The other day, a friend asked me to tell them what I thought about one of the options in their workplace 401(k), “The Growth Fund of America” by American Funds, ticker AGTHX. To evaluate an investment option, I generally look at three things: objective, fee structure, and benchmark performance. What is AGTHX? AGTHX is an… Continue reading How to Evaluate An Investment Option using AGTHX
I’m not 100% rational. Few (any?) people are rational all of the time. And even though I am aware of psychological traps and my own irrationality, I still find myself occasionally trapped. Familiarity Bias I worked at Dumpster Fire Inc between 2013 and 2017. During my time at DFI, they went public at $40/share and… Continue reading Behavioral Economics
Recently, I spoke with a family member who decades ago, made a decision to prematurely cash out a pension plan prematurely, netting about $5k at the time. Fast forward 29 years later and the cost of undoing the earlier cash out cost $37k, an annualized rate of return around 7.1%/year. To help frame things, if… Continue reading Playing it too safe
A couple of years ago, I closed my Wealthfront account. After closing my account, I set out to DIY a tax loss harvesting system, modeled after Wealthfront. I’m tempted to call it my level 5 asset allocation strategy. Building my own tax loss harvesting system has a few advantages, including: Avoid Wealthfront’s .25% management fee… Continue reading Tax Loss Harvesting Update – October 2020
Each month, I find that there’s a bunch of small topics that don’t warrant their own post but that I want to share nonetheless. Here are some from August. Beach House In North Carolina In the eight years that we’ve lived in Virginia, we’ve rented houses near the beach on the southern coast of North… Continue reading August 2020 Update
One challenge that first time investors face is where to invest. The options are nearly infinite, with the financial industry creating new products every day. The myriad of choices are overwhelming. I propose the following four levels of investing. A beginning investor could start at the first level and as their education and stomach for… Continue reading Level Up Your Asset Allocation
For my readers in the United States, happy 4th of July! And for my readers outside of the United States, happy 4th of July as well 🙂 In a previous post I looked at target date funds offered by Vanguard. In my opinion, they are a great benchmark to measure other target date funds, including… Continue reading Comparing my 401(k)’s Target Date Funds
It’s been four months since I posted about my experiment selling covered calls on some stock in DumpsterFireInc. With the pandemic and the associated crazy market volatility, it’s felt like much longer than four months. Its a good time to check in with how my experiment has been going. The Good The good news is… Continue reading Covered Calls Experiment Update
For most of my peers, digging through 401(k) investment literature and understanding the different options is not exciting and even a little scary. Few make it a hobby like I do. I can sympathize with the allure of a “target date” fund. The chief advantage of target date funds is their simplicity. Simply specify the… Continue reading DIY Target Date Fund
It was Thanksgiving 2017 and I was having an investing conversation. During the conversation, I tried to explain the dangers of “return chasing”, picking investments solely based on past performance and projecting past performance into the future. Picking a fund that has had a good run is not an effective investment strategy. Instead of return… Continue reading Return Chasing
