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mrbrsman t1_j2e64uu wrote

I want to point out that “managing my investments more directly” can actually hurt returns, not help.

I tried to quickly find a link but couldn’t. There was a fidelity study a few years back that analyzed all their 401k participants and found that the best performing participants, were the ones who were deceased (by over a 100 bps).

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Fatindocce OP t1_j2efeu7 wrote

Thank you for your reply. Perhaps I should have worded the post a little better. I am not looking at fiddling with allocations continuously, I just wanted to set it up in a way that hopefully outperforms the target date fund and then leave it alone for the most part.

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Inevitable_Silver_13 t1_j2fq5si wrote

So the thing about the target date fund is that it gets more conservative over time and stays in bonds, cash, and money market funds as you approach retirement. That way if the market crashes a year before you retire you don't lose as much of your retirement savings.

Another thing to mention is it is going to be hard to outperform the target date fund without a lot of micromanaging that you might not have time for.

My plan is to keep most of my money in the target date fund and experiment more with say 10-20% of my account, but I do think you should have most of it in the target date fund, at least until you have a proven strategy which outperforms it.

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