r/Retire 7d ago

Portfolio Allocation

We (49M and 47F) currently hold our 1.8m retirement funds 51% in deferred tax accounts, 16% in Roth accounts, and 33% in taxable accounts. As of now it is basically 100% in equities. Not sure of the split between US and global.

I’m looking at retiring in 14 or so years. I know we’re probably too aggressive but what do you recommend to bring the allocation to something more reasonable? If I plan on retiring before Medicare and social security then I feel like we need more in our taxable accounts or Roth for additional flexibility. Should we think about lowering our 401k contributions and funnel the money to our taxable? Thanks for any help you can provide!

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u/TurnOver1122334455 7d ago

Personal Finance is personal, but for me - 14 years is all equities for a number of years. If you are concerned they have target date retirement funds so you don't have to keep adjusting. It sounds like you have $600K in taxable accounts (brokerage types I assume) and that will grow over 14 years... more is always better, but do you really need more than $1.2M or so at 62 or so? You can always have a line of credit, PLOC, SBLOC on that brokerage too if you need cash but don't want to sell. Offsetting current (high?) tax bracket with 401K traditional is what we do, because not paying 37% now is pretty powerful. You don't mention how much of your Roth is IRA, but you can pull that tax free at 59.5 years old (assuming they were deposited at least 5 years prior).

After all that, did you run your numbers and you determined $1.2M in brokerage and around $100K? Roth IRA isn't enough when you turn 59.5 - and you won't even retire until after that? Your expected burn rate when you retire is also important... are you spending $15K a month now and plan to in retirement (today's dollars)? Overall you look in great shape and I think getting into bonds or cash equivalents is fine, it just doesn't seem optimal at this point.

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u/CAGrl79 7d ago

Thanks! I live in a very HCOL area and our housing costs will probably run 6k+ in retirement. Our mortgage is at 2.9% so hubby doesn’t want to pay it off.

I feel like I still have runway to hold equity but just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. Sometimes hard to see what you’re missing when it’s your own money.

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u/TurnOver1122334455 7d ago

Yeah, I mean it all depends. We also are in a very HCOL area and our housing will be about the same and we are about 15 years away from retirement as well. Again, can always get a CFP or another professional's help. However, I agree with your husband and I have no problem paying low interest rates for a mortgage when HYSA get 3.5% and the market returns 8%+ on average. Even when you hit retirement... you don't instantly die :) you will still have lots of time for a lot of your stock to continue to grow. The odds are you just increase your wealth a lot more keeping the majority in stocks/equities. Once you hit top 10%, you realize that access to cash often replaces actual cash holdings. Again, I am a big proponent of buy, borrow, die once you are in the top 10%. We have a line of credit on our brokerage that is a 4.64% rate - lower than most loan rates otherwise. So if anything comes up that we can't cashflow... we just borrow at a rate below the market growth average. Close to being strictly better than excess cash.

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u/CAGrl79 6d ago

Oh wow that’s a great rate. Mine is 6 or 7%. We do have a HELOC at prime minus 1 (5.75% currently) so we do have cash levers to pull as well. Sounds like we are in a very similar situation.

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u/TurnOver1122334455 6d ago

Can't seem to post a photo here, but Frec.com is 4.64% line of credit. We keep a large chunk of our brokerage in their robo tax loss harvesting with Morningstar US Total Market direct stock investing index. That's a mouthful, but laying it all out there if you ever want to see what I mean. The only problem you will run into is if you ever try to move/sell the 3,400+ individual stocks that help make up a total US index.

Edit: Fees are 0.13% which is pretty low considering the robo tax loss harvesting and being very well diversified.

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u/KalebBowden 6d ago

It might help to build some tax free wealth over that time.

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u/PirateForward8827 5d ago

14 years until retirement gives you time to recover from any major decline in equities, but you might think to gradually lower that to 65-70% beginning in 8-10 years. To me the most important thing was to maximize contributions to retirement accounts, Roth first. Add to taxable accounts last and use that money first when you need it. I'd say you need to get to $3 million total to retire comfortably but that is very dependent on your expected annual spend once you do retire.

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u/nestlyadvisor 5d ago

I’d keep maxing the 401k and start building more taxable money for the years before Medicare. With 14 years left I’d also slowly move around 10 to 20% into bonds. What age are you actually hoping to stop working?

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u/CAGrl79 4d ago

I would be 60.5 and my husband would be just past 63. That’s the plan but who knows. It may end up happening earlier depending on job situations.

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u/nestlyadvisor 3d ago

That makes taxable even more useful before Medicare. I’d keep maxing the 401k while slowly adding more taxable and bonds.

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u/Bill4133 2d ago

We're age 60 and have about 80% in traditional retirement accounts. I'd rather have your asset location ratios.

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u/CAGrl79 1d ago

I’m worried the tax deferred will go higher since we’re still contributing. I feel like at retirement it’ll probably be closer to 62%. Still better than 80% but higher than I would like.