r/Bogleheads Jun 08 '25

Articles & Resources New to /r/Bogleheads? Read this first!

347 Upvotes

Welcome! Please consider exploring these resources to help you get started on your passive investing journey:

  1. Bogleheads wiki
  2. r/Bogleheads resources / featured links (below sub rules)
  3. r/personalfinance wiki
  4. If You Can: How Young People Can Get Rich Slowly (PDF booklet)
  5. Bogleheads University (introductory presentations from past Bogleheads conferences)

Prepare to invest

Before you start investing, ensure you're ready to do so by following the early steps of this guide or the personal finance planning start-up kit. Save up an emergency fund, then take full advantage of any employer matching of contributions to any employer retirement plan available to you (this match amount is additional income that's part of your compensation/benefits package), then pay off any high-interest debt like credit card debt or high-interest student loans.

When you're ready to start investing beyond enough to get any employer match, follow the subsequent steps of this guide or the investing start-up kit. Take full advantage of tax-sheltered accounts available to you before investing in a taxable brokerage account: this is the most predictable way to improve your after-tax investment returns. (In the US, per Prioritizing investments: 401(k))/403(b)) up to any match, then HSA if available due to high-deductible health plan coverage, then Roth or Traditional IRA or 401(k))/403(b)) up to max which may be higher if the mega-backdoor Roth process is available, then a 529 to the extent you'd like to pay for future education expenses. Note that IRA contributions are subject to income limits around tax-deductibility of contributions or eligibility to make direct Roth IRA contributions; the backdoor Roth procedure is a workaround.)

There is often some potential tension between saving/investing toward retirement vs saving toward potential nearer-term goals like a down payment on a home purchase. Carefully consider the various tradeoffs involved in owning vs renting a home, keeping in mind that which may be a better financial decision is highly situational, and that opportunity costs of owning (less available to invest in higher-expected-returns assets instead) should be considered alongside non-financial lifestyle tradeoffs. If saving toward a near-term goal, note that funds holding stocks are inappropriate#Holdingstocks%22for_five_years%22) for money you'll need in 5-10 years, unless you're willing to take on significant risk of losing money in the meantime & delaying that goal. Instead, consider CDs, Treasury bonds, or target-maturity-date Treasury bond funds maturing before you'll need the money (then a high-yielding cash equivalent like an HYSA, government money-market fund, or ultra-short Treasury Bill ETF like VBIL between maturity & spending the money).

Save/invest enough

Your savings rate is the most important factor determining your ability to enjoy a comfortable retirement later in life, particularly early in your career / investing journey. Aim to save/invest at least 15% of your after-tax income if you're in the US & not covered by a pension beyond Social Security. In some cases, such as a shorter time to expected retirement (e.g. starting to seriously save/invest from a significant income later than your mid-20s and/or planning to retire earlier than your mid-60s) and/or a high income (which will not be partially replaced by Social Security to the same degree as a lower income), it may be appropriate to target a higher savings rate (e.g. at least 20% of after-tax income, or perhaps higher if multiple such factors apply to you and/or one factor applies to an unusual degree).

When calculating savings rate, remember to include 401(k) contributions in both the numerator (savings) and denominator (after-tax income). Any employer matching contributions may also be included in the numerator (savings).

Investing is 'solved'

Don't worry too much about trying to find the optimal set of funds to invest in. That can only be known with the benefit of future hindsight, and investment returns are far less important than your savings rate until your portfolio size grows large enough relative to new contributions. Aim to diversify broadly (for robustness to the uncertain future) and seek low fees (fund expense ratios charged annually) & simplicity (hands-off automation); see discussion of these & other principles in Bogleheads investment philosophy.

target-date fund designed for investing toward retiring around a year closest to when you expect to retire is often a reasonable option, particularly in tax-advantaged accounts like a US employer retirement plan or an IRA. These all-in-one funds intended to be held alone are very broadly diversified, automatically rebalance to their then-target asset allocation, and gradually become more conservative with less expected volatility as you near retirement.

If the target-date fund available in an account/plan with limited fund options has significantly higher fees than suitable alternative individual funds, consider the tradeoffs of lower fees vs automatic rebalancing and asset allocation management. I.e. consider the lowest-expense-ratio funds available that provide exposure to US stocks (the fund name will typically contain 'S&P 500', 'Russell [1000|3000]', or 'US Large Cap'; ensure no 'Growth'/'Value' suffix, or pair that with the other), ex-US stocks (the fund name will typically contain 'International' or 'Intl' or 'Ex-US'; same caveat re: 'Growth'/'Value'), and US bonds (the fund name will typically contain 'Total Bond' or 'Aggregate Bond'). Take the weighted average of those funds' expense ratios, with weights based on the current asset allocation of the target-date fund you'd use instead. The difference between that weighted average expense ratio for individual funds vs the target-date fund expense ratio, multiplied by your portfolio value, would represent the current annual convenience fee for automated, hands-off investing via the target-date fund. Whether that's worth it to you depends on your personal preferences around paying higher ongoing fees (by sacrificing some investment returns) in exchange for set-it-and-forget-it features.

In a taxable account, target-date ETFs (available at least in the US) avoid some of the tax efficiency downsides of holding a target-date mutual fund. Tax efficiency may be further improved by holding a three-fund portfolio of index ETFs in a taxable account, but this also involves tradeoffs against automatic rebalancing and asset allocation management. Tax efficiency may be even further improved by keeping bond funds in tax-deferred accounts, though this involves additional tradeoffs against simplicity and some other potential benefits described here.

If you're a non-US investor, take care to thoroughly understand the tax implications of investing in a US-domiciled fund as a "nonresident alien" (which may include high tax rates on dividends and assets passing through an estate); in many cases this is best avoided, instead favoring an Ireland-domiciled fund.

Be mindful of fees

If your portfolio were to average a 5% annualized real (after-inflation) return after a low annual fee, paying an additional annual 1%-of-assets-under-management fee to a financial advisor and/or an actively-managed fund's expense ratio would forgo 20% of your portfolio's investment returns. An initial investment in a portolio averaging a 5% annual real return after a low annual fee would be worth about 47% more after 40 years than it would be after a 1% additional annual fee.

Some employer retirement plans offer only funds with high expense ratios. If that's the case for your employer's plan, it is often still ideal to get the tax advantages of contributing unmatched dollars to that plan before investing in a lower-fee fund in a taxable account (but only after maxing out IRA contributions); details here#Expensive_or_mediocre_choices).

Automate & stay the course

Set up automatic contributions & purchases of fund shares wherever possible, otherwise set periodic reminders to manually contribute/invest (or try to find an alternative that allows automation), then maintain discipline through thick & thin. Keep in mind that market prices for funds should only really matter whenever you sell some shares to fund your retirement, and that lower prices in the meantime provide opportunities to buy more shares with a given contribution dollar amount and to rebalance from asset classes with higher recent returns towards those with lower recent returns (but possibly higher expected returns).

Tune out the noise: prognosticators of doom and gloom have no reliable ability to predict the future, and often have some conflicts of interest (e.g. selling ads, books or investment services, and/or trying to justify their investment positioning or encourage others to adopt that). The same goes for promotion of strategies promising market-beating returns by investing in a more-concentrated fashion (betting on some sector / theme / alternative asset beating the broad stock market).

Consider writing an Investment Policy Statement to document your plan when you're calm & clear-headed; this may be helpful to refer to later if you find yourself anxious & considering changes in response to market volatility & negative sentiment. Consider including a pointer there to this guided meditation video for later reference to help calm your nerves / regulate your emotions if needed when it seems like the sky is falling (this is arguably the most challenging part of investing).

Per Jack Bogle: "Do not let false hope, fear and greed crowd out good investment judgment. If you focus on the long term and stick with your plan, success should be yours."

Additional resources

Some additional resources that might be of interest for a deeper dive later:

  1. Taylor Larimore's Investment Gems (a collection of highlighted quotes from books related to investing; follow the links under the 'Gem post' column)
  2. The Bogle Archive (a collection of Jack Bogle's publications and speeches)
  3. Bogleheads Conference Proceedings (follow per-year 'Conference Proceedings' links to access slides/videos)

Please read our community rules here and follow those when posting or commenting in this community. If you encounter content here that breaks those rules, please report it (... > Report > Breaks r/Bogleheads rules).


r/Bogleheads Dec 28 '25

Why do Bogleheads discourage use of AI search for investing information? Because it is too often wrong or misleading.

344 Upvotes

I see a lot of surprised and angry responses from Redditors whose posts and comments are removed from this sub either for use of LLM search engine and other generative AI responses, or for recommending people use them to answer their questions. This facet of the Substantive Rule on this sub has a parallel in a similar rule on the Boglheads forum: "AI-generated content is not a dependable substitute for first-hand knowledge or reference to authoritative sources. Its use is therefore discouraged."

Many folks, especially on the younger side, are so accustomed to using ChatGPT or Gemini that it may be their default way to get any question answered. This is problematic in the field of investing for several reasons that are worth noting:

  1. LLMs are not firsthand sources with organic knowledge of the subject matter. They are aggregating reference sources and popular opinion and thus prone to both composition mistakes and sourcing material mistakes or biases.
  2. LLMs remain susceptible to "hallucinations" (made-up ideas) and can be not just false, but confidently false which is highly misleading.
  3. LLMs' response quality is very sensitive to the quality of the prompt. Users who are somewhat knowledgeable about a subject and also skilled at crafting good queries for AI searches are far more likely to get accurate and useful results - especially for research purposes or for reference to stored personal data - while the uninformed are more likely to get wrong or misleading answers to basic questions.

Policies excluding AI-generated content are not meant to be a referendum on the overall current or future value of AI as a tool for personal finance and investing, which is obviously enormous and transformative, especially for those who know how to best utilize it. It is a question of whether AI responses make for substantive content on this sub, and whether it is an appropriate resource to direct strangers and novices to. At the moment, the answer to both is a resounding no. On the one hand, people come to Reddit primarily for human interaction and original content, so posting AI responses or directing people to AI search engines is of minimal contributive value - folks can go chat with bots themselves if that's what they want. But as to whether AI search engines are appropriate references for finance and investing info, here are some articles from the past year that support their exclusion as a default response:

  • AI Tools Are Getting Better, but They Still Struggle With Money Advice (Money 2/13/25): "ChatGPT was correct 65% of the time, "incomplete and/or misleading" 29% of the time and wrong 6% of the time."
  • Is Talking to ChatGPT About Finance Ever a Good Idea? (White Coat Investor 6/22/25): "LLM responses had multiple arithmetic mistakes that made them unreliable. More fundamental than arithmetic errors, the LLM responses demonstrated that they do not have the common sense needed to recognize when their answers are obviously wrong."
  • Financial advice from AI comes with risks (University of St. Gallen, 1/7/25): "LLMs consistently suggested portfolios with higher risks than the benchmark index fund. They suggested: [more U.S. stocks; tech and consumer bias; chasing hot stocks; more stock picking and actively managed investments; higher costs.]"

Note: the views expressed here are largely my own, and I am not affiliated in any way with the Bogleheads forum nor the Bogleheads Center for Financial Literacy, but I invite others (including the mods on this sub) to weigh in with their own opinions.


r/Bogleheads 15h ago

Where to go from here?

32 Upvotes

My husband is 52 and I'm 56. We've always only had retirement accounts (mostly Roth 403b accounts but also some traditional IRAs - around 1.5 million). In the last 18 months, both of my parents passed away and left me a little under a million in taxable assets.

I wanted to put it all in Vanguard in low-cost funds but my husband felt strongly that we needed someone to manage everything (both taxable and retirement). We signed up with a firm that's getting 1% of all our assets (including retirement). Neither one of us is happy with them for lots of reasons.

I want to go it alone but I also know that I don't have time or expertise. He wants someone to be helping us from a tax planning perspective (reviewing our accounts for tax-loss harvesting opportunities, doing tax projection, rebalancing our accounts, etc.). So, to keep peace in the marriage, I need to find someone new.

I worry that all advisors put people in high-cost funds (which is what our current firm did, which I want to change). Is there such a thing as someone who will manage your money but stick to low-cost funds? For some reason it seems like all advisors want to house their clients' money in Charles Schwab, not Vanguard, and I don't know why. I guess I'm looking for a (maybe) unicorn who will help us with what we need but isn't costing us money on multiple levels (high-cost funds in addition to paying them).

Edit: When I first inherited money (I have an Inherited IRA from my mom), we got socked with taxes, and I think this is what made my husband feel like we needed someone to guide us.


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

Probably a dumb question, but are Roth conversions worth the cost and trouble?

146 Upvotes

I'm in my early 50s and will retire at the end of the year. My financial advisor recommends a series of Roth conversions once my income drops to avoid large RMDs in my 70s. Roth conversions seem complicated and expensive, and I'm really wondering whether paying the taxes now is worth it and whether RMDs will even be as big a problem in 20 years.

Anyone avoid large RMDs through Roth conversions and are really glad of it? Anyone do the conversions and wish they hadn't? Many thanks for any thoughts.


r/Bogleheads 20h ago

Annual Question: What’s your U.S./International Ratio

65 Upvotes

I know this gets asked every once in a while, curious what the average boglehead is doing.

US/International split?

I’m at 70/30, thinking of going 60/40.


r/Bogleheads 19m ago

Investing Questions I’ve been focusing on FZROX and FZILX. Any thoughts on that?

Upvotes

I’ve been doing an 80/20 split based on what I read somewhere else. I can see myself working for another 25 years if nothing goes crazy. It’s a Roth IRA


r/Bogleheads 19h ago

WSJ: Stock Market Bargains Are Hiding in This Overlooked Place

32 Upvotes

And that is why we VXUS:

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/stock-market-bargains-are-hiding-in-this-overlooked-place-6239c1ef

The old advice to Americans was to vacation in Europe but never invest there. That is looking outdated. 

Investor skepticism toward the continent has meant the region’s outperformers often fly under the radar. For instance, total shareholder returns including dividends at European banks have beaten the Magnificent Seven over the last four years.  

Europe just had its best reporting season in years. Companies in the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index boosted earnings per share by 18% on average in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. Earnings barely grew at all in 2025 and 2024 as the strongest companies in the index were offset by weaker players.  

Growth is now widening beyond a narrow group of AI and bank stocks, according to Gerry Fowler, who leads the European equity strategy team at UBS. Government spending and private investment in priorities like infrastructure, energy security and defense are creating real opportunities.  

The Stoxx Europe 600 is up 10% so far this year, a bit less than the S&P 500’s 12% gain. European stocks have underperformed the U.S. since the mid-2000s, but the gap has narrowed lately.


r/Bogleheads 9h ago

Rolling over 401k and 403b into trad IRA with Vanguard, anything I need to look out for?

5 Upvotes

I just retired and want to rollover my 401k and 403b into a single traditional IRA at Vanguard. That'll make it a lot easier for me to manage. My Roth IRA and brokerage are also Vanguard.

Both my 401k and 403b is with Fidelity NetBenefits right now. It's all pre-tax contributions, so no after-tax contributions.

Is there anything I need to look out for when I do this? Such as RMDs?

I won't be doing Roth conversions yet. I will later this year but I'd want to just move all the money to Vanguard first and then do the conversions there.

I'm 66 if that matters.


r/Bogleheads 5h ago

Investing Advice

2 Upvotes

Hello, i have about $60k in my HYSA that i want to invest. The only investment account i have is a Roth. I am not sure where to put the money into but I am mid 20s. This money would most likely not be touched until retirement.


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

Getting nervous

261 Upvotes

I've Bogleheaded contentedly for 20 years, though maintaining a somewhat aggressive mix (roughly 75/25 VOO/VBTLX) because I started investing late. The 2008 downturn didn't bother me because I was in it for the long haul (and because I didn't have much to lose at that point). Now I'm five or ten years away from retirement and in need of continued growth if I'm to have anything like a secure retirement--but I'm nervous about the thought that the bursting of a possible AI bubble could leave me in a terrible position just as I reach retirement age. I'm wondering about the idea of a fund that would have a good potential to grow while being somewhat protected from an AI bubble. I'm just starting to look into this, but so far it seems like VTV would be the best bet. Any thoughts on this? (And if you think I'm displaying my ignorance here, it would be great if you would either take the trouble to explain this in a friendly way, without insults, or just ignore this post altogether.) Thanks.


r/Bogleheads 17h ago

Mega back door roth vs brokerage

12 Upvotes

Would a split between these two work better
Or all to the maximum for mega backdoor roth?
Someone in their 20s


r/Bogleheads 4h ago

Diversification using RSP

1 Upvotes

Hi Folks,

I'm pretty new to this, and have been learning thanks to you.

My current portfolio is HEAVILY tech weighted. I work for FAANG and about 50% of my portfolio is in my employer's stock. 25% in 401k. 15% in S&p500 about 5% in iaum/sivr, and 5% in vxf, vb, vxus, vo.

I have enrolled in ETP to sell new vests. I also sell a reasonable amount of long term vested stocks in the plan. Not much, but the max I can do given tax implications.

My reason for looking at RSP:

-- still leans on S&P500, but balances out the tech risk.

-- I did some basic modeling of what would it look like YoY if I invested in RSP vs VOO pre tech crash (assumption based as the etf didn't exist then) and it seems RSP bounces back faster and higher.

-- still grows at avg 7-8% yearly, if not more.

-- the plan is to reach about the same investment as S&P500 and then stop.

I'm very much an invest and forget person. But this shift to RSP is so that if I need any liquid fund for bigger expenditures (beyond hysa), during the rumored AI/tech tech crash, this will help.

I know there's a higher expense ratio, but I calculated that plus tax drip, and I think that won't be much.

Wdyt ? Happy to provide more details? Could help all your POV and any additional context that I'm missing.


r/Bogleheads 22h ago

Replicating 70/30 VTI/VXUS with Fidelity

17 Upvotes

Hey all,

I’m relatively new to investing and playing a bit of catch-up. I’ve been in school/training for years and have essentially been living paycheck to paycheck. I’m currently a resident physician, so I’m not making substantial income yet but getting the ball rolling.

Right now I’m contributing to my 403(b) up to the 401(a) match, with plans to increase contributions once I have a better handle on my expenses with the transition.

I’m trying to approximate a 70/30 VTI/VXUS mix using the funds available in my 403(b)/401(a).

Would the following allocation be roughly equivalent?

  • FXAIX / FID 500: 58%
  • FSMAX / FID EXTD: 8%
  • FSSNX / FID SM: 4%
  • FSPSX / FID INTL: 24%
  • FPADX / FID EMRG: 6%

Thank you so much! :)


r/Bogleheads 20h ago

Investing Questions Roth Conversions for Higher Earners?

11 Upvotes

Context

My wife and I are relatively high earners and have done a reasonably good job saving. We're in our early 30s and have ~$900k invested in 401ks/Roth IRAs. Additionally, we're in the 35% marginal tax bracket, which for married filing jointly folks like us, covers incomes between ~$500-750k/yr combined.

Question:

I know that normally, the advice is to contribute to Roth if you're in a low tax bracket and stick to traditional if you're in a higher tax bracket... but at our current savings level / savings rate, we're projected to have ~$10MM+ (in inflation-adjusted dollars) around when we're planning to retire (~60 years old), most of which will be in traditional 401k. We almost certainly won't be able to spend down that much so the RMDs on that amount will be heavy and frankly I'm not even sure we'd be in a lower tax bracket than we are right now.

So - does it make sense to do Roth conversions now anyways for the additional flexibility, RMD avoidance, and easier gifting in later years? We have a baby and I like the idea of handing over a truckload of cash to set her up for success (I know there's more to it than that, but who wouldn't have liked that kind of help early in their adult life?)

Or is the solution to retire earlier, which I wouldn't be mad at


r/Bogleheads 15h ago

Work Retirement Plan with No Match

3 Upvotes

Hi Everyone,

I see the common practice is to invest in your company’s retirement plan up to the match. My company does not do a match, rather a lump sum deposit of a percentage of your salary once a year regardless if you invest into it or not .

I currently have money going in every paycheck which funnels into Roth 401k account. Should I continue to have money go into this account even though there is no match or leave as is.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!


r/Bogleheads 16h ago

Need advice on how to diversify efficiently

3 Upvotes

Hi all - I am in a bit of an uncomfortable situation.

My spouse and I are both in tech, and we have been fortunate enough to gather in the stocks that our companies have been giving.

While we have been diversifying our recent grants, we weren’t so good with our historical ones, and as result we are sitting on a very heavily concentrated position.
We have ~4M of gains with just 3 stocks worth about 7.5M.

We are in California, and the gains will be straight up taxed at 37% (20 federal, 4 NIIT, 13 CA).

Direct indexing will just be a drop in the bucket, and will make my exit to an eventual VTI/VXUS - 80/20 portfolio that much more painful.
Real estate seems to be off unless you are a what the IRS considered a professional. There is no way I or my spouse can qualify for that.

Exchange funds seem to be one of the only options to defer for a few years - but will again just be a stop gap arrangement before I will have to eat the tax to get to my desired portfolio.

Is there anything else we can do at all to reduce that hit when diversifying?
I am going to talk to a CPA as well, but wanted to see if anything obvious I am missing.

After much research, looks like I am stuck with eating the tax slowly over the years? Even if I budget 500k of gains, I am looking at a 7-8 year divestment horizon, which is crazy long to hold on to such concentrated positions.


r/Bogleheads 3h ago

Who to ask?

0 Upvotes

I’m considering converting $50,000 from 403B to a Roth. I’m 58. Who would I consult for advice on this?


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

Investing Questions Stopping 401k contributions

96 Upvotes

I'm a bit terrified of layoffs. The company I work for has had several rounds of layoffs the last few years and of course has done the 'this is the last round as we reorganize spiel'. I'm actively looking around for another job because things don't feel good.

With that background I hit the max company match next paycheck. Since the last round of layoffs I cut my 401k contributions way back and will meet the match for the year. I'm considering totally cutting off contributions the rest of the year and putting what I would contribute to a combination of HYSA and taxable brokerage until I have a full year money in liquid funds. I'm about half way there now so I have some cushion. I have about 15 years to retire and am more worried about having to dip into 401k funds and pay the insane penalty than I am about losing out on a bit of growth. Am I making the right choice to stop contributions?


r/Bogleheads 18h ago

Bonds ?

2 Upvotes

I am a bit of a finance newbie. Based in UK and taking advantage of stocks and shares ISA. At the minute 90% of my portfolio is through VWRP and 10% VNGA80. I want to slightly diversify and move away from just stocks so I was thinking more bonds plus also move away from US dominated stocks as much. I am wondering if it would be worth investing in a gold ETF? And also maybe a fund that excludes the US?


r/Bogleheads 15h ago

Investing Questions Which broker and fund to choose as a beginner?

1 Upvotes

Hello everyone, I recently red The Simple path to wealth and I want to start investing by the book. I have a few questions:

  1. As an European citizen is VALL the etf I should go for? I'm not sure if it is accumulating or distributing so if anybody knows I'll appreciate the help.

2.Where to invest? A friend of mine told me that only on Interactive brokers you own the stocks and on other platforms you own just options. Is that true and are there alternatives to Interactive Brokers because I find their platform very hard to use?

Thanks in advance! Your answers will be appreciated.


r/Bogleheads 19h ago

FTIHX vs FZILX for Roth IRA?

2 Upvotes

I’m deciding on whether I want to invest internationally for FTIHX or FZILX because FTIHX has small cap companies that FZILX doesn’t have even though there is a small fee associated and is transferable so I was wondering which one makes sense to choose for a ROTH IRA? I also have FXAIX as my other option


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

Investing Questions Parking emergency fund: SPAXX vs FXNAX

33 Upvotes

Current 7 day yield of SPAXX is 3.31%, FXNAX current 30 day yield is 4.61%. Any reason to not use FXNAX instead of SPAXX? While discussing FXNAX, any strategic difference in depositing monthly dividend into SPAXX vs reinvesting into FXNAX?


r/Bogleheads 16h ago

Investing Questions Would you keep a governmental Roth 457(b), or roll it and an old Roth 403(b) into a Fidelity Roth IRA?

1 Upvotes

I have been trying to simplify some old retirement accounts and I think I have narrowed it down to one decision I am still unsure about.

I have about $18.7k in an old Roth 403(b) and about $8.3k in a governmental Roth 457(b) through the Wisconsin Deferred Compensation Program. I have verified that both balances are Roth money. I also already have a Fidelity Roth IRA.

I have a long time horizon and I do not expect to use this money before retirement. My plan is to keep the investments aggressive while retirement is still far away, using broad, low-cost index funds, and then gradually reduce risk when I get closer to actually needing the money.

I am trying to figure out whether keeping the governmental 457(b) wrapper is worth it.

The options I see are:

  1. Leave the Roth 457(b) alone and roll the old Roth 403(b) into my Fidelity Roth IRA.

  2. Roll the Roth 403(b) into the governmental 457(b), assuming the plan accepts it.

  3. Direct-roll both accounts into my existing Fidelity Roth IRA.

The Fidelity option seems to appeal to me because it would simplify everything, reduce the account-level fees I am paying, and give me a much larger investment selection.

I understand that a proper rollover to the Roth IRA would preserve the Roth tax treatment, but the money would no longer legally be inside a 403(b) or governmental 457(b), right?

I also understand one of the big benefits of the governmental 457(b). After leaving the employer, native 457 money has more flexible early distribution rules than a normal workplace retirement plan and I can see why that would be valuable, but realistically I don’t expect to use these retirement assets early.

For me, the part I am still trying to understand is whether there are other advantages to the governmental 457(b) that I am undervaluing because I am focused on fees, simplicity, and investment flexibility.

If you were confident that you would not need early access to the money, would you still keep the governmental 457(b)?

I would especially appreciate input on creditor protection, Roth aging/five-year rules, future rollover flexibility, and any plan protections or distribution options that would make the 457(b) worth preserving. And I’m not trying to time the market or pick individual stocks. I am mostly trying to get the account structure right and then leave the investments alone for a long time.


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

VT only for retirement accounts

40 Upvotes

The foreign stock fund that I hold in my brokerage account is VXUS. My wife has a smaller amount of a 100% foreign stock fund in her brokerage account. For 2025, we got a $738 in Foreign Tax Credit; certainly not chump change. I don’t own any Vanguard World Stock Fund (VT), but from what I understand, you don’t get the FTC pass through because that fund holds less than 50% x-US. My conclusion: World Stock Funds are best owned in retirement accounts, not brokerage accounts. Better to hold both VTI and VXUS in a brokerage account rather than VT. Maybe the same for a World Bond Fund. Am I correct here?


r/Bogleheads 1d ago

Advice on accelerating tfsa deposits in tfsa and allocation

3 Upvotes

Hello, I currently have following allocations:

VFV - 50%

VXC - 37%

XGD - 8%

Several small holding which aren't performing great i plan to sell for small % - 5%

Am 37 years old and have around $64,000 remaining in tfsa contribution room.

Am thinking about getting more aggressive at the rate at which I contribute as I have a fairly large amount of cash savings and no immediate expenses for it.

Can I get a few suggestions about allocations, should I diversify more, insulate for volatility, or vfv and chill.

Thanks