Shoki wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 11:20 pm
Does a 35% U.S. stocks / 15% international stocks / 35% bonds / 15% TIPS allocation fit my goals, or would you suggest adjustments?Max equity exposure / max loss: 50% / ~20% — feels about right to me.
Seems fine and if you’re comfortable with it, then you’re done. If you’re feeling unsure, then read the Wiki article for Assessing Risk Tolerance, take the Vanguard Investor Questionnaire, then tailor the asset allocation (AA) that was recommended by the quiz based on your knowledge of your personal risk tolerance having read the Wiki article. I don’t think you need TIPS until late-retirement, but fine if you want them now.
Shoki wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 11:20 pm
I’d like to keep rebalancing reasonably easy across multiple accounts. It seemed simple at first, but once I started thinking about moving things around in multiple accounts, I wasn’t so sure. What’s the best way to keep everything on track as the markets move?
In the portfolio analysis of your current layout and the proposed simplification (that omits TIPS at this time), I’ll link a template spreadsheet that can help with assessment & rebalance planning. This is not something you need to do “as the markets move,” since they move all the time. You only want to rebalance if there’s been a huge market shift (say ±10% to ±20% change in the value of the Total Stock Market or the S&P-500); otherwise you try to ignore the desire to make lots of small shifts to be “perfectly balanced” by only checking once a years (say after you do your taxes or pick a date), and if that annual assessment shows that any individual target (US stock, Int’l Stock, Bonds) is off by more than ±5%, then that merits a rebalance, otherwise just let it flow.
Shoki wrote: Thu Sep 11, 2025 11:20 pm
I’d like to set up monthly purchases that run automatically. Is that the way to go, or is it better to deposit monthly and then place purchases manually to maintain balance?
I would just go with automatic, monthly investments to your chosen funds and then rebalance in the largest account (401k) once a year, rather than try to shift the purchases to to be “perfectly balanced” all the time.
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Your Current layout has a whopping 54 holdings… it’s hard to believe a robo-advisor would make such a complicated portfolio but meh… It’s also mirrored across Taxable and tax-advantaged accounts, so there’s lots, and lots of potential issues with Wash Sales, which are highlighted in red. There are nominal bonds in Taxable, which are not tax-friendly, and there are bonds in Roth, which diminishes the tax-free earnings attribute of Roth accounts; these are highlighted in purple. You have individual stocks (DIS is >5% of total portfolio) and cryptocurrency (which per forum policy we can only suggest that you sell); these are highlighted in blue. There are some high-cost funds (ER > 0.30%) with FWD and EMB (FWD is highlighted in yellow with the ER in red only because there was no Wash Sale over-riding that color-coding). The ones I highlighted in bold-black are low-cost indexes that I’d probably just keep rather than paying a tax-bill to get rid of them (VTI, VEA, and probably just limit DIS to 5% of total). However, unwinding everything else requires consideration of the capital gains tax that will incur and whether or not wash sales will be triggers (which complicates tax filing because some/all of the losses may be disallowed if you accidentally repurchase the same fund).
The Proposed layout exactly meets an AA of 50/50 with 30% of stocks in int’l and simplifies from 54 holdings down to 8, while continuing to hold VTI, VEA, and DIS in Taxable to avoid an unnecessary tax bill. All the int’l stock (VEA) is in Taxable so you can get the Foreign Tax Credit (not available on int’l stock held in Trad & Roth accounts) and VEA is likely more tax-friendly than a “total” int’l stock fund but like S&P-500 to Total US Stock, VEA is probably very close to the performance of say VXUS (but probably higher tax-efficiency than VXUS). Since there is a Tax Cost to Switch Funds in Taxable, be sure to check the cost basis against the current value of holdings (i.e., how big is the unrealized gain/loss?) to make sure you can tolerate the cumulative tax-bill for cleanup (sometimes we suggest breaking up a Taxable cleanup into several successive tax years to spread the tax cost rather than take the hit all in one year).
If you’re wiling to pay a tax bill just for simplification (rather than significantly lowering cost of ownership), then selling VTI, VEA, and DIS and consolidating that into FSKAX & FTIHX in Taxable is fine (along with the rest of your proposal for Trad & Roth), although I’d probably swap FSKAX & FTIHX in the Trad & Roth IRAs to FZROX & FZILIX to drop your ER to 0.00%, plus your proposal gets the 15% TIPS that you want and mine omitted them. I don’t think you need TIPS until you’re older, and I also think a ladder of individual TIPS duration-matched to your remaining life-expectancy (e.g.. around age 75 to 85) is likely better than a TIPS fund if you really need TIPS at that time. If you really, really want TIPS now, then a fund like FIPDX is fine (it’s a long time-frame so differences between a fund & ladder are minimal).
A template spreadsheet (not your data) to help with asset allocation assessment and rebalance planning is linked below. Make a copy in your local GoogleSheets space to edit (or download to your local machine if you have Excel). It should only take about 10-20 minutes once a year to update your balances and plan a shuffle among funds if any deltas are off by more than ±5% (or whatever your personal rebalance threshold is).
Asset Allocation Sheet
