Multiple Accounts

Roth IRA, TSP and taxable account. Concern is having similar accounts in all three. Is it best to treat them all seperate or instead for example use one for domestic, another for emerging markets and foreign, etc.

I keep all of my retirement accounts with the same allocation style so that regardless of the tax situation (roth or traditional) they will still have the same type of returns and I don't have to worry about ensuring my risk level is balanced between multiple accounts and re-balancing to maintain my risk profile can be done in both types of accounts periodically with very little/no need for me to do anything other than sign up for automatic re-balancing in both types of accounts. If you attempt to establish a specific risk profile using multiple accounts then it can be much more difficult to maintain that risk profile in the future. For instance, say you wanted 60% domestic large cap, 20% domestic small/mid cap stocks, 10% foreign/emerging, and 10% bonds. If you put the 10% foreign/emerging and 10% bonds in your TSP and it grew faster than the others, then you would now have to shift your TSP to include some other type of investment and try to figure out exactly what % into each you needed to adjust all three accounts in order to re-establish your risk profile. If they are all balanced with the same risk profile, however, you can generally just have each set to automatically re-balance your portfolio to your desired risk profile at regular intervals.

That's how I prefer to do it for retirement accounts anyway. (insert legal disclaimer that this isn't professional advice etc etc here )

Disclaimer Agreed. I also treat them all as seperate with similar allocations. Just wanted to see what were the pros and cons. Thx.

I am thinking about dumping my L2030 funds and switching over to the L2050 fund. It seems like there is more potential for growth with the newer life cycle fund. L2030 is about $19 whereas l2050 is just $11.

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Originally Posted by flashtwosix

I am thinking about dumping my L2030 funds and switching over to the L2050 fund. It seems like there is more potential for growth with the newer life cycle fund. L2030 is about $19 whereas l2050 is just $11.

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Well, how many shares are outstanding and what is the total market value of the fund ?

Thx Raymond there are so many variables when looking into these accounts. I put some funds into a few dividend stocks and I just roll the dividends into my IRA along with my monthly investment.