A lot of people know that having an asset allocation and sticking to it is a decent way to manage your investments without getting sucked into market timing. But how do you track your current asset allocation and compare it against your targets?
I figured I would share how I do it, since I have recently streamlined the process a bit and it's pretty easy now.
Here is the Root of Good portfolio with my target allocation, my current allocation, and a calculated amount I need to add or subtract to each asset class to reach the target:
I use Personal Capital to consolidate all investment holdings into one place. Here's what the "holdings" screen looks like at PC:
I copy and paste the holdings data into my customized analysis spreadsheet to get the first table I show in this post. The spreadsheet took a little time to set up like I wanted it, but now it only takes me about 2 minutes to copy/paste from Personal Capital and then I'm working in my analysis spreadsheet with updated holdings data.
If you don't feel like building a custom analysis spreadsheet, Personal Capital has a built in portfolio analyzer that shows your portfolio composition broken into various asset classes:
I figured this might be useful to some, because I used to spend a lot of time visiting all my different brokerages, 401k's, and IRAs and manually downloading the data. Now the holdings data are all in one place through PC.
If you are curious, I go into more detail on how I rebalance and give a few examples in a
recently published article.