new member, new portfolio (foreigner living in US)

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Astones
Posts: 322
Joined: Mon Apr 12, 2021 12:48 pm

new member, new portfolio (foreigner living in US)

Post by Astones »

Hi all !
I am new here. I've been doing my best to learn the abc of investing in the last two years and Bogle has been by far the figure who appeared to make most sense to me, so I am very excited to have found this community.

I am a 30 years old European who has been living in US for the last 3 years. I am unsure about how long I will keep living here (my job requires moving a lot), and my investment decisions are influenced by this aspect.

I have roughly $ 120k. I have kept 20k as emergency fund and invested the remaining 100k.

So far I have made virtually no contribution to my 401K. This can be a problem in the long run, but I am uncertain about putting money there in case I will soon leave the country.

I am single with no kids and no plan to have them in the foreseeable future.
I don't plan to buy a home.
My salary is $ 100k per year before the taxes.

Everything I will describe is done in an account with Fidelity.

State of residence: NY
Desired asset allocation: Given my young age I was planning to have almost 100% stocks when I'll reach the age of 32. I have started investing rather recently and I did not feel comfortable to invest in stocks everything immediately, so for the year 2021 I plan to keep the present allocation of 30% stocks, then to move to 60% in 2022 and close to 100 % in 2023, but I'm looking forward to a feedback on this.

Portfolio:

Stocks 30 % in the following equally weighted 12 ETFs. (Note = while it sounds unnecessarily complicated to have as many as 12 -and with a lot of redundancy- my reasoning was that having the same amount in each of them makes it look easier to me to handle than having fewer ETFs but with asymmetric weights. In this way, whenever I have money to invest, I just buy a bit more of the ETFs that are under-weighted and I don't need to make big calculations)

US large
Vanguard S&P500 (VOO)
I-share total market (ITOT)
Vanguard value large-cap (VTV)
US small
Vanguard small-cap (VB)
Vanguard Russell 2000 (VTWO)
Vanguard small value (VBR)
World large
Vanguard world (VT)
Vanguard world exUS (VEU)
Vanguard developed exUS (VEA)
Vanguard emerging (VWO)
World small
Schwab int. small-cap (SCHC)
Vanguard int small-cap (VSS)

Inflation protected bonds 50%
Vanguard short term inflation protected (VTIP) (40%)
Schwab inflation protected (SCHP) (10%)

Other bonds 20% (equally weighted bond ETFs)
Vanguard long term (BLV)
Vanguard Short term (BSV)
Vanguard short term Corporate bonds (VCSH)
Vanguard international bonds (BNDX)

My idea is that in the time of two to three years I will slowly use the money currently allocated to inflation adjusted bond ETFs to buy stock ETFs, shifting the allocation toward stocks.

Questions
1) First, very generally, did I say anything that makes absolutely no sense ? Even though I did my research, of course I still consider myself a beginner.

2) More specifically, am I doing a mistake by not investing immediately in stocks according to my desire future allocation and diluting the investment in two to three years?

3) Is there anything intrinsically wrong about having so many stock ETFs ? I don't find it necessarily complicated, since the equal weight makes it rather straightforward, but perhaps there are other problems I'm not aware of.

4) is there any dangerous asymmetry in the asset allocation?

5) should I make more contributions to my 401K even though I might soon leave the country? So far I keep virtually everything in the taxable account.

Thank you for reading and stay safe!
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