Planning the Joint Retirement Portfolio: December 2007 Update

This is part 5 of our Planning the Joint Retirement Portfolio series. See what we went out to do here, how we got our magic number (part 1), assessed our portfolio back then (part 2), the big picture of our portfolio (part 3), and then a detailed plan allocation (part 4).

It has been almost a year since we've started the joint retirement portfolio series, and almost 6 months since we've last looked at our joint retirement portfolio. Since then, we've done many changes to get it to our model portfolio. We've sold some, bought some, and cleaned things up a little. Our current asset allocation is depicted in the pie chart below.

Compared to our model portfolio, we're still not quite there yet.

When we first started this exercise, we showed you what was in our portfolio. Here are the detailed holdings in our portfolio as of today.

Fund Ticker % of Portfolio
TOTAL 99.9%
Roth IRA (Vanguard)
Ameren AEE 0.9%
Boeing BA 0.5%
General Motors GM 0.6%
Northern Trust NTRS 1.3%
Prologis PLD 1.0%
Vanguard Total Bond Market Index VBMFX 13.7%
TOTAL PERCENTAGE OF PORTFOLIO ASSETS 18%
Roth IRA (Fidelity)
Fidelity Real Estate Investment FRESX 7.7%
Fidelity Small Cap Value FCPVX 8.5%
TOTAL PERCENTAGE OF PORTFOLIO ASSETS 16.2%
401(k)
AllianceBernstein International Value Fund (A) ABIAX 11.7%
Dreyfus Premier S&P STARS Opportunity Fund (R) DSORX 7.1%
Fidelity Advisor Small Cap Fund (T) FSCTX 6.9%
Neuberger Berman Socially Responsive Fund (Investor) NBSRX 2.7%
STI Classic Small Cap Value Equity I SCETX 11.2%
TOTAL PERCENTAGE OF PORTFOLIO ASSETS 39.6%
SIMPLE IRA (Vanguard)
Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 VTIVX 26.1%
TOTAL PERCENTAGE OF PORTFOLIO ASSETS 26.1%

The remaining 0.1% is cash that is floating around in some of the accounts.

We made most of the changes to our portfolio last summer. We now plan on reassessing our target allocations every six months or so, and then adjusting if necessary. Much of the difficulty of getting a cohesive portfolio is balancing the available account in each of our brokerage accounts, namely Her's 401(k). Another obstacle is the minimums required to invest in many mutual funds at Fidelity or Vanguard. In order to get around that, we're currently looking at ETFs; that is not looking like an attractive option due to the high trading fees relative to our balances at Fidelity and Vanguard.

We welcome your comments and suggestions on our current portfolio.

Comments/Trackbacks

Trackback URL: http://www.makelovenotdebt.com/MT/mlnd-trackbacks.cgi/1186

corrin | Dec 21, 2007

loving the reit investment. i work for a reit and we're doing very well.

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E | Dec 31, 2007

Two options to avoid hefty trading fees:
1. Roth IRA through buyandhold.com, $25 fee per year and $2.99 per window trade
2. Buy no load no transaction fee mutual funds through Charles Schwab with no account minimums/service fees if you simultaneously open up a linked checking account (I use their checking account as my secondary because they currently pay 4% APY and refund unlimited ATM fees)

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