r/Bogleheads

I know these posts happen frequently, but is that really all it takes? My portfolio is 100% VT. I don’t know much about stocks, markets, etc. I have all of the money leftover after essentials go into my taxable brokerage account. 29M and new to investing. I actually don’t even look at my account unless it’s to add more money. VT hasn’t even gone down as much as I thought compared to what I read online. Just wanted to hear everyone’s thoughts. 100% VT until retirement?

Ben Felix has me convinced that it’s worth shifting to a dimensional funds as I’m very early in my investing timeline and the benefits can be significant. But I don’t want to overly complicate things. What’s the best single dimensional funds or combo of 2-3 funds to buy into for a Roth IRA and not look back for 30 years?

I know there's a longstanding discussion here about the merits of VTWAX vs VTSAX, but I'm here to ask a potentially dumber question. Considering VTSAX ($157) is trading at 3X VTWAX ($49), does it make sense to shift my buys to VTWAX, given that I'd be able to simply buy *more* with each individual contribution to my investment fund. If you split a $7,500 ROTH IRA over 26 weeks ($288), you'd be getting nearly 6 full shares of VTWAX vs only 2 of VTSAX. I do know that expense ratio is a half-point higher for VTWAX (.09% vs .04). Now, someone please tell me why this is stupid and kindly explain how things actually work. Thanks!

Anyone else treating their HSA as a stealth retirement account?

I max my HSA every year, pay all medical expenses out of pocket, and plan to let the balance compound for decades — reimbursing myself later when it makes sense. The triple tax advantage is too good to leave on the table.

The problem I've run into: keeping proper documentation for reimbursements I might make 10, 15, or 20 years from now is genuinely messy. I've been cobbling together a system using folders and spreadsheets, but it feels fragile for something I'll be relying on in retirement.

A few questions for people doing the same strategy:

1. How are you currently tracking your unreimbursed medical expenses and storing receipts long-term? What's your system?

2. Do you ever model out what your HSA balance could be worth at retirement based on your current contributions and investment returns? If so, how?

3. If a purpose-built tool existed for this specific strategy — long-term receipt storage, running reimbursable balance, and HSA growth projections — would it be worth paying for? What would make you actually switch from whatever you're doing now?

Curious how others are handling this. Happy to share what I've learned in the comments.

Wanted to get some opinions as to which Target Retirement 2035 funds are worth a look. Trying to decide between vanguard and fidelity, possibly Schwab.

Hi y'all. Just wanted some feedback for my current and future investment plans. Thank you!

Background: 20 y/o college student. Employed with a $47k/year (pre-tax) income. Living with parents and planning to take care of them in their retirement (or find a really nice retirement home). No plans for dating, marriage, etc., but considering single-parent adoption in the far future.

Roth IRA - Fidelity

• 100% in FSKAX (Total Market Index Fund).
• Maxed out in 2025; plan to max out in 2026+.

Brokerage - Fidelity

• 80% in FSKAX (Total Market Index Fund) and 20% in FTIHX (Total International Index Fund).
• Stopped contributing after the Cost Basis hit ~$29k. This money is either my brother's college fund or my personal car fund, depending on his choice of college, tuition, scholarships, etc.

Roth 401(k) - Vanguard

• Plan to start once I meet my company's minimum age requirement (21). I'll be putting in the minimum contribution for an employer match.
• Out of the options listed, I'm leaning towards either 100% in Vanguard's Target Retirement 2070 Fund or 100% in Vanguard's 500 Index Fund.

HSA - Fidelity

• Plan to start once I've paid for my final year at college.
• Plan: Max out with 80% in FSKAX (Total Market Index Fund) and 20% in FTIHX (Total International Index Fund).

Much appreciated.

Hi all.

I am 30+ years from full retirement, filing single, and my effective marginal tax rate is >30% with maxing out my traditional 401K and HSA. I don’t have a Roth or traditional IRA.

I have about 20k in a traditional 401k from a job earlier in my career. My goal is to eventually roll this over into a Roth IRA (taking the tax hit) in a year when my income is lower (take a sabbatical, get married and file jointly in a lower tax bracket, take mat leave, etc). Or if that doesn’t end up happening I’ll just do the conversion when I retire.

I would like to start implementing a backdoor Roth strategy to funnel more money into a Roth so that I can preserve some optionality in retirement around my withdrawals/taxes.

Question: is there any disadvantage/concern with having an existing well funded Roth IRA if I then want to do a Traditional 401K to Roth IRA roll over? If so, I can do the roll over now, but I’m trying to avoid the tax hit at my higher income/tax rate.

Thanks in advance :)

My 401k has lackluster options.

• The only index fund is an S&P500 fund from Vanguard, with a 0.05 ER. This is great! Unfortunately, there are no index options for small or mid-cap, only actively managed funds with ERs of 0.4 and higher.
• My only TDF is an actively managed fund with a 0.44 ER. Not so great. No index options here.
• The only bond fund is at 0.39 ER (not bad for an actively managed bond fund).
• The only international funds are also actively managed, with an ER 0.60. or higher

I would very much prefer a set-it-and-forget-it method of a Target Date Fund. The TDF in my 401k includes bonds and international exposure, which I want. I also value the automatic balancing and glide path of a TDF.

The question I am trying to weigh is: when does the personal preference for a TDF outweigh the increased expense?

I could put all of my money in the S&P500 fund. I'm about 15 years from retirement, so having my 401k 100% still reasonable, but I would lack the international, other domestic, or bond exposure I would prefer.

However, adding international exposure or bond exposure with one of the other fund choices would seem to dilute the savings of using the lower ER of the S&P500 fund. For example, by the time I added 30% of my equity position weighted toward international and maybe 10% of the total portfolio in bonds, about 37% of the 401k is comprised of funds with ERs similar ot higher than the TDF! The total average ER would still be lower, but nowhere near the 0.05 of the S&P500 fund.

How much of a premium would you pay on a TDF compared to a diy three-ish fund approach? If I were saving 1% in fees, I'd absolutely cobble something else together. But if I were saving only 0.2% or 0.3%? Does the convenience of having one fund ever outweigh the increased cost?

Sharing some backtest results on a fixed portfolio that was originally shared on Bogleheads forums. I ran it through 33 years of data using proxy chains for tickers that didn't exist in the early 90s (e.g. DBMF proxied via RYMFX scaled to match volatility, AVUV via DFA Small Cap Value fund data).

Golden Ratio Portfolio:

• 21% US Large Cap Growth (VUG)
• 21% US Small Cap Value (AVUV)
• 26% Long-Term Treasuries (VGLT)
• 16% Gold (GLD)
• 10% Managed Futures (DBMF)
• 6% T-Bills (BIL)

Backtest: March 1993 to April 2026, annual rebalance:

Metric	Golden Ratio	Classic 60/40	All-Weather
CAGR	10.7%	~7.5%	~7.2%
Sharpe	1.17	~0.75	~0.72
Max Drawdown	-21.6%	~-30%	~-22%

A 1.17 Sharpe ratio for a fixed, no-signal, annual-rebalance portfolio is genuinely impressive. For context, most tactical strategies struggle to beat 1.0 Sharpe over this period.

What makes it work: the growth/value barbell in equities picks up two historically persistent factors (momentum via growth, value premium via SCV). Long-term treasuries provide crisis protection and negative equity correlation. Gold hedges against inflation and currency debasement. And managed futures provide genuine "crisis alpha" - they tend to make money when everything else falls (2008, 2022).

The key insight is that these five asset classes have structurally low correlation to each other over long periods, not just during backtested cherry-picked windows. The 33-year backtest covers the dot-com crash, GFC, 2018 vol spike, COVID crash, and 2022 bond crash.

No signals, no rebalancing triggers, no tactical timing. Annual rebalance is all you need. Credit to the Bogleheads community for this allocation.

Anyone else running something similar? Curious how it's performing in live portfolios vs the backtest.

A typical Boglehead portfolio might include SCHB 75% VXUS 25% and provide exposure to the entire world market with two low-cost ETFs offering cheap and simple, but what if I could min-max low expenses? Would sacrificing some simplicity for the lowest possible fees be worth it, or would it be Boglehead blasphemy?

TL;DR scroll to the bold conclusion and 1), 2) and 2a at the very bottom.

For example: take the same portfolio above with SCHB at 75% and VXUS at 25%

SCHB is ~73% large cap, ~19% mid cap, and ~8% small cap with an expense ratio of .03%, but could I use SPYM (.02%) VO (.03%) and VB (.03%) to get a lower weighted avg expense ratio?

If I go for exact measurement to get a weighted avg., I could do 73% SPYM, 19% VO, and 8% VB for my 75% category of Total U.S. Market.

.02 x 73 + .03 x 19 + .03 x 8 = 2.27/100 = .0227% weighted expense ratio. Lower than .03%.

I could do the same with VXUS (.05%), which is 75% developed markets and 25% emerging markets, or VEA 75% (.03%) and VWO 25% (.06%) for my 25% Total International Market 25% category. I would need three parts VEA and one part VWO.

.03 x 3 + .06 = .15/4 parts total = .0375%, which is less than VXUS's .05%.

Now let's take these and apply it to the weighted avg. of the portfolio with .0227% replacing SCHB's .03% and .0375% replacing VXUS at .05% I will need 3 parts SCHB alternative and 1 part VXUS alternative.

.0227 x 3 + .0375 x 1 = .1056/4 parts total = .0264% expense ratio

Cheaper than SCHB at .03%

Cheaper than VXUS at .05%

Cheaper than VT at .06%

1. Does the math math? In other words, are the calculations logical or did I totally screw up somewhere?

2. Assuming I'm not trying to change my portfolio to try to time the market, or taking unnecessary risks that might lead to panic selling or other counterintuitive behaviors:

a) Is the increased complexity of using 5 ETFs instead of 1 or 2, even if it could save thousands over the lifetime of my portfolio (most likely not many multiple 10's of thousands btw) acceptable for a Boglehead because it reduces expenses by an estimated half, or is it unacceptable because simplicity is the true cornerstone of Bogelhead investing philosophy, not making it as cheap as possible - cheap enough will do?

I have an i401k. I was with Vanguard, got switched to Ascensus, but after finding their customer service beyond horrible, I'm moving it to Charles Schwab. I have a check from Ascensus to deposit tomorrow.

In Ascenesus, I was doing a target retirement of 2065 which is way later than I'd want to retire. My thinking is a regular target fund for my age is a bit conservative.

But part of me wonders if it might make more sense to not have any bonds at all, be a bit more aggressive for the next 10-15 years and then i can begin moving it from what I choose (which would be 2-3 broad index funds) to bonds.

Pros and cons with this? On the one hand, doing the target date for someone younger seems simpler. But I also wonder if with a bit more effort, I'd be better off with the second option.

Recently left a job, about to transfer my 401k to my brokerage retirement account. Should I move HSA also?

Started a Roth IRA for the first time at 54. Would love to do VT but know that within a Roth I lose the foreign tax credit. To keep it simple, 100% VTI is what I am thinking. No bonds, to maximize returns. Am I okay going with this strategy for the 1st time to keep it simple and actually get started?

Hi all! So grateful for this subreddit as it started me on a great path with my investment journey :D

Context, I'm a 22M who's been working full time since august after graduating college. Currently have my Roth IRA and personal brokerage in Scwhab doing a 60% SCHB (US broad market), 32% SCHF (international), 8% SCHE (emerging). Every paycheck putting money in the brokerage and investing, and have a little Excel set up to put me in the 60/32/8 direction. Prior to full time, I had my Roth IRA and personal brokerage (both quite smaller than they are now) robo-invested cause I thought that was cool when I was 16 and begged my mom to let me use her identity to invest $100 bucks into the Wealthfront one haha

Anyways, loving the Boglehead life, love putting the money into these guys and not really caring otherwise, and heavily plan to stay the course (which I bet is easier said than done from my 22 year old naivety). But guess I'm wondering if anyone has feedback for what I'm currently doing / any thoughts for what I can do next? Any thoughts welcome, but thinking about the following things in specific:

1. Worth it to pivot to Fidelity/Vanguard? I love Schwab because it's what my Dad uses and the people are really nice whenever I call, but also recognize they're not as popular for valid (though I think pretty small) reasons. I'd be sad to make the switch, but wondering if it would be worth it, or if it really doesn't matter that much.
2. Allocation? My allocation of 60/32/8 I like because the numbers look nice and it is sorta close to the "true" allocation that people balance for. Is it worth it to start using the uglier numbers? And if so, what would be the best implementation? From my understanding, I look at the VT proportion of US/international and then VXUS proportion of emerging to get the split across my 3, or would it be something different?
3. Additional/alternative ETFs/investments? Like I said, love these three and I think it aligns with the general concesus of the reddit. But wondering if there's additional or alternative investment mixes you'd suggest? I don't want to add it for no reason, but also I enjoy going into Scwab twice a month to send in my trades, so I wouldn't mind something more complex. Obviously, still want it to be bogle, but I see some more complicated mixes on the Wiki so I'm curious. Also seeing discussion about Dimensional / Avantis (avantis?) ETFs. Open to any thoughts here, especially considering I'm 22 and hopefully hopefully fopefully have a fruitful life of investing in front of me.

Okay, I think that's everything! Thanks so much :D

TLDR: 22M with 60 SCHB, 32 SCHF, 8 SCHE asking for feedback on current approach and thoughts on potential changes, with emphasis on three main areas: pivoting from Scwab, current allocation, and additional/alternative investments.

Hello. I'm reading conflicting information on whether the state exempt tax is shown on a 1099. Some say the tax preparer has to figure it out and some won't do that because they want broker documentation - like a 1009.

Current roth 70% FZROX and 30% FZILX. Considering adding F b t c for further diversification, targeting 65/30/5. Thoughts ?

I am a newish investor, I am curretly following the boglehead method of investing. I've read many times about how options trading isn't a good idea; unfortunately the little that I learned about buying calls you can actually cap your loss with a much higher upside. This seems nice, additionally went over to wall streets bets subreddit (stupid I know) and read some of the things they might be doing now that spacex is going to be launching their ipo. Overall I am intrigued about options trading and am considering starting with small amounts. <$1000.

Basically I know getting involved in options trading is a bad idea but my interest has been sparked and I need ya'll to talk me out of proceeding before I get involved now, and even in the future if I become debt free.

Please use solid arguments and examples as well instead of just catch phrases.

Im about 4 years from retirement and wondering at what point of a downturn do you pull from money you have put aside and stop pulling from equities? I plan on having about 3-5 years worth of spending in CDs or something like that and im curious at what point different people decide its time to go to that.

As title says, I have this $15k that is earmarked for spend in August. Should I just leave it there? Is it like a savings account?