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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Investor Alley => Topic started by: Poeirenta on December 26, 2016, 04:03:58 PM

Title: More bond fund questions! Asset allocation mini-case study
Post by: Poeirenta on December 26, 2016, 04:03:58 PM
I am trying to decide if it is time to add a bond fund to our tax-advantaged portfolio. I’ve been researching pros/cons, but honestly bonds/bond funds make my head swim! A couple of other bond-related posts have popped up lately, which made me even more curious what others would suggest given our specifics:

Team Dusty Dog is debt-, mortgage-, and child-free. Mid-40’s, about 5-8 years from FIRE. Our investor statement AA is 45% US stocks, 20% international stocks, 35% bonds.

Our actual AA is a little different though, and complicated by our gov’t pensions. When we list our pensions as bonds, AA is 50/17/24 plus 10% cash, mostly in CD ladder.  Add the cash to the bonds and we are close to our planned AA. However, if you take out the pensions, then AA is 58/19/11 plus 10% cash, so we’d need another 13% in bonds to reach planned AA.

So, add a bond fund (probably VBMFX but other suggestions welcome)? 

If we do go ahead with adding a bond fund, we could either sell some VTSAX to rebalance or change to purchasing bond fund shares with our monthly contributions in either my Trad IRA or his Roth or Simple until we get to the desired %. Any opinions on the strategy options?