Age 52. Only started making enough to substantially save a decade ago. Make 60K/yr. My wife is a bit older, and just works a couple of days a week as a nurse. She comes from a poor family. Her retirement isn't much- probably 65K at this point. Partially paid on a house, debts are only monthly things. Looking for some land to gradually move to, maybe keep the the urban house as a rental- I'm from the country originally, and ready to get back.
I first fill up the Roth each yr with 7K. Right now it's worth 65K. Current breakdown:
Fund/Index Current Value
VTI Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund ETF Shares 36.1K
PARMX Parnassus Mid Cap Fund 14.1K
VWIGX Vanguard International Growth Fund Investor Shares 8.3K
Cash 7.5 K
The "overflow" of money that I have available to invest goes into a retirement fund (I'm a school teacher), currently at $100/month. I started this a few years back. My plan is to increase the contribution as my salary increases, though I'll be topping out in the next few years, and COL increases I doubt will be huge:
VITFX Vanguard Instl Trgt Retire 2035 Instl 6.1 K
I received a small inheritance 6 years back and put $55K of it into a Vanguard account. It has done very well, but my rationale is that I should be loading what I have to invest each month into my tax-advantaged accounts, so nothing has been added to it. This is one of the things I'm soliciting advice on- is this the way to go? Here's how it stands currently at 104K:
Vanguard S&P Mid-Cap 400 Growth ETF 18.2K
Vanguard S&P Mid-Cap 400 Value ETF 10.5K
Vanguard Dividend Growth Fund 43.9K
Vanguard Health Care ETF 8.9 K
Vanguard International Growth Fund Investor Shares 22.9K
Put togher, these accounts come together to make up the he basic allocation that I've roughly followed was to weight my asset classes thusly:
Large Blend VTI Roth/VITFX 401K 24%
Dividend Growth VDIGX 25%
midcap value IVOV 6%
midcap growth IVOG 11%
midcap blend PARMX 8%
international growth VWIGX roth/vgd split 18%
health care VHT 6%
Investable cash 5%
In my state retirement, I have about 90K. Also, 12K worth of metals (real, not certificates). 25K in the bank.
As you can guess, my weighting partially derives from years back when I checked out Dan Wiener's model portfolios. No need for Wiener commentary, I've read my share. I was never orthodox about it, but it was helpful for getting started.
I'm trying to maintain some discipline in my allocation plan. These have been my weights for several years. I've done some small modifications, but not a whole lot of change. I rebalance twice a year. I'm not ready for the "just put everything into Total Market" move, but some simplification I'm open to doing.
Some considerations I'm looking at:
Probably too many questions, but I promise to be very attentive to any feedback. I really appreciate this forum and the level of seriousness that it has.