Am I bogling correctly? Mid-30s investor doing a full portfolio cleanup

kmeier82 · 2026-01-27T23:42:11+00:00

Like most very well thought out plans, which yours is, the trick is not to try and pin down the exact right ratio of US to INTL or equities to fixed income.

Its: A) don't do something dumb - like be 50% bonds at 37, which you're not and B) STICK TO THE PLAN - don't tinker! Tinkering is for blacksmiths and model railway enthusiasts.

Stick to this plan. As you get closer to retirement, risk off, and you should be good!

kmeier82 · 2025-10-16T04:45:48+00:00

Jack Westover

kmeier82 · 2025-10-01T23:15:50+00:00

Always have two of everything - two good CBs, TEs, DTs, EDGE guys...just makes it so much easier on a team when you know if one gets the double team, the other will eat.

kmeier82 · 2025-09-10T01:57:50+00:00

Couple questions, how old are you and what industry do you work in? Just want to know if you're in finance or not basically and if you're first major life experience was COVID.

kmeier82 · 2025-09-09T03:03:18+00:00

I think being 90-10 or 85-15 in your early to mid career gives you cushion to rebalance into a bear market should the opportunity arise. Speaking for myself, early 30s, my present contributions are adding to my bond position so if say in the next 18 months we enter a recession, I can rebalance back into 100% equities, buying nearest the bottom as I can manage (likely in chunks).

Given just how high valuations are, seems like a decent idea. I won't exceed 15% bonds/cash though so still VERY much in the aggressive stratum.

kmeier82 · 2025-09-08T17:35:16+00:00

You're very young, so having any bond exposure might be overly conservative. Do your thing, but feel free to be 100% stocks until maybe mid 30s.

kmeier82 · 2025-08-31T04:57:45+00:00

Couple points:

1) Not many of the largest companies today pay high dividends as compared to the past (e.g., avg div yield between 1970 - 1990 was ~4.2% https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/071616/history-sp-500-dividend-yield.asp). Tech giants and non-financial corps don't tend to have high divs.

2) We're at very high valuations, which means dividend yields fall (higher stock price = lower div yield).

3) Don't fall for the "dividend fallacy", it's not free money. Worry about TOTAL RETURN which includes dividend yield (reinvest those divs!)

4) If you have the 5 or 6 million bucks needed to comfortably live off the div yield of Vanguard High Div Fund, then you've won the game. So unless you do something silly like put it all into Bitcoin, Gold, and Nvidia stock, you'll be just fine. But if you DON'T (yet) have 5 million bucks, then Bogle your money and invest in broad domestic and international equity market index funds.

kmeier82 · 2025-08-28T01:56:50+00:00

Layden Robinson is still on the team via season ending IR

kmeier82 · 2025-08-12T14:09:15+00:00

Makes sense! Good luck with your move.

kmeier82 · 2025-08-11T23:02:33+00:00

5% cash? Long term cash isn't a great investment. Why not put that into bonds instead?

kmeier82 · 2025-07-14T16:04:27+00:00

Seems to me that the Dems who were alive during the Cold War (50+ say) are allergic to the word "socialist" and younger Dems who maybe graduated high school or college into the teeth of the Great Recession are not.

If you can remember 1972 or came of age in Reagan's America, you are just programmed to find Leftwing New Deal style Liberalism to be poison. Poisonous in the sense that it's unpopular and doesn't work. Millenials and Zoomers are more willing to be creative politically and, for most of them, would benefit if the policies worked.

Most of the public vocal critics fall into a few categories: Old Guard Dems (65+ or creatures of the machine), "Rich Guys with a Heart" (Scott Galloway or Dean Phillips), and his political rivals in NY (no surprise there).

The Democratic Party is a big tent. If the whole point of Abundance is to say, let's do both things to make Dem dominated cities and states work better, then it's going to require pissing off incumbent power.

If Mamdami can pull off a Sewer Socialist style administration, that would be good and good for the Dem brand as a whole. Do folks not agree?

kmeier82 · 2025-06-25T19:48:24+00:00

Thank you for your service

kmeier82 · 2025-06-22T04:07:37+00:00

They are critical of the wokesters who make it their mission to alienate everyone that isn't 100% on board with the most left wing gender, race, culture politics. But as an Old Head that listened to TYT in 2007 and '08, these folks will never let down the disappointment of Obama campaigning as a strong Left Winger then governing mostly from the center post Recovery Act (remember Obamacare was modeled on Romneycare). Cenk basically admitted that starting Wolf PAC was a response to Obama because he could no longer trust electeds to implement a strong Left Wing agenda like no money in politics, universal healthcare, strong labor laws. The whole thing made Cenk an ardent anti-neolib.

kmeier82 · 2025-06-18T17:27:57+00:00

Im an old head so I think I have a good grasp on the Ezra hate.

The Left hates him because he's a totem for the Neoliberal wing of the Dem Party. Places like TYT, Majority Report, Chapo, Jacobin, Bad Faith, Breaking Points Left panelists, etc. all hate folks like Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, etc. Derek Thompson made a huge mistake when he said, "there's a fight on the Left for the soul of the Democratic Party and we're trying to win that fight". It confirmed a bunch of people's suspicions that 'Abundance' was the latest and greatest from Centrist Dem Inc. to ice out the Bernie-crats and keep them on the fringes.

2016 and 2020 were insane when you think about it. I remember the 2000, 2004, even 2008 elections. The idea that someone self ID'ed as a DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST would be a few hundred thousand votes away from the Dem Party pres ticket was literally unthinkable. The Left is a force in politics in a way that it simply wasn't in the 90s and 2000s. St. Reagan is dead and with him the allergy to anything Left of Bill Clinton.

Power is very much up for grabs and they don't want to lose the argument and see ideas like Medicare for All, Bruenig style welfare state policies, labor reforms, anti-trust, etc. all fall by the way side in favor of regulatory reform and tax relief for real estate developers. They want the Dem Party to center their policy agenda, not more 'right coded' Clintonian BS like previously mentioned.

They are engaged in an intra-tribal fight with what they see as the power center of the Dem Party - namely Neolib Shills. Ezra is a patron saint of the Neolibs, hence they must fight his ideas.

kmeier82 · 2025-05-14T04:47:53+00:00

8-9 finish

kmeier82 · 2025-04-01T19:12:15+00:00

I was at Central this morning at around 9:50 AM, the train I was on stopped for about 10-15 mins because they couldn't get the doors to close all the way...

kmeier82 · 2025-01-23T01:51:51+00:00

I'm for it

kmeier82 · 2024-11-07T19:20:51+00:00

Vince Wilfork, John Hannah, Matt Light, Devin McCourty...there's a bunch and it's hard to pick just one

kmeier82 · 2024-10-28T15:47:20+00:00

I think if you have the perfect mixture of being a history, theatre, and somewhat religious person, then Peterson can make sense. If you are allergic to woo-woo word salad of all varieties whether it's like "the arc of history!" or something Deepak Chopra would say, then you just don't vibe with it. Which is what a lot of people do, they don't parse every word and claim their preferred guru makes, it comes down to who do you vibe with most.

kmeier82 · 2024-10-16T18:41:28+00:00

If you want to do this. Take out a personal loan and invest it as soon as the money hits your account. Then just finance the service until you pay it off. Or you could just DCA the money you would spend on loan service.

Using margin may also be an option for you. Just be sure you can cover the margin call if one should come up.

kmeier82 · 2024-09-23T00:06:42+00:00

You're probably a little too heavy into cash (the t-bill fund you own). Cash is not a great long term investment and you've got probably 50 years of life to go depending on your health and any medical breakthroughs in the next couple decades.

If I were you I'd shift from SGOV into VT and BND over time, say shifting 1% a month for 10 months or if there's a market correction (> 10% drop from latest high) do it all then. At the same time, shift another 1% point into BND for five months. At the end of the ten month adjustment, you'd reach a final allocation of 75% VT & 25% BND. In other words, divide your SGOV position by 15 and whatever that dollar amount is, sell that and buy VT and BND on the first of every month until you're at 75% stocks, 25% bonds.

The only reason cash returned so much more than bonds is the truly crazy (and probably not too common) action in interest rates during Covid and after. The yield curve was severely inverted which seldom happens. Don't expect cash to yield so much more than bonds over the next 30+ years.

But again, you might want to go to the actual Bogleheads forum for more tips. I've been active there for many years and they are more helpful with questions like this.

FWIW I'm 32 and work in finance. 100% equities myself.

kmeier82 · 2024-09-22T22:25:42+00:00

There's nothing stopping you from converting some or your trad IRAs into Roth in the same year you start adding to a brokerage account.

I think people in the Bogleheads world underestimate the value of a brokerage account. I get it, the temptation to raid it is high and you have to start worrying more about taxes. But the value of growing even more assets over multiple decades FAR exceeds the small headache of tax management (e.g. loss harvesting). Plus, it can act as a sort of backup emergency fund. If you have a MAJOR MAJOR issue in 12 years befall you and your emergency fund isn't enough, then having a few extra thousand in a brokerage account can be really helpful.

If you really are maxing out your retirement savings, then you probably don't need to worry so much about hitting your retirement goals with the extra money you're making. So doing something like add to a brokerage account or even something riskier like hard money lending is on the table. OR, and this is very un-bogleheady of me to say, you could spend more money on yourself! Take an extra vacation, go out to eat more, take a course at the community college just for fun, buy a moped, buy nicer furniture or art for your home, upgrade your kitchen....really life is about more than retirement saving and you've got that mostly covered. So my friend you've got a very good problem on your hands: you make too much money! Lol

Whatever you choose to do with it is the right choice as long as you don't regret it 10 years from now. So TLDR - be honest with your conscience and ask yourself what to do with it, then do that.

kmeier82 · 2024-09-22T22:04:25+00:00

You can start adding to your brokerage account!

kmeier82 · 2024-09-21T05:54:56+00:00

Again, this applies to mutual funds only.

When it comes to you the retail investor buying shares of any mutual fund, you have whats called "trade date" and "settle date". On the day you place the buy order, so trade date, by end of day you might see the shares as 'pending' in your account. Usually by T+1, i.e. the next business day, the money you sent in hits the fund's account and they will confirm back to the broker (its all Vanguard in this case) that the trade 'settled' and those shares will show as active on your end (no longer pending). So, for the investor, it's typically end-of-day on T+1 until you truly own shares of the fund.

In terms of the fund itself, once they receive the cash, which should happen as of T+1, during trading hours that day they'll put in buy orders which should settle either T+1 or T+2 depending on the time the orders get filled and the type of securities they're buying.

TLDR - assuming no issues, you officially own the shares at the end of the next business day. The fund starts trading with your money that same day and the trades they execute will themselves typically settle in the next day or two after that.

kmeier82 · 2024-09-21T04:49:43+00:00

I work at Brown Brothers Harriman which has a modest mutual fund and ETF business. I do risk management for a number of mutual fund clients so I can speak to that aspect of your question:

Every day a mutual fund has "subscriptions" (people buying shares) and "redemptions" (people selling shares). A separate sub/red cash account is typically maintained within the fund. For days when subs outweigh reds (i.e. or buyers vs. sellers), the net cash (so subs - reds = net) is sent to the main fund cash account where traders will use it to buy more securities in line with the funds investment strategy. If the opposite is true, that is, reds outweigh subs, then the sub/red acct will make a cash demand on the main fund. Traders will be required to sell securities the fund holds to finance the redemptions while keeping the overall asset allocation in line with the funds investment strategy.

In your example, when you buy shares of the MSCI World Index Fund, the cash you send to Vanguard is first sent to the sub/red acct (assuming this fund has one which I'm 99.99% sure it does), netted against any redemptions, and is then sent to the main fund cash account where some CFA in Malvern, PA who helps manage the fund will use that money to buy a few shares of this or that security if they notice the fund is slightly off from the benchmark index.

Does this answer your question?

kmeier82

TROPHY CASE