Yep, your assumptions on the tradeoffs are correct.
Except you don't want the Fidelity Freedom 2055 Fund, you want Fidelity Freedom
Index 2055 Fund (FDEWX). The latter invests in a handful of index funds, like your FFNOX does, while the former invests in a zillion expensive managed funds, which makes that fund both expensive itself, and philosophically stupid, since throwing a ton of managed funds together will just make them average out like an index fund anyway.
So if it was 0.78% ER of FDEEX vs. the ~0.10% ER of the individual Spartan funds, the decision would be easy, but with the 0.16% ER of FDEWX, it comes down much more to preference.
For what it's worth, in my 17-year investing career, I've never had to actively rebalance. Rare and minor adjustments to my contributions have been sufficient to keep my asset allocation where I want it. If you went with the individual funds, I would recommend holding the largest component of your AA (FSTMX) in your taxable account, and the other three in your IRA. That both keeps a tax-efficient fund in your taxable account, and minimizes the chance of any future rebalancings occurring on the taxable side.
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Thank you, you've been incredibly helpful!!
Does anyone know of good charting tools where I could plug into symbols and compare value of $X invested over periods of time? I've used Yahoo finance's but I'm not terribly fond of it.
Also RE: school, I still have to take the GMAT and after I would have a discussion with my boss about potential reimbursement - I'm nearly positive my company does not have an official reimbursement policy but there is a chance I could get special treatment. However, the more research I do, the more I think this whole process may not be worth it. I had a co-worker make a bit of a stink last year so my company sent our team to multiple training classes at a well-regarded professional institute so I think I will try to go to more of those this year. Obviously this is far from an MBA but I think it shows I have desire to continually develop my knowledge base.