Lunarstorm & BiggBeans,
There has been some good suggestions and discussion above. Here is our story for your review and consideration.
I retired effective 1-Feb-21 from megaoil corp after 43 year working in the oilfields all over the world, the last ~20 year living in Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria as Married Accompanied Basis Expats - we kept our home in The Woodlands incase I ever had to come back and work the home office. Fortunately that did not occur.
ms gamboolgal and I were not poor but we did not have much at all and were living on love and buying on time for many many years - as I started out Roughnecking at 18 year old. I say this because we got no inheritances or windfalls over our lifetime together.
I wish that someone would have helped me 40 year ago to understand saving and planning for retirement.....and how to do it.
We did what we did by working, saving and investing later in life once we started to learn abit.
ms gamboolgal taught school for a few years but for most of our 40 year marriage she has been a SAHM and when the kids got to college she moved full-time to Africa to be with me since we did not come home but once or twice per year at most.
We self manage our Portfolio. But we did not always do so. For many years we had monies being actively managed by a well known and respected Financial Management Firm. They charge a % of total Portfolio value as a fee - as is customary with these types of firms.
About 10 year ago, after much reading and studying (see links below) we established a Portfolio at Vanguard as we have detailed herein.
During the first ~8 year Vanguard outperformed the actively managed firm by a huge %.
We finally had enough and moved to consolidate all of our personal savings and upon retirement move all of our megaoil corp savings to Vanguard to consolidate and simplify.
We are not speculators. We invest and hold to our investments as per our own Investment Policy Statement (IPS) and Philosophy. Boggleheads link below will explain this - do recommend that folks have a IPS of their own.
As such we are not buying and selling much at all. We will rebalance if and when as necessary but that is very rare.
Some folks like to spread their monies around to different firms, e.g., Fidelity, Vanguard, Edward Jones, etc., - thats ok and I sorta get it. But for us the ease and simplicity of having our Portfolio with Vanguard is well worth it. And remember, we are invested in thousands of individual Bonds and Equities thru VG funds- not in Vanguard. Thus we do not see the risk or need to spread out the monies with the resultant hassles and complications.
We maintain a Asset Allocation (AA) of 50% equities and 50% Bonds/Cash.
Just fyi - AA as of today is 49.5% Equities, 47.9% Bonds, and 2.6% Cash.
We rebalance if the AA gets ~2% off target - which does not happen alot.
We keep about 2 to 3 years worth of net living expenses in Cash. This allows us ride out the normal Market Peaks and especially the valleys; and sleep good at night.
We know and accept that we are not making Return On Investment (ROI) on the Cash - but we sleep good at night. This is same reason we paid off our home mortgage many years previously.
Being out of debt was/is a wonderful thing to us.
We have/use Mutual Funds (MF's) and Electronically Traded Funds (ETFs) - I would recommend using ETF's now instead of MF's for simplicity. The ETF's were not around when we established our Portfolio at VG and thus invested in our MF's.
We use following 3 X ETF's from VG. We have 2 X Bond Funds as one is Long Term (BND) and the other is short term (BIV). Our equities is VTI.
You could easily just use VTI and BND or BIV at 50/50 and maybe some cash if you are so inclined.
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We like and recommend Vanguard. But you would do well at Fidelity and others.
I would say to be careful of hiring a Financial Planner and Management Firm as they will normally charge a % of your Portfolio - and it is a lot of monies. As I said we did exactly that for a long time and I regret that I/we did not move to VG and self manage as I described above many years previously..... But live and learn....
I recommend the following 2 X Web Sites / Communities and forums to read and study up on.
You can post your particulars in the suggested formats and you will get excellent feedback and suggestions.
https://www.early-retirement.org
You can also seek out a paid by the hour Chartered Financial Advisor (CFA) to review your particulars and provide you with advice. They will not manage your monies for you. We did this with Mr. Rick Ferri, and we highly recommend him. But there is many competent and well regarded CFA's out there. We used Mr. Ferri on 3 occasions - one was really just hand holding and reconfirming our previous reviews. Cost was in the ~$750 range per consultation. Well worth it for us and very useful recommendations and advice. And for us to bolster our confidence that we did have a good plan and could self manage a mid seven figure Portfolio.
All the best in your endeavors.
gamboolman....
Lifes A Dance And You Learn As You Go....
