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View Poll Results: Most people should just put retirement savings in target funds and forget out it until their 60s
YES 20 48.78%
NO 14 34.15%
Who knows! 7 17.07%
Voters: 41. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 06-09-2017, 05:07 PM
 
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and how many of these uninformed folks these were marketed for will understand that fact ? very few . they will see a date and blindly follow it right or wrong ..

they are just to complex because of a changing glide path and vary from fund family to family .
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Old 06-10-2017, 10:38 AM
 
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I like them and have my funds in Vanguard target fund 2050.

If one is less risk tolerant, one can pick a sooner target date. If someone is less risk adverse, onr can buy a target fund farther than the anticipated retirement date.

One has to be cognizant of expense ratios as target funds can be more expensive and possibly have a bigger emergency fund.
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Old 06-10-2017, 11:50 AM
 
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in other words folks first have to understand how to analyze them . they need to understand that particular glide path .they still need to determine if it is right for them regardless of age . see my point about just throwing the masses in one .

the other factor is i have yet to know anyone who only owns the target fund .

they usually mix it in a hodge podge of other stuff undoing just what the target fund is trying to do defeating the purpose
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Old 06-11-2017, 04:43 AM
 
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People who don't like target funds for the average investor don't seem to understand that that the average person is not to make good decisions on their own due to being lazy or not so smart with money and investing.

Index funds are not perfect and their investment philosophy varies by brand, but they will be better for most people.
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Old 06-11-2017, 04:45 AM
 
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so are all the lazy portfolio's out there that do a hell of a good job with no effort and no knowledge of things .
you can't go wrong with most of them , if not all of them .

all the work is already done . google can be your friend . no matter what you do you need to know enough to pick a model or target fund to understand the risk and the investments to know what is right for you .

blindly picking a target fund by age varies to much from company to company for one size fits all , regardless . you still have to be able to analyze the glide path on a target fund or face the consequences of being to aggressive for you or to conservative and falling short of goals .

like i said dollar cost averaging in to a target fund is not the best way to get in but it is pretty much the top way of getting in .

the target fund can easily end up being to conservative and miss goals because that is just what happens when dollar cost averaging is used with them .

they are cutting allocations to stocks at the same time markets are going higher and higher over time and you are buying less and less shares each year because of rising markets .

with markets up 2/3's of the time and only down 1/3 of the time the two work against you .

that can leave you far more conservative than you thought you signed on for .

you end up with a very different model than had you bought in day one and got the glide path they designed in . . that is not as much a problem with balanced funds as there is not two moving targets to deal with and no glide path involved working against you so dollar cost averaging in over time works a lot better . .

https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/15...er-than-yours/


https://portfoliocharts.com/portfolios/

Last edited by mathjak107; 06-11-2017 at 05:27 AM..
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Old 06-11-2017, 06:54 AM
 
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My opinion is there are a lot of people that are under savers and have no idea of the investing world at all so I think target date funds are great place for them. At least with a target date they first & far most are investing for the future but that they are invested at all in a diversified portfolio.


Fidelity has some great Freedom funds for those that know they should be investing but don't really know anything about how to create a portfolio. The main point to investing is to experience a return that beats inflation so your dollars do not erode & target date funds accomplish this.
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Old 06-11-2017, 07:06 AM
 
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Sounds like the majority are not in favor of Target Date funds but the poll is tied. I don't own a TD fund but I have considered moving everything to one so that my wife will be confident handling things when I'm gone. If she has questions about how/when to disburse or rebalance that opens up the chance that someone will give her bad advice or worse. For that reason alone, a single TD fund portfolio is worth consideration, at least in my situation.
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Old 06-11-2017, 07:10 AM
 
105,824 posts, read 107,820,907 times
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most who are in favor of them really do not understand the ramifications of them . it is hard to really get a valid poll when you are choosing sides with out fully understanding the opposing side . that is the problem with any polls relating to financial planning . folks just understand so little it is hard to make an informed choice .

we saw that at my work where i was on the 401k committee and the youngins all went in to target funds for their ages and were so overly aggressive in 2008 they got scared out and never came back in .
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Old 06-11-2017, 07:15 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mathjak107 View Post
most who are in favor of them really do not understand the ramifications of them . it is hard to really get a valid poll when you are choosing sides with out fully understanding the opposing side . that is the problem with any polls relating to financial planning . folks just understand so little it is hard to make an informed choice .

we saw that at my work where i was on the 401k committee and the youngins all went in to target funds for their ages and were so overly aggressive in 2008 they got scared out and never came back in .
It's probably safe to assume those same people would have bailed no matter what the portfolio composition.
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Old 06-11-2017, 07:16 AM
 
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perhaps, but we don't know that , but one thing was known , there was no question they shouldn't have been 90-100% equities for their pucker factor .

on the other hand , why should it be assumed a 60 year old with a pension that covers expenses and a high pucker factor who is investing mostly for legacy money should be bond heavy .

age is such a vague criteria , it really is . it was only to cover wall streets butt since they can claim it is the industry recommendation as to what someone was put in .
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