Author Topic: College Student Asset Allocation  (Read 1794 times)

College Stash

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 78
  • Age: 29
  • Location: Midwest
College Student Asset Allocation
« on: March 16, 2015, 10:42:22 PM »
I'm a current college student and have been investing the last few years.

Currently my strategy is to contribute as much as possible to my roth ira account each year whether that be $5500 or my Earned Income amount.
Each year in my roth I contribute more to VNQ. I feel REITS are an excellent long-term investment, but only really practical in a tax-deferred account like a Roth Ira.

The rest of my savings from gifts, scholarships, etc. goes into my brokerage account which is almost entirely in VTI.

For a young college student with a long time horizon is this an intelligent allocation strategy?

Thank you in advance for the help.

GGNoob

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 726
  • Age: 37
  • Location: Colorado
Re: College Student Asset Allocation
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2015, 07:28:39 AM »
There's a lot of information we don't know here. But assuming you've been investing for a few years, you probably have a decent amount for your age in your Roth IRA. You should write yourself up an investment policy statement and figure out your asset allocation. Since you are using ETFs, you can easily diversify your portfolio without having to purchase funds at a minimum of $3k each.

Lets say you wanted do the the core four portfolio:
VTI (Total US Stock)
VNQ (US REIT)
VXUS (Total International Stock)
BND (Total US Bond)

You could pass on BND and eventually put bonds in your Traditional 401k through your employer after college. So all you'd need to do now is add VXUS to get some international allocation. Keep VNQ in your Roth and then VTI/VXUS could be placed in either the Roth or Taxable.

You could do an allocation of something like this for your stocks:
50% VTI
10% VNQ
40% VXUS

My Roth allocation is:
25% VTI (Total US Stock)
25% VXF (US Extended Market)
10% VNQ (US REITs)
15% VXUS (Total International)
15% VSS (International Small-Cap)
10% VWO (Emerging Markets)