Can you advise on what the good tools are?
It seems most of the education tools out there are either YouTube videos, bloggers, or people wanting to sell products.
I'm 36 so guessing I have another 30 years before I would touch my retirement income.
However, not sure if I see myself living in my current location - or any city - 10 years out as development is exploding in my area and the zoning changes are set to make this place look like the East Coast.
What about getting hosed on fees?
I had something called Euro Pacific Growth Fund.
That fucking thing made something like $250 over 10 years cause the fees were like $50/yr. Thank god it wasn't my money. I cashed it out and used it for a deposit on a board.
Kahn Academy is good as are some of the investment houses: Fidelity or Vanguard will provide educational tools.
30 years is plenty long to be as aggressive as you want/are comfortable with, you should/would at least annually review that and adjust accordingly.
-rule of thumb, money roughly doubles every 7 years at a 10% return, which is pretty much the expected historical return of a relatively aggressive diversified investment strategy.
-so in theory you could have ~ 4 doubles; if you remain invested and don't panic and sell
100k now is 200k in 7 years
200k is 400k in another 7 years
400k is 800k in another 7 years
800k is 1.6mil in another 7 years
Fees are fees, definitely look for lower(set) cost options but no one can trade for free.
-I doubt the fees on Euro Pacific Fund alone caused the underperformance, more likely fund management and just underperformance of that region. Funds are bound by their investment prospectus to invest in what they say they are going to invest in. So a Euro/Pac fund manager can't be buying U.S. Equities if his investment mandates does not let him/her.
What is your asset allocation in you 403b?
-meaning what % stock/bonds do you have and what funds do you own? Are you happy with that/comfortable?
A couple of funds that have good track records and that are relatively conservative, meaning the stock to bond mix is not the most aggressive are FPURX and FBALX.
-looking at timeframe alone, kind of conservative for 30 years.
-but always want to consider appetite for risk.
Now I am just mentioning those two funds that are kind of 4 wheel drive vehicles, maybe not be the right ones for you but you can look them over and see how they have performed:
-you'll see had you been invested in the S&P 500 over the 10 year time frame vs. those funds you would have outperformed the fund(s), but the ups and downs would have been greater. So some people maybe would have bailed and gone to cash, so the stock to bond mix looks to alleviate the downside, knowing that you may give up some upside; with a higher likelyhood of selling and missing out on the upside.
-after all the U.S. equity market goes up ~ 70% of the time, so market timing and gut 'instinct' usually is a bad thing.
And comparing the S&P 500 to these two funds is like comparing the performance of a short board to a long board: apples vs. oranges.
Like surfboards you can't have it all in one package, there are compromises.
