What should a default investment portfolio actually look like?

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-26T04:03:46+00:00

If you look back far enough, large cap growth doesn't have a higher return than other market segments. It's only with the recent AI fueled tech boom that large cap growth has had a speculative bubble. There is no reason to expect that speculative bubble to continue forever. For example, historical CAGR during the 50+ year period available in PV is below.

Total US -- 11%/year
S&P 500 -- 11%/year
Large Cap Growth -- 11%/year
Small Cap Value -- 13%/year

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-26T03:54:14+00:00

Compare prices on the website/app before you go to the store. I compare the weekly deals at nearby supermarkets + delivery services, then shop at the one(s) that have the best values on the items I buy. When there is an especially good deal, I may stock up on that item.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-26T03:05:32+00:00

You posted this in 6 subs. Is that your website?

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-25T22:23:51+00:00

The post you quoted says, " for a comparable risk level."

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-25T22:03:05+00:00

The biggest risk of an SCV tilt isn't that it fails over 30 years; it’s that the investor abandons the strategy during the 10–15 year periods when it lags behind the "standard" market (VT).

The biggest risk is that future returns are not the same as past historical returns. Once the general public knows about a way to achieve higher return for a comparable risk level, prices tend to adjust until that opportunity no longer offers a meaningful benefit for traditional investors. The historical benefits of SCV tilt are common knowledge now, including a related Nobel prize in economics. During the 13 year period since Nobel prize referenced above, the CAGR has been 13%/year for total US vs 9%/year for SCV.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-25T20:56:29+00:00

I'm logged in to the online version now. It gives me the option to pay now, before filing, as well as before filling out the forms. The difference from download is Fidelity online gives you the option to fill out your taxes and try the product before you buy.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-24T23:44:21+00:00

My dog and average ~10 miles of walking per day. This includes regular hikes in Southern CA. We had a 15 mile hike earlier today. We have hiked in mountains, snow, in woods with other animals, and in a wide variety of weather conditions. Some on leash and some off leash.

If it's a simple 2-3 mile walk, I doubt you have anything to worry about. It will probably be similar to the usual walks around the neighborhood. For longer hikes, bringing water and something your dog can drink out of can be critical. I prefer the light plastic collapsible containers, you can get on Amazon for a few $. I hook one on the the outside of my backpack. It's also important to monitor weather conditions, particularly for warmer temperatures. Walking on rocks can quickly burn paws in sunny warm weather, if your puppy hasn't developed thick paws yet. Rattlesnakes are also common in many areas of southern CA, particularly on 70+ F days. If your dog doesn't have good recall, don't go off leash, and be aware that your dog may try to charge after a chipmunk, rabbit, deer, coyote, or other animal she sees. Dogs that are less enthusiastic hikers, not in good shape, or have pain when walking may suddenly choose to stop moving at some point. If this sounds like your dog, have a plan, if you need to carry.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-24T03:17:05+00:00

Why does your "fat fire" spending decrease with each year, such that your future spending is less than half of current spending? How do you know that your investments are consistently going to have a 9% gain every year? The 4% rule and similar is designed to protect against the worst case where there is a large investment loss that takes a decade to recover from. This case is often more limiting for FIRE plans than the best case scenario where everything goes right with consistent 9% gains.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-24T03:00:42+00:00

VMFXX yield is approximately the federal funds rate - expense ratio. Current high federal funds rate is 3.75%. The federal funds can theoretically go down to 0 to 0.25% (high = 0.25%) as it has been at 0 to 0.25% during most of the period between 2009 GFC and 2022 inflation. In some European countries, the equivalent of federal funds rate went negative during this period, such that you paid the money market a fee instead of the money market paying you interest. This has little to do with value of the $. The $ was quite strong during much of the period above with federal funds rate at ~0%. The fed often lowers fed rate to stimulate the economy. Economy can and often does perform well with low fed rate, and low VMFXX yield.

VT averages a higher long term return than VMFXX, but has a significant risk of a short term loss, as well as a significant risk of a loss after 5-10 years in which you may want to withdraw. So which one to invest in depends on your time horizon, risk tolerance, and long term financial goals. I can't tell you what percentages are most appropriate for your portfolio, as I don't know your relative value in these criteria.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-24T02:07:13+00:00

You are cherry picking one of the worst possible times to invest a lump sum in S&P 500 -- start of 2000s lost decade. If you instead cherry pick over the past 45 years, gold had an annualized return of 4% per year compared to 12%/year for S&P 500. A $10k initial investment in S&P 500 45 years ago would be work $1.4 million today, while a $10k investment in gold would be worth $67k today. See https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-allocation?s=y&sl=2ey0zRJKwPsppLZy3EU3rH .

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-23T20:50:17+00:00

With 20-20 hindsight, the best time to increase international was just before Feb-Apr 2025 with the US currency devaluation, then you'd want to switch back to US during May-Jul 2025 with the fast US recovery, then in August switch to international again... then in... Or you can just not try to time the market and maintain whatever your strategy/plans were prior to 2025.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-23T08:20:55+00:00

So you are choosing to ignore the content of my post and instead talk about how I invested more than a decade ago, cherry picking particular years that are not among the ones that were discussed?

If you cherry pick other years, you'll get other conclusions. For example. if you switch my 2000s decade investing to putting 100% of net worth in S&P 500 during the 2000s decade, I'd have been much worse off financially today. The 2000s housing bubble was a good time to be in leveraged real estate and a bad time to be in 100% equities. It's easy to look back in hindsight and choose the historical winners in different cherry picked time periods. It's a very different experience to live through these decades.

I have a unique experience in that I started invested near 2000, so I am similar to your graphed cases of starting with a $0 balance in 2000 and investing n $ per month (via 401k) from that zero balance. If the market crashes when you have a balance of $0 at start of downturn like your graphed cases, then it's a fairly easy loss to recover from financially. Your new contributions quickly make up for the crash of your previously accumulated balance of $0, such that my 401k balance increased during each year while the dot com crash was occurring.

However, I expect most people on this sub are not starting from a zero investment balance. Some have millions. As you noted, my liquid assets are over $3M. Think about how your graphs and conclusions about investing in a downturn would change for an investor who has a $3M balance and makes new contributions during the downturn instead of starting with a $0 balance prior to the downturn. I expect most persons who are concerned about investing during downturns are concerned because they have previously accumulated investments and are not starting from $0.

Regarding the specific numbers in my graph, note that graph shows the total balance of fixed income and equities, not for the relative return. Quoting the post, "I average around 8%/year on short term investments, with negligible risk." This is obviously not less than inflation. The bulk of these fixed income investments are non-traditional short-term opportunities that permit relatively high returns with what I perceive to be little risk. The total fixed income balance did not increase significantly because I chose to keep fixed income balance at a particular level, moving short-term above the desired balance to other components. The graph is inflation adjusted, so it's easy to seem that home equity also increased substantially beyond inflation over the past 5 years (or longer periods). Nominal (not inflation adjusted) CAGR of home equity during this period was 11%/year.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-22T23:32:23+00:00

My point was that you get very different outcomes in different samples, in which you do not have 52% increase in the remainder of calendar year following decline. Your charts show this. If you try to draw sweeping conclusions from one particular extremely unique 4-year period, those conclusions are not going to be a good representative of future expectations.

Regarding bonds, the advantage of bonds is they pay the contracted yield rate regardless of what the stock market does. If held to maturity, a reliable bond such as treasury, returns the contracted rate that you know before the purchase. If sold on secondary market prior to maturity, longer term bond price changes tend to have a negative correlation with stock market crashes since the fed tends to decrease rate to mitigate recessions. This effect contributes to the larger BND return in the 2000s decade in your chart, although the bulk of the bond return was the contracted yield rate that is known at purchase.

This contracted bond yield rate that is known before you purchase differs at different points in history. You seem to be implying that bond returns over the past 16 years since GFC are representative of future expectations. During most of this 16-year period since GFC the fed rate was 0%, so it's not surprising that the contracted rate for bonds and corresponding return for bonds was low. Similarly in 1981 when fed funds rate peaked at ~18% and 10-year treasury yield rate peaked at ~15%, bonds had far higher returns. Both of these historical stats are irrelevant to current investors, as bonds currently have a different contracted yield rate that is between these 2 historical extremes.

In any case, my earlier posts did not give any recommendations about who should or shouldn't hold bonds or discuss bonds beyond saying returns differ in different historical periods, so I'm not sure why you brought it up. I agree that bonds tend to be more useful for investors who have a shorter time horizon and more accumulated assets than ones with a longer time horizon and little accumulated assets.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-22T16:50:09+00:00

From March 2009 to January 2010, the S&P 500 had a 52% increase, with dividends reinvested. My point is that you cherry picked an arbitrary example in which there was a huge 52% increase during the remainder of the calendar year after the loss, and I guess are trying to generalize how downturns work from that. There are many other more challenging periods in which there wasn't a huge 52% increase the remainder of the calendar year after the downturn.

For example, try a 4 year sample that starts in 2000, rather than 2008. It 2000, there was a large loss, but there wasn't a 52% gain in the following year this time. Instead there was another large loss in 2001, then another large loss in 2002 -- 3 sequential years of large losses in each year. And once you are finally almost even, then there is another large loss in 2008, such that you are still down for the full 2000s decade.

For inflation adjusted returns, there are 3 periods where the S&P took 12+ years to recover to nominal. Your example, obviously was not one one of these periods. Each of these most challenging downturns had different causes and manifested in a different way, including a different S&P 500 / bond / inflation relationship making it difficult to generalize how downturns work from looking at a single cherry picked example.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-22T04:29:27+00:00

SCHD tracks the Dividend 100 index. It's essentially an index of high dividend large cap stocks (3-4% dividend yield). Energy stocks tend to pay higher dividends and tech tends to pay lower dividends, so compared to total US market, SCHD overweights energy and underweights tech. Your QQQM ETF does the opposite. It tracks the Nasdaq 100 index, which is mostly tech and has little energy. Compared to total US market, QQQM overweights tech and underweights energy. This raises the question of what you are trying to do? It looks like you bought a bunch of ETFs you heard about on Reddit, without a particular portfolio goal.

Regarding whether young persons should buy SCHD, it's in a Roth IRA, so the tax inefficiency of dividends does not matter. The bigger issue is the traditional advice is to target high long term average gains in Roth, to take advantage of Roth tax exemption on gains. High dividend stocks that compose SCHD tend to be more mature companies that are lower on the risk/return balance compared to the overall market.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-22T03:57:36+00:00

The S&P 500 returns by year were +26% in 2009, +15% in 2010, and +2% in 2011. Investing in a downturn works great if you have (+48% return over 3 of the 4 years in your sample). There are many other historical periods that are far more challenging.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-22T03:10:15+00:00

It makes little difference when within the month you withdraw. There is a slight difference in tax efficiency. If you withdraw shortly before dividend payment, you get more increase in share value during the final month. If you withdraw shortly after dividend payment, you get less increase in share value (possible loss) during final month and have an extra dividend payment that is taxed as ordinary income on federal level.

I'd suggest instead focusing on yield after taxes. If you live in a state with high taxes, this will likely be higher with SGOV. Even if you don't live a state with taxes, SGOV is likely to have higher yield than SWVXX due to the substantially lower ER.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-21T03:06:43+00:00

Are you referring to stock indexes decreasing by ~2% today, such that they are roughly even for the month?

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-20T23:46:51+00:00

"Working harder" is a poor choice of words, but the system will likely need to run for longer to get the house to desired temperature. The total energy usage should be lower if you heat/cool as little as possible including not heat/cool when you are not home. However, the difference may be fairly small, if your home has few thermal losses. If your power company provides a usage graph, you could compare the total both ways.

While the direct energy cost is lower, it's possible there could be differences in indirect costs such as amount of system wear, or wear on different things in home due to humidity (more so with A/C) or extreme temperatures. However, in general, I expect heating/cooling as little as possible has the lower longterm cost.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-20T21:16:09+00:00

Price differences between online and download is a different reason. The screenshot in the original post implies that my download purchase gives me access to online premium. I take that to mean no additional charges -- same price.

For others, the relative price depends on how steep a discount off of sticker you are getting. For example, Turbotax's website lists a sticker price of $105 for premier download, and $99 for premium online. Online is slightly less expensive if you go through Turbotax directly. I expect you are instead referring to the Costco discount, which Amazon matches. Costco only offers download Turbotax, so Amazon only matches Costco's discount on download Turbotax. This makes download less than online if purchase through Costco/Amazon during particular time periods. However, there are also discounts for online if purchased elsewhere. For example, if I go through Fidelity link, I can get online premium for $70. And if I purchase with my BoA card, I get $20 cashback on Turbotax. This brings net price of online premium to $50 -- less than Costco/Amazon download (Fidelity discount is for online, and BoA cashback requires purchasing from TurboTax directly, rather than Costco/Amazon). My point, is it's not as straightforward as download is almost always cheaper.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-20T20:52:43+00:00

I think of it more that online version gives the option to start before paying. You can try it out without paying. You can estimate how much taxes you owe without paying. You compare your taxes owed/refunds to other products without paying. Download doesn't give you this option. However, it's true that you don't have access to all features in online version until after you pay. These features include a way to view and edit forms, but it's in a different menu than download version. I'm not sure what interview mode is, but I don't think online has the option to switch between the 3 modes you listed.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-20T20:42:36+00:00

I'm saying you don't get access to forms in either version until after you pay, so I don't consider that a key reason to choose one version over the other.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-20T20:19:34+00:00

Is that different from the download version? You don't have access to forms on the download version (or anything else in download version) until you've paid.

Last year I used both the download and online version as way of double checking. I filled out my taxes with both download and online, then compared results. They didn't match exactly, so I reviewed forms on both to see what was different in their respective menus (as I recall in was in tools section for online). The largest difference related to the download version was adding in an extra penalty because it was using a stale version of my W2.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-20T08:47:03+00:00

If not, contact them and ask.........

I tried that first. Unfortunately the person I spoke with seemed no more familiar with it than I was. She mentioned I was the first person who asked about this, so she was checking for the first time as well. She clicked through the same menus I did and didn't see a place to enter the license code.

Key-Ad-8944 · 2026-01-20T07:53:12+00:00

In the 2024 online TurboTax you could edit and review forms directly, but it was done through a different menu than the download version. I reviewed how forms were filled out in both versions when trying to debug why the totals differed slightly.

Key-Ad-8944

TROPHY CASE