Hey! It’s been a while since I’ve posted to financialgeekery.com…but it’s not because I haven’t been writing! Rather, all my new stuff (and the old stuff, too) is on my firm’s website: Seaborn Financial Services, LLC.
If you’re a subscriber: while I’d love to automagically subscribe you to the new stuff…I can’t. (It’s a WordPress thing.) However, it’s super easy to subscribe to the new blog — I’ve got a subscribe button right at the top of the page.
See you there!
When I first meet with clients, they often have very particular views on investing, generally coming from what they’ve heard all their lives. “It’s all about beating the market, maximizing the return on investment.” “Buy what you know.” “I need to make my portfolio more conservative as I retire.” “We need to invest in gold because of the administration’s fiscal policy.” And you’ve got shows like Mad Money which seem to promise that you can always make money, if you just buy and sell the right stock at the right time. I’m constantly reminded of how much misinformation (or partially-true or out-of-context information) is out there, and the Internet hasn’t really helped that much. Hence, this blog.
So let me address that first one: “beating the market”. I hear that all the time, and I wonder if people even know what that means. What market? The S&P500 — 500 of the largest US companies? Or the Russell 1000? Or the Russell 2000? Or the MSCI EAFE index, an index of companies Europe, Australia, and the Far East? Or all of those? What about the bond market?
Point being: sure, I could beat the S&P500 over the long term, simply by investing in a riskier-but-more-rewarding market. But that would involve taking on more risk. Is that what you want? Or are you saying that you want the most reward for a given amount of risk, or vice-versa? Now you’re starting to ask the right questions — and they’re questions that will vary from person to person!
And that is what investing is “all about”: quite simply, determining the return you desire and/or the risk you require, and then determining what combination of investments will give you the best combination of the two. That’s it.
And before you can do that, you need to figure out what your investments are for. It’s vitally important and many investors don’t do it! Are your investments for retirement? A legacy? Saving for a house? An emergency fund? This will have a massive influence on how you invest! If you might need the money next month, why on earth would you invest it in the emerging stock market, which could get cut in half next week? And if you’ll need the money thirty years from now, why on earth would you invest in short-term bonds, where inflation would eat your returns alive?
Let me be clear: I don’t care how smart your broker is. If your investments are risky — stocks, junk bonds, etc. — then your investments are going to occasionally take a dip, along with the market. That’s just how it is. A really smart broker may be able to swing the needle a little bit, but they’re never going to time the market perfectly so as to always make money every day.
So: forget what Jim Cramer says. Don’t worry about which stocks to buy or sell NOW. Think about what your goals are, put together a portfolio (or portfolios) that make sense for those goals, and rest easy. And for God’s sake, turn off CNBC.
Are you on track to retire? This seems like a simple question, and it is — but the answer’s not easy to get to. Pensions are fast becoming an endangered species, which puts the onus of retirement planning on you, and there are a lot of variables in play. There’s no “magic number” that works for everyone. How much do you have saved, and what is your asset allocation? How much are you saving, and what’s your company match? When would you like to retire, and what are your expenses? How much will your social security be, and when will you start taking it?
And then there are the “what-ifs”. What if you save more, or less, or raise or lower your expenses? What if you want to take a big vacation, or leave a legacy? What if you change your asset allocation? What if there’s a market correction? What if a law is passed which raises the “full retirement age” for Social Security? And on, and on, and on.
There’s little question that the retirement deck is becoming stacked against those who don’t have expert-level knowledge, or access to those who do. I’m looking to level that playing field.
How?
I’m offering a free, personalized retirement analysis. First we’ll set up a meeting to gather data from you, like your retirement package, expenses, social security information, and current investments, as well as your goals, like risk tolerance and desired retirement age. I’ll iterate on the details until I’m satisfied, run the numbers, and then meet with you again — at your workplace, or over lunch, or wherever is most convenient for you — to go over the results.
I won’t pull any punches or promise any magic financial product that will make all your worries disappear. Rather, I’ll tell you what I’ve found (in plain English, not financial-ese). We’ll be able to play around with the variables I’ve mentioned above to see what effect they’ll have on your retirement. In the end, I’ll have a specific list of recommendations, which you can implement as you see fit. Perhaps more importantly, you’ll have a much clearer sense of where you are and what knobs you can turn in order to help you get where you want to go.
What’s the catch? You’re wise to ask. I’m a Registered Investment Advisor — I should be charging for a service like this! The catch is straightforward: I’m growing my business, and you may find that you like working with me as a financial advisor, that you trust me to work for your best interest, to keep you informed rather than try to keep you ignorant, to communicate with you often, and to earn my fee and more in the value I provide.
But if we don’t end up working together, if I only shed some light on your current financial situation and then we part ways, then that’s okay by me. There are many people for whom I’ve had only one session, which ended with me telling them, “do X, Y, and Z, and then come back and talk to me in a few years.” I enjoy those meetings as much as any, because invariably these clients — and I do think of them as clients — leave the meeting wiser and more informed than they arrived, armed with knowledge that will serve them well. And that, ultimately, is why I do what I do.
What’s the next step? If you like the idea of putting some clarity around your retirement, just click here. I’ll get in touch to set up an appointment, and we’ll get the ball rolling!
People who’ve worked with me know one of my favorite sayings: “benign neglect is one of the best investment management practices you can engage in.” (I wish I could say I came up with it; rather, it was Warren Buffett, though his language was a little stronger.) The financial news is constantly looking for something to panic over; a few weeks ago, it was China, and before that it was Greece. The Wall Street Journal says it better than I can; go ahead and read, I can wait.
At the end of the day, 99% of financial news can be boiled down to this: “the markets go up, and the markets go down”. But we already knew that, didn’t we? Especially my clients, who through their weekly statements have become accustomed to the short-term ups and downs of the stock market.
But if we’re supposed to ignore 99% of financial news, that doesn’t mean that we should just stick our heads in the sand, does it? No, of course not. The question to ask is: how does this affect me in the long term? Not the gobal economy, not in the short term: me, in the long term. So if someone talks about oil prices — which are constantly bouncing around — then you can safely ignore it and change the channel (or turn to the sports section); but if you come across an article where an economist talks about a change in long-term projections, then your ears might start to perk up a bit.
Of course, while such articles do indeed discuss the long term, they don’t talk about *you*, in particular. For that, we need a metric for how on-track you are to meet your goals. And no, I don’t mean just your current portfolio balance! As we said earlier, the market is constantly going up and down, and investing isn’t a game where you’re just trying to get more dollars; rather, it’s all about balancing risks against reward. Is your portfolio too heavily weighted towards stock, such that a sudden market correction at the wrong time might throw a wrench in the works? Or is your portfolio weighted too heavily towards bonds, so that it’s not growing fast enough to meet your needs?
My clients are familiar with the “success rate” metric that I use for exactly this purpose: a percent value that represents the likelihood, after all the ups and downs of the market, of meeting your goals. This kind of number is the Gold Standard, the ultimate arbiter of whether you should take action based on the financial news: if the market takes a dip, but your success rate is still in your target range, then you can sleep peacefully. If your success rate starts to drop below target, then you can still sleep peacefully, but now you have work to do: perhaps changing your allocation, revising your goals, increasing your savings rate, or delaying retirement. Regardless, you have an indicator that tells you exactly how much action to take –no more, and no less.
Sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? Instead of some vague feeling of dread that you might not be able to retire, you can get a concrete indicator that tells you exactly when it’s time to take action. If this is something that sounds interesting to you, I’d be happy to put together a financial projection for you, gratis. (Even if you already have a financial advisor, it’s worth getting a second opinion — or a first opinion, if they don’t offer this kind of metric!) Just click the link, and I’ll be in touch!
Alright, now it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty. You’ve decided on an allocation and you’ve decided on a location. Now for the big question: what funds do you actually buy? As it turns out, this part is actually simpler than you might think. There are two main rules:
#1: Follow your allocation. This means avoiding funds that are mixes of different asset classes, which includes most actively-managed funds, since they almost always contain some amount of cash.
#2: Find the lowest expense ratio possible. Forget Morningstar ratings; within a given asset class, expense ratio is the best predictor of fund performance. Now, this is simultaneously intuitive and counter-intuitive — one would expect a cheaper investment to be a better bargain, but at the same time, one would expect someone who charges more to give you more for your money. That’s certainly what expensive funds would like you to believe, but the research — including Morningstar’s own! — doesn’t bear that out.
With those two rules in mind, let’s take a look at 401(k)’s and IRA’s.
401(k)’s
With 401(k)’s (and 529’s), rule #1 is generally enough to suffice: you rarely have more than one fund per asset class, which makes the choice easy. However, sometimes there’s no direct match, in which case you just do the best you can. Here’s a list of funds you might swap out a given asset class for, in order of preference:
IRA’s
Now, with an IRA, your choices are much, much broader, bordering on overwhelming. However, given that the ideal per the above rules is (a) a “pure” mutual fund, and (b) an inexpensive one, the choice becomes clear: Vanguard index funds. You can easily find an index fund that matches any of the given categories above, and it is virtually guaranteed to have the lowest expense ratio in its class. Also, you can avoid brokerage fees by opening your IRA with Vanguard itself. The only caveat is that Vanguard funds often have a minimum ($3,000 is the most common). If you have less than this, you can substitute funds as per above; for example, you could combine all of your stocks into Total World Stock and all your bonds into Total US Bond.
(Sounds like an advertisement, I know. But Vanguard doesn’t know me from Adam. I just like their funds.)
That’s it — you’re done! Once you’ve come up with your allocation, all you have to do is rebalance periodically to stick with your target (and update your target as circumstances change). More on that in a future post.
In the meantime, if there’s a related topic you’d like me to go over in detail, let me know in the comments!
Welcome to part three of my series on rolling your own target date fund — taking charge of your own investments so as not to get blindsided, but without spending every waking moment reading the Wall Street Journal. Last week was all about the biggest factor in determining how volatile your portfolio is going to be: your asset allocation. This week, we talk about where best to place those assets. Yep, it’s all going to be about taxes and fees, fees and taxes. Since the vast majority of your investing is going to be for retirement, today I’m just going to talk about retirement vehicles; if you’d like to know about college savings, you might want to check this out.
Ready? Let’s go.
401(k)’s: For lots of you, this is where nearly all of your investments will be located. Many companies offer a 401(k) match (in lieu of a pension plan), which can make investing in a 401(k) a tasty treat. However, once that match has been met, a 401(k) becomes much less appetizing. For one thing, there are generally only a small handful of choices to invest in; this wouldn’t be terrible, were it not for the other thing, which is that either (a) most of the choices are expensive, or (b) there is a fee tacked on top of the funds’ normal expense ratios, or (c) both. 401(k) administrators have to make money somehow! So generally, once you’ve hit the match on your 401(k), it’s time to move on to a better home, like…
IRA’s: An Independent Retirement Account is generally a better alternative for retirement investing than a 401(k): your options are better, especially if your IRA is with Vanguard, where you have access to some extremely nice, low-cost, no-load funds (more on that next week). And there are no fees. However, there’s a couple caveats: for one, as of this writing you can only contribute $5,500 annually to your IRA ($6,500 if you’re 50 or older), while you can contribute $17,500 to your 401(k). (And yes, you can do both!) For another, IRA’s are subject to an income limit, so some people can’t contribute at all*.
Roth v. Traditional: Now, 401(k)’s and IRA’s come in two different flavors: Traditional and Roth. The main difference lies in how they’re taxed: Traditional IRA’s and 401(k)’s are tax-deferred, which means that you don’t have to pay taxes on the money you contribute, but you do have to pay normal income taxes on money that’s withdrawn in retirement. Meanwhile, Roth 401(k)’s and IRA’s grow tax-free, which means that while you are taxed as normal on your contributions, your withdrawals are completely tax-free. A couple related wrinkles to also consider:
So…what to do? Everyone’s situation is unique, but a good strategy for most people when allocating your contributions is to contribute to your 401(k) up to your company match (the Roth option, if your company offers it), then max out your Roth IRA, then max out your 401(k).
Got it? Great! Next week, we’ll get down to brass tacks: exactly what funds to buy to implement that asset allocation you crafted from last time!
* You’re right, that’s not entirely true: there is a sneaky backdoor, where you can contribute to a nondeductible IRA at any income level, and roll that over to a Roth IRA. Good call, have a lollipop.
** The same smart kids who got a lollipop will note that because you’re not taxed on contributions to a Traditional 401(k)/IRA, you could in theory afford to contribute more to it. This is true…until you reach the max, which is the same dollar amount for a Roth as for a Traditional. So: the Roth wins. Nyaah nyaah.
Hopefully, last week convinced you that while a target date fund is a good place to start, ultimately it’s up to you to make the right decisions for your portfolio. Of course, you already know that the most important investing rules are 1) save earlier, 2) save more, and 3) be tax-efficient, but asset allocation is right up there; it can make the difference between a smooth transition to retirement and losing half your portfolio the year before! So: following are some simple guidelines for constructing your asset allocation. I could write a book on this — and many people have — but I’m going to fly through a top-level summary here, so that you have just enough information to construct a decent allocation.
Step 1: Cash. Any money you’re going to need in the next two years should be in cash or cash-equivalents; generally, this means a money-market or stable value fund. Why? Because even a short-term bond fund isn’t guaranteed to maintain its value, and in fact, it was a full year before many such funds recouped their losses from their peak in 2007.
Step 2: Stock/bond allocation. The rest of your money should be broadly divided between stocks and bonds. Stocks are riskier but have a higher expected return; bonds are more stable, but have a lower expected return. Your stock/bond allocation is absolutely critical; much of the rest is gravy, if you’re making halfway decent decisions. An allocation to all stocks means the risk of losing half your portfolio in a given year; an allocation to all bonds means having inflation devour your returns. Let’s walk through one way to calculate your stock/bond split:
Step 2a: How much can you lose, without losing sleep? This is probably the hardest question to answer honestly. A lot of folks thought their appetite for risk was greater than it actually was…and then 2007 happened, and they panicked so badly that they sold everything and went to cash. This is precisely what you want to avoid; you want to balance your maximum equity allocation with your maximum tolerable loss. You can thank Larry Swedroe and William Bernstein for the following table:
| Maximum Tolerable Loss | Maximum Equity Allocation |
| 5% | 20% |
| 10% | 30% |
| 15% | 40% |
| 20% | 50% |
| 25% | 60% |
| 30% | 70% |
| 35% | 80% |
| 40% | 90% |
| 50% | 100% |
| Time Horizon (years) | Maximum Equity Allocation |
| 0-2 | cash |
| 3 | 10% |
| 4 | 20% |
| 5 | 30% |
| 6 | 40% |
| 7 | 50% |
| 8 | 60% |
| 9 | 70% |
| 10-14 | 80% |
| 15-19 | 90% |
| 20+ | 100% |
Step 2c: Use 2a and 2b to determine your equity allocation. In other words, choose the lesser of the two; this represents the most risk you should take with your portfolio, both from your personal point of view and your portfolio’s.
Step 3: Divide your equity portfolio into international and domestic components. Basic allocation: 30% international, 70% domestic. The US is about 50% of the global market, but there is some uncompensated risk to international investments (namely currency fluctuations and event risks caused by restrictions on foreign investors, if you’re interested).
Step 4: Divide your domestic equity portfolio into sub-categories. Basic allocation: 10% of your equities be in real estate, because it often (not always!) tends to move in an uncorrelated fashion from other equities, with the rest divided equally between large-cap equities, large-cap value equities, small-cap equities, and small-cap value equities. (I recommend the tip towards value because growth stocks tend to be less “efficient”, i.e. less stability for their lack of return compared to value.)
Step 5: Divide your international equity portfolio into sub-categories. Basic allocation: equal portions developed, international small-cap, and emerging markets. (If that sounds like a high allocation to emerging markets, remember: this is only 30% of your equity portfolio.) If you don’t have access to an international small-cap fund, feel free to put that part in developed, as well.
Step 6: Divide your fixed income portfolio into sub-categories. Basic allocation: equal portions short-term bonds, intermediate-term bonds, and inflation-protected bonds. I don’t recommend long-term bonds because they’re generally quite volatile for the modest increase in returns they give you, and I don’t recommend junk bonds because they put instability into the stable part of your portfolio.
There you have it — your own personal asset allocation. Note that beyond the cash/stock/bond split, I pretty much dictated the sub-allocations; this was done for simplicity’s sake. If I ever write that book, I’ll probably have a lot more to say on the matter; for now, however, this will get you most of where you want to go.
An asset allocation is really an abstract concept, however; next week, we’ll talk about the actual investments you’ll use to implement your allocation!
If there’s any place where the investment world falls into the “one-size-fits-all” trap, it’s in target date funds. Don’t get me wrong — they’re a good place to start — but the chances of any given target date fund being just right for you for your entire life are slim to none. Case in point: the uproar in 2009, when funds targeted for people retiring that year took a beating, dropping up to 41% in value! But here’s the kicker — I’m not saying that the funds were poorly designed. I’m saying that they weren’t right for the people who were yelling about them, who didn’t fully understand what they were getting into. I would love it if there were an investment out there that magically tailored itself properly to the person who bought it; until that day, I highly recommend you roll your own “target date fund”. Don’t worry — it’s not nearly as complex as it sounds!
A quick primer on target date funds
A little review: target-date funds are mutual funds that are designed to achieve a certain goal, generally either retirement or college matriculation in a certain year. They do this by gradually changing their asset allocation from very aggressive (risky but long-term rewarding stuff, like international stocks) at the beginning to conservative (stable but less long-term rewarding stuff, like short-term bonds) as the target date approaches. The idea is that you get the benefit of higher expected returns when you can afford to take the risk — and stability when you can’t.
This gradual shifting of allocations is called a “glide path”, and every fund company uses a different one. For some examples, check out this wiki page from our good friends the Bogleheads. It all looks very scientific, but truthfully, there’s a lot of guesswork involved — especially since the fund has no idea what you need. What if you plan on delaying social security claims, and thus having completely different income needs your first few years of retirement? What if you’re keen on leaving a legacy, and have more than enough money to handle market fluctuations? What if (as happened to a lot of folks in 2009) a drop of more than 10% in your retirement funds would cause you to panic, sell everything, and put it in cash, where it would subsequently get mauled by inflation? Each of those situations calls for a radically different allocation, but the target date retirement fund doesn’t know that, and if you don’t know that it doesn’t know, you may end up blindsided.
Building the glider: the basics
So, if a target-date fund could leave you high and dry, how do you go about building a replacement yourself? First off, don’t worry about creating a “glide path” that makes assumptions about what things are going to be like 20 years from now — the only thing you know for sure is that they’re going to be different. Glide paths are for institutions that don’t know your personal situation! Rather, you’re going to focus on the allocation that makes sense now, and you’re going to revisit this once a year. Once you’ve gone through the exercise once, it’s a breeze to revisit — just make sure you’ve got a calendar entry or reminder set up, or you may find yourself losing half your portfolio the year before you’re set to retire!
Really, it’s just a three-step process:
1) Determine your asset allocation: what percentage of your portfolio are you going to allocate to stocks v. bonds? International v. domestic? Small-cap v. large-cap? A lot of research has been done on this, but until (or unless) you dive in deep, there are some basic rules that will get you 90% of the way there.
2) Determine your asset location: how much of your portfolio is in a tax-advantaged account? Roth v. Traditional? Again, some basic rules will help you out.
3) Determine the funds you will use to implement your allocation. If all of your retirement is in a 401(k), this choice is often more or less made for you. If you have an IRA, then you’ve got a double-edged sword: you generally have access to better (cheaper/more transparent) funds, but the choices can be overwhelming.
And yes, once you’ve been at the investing game for a while, you’re liable to collect quite a handful of accounts — 401(k), Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, brokerage account, etc. etc…and one of each of those for your spouse, as well! This is where a rudimentary knowledge of spreadsheets — or a friendly expert who can set it up for you — comes in handy!
That’s it! Don’t worry, I won’t leave you hanging; the next few posts will go into detail on steps one and two. Stay tuned!
food and money — two great tastes that taste great together!
Got your attention? Well, I won’t be coy: the key is mindfulness. Surprised? Looking at some of my previous posts on systems, you might think the opposite; isn’t the point of systems to enable you to just breeze through life without really paying attention, and yet still have things turn out okay?
Well…no. In fact, “hell no”.
For instance, take a look at this article on mindfulness in eating from Mind Over Fatter. In it, the author begins with the assumption that mindfulness in eating is important, and then poses the oh-so-practical question: how do we achieve that? Her answer is to give us ideas for implementing a system for improving that mindfulness! Rather than a machine that does your work for you, the system becomes a set of triggers whose sole purpose is to restore you to mindfulness.
It’s like having a series of alarm clocks. The practice of “chewing your food twenty-five times” (as she is reminded by a regular iPhone notification), using the action of stabbing your food with a fork to remind you to wait until you finish what you’re chewing, and other “scripts” are constantly waking you up to the world around you (and in your mouth). They keep you from “falling asleep”, sleepwalking your way through your meal without really paying attention to what you’re eating.
A lot of life is like that, isn’t it? It seems that it’s all too easy to fall asleep, acting automatically on our fears, our greed, our “lizard brain”, rather than waking up to the world around us. We eat without tasting; we watch TV without engaging; we go to our jobs without being present to the joy of doing good work. We read blog posts without looking to apply their insights to our lives. (Yeah — did that one wake you up? Good.)
And of course, we spend without being mindful.
Really, that’s what budgeting is all about, and if you’ve been paying attention to previous posts, you probably saw that coming. And if you’ve heard it before, then listen, because it’s important and worth hearing again. It’s not about going on some sort of money diet, though it can feel like that it times; it’s not about getting out of debt, though it’s a good way to get there; it’s not about preserving marital peace, though that can be a happy side effect. No, it’s primarily about mindfulness: deciding what your values are, what you want to spend your money on, and then staying awake enough to follow through with that decision, even when the siren song of advertising or peer pressure or habit tries to lull you to sleep. This is vital, because the consequences of falling asleep at the financial wheel are disastrous — just ask the guy with tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt, and no idea how it happened.
And that’s where the systems I’ve been talking about come in. The Monthly Money Check-In, where you go over your bills and your cash flow, keeps you mindful of where your money is going. Similarly, the Monthly Money Date, where you get together with your partner to go over the household budget and talk about money matters in general, helps keep the both of you mindful not only of yourselves, but of each other. The overnight investment test keeps you mindful of why you bought your investments. You get the idea: each of these systems isn’t putting your life on autopilot, but rather getting it back under your control.
Is it hard? Sure, at first — but so is waking up, and if you’re going to live, why not live awake?
Financial Geekery 