Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Where do you keep your 401k investments?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 73 posts

Re: Ask HN: Where do you keep your 401k investments?

#11

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

I might sound like a bad idea to hold bonds so far from retirement but it can sometimes work out better than solely index funds.

If the market crashes you'll be heavy on bonds and able to buy the dip when you rebalance.

Check this out: https://www.amazon.com/Bogleheads-Guide-Investing-Taylor-Lar...

Re: Ask HN: Where do you keep your 401k investments?

#13

Post by pram »

I rolled all my 401ks into an IRA on Betterment. They automatically buy Vanguard ETFs and some other stuff. Has some nice features like earnings projections and automatically setting your equity/bond composition (like you can set it to 10% bonds and it will automatically rebalance all your ETFs)

Re: Ask HN: Where do you keep your 401k investments?

#14

Post by wombat-man »

I think he's asking more about which funds, but coincidentally I have 401ks at the same 3 places.

Everything is going towards a target date fund in vanguard with a low expense ratio. This should manage the risk for me. I am also contributing pre tax, since I expect to be in a lower tax bracket when I retire.

Oh also, I plan to eventually transfer the other two accounts into my current vanguard 401k. This is different from rolling over into an IRA. I think 401k is better since it has more legal protections

Re: Ask HN: Where do you keep your 401k investments?

#15

Post by bionhoward »

keernan wrote: post #7

Vanguard's target date retirement funds furthest from retirement do not have a 100% stock allocation simply because studies have established that a 90/10 stock/bond portfolio outperforms a 100% stock allocation.

This sounds reasonable and I’m with you, but compelled to ask, which studies, can you provide links?

Knowing those sources could help us find more recent ones citing them, and see how this strategy has held up over time.

Here’s one:

[1] https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/14/9/409

Re: Ask HN: Where do you keep your 401k investments?

#16

Post by nightski »

Vanguard, but instead of using target date funds I choose the index fund allocation manually. The target date funds basically just hold 4 index funds. If you are in a tax advantaged account, it's pretty trivial to just update those allocations once a year to pay lower fees.

Re: Ask HN: Where do you keep your 401k investments?

#19

Post by zackify »

pram wrote: post #13

I rolled all my 401ks into an IRA on Betterment. They automatically buy Vanguard ETFs and some other stuff. Has some nice features like earnings projections and automatically setting your equity/bond composition (like you can set it to 10% bonds and it will automatically rebalance all your ETFs)

If you just rolled your money into vanguard directly, you would avoid the .25% annual fee which is a lot of money compounded over time
Post reply on HN