as common knowledge often changes with time. My own views shift as I read more. I also see a lot information out there that I disagree with. Therefore, I encourage everyone to do their own due diligence, keep their minds open, question things, and try to separate the wheat from the chaff for themselves. All I can do is to promise that I will try to keep doing the same.

(This will be added to my compilation of posts about managing money called My Rough Guide To Investing.)

After looking at how other people and mutual fund companies choose their asset allocation, I’m a little conflicted. Both the Vanguard and T. Rowe Price mutual funds recommend holding nearly 80% in stocks at age 50. That’s pretty aggressive in my book. To see why, let’s look at some historical numbers.

Coincidentally, a commenter left me a link to a recent FundAdvice article about fine-tuning your asset allocation. I’m actually going to ignore the specific components of his portfolio and focus on the general trends instead. Let’s just say it’s well-diversified.

The article provides historical numbers (1970-2006) that compares risk versus return for portfolios ranging from 0% stocks to 100% stocks. Risk is represented by standard deviation, a measure of volatility.

Risk vs. Return For Varying Stock Percentages

This is pretty consistent with a lot of other similar charts I’ve seen. You’ll notice that the slope of the curve decreases as you move towards holding more stocks. Accordingly, if you compare the differences between successive dots, there risk gap grows larger and the return jump decreases. In other words, you are generally getting less return for each unit of risk as you keep adding more stocks.

Here is another risk-reward chart for increasingly aggressive portfolios.

Still, this chart really doesn’t help too much either. Why not just go for the 100%? Instead of averages, let’s focus on how bad it can get over the same time period (returns not annualized):

This second chart is more important than the first one, because you won’t get any of the returns listed above unless you can “stay the course” through periods such as these.

It’s really easy to say “Oh, 30% drop, no problem”, but that’s not the whole picture. Not only will stocks be dropping, but bonds may be skyrocketing. Imagine if bonds are returning 15% a year at the same time stocks are going down 15%. You will have what appears to be a way out! Personal finance magazines will be shouting “Bonds are back!” Cutting down on your stock exposure will become the “prudent” decision.

Going back to the 80% stocks at 50 years old… Can you imagine losing 35% of your portfolio in one year at 50 years old? I would freak out. This is why age matters, it’s so much easier to shrug off losses when you know you won’t need the money for another 30+ years.

I’ve always thought of 403(b)s as identical to 401(k)s, just for non-profit and educational institutions. But upon discussing this with a teacher, I found out that they can have their own unique problems: primarily high-priced annuities. Did you know that 80% of 403(b) funds are currently invested in fixed or variable annuities? This is really surprising, considering that annuities are usually only a good idea for high-income people who’ve already maxed out all their other tax-deferred options – why put a tax-deferred product inside another tax-deferred product?

If you’re not sure what you have in your 403(b) accounts, I would definitely recommend reading up at 403bWise.com. Started by teachers, it has a wealth of information about your investment options. Did you know that if you summed up all the various annuity costs you could be losing 3% to fees every year? If you are stuck with a bad administrator, you may be able to do what is called a “90-24 transfer” to a low-cost provider like Fidelity, Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, or TIAA-CREF. There are some upcoming law changes and this transfer ability expires at the end of 2007, so compare your options soon. Another route is follow other teachers and fight for a change from within.

There is also 457bWise for 457(b) holders.

After choosing your asset allocation, it is still important to think carefully about where to place each type of investment. After all, what you actually keep is your return after taxes. For example, a stock index fund that tracks the S&P 500 will have low turnover and primarily pay qualified dividends which are taxed at the lower long-term capital gains rate (max 15%). On the other hand, REITs and bonds tend to distribute a significant amount of their return annually as unqualified dividends, which are then taxed as ordinary income (max 33%). Therefore, you should try to take advantage of your tax-sheltered accounts as much as possible by placing the least tax-efficient assets there.

Below is a chart that shows the major asset classes sorted by tax efficiency. It is based on information from the fine books Bogleheads’ Guide To Investing and The Four Pillars of Investing.

Let me clarify the chart above. You should start with the least tax-efficient assets and place them in your pre-tax accounts (Regular 401ks, 403bs, Traditional IRAs) first. Then the next least efficient assets should into the post-tax accounts (Roth IRA, Roth 401k). Only what is left after this should end up in taxable accounts.

In general, bonds should go into tax-deferred accounts, leaving stocks for your taxable accounts. There are even special “tax-managed” mutual funds which work hard to minimize any capital gains distributions and are designed specifically to be placed in taxable accounts.

This article is part of my Rough Guide To Investing.

Fidelity has a new tool called the myPlan retirement calculator. It’s very soothing and is only 5 questions long, why not give it a whirl? What I like about it is that it doesn’t just deal with average numbers. People like to use round numbers like 8% annually and pretend like they are a sure thing, but the fact is with some bad timing we could end up doing a lot worse.

Using some rough numbers from our own situation – age 28, $100k income, $100k saved so far, $2,500 saved monthly, Aggressive Growth investment style, we get the following result:

Not bad, right? If the market performs on average, we will easily exceed what we need to retire on. (Yes, the numbers are huge!) If the market performs poorly however, we’ll be significantly short. Now, what if we change the investment style from Aggressive to Conservative?
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It’s time for another bi-monthly update on my investment portfolio.

Thoughts
Another two months with little activity in my low-maintenance portfolio. I don’t get the joy of reading about my fund picks in magazines, but I don’t worry about choosing the wrong one either.

I am still ironing out a slightly tweaked asset allocation, one that has a more balanced domestic/international distribution and something I hopefully won’t mess with again for a long time. I’m reviewing the model portfolio comparisons and the books they came from, including Ferri’s new book All About Index Funds.

You can see some older posts on how this portfolio came to be here, as well as my previous portfolio snapshots here.

All of these suggested portfolios were developed by smart people who did their homework. But none of them are the same! This is because every single one also made compromises based on their interpretation of current research, simplicity, availability of suitable investments, costs, and also to some measure their overall predictions of the future. We have to do the same thing on our end.

For example, many people are starting with smaller amounts. Some of these model portfolios have 8 funds or more! Just by the fund minimums alone, you’d be looking at a minimum balance of $24,000 or so. And even then, you’d be looking a various low balance and maintenance fees. So what do you to minimize fees? Here are a few ideas:

1) Buy an all-in-one fund, and split it up later. Since many fund companies have all-in-one target-dated funds, you can simply buy one of these until you have enough to split into other funds. Here are some specific fund suggestions, starting at only $50 per month. The fund’s asset allocation may not be exactly what you want, but it will be well-diversified, and still much better than other high-cost alternatives. Here’s what the Vanguard Target 2045 Fund looks like:

I built up about $50,000 in Vanguard Target funds (VTIVX and VTTHX) before splitting it up into 8 funds last year. Since they were held in IRAs/401ks, I didn’t have to worry about any tax consequences. This choice is my favorite because it’s the most simple – just buy the same fund for a few years!
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