Author Topic: Blackrock fund in work retirement account  (Read 2058 times)

KCM5

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 881
Blackrock fund in work retirement account
« on: November 14, 2016, 12:31:06 PM »
I don't normally spend a lot of time worrying about my asset allocation - I have a lifecycle fund and an international fund in order to avoid that.

But now I'm starting to wonder about my lifecycle fund. After the recent market run-up, I thought I'd check on my investments to get some of those good feels. But they're still at where they were in August ($125,000). We add almost $3k/month. What's up with that?

I have two funds:

VTIAX - 16%
LPVIX - 84%

VTIAX is Vanguard total international that I have our IRAs invested in with Vanguard. This fund is kind of volatile, but no big deal. The other one is Blackrock Lifepath 2055, which has all of our workplace plan holdings. I switched to it earlier in the year when our plan made some changes that made the cheap Vanguard index funds I was in the same (more expensive) price as a lifecycle fund (.34%), so I thought it'd be more balanced and would require no thought from then on. Now I'm second guessing myself. Should I be? I that one should stay the course. But I'm concerned that I might have chosen a poor fund? If it were an index fund I could just take a look at the index and compare, but it all seems like a bit of a black box to me with the lifecycle fund.

NoStacheOhio

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2136
  • Location: Cleveland
Re: Blackrock fund in work retirement account
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2016, 01:06:07 PM »

KCM5

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 881
Re: Blackrock fund in work retirement account
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2016, 01:20:42 PM »
Yeah, after I posted I looked further and it looks like over 50% of the fund is "Active stocks master portfolio" and "international tilts master portfolio," which look to be large funds managed by Blackrock.

I don't really know what I was thinking - I just moved into this fund when they wanted to charge me the same amount for the Vanguard indexes that I was in. I guess I can move providers to the one provider that has one fund at 0.04% (VITSX). I just feel a little annoyed at moving funds so much. I'm not trying to move things around so much, I just want to make a good choice and stick with it.

NoStacheOhio

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2136
  • Location: Cleveland
Re: Blackrock fund in work retirement account
« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2016, 01:30:16 PM »
Yeah, after I posted I looked further and it looks like over 50% of the fund is "Active stocks master portfolio" and "international tilts master portfolio," which look to be large funds managed by Blackrock.

I don't really know what I was thinking - I just moved into this fund when they wanted to charge me the same amount for the Vanguard indexes that I was in. I guess I can move providers to the one provider that has one fund at 0.04% (VITSX). I just feel a little annoyed at moving funds so much. I'm not trying to move things around so much, I just want to make a good choice and stick with it.

I think you fell victim to a sort of "forest for the trees" situation. There's more to fund choice than expense ratios. That particular target date fund doesn't use indexes (it holds some, but also holds active funds), and as such, probably isn't as good as your previous Vanguard index, even at the same expense ratio.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!