No More Playing Around
I’ve been testing out investment ideas in my IRA over the last few months. I tried No-Load FundX, Trader Vic strategies, gold, and a couple of other things. I never gave any of them enough time before I’d move on to the next one. All it has done is cost me money. Well no more! I’ve finally come to the conclusion that the money in my IRA is not for playing around with.
The last couple of days I’ve been working on moving the money in the account to a decent asset allocation. Once done, I’m leaving it alone. I’ll save some other money to be used to “play” with while investing. I’ve settled on an asset allocation for my retirement funds of:
- 70% Large-cap
- 20% Small-cap
- 5% Bonds
- 5% Commodities
This is an aggressive portfolio but this is retirement money that I basically can’t touch for another 23 years anyway. I’ll just let it grow. The two accounts I’m using this asset allocation for are my 401(k) and my rollover IRA. I’ll look at these accounts about every 6 months and rebalance as needed. I’m sticking with this this time, no more playing around.
For the large-cap investments I have Harbor International fund, Fidelity Freedom 2040 fund, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI), and something as yet undetermined. I still need to increase this portion of my portfolio by about $7800. For the small-cap portion I have mainly the iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM), with a portion coming from Fidelity Freedom as well as VTI. Bonds are mainly in iShares Lehman TIPS Bond ETF (TIP), with a small portion coming from Fidelity Freedom. Commodities are in PowerShares Commodity Index Tracking ETF (DBC). (I love ETFs).
I still need to figure out what to put the rest of the large-cap money into. It’ll likely be an S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY) or Dow Jones Industrial Average Index ETF (DIA), but I may increase my international exposure with an international index ETF. Once I make the decision I’ll post an update.