Investing General Discussion

Has anyone messed around with personalcapital.com? I caught wind of it a little over a month ago during college football and signed up for the free side of it (they interface with your other investments, credit cards, bank, mortgage, etc. and give you a breakdown of the overall portfolio vs. the market on the free). Unsurprisingly, they called me about a month later to try and sell me investment advice, which I was a bit leery of since I have done pretty decent managing this on my own and am sketchy about paying a fee for someone else to manage my investments. In the end, I think I am going to give them a go and see how it plays out as their strategy makes a helluva lot of sense to me.

They play a market neutral approach by sector, evenly investing in each sector (this is statistically more sound than my current strategy as it will avoid sector bubbles), but utilize tax loss harvesting to balance gains you will see in other sectors. I personally am pretty negative on the market outlook, but as easily as sliding my risk profile to conservative, they recalculate an appropriate investment mix with more allocated to bonds while still having a balanced investment cross-section (my plan is to wait for the next big crash which I feel is imminent and then get aggressive, if it doesn't happen in 2 years I'll get back to middle of the road and just ride it). They do charge 0.89%, but only on the portion of your investments they have custody on. The remainder, such as my and my wife's 401ks, they will advise on and consider for your overall portfolio, but you get the advice for free.

I also like the notion that if I keel over before my wife, at least someone will have a notion of what to do with our investments.

Anyways, story is just curious if anyone else has had experience with them and what is your take? If nothing else, I'd recommend trying them out on the free just for the tool they have to aggregate your investments in a single place.

Anyone else a passive index investor?

My AA at age 40 is:

50% domestic stock (I need to consolidate the S&P and Small cap into Total Market, those two were some of my first index purchases years ago)
FSTVX - Total US Market
FSRVX - REIT
FUSVX - S&P 500
FSSVX - Small Cap

20% international
FPMAX - Emerging Markets
FSIVX - Total International

30% bonds
FSITX - US Bond

I use the Fidelity index funds (formerly Spartan funds) to keep my costs low and I rebalance only when my AA wanders too far.

Big Phoenix said:

Still time to get on the amd train.

AMD's new Zen-based $499 CPU beats Intel's $999 CPU

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How many times have we been here? I really hope it does perform better. Intel needs the competition, but until I see real world results proving it I'm skeptical.

Changing jobs in January, and I'll need to roll over my company 401k into something else. I could throw it into my new company 401k, but I'm thinking about giving something like Wealthfront or Betterment a go. I was only in this job for a year and it's not a large sum, only 10k or so. I also still have 30k or so sitting in a retirement account with the state growing at a guaranteed 5%. Haven't found a good reason to move it yet so I've just let it sit there since I left academics.

Should clear 40k or so on our home sale (starter home in Georgia, low property values). I'm going to need to stick that somewhere as well. Any suggestions? I'm 34 and feel woefully unprepared to invest in anything. My wife and I own some Tyco (formerly Johnson Controls) stock we purchase every month, but that's basically it.

I would say it comes down to how willing / level of desire to manage your own investment strategy. I faced a similar choice a few years back and ended up rolling it over to a IRA with Fidelity. I went this route because I can now choose to invest the money with any mutual fund I choose opposed to just the ones offered in my companies 401K. If your new company happens to use Fidelity Net benefits as the 401K administrator it makes it super easy to handle the investments from a single web login. If you're looking for path of least resistance and willing to accept the the choices your company offers you in terms of 401K investment just roll it over to the new plan, it's pretty much automated these days between companies with minimal paper work.

Willing yes, knowledgeable no. I really feel out of my depth with retirement and finance, so I try to make it as idiot proof as I can. I realize that probably means I'm not accruing at the rates I could with more direct management. I don't have a ton of info yet, but it looks like Vanguard handles at least a few of the options.

As others have pointed out Vanguard has some solid mutual funds you can invest in. Sounds like a Index Fund would be a good fit for you're current situation. Keeps cost low and you should see returns similar to the over all market the index is based against.

Index funds | Vanguard

Go with a Vanguard or Fidelity index fund. Throw all of it in there. Pick the one with the lowest fees. I prefer Vanguard, personally, but they're both the only two companies with competitive fees.

I suggest a total market fund (VTSAX or whatever Fidelity has, FSTMX?).

Heylel said:

Willing yes, knowledgeable no. I really feel out of my depth with retirement and finance, so I try to make it as idiot proof as I can. I realize that probably means I'm not accruing at the rates I could with more direct management. I don't have a ton of info yet, but it looks like Vanguard handles at least a few of the options.

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You may want to read the Bogleheads wiki then ask questions in the same forum.

I own a seasonal business and my wife has a great job so we started out saving up the 20% down payments and buying one house a year . In my area you can buy a good mid-ranged home with good schools for 100k.

We then moved to buying houses that needed lots of work and my crew from the seasonal work and myself would get them rental ready through the winter this process allowed me to start buying houses much faster.

As an example I buy a 2 bedroom 1 bath beat up home for 40k (8 grand down) I then spend 3 months and 40k more turning it into a 3 bed 2 bath home worth 120 grand, I then have it revalued and pull out any forced equity ( in this case I am able to pull out around 40 grand ) and I use that cash for my next deal.

Two other factors that really helped me is having a great relationship with a local bank and my best friend is the supervisor of one of the companies my business provides work for and I am able to charge them roughly 4 times the average market price

We used many more tricks but my best advice would be to go to a sight called bigger pockets.com there is no better resource for learning the rental business.