Afford Anything - Q&A: Is ChatGPT's Portfolio Better Than VTSAX?

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Your Next Raise now open for enrollment! https://affordanything.com/how-to-negotiate-your-next-raise #631: Jason's analysis of his retirement plan shows that the simple path beats the efficient frontier. Is he right or is he missing something? Minerva is worried about the impacts of tax inefficiency to her wealth. Are her investments properly located? Scott feels frozen because he doesn’t understand the nuances of the efficient frontier. Where can he get a simplified explainer so he can start taking action? Former financial planner Joe Saul-Sehy and I tackle these three questions in today’s episode. Enjoy! P.S. Got a question? Leave it here. Resources Mentioned: https://affordanything.com/how-to-negotiate-your-next-raise/ ⁠https://affordanything.kit.com/assetlocation ⁠Join Paula at Acorns and get your $5 bonus!⁠ https://affordanything.com/577-qa-the-efficient-frontier-was-perfect-until-hr-got-involved/ https://affordanything.com/547-ask-paula-we-have-2-million-at-40-now-what/ https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/small-cap-value-etf/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe, you know what I was thinking about the other day? I do not. And it really bothers me that I'm not yet clairvoyant. So I was thinking about how we in the personal finance community often associate a particular concept with a particular person. So for example, the 4% withdrawal rate, Bill Bankin. VTSAX and Chill, J.L. Collins. Four fund portfolio, Paul Merriman.

And you, Joe, you are the efficient frontier guy. Oh, ho. Move over, Nobel Prize winner, Harry Markowitz. Joe, today is going to be the Joe show, because we've got three questions about the efficient frontier. Wow, let's do it. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast,

the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars. Financial Psychology, Increasing Your Income, Investing, Real Estate, and Entrepreneurs. entrepreneurship. It's double I fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant, every other episode, ish. We answer questions that come from you. And I do so with my buddy, the former financial planner, Joe Sall-C-Hi. What's up, Joe? Oh, man, Paula, as you know, but our Ford Anything community doesn't know, I'm kind of here as a distraction today because about a week ago, we had a storm that rolled through Texarkana. And about 15 minutes after it started storming, it was raining inside of Cheryl's

closet, my spouse's closet. It was raining down our fireplace. We're now changing out so much stuff. Luckily, we're doing a building project, and this is a great time to talk about insurance for just a second. Thank goodness for insurance policies. But yeah, we're going to be moving in with you, Paula. Welcome to my 600 square foot Manhattan apartment. Oh, it'll be so great. It'll be so great. We'll make some room in the kitchen. We'll get bunk beds. I'll roll out a sleeping bag in the middle of the kitchen. It's going to be awesome. Well, I'll tell you what, it'll be more awesome than what's going on at my house.

Because as you know, it is a disaster. So talking efficient frontier, encouraging people to, you know what, have the money to do the things that you want to do and understand your plan. Like, that is a great use of time right now. Beautiful, beautiful. Let's start with the first question, which comes from Jason. Hi, Paula and Joe. I've been really intrigued by all of the efficient frontier episodes in the past year or so, especially episode 577, in which Kelsey asked about how to deal with her limited

401k plan options with regard to the efficient frontier. I'm in a similar boat, and after that episode where Joe taught us how to use portfolio visualizer, I have been trying to determine if I should add some additional funds to my allocation. Some quick background info. I'm in a public safety career and will have a pension that will provide me with a guaranteed income. I have access to both a 457B and a 401A account. And because of my pension, I have been fairly aggressive with a 90% allocation to either a total stock market index fund or S&P 500 index fund, depending on which account I'm looking at, and 10% to a total bond market index fund.

Portfolio Visualizer is telling me that this allocation has an expected return of 13.22%, with a standard deviation of 14.33. I wasn't sure that I was using or understanding portfolio visualizer correctly, so I fed the fund menu from my 401A account into ChatGPT and asked it to come up with a 9010 equity bond allocation on the efficient frontier. It spit out a mix of 25% S&P 500 index, 25% large cap growth index, 15% mid-cap index, 15% small-cap index, 10% international index, 10% bond index. I fed this allocation into portfolio visualizer using a max weight of 30% like you talked about in episode 577, and the best I get on the efficient frontier curve is 12.9% return

at 16.75 standard deviation. If I keep my standard deviation at 14.33, the efficient frontier allocation only has an 11.65% expected return. The free version of portfolio of the Realizer only allows me a 10-year history, even though all the available funds go back at least 20 years. I'm interpreting this as my current simple allocation is better, given my desired 90-10 split, than adding in the additional funds and complexity. But I'm taking away from all of your episodes that this shouldn't be the case. What am I missing? I'm perfectly happy with the VT, S-A-X, and chill philosophy, but if I can eke out the types of additional returns, you said the efficient frontier would provide, I'd like to go that route. Thanks for another dive into the

efficient frontier. Jason, thanks so much for the question. I-L-O-V-E, the fact that you have gone headfirst into this. I think, Paula, that's incredible, just the amount of time that he spent. But let's go big picture here. The first thing, Jason, is you don't need to overthink this. And the reason I say that is I 100% agree with you that that initial allocation that you got versus the much more complex allocation that you got, there are so many problems with that more complex allocation and you brought them up. You might not understand it.

you might blow it up later. You might get frustrated because there's more funds. You're going to introduce this complexity. And to your point, you know, if you were happy with VTSAX, my goal was never to complicate the situation. My goal was to introduce something that is stickier first. And I'll talk about that in a second. But second can also produce potentially much, much, much more growth in your portfolio. And I want to start there because if in my initial presentation of this, and for people knew the afford anything community, I showed how using the efficient frontier, you could have a ton, ton more money than using VTSAX. The reason I did that, and I want to be very clear about this, because I don't think this is the utility of the efficient frontier for most

people. I think the biggest utility of the tool is in other places, but I did that to wake people up. People that are very mindful about their budget, they're very mindful about how they spend money. Yeah, right. You're cutting cable. You're cutting Netflix. You're making sure that you're not subscribed to Hulu and Netflix and HBO Max all at the same time. Right. You're that level of tuned in. Which is wonderful. All of this is wonderful. You're so good at all. all this stuff. And yet there's this area of our life where we can be as equally mindful, as equally mindful, which is our portfolio. And we're like, no, because Jail Collins said, VTSAX and chill. Now, Jail Collins and I, and I love that man. And so do you. We all love that man.

Jail Collins will tell you, you're going to be okay your entire life with VTSAX. And he's not wrong. He's 100% right. And he will tell you to stay in VTSAX for your entire life. I had a long discussion also with his and my mutual friend, Paul Merriman, who Paul takes J.L. Collins's one fund portfolio and sometimes two funds, right, because sometimes he'll do a bond index as well. And Paul and I had a wonderful discussion where, you know, you look at Paul, Paul has a four fund portfolio five, six, eight, ten, which later in the episode and in the show notes will link to

that initial training that I did so people can go back through it and they can see me going through Paul Merriman's work in this area. He and I agreed that the goal is not more complexity. The goal is until you reach that first roughly $100,000, just focus on pouring more money in, which VTSAX is perfect for. But all of us agree. that when you get past 100,000, the juice becomes, quote, worth the squeeze if you have a little more mindfulness toward your portfolio allocation than J.L. Collins says. Now, what's funny that Paul said to me, which I 100% agree with, is that J.L. Collins knows his audience really well. And much like Kramer stays on message, Dave Ramsey stays on message, Susie Ormond stays on message,

J.L. Collins stays on message. This can work your entire life. And he's not wrong. Where J.L. Collins and I disagree. I've told him this. He and I have had wonderful conversations, the very thoughtful, fantastic conversations about this, that we disagree what to do when you reach $100,000. But my rationale for using the efficient frontier was never having more money. But I realized that in a community of people that have been, been, in my opinion, lulled to sleep with huge amounts of money to do a thing that's very suboptimal in a world where we're optimizing everything else. Why are we ignoring this area? Just because one very smart, very likable man said that we should. So I love Paul Merriman's take that J.L knows his audience. Our audience, I think, when you look at the afford anything podcast and you look at stacking Benjamins, we're okay with this next level idea. The goal here, Jason, from my perspective of the Efficient Frontier, if you're using the Efficient frontier, Jason, just to make more money, here's what I think you should do.

I think you should take all the work you've done on the Efficient Frontier and you should take it over to the garbage can and throw it in. Because what I really want you to do, if you want to be a little bit of the efficient frontier, and you should take it over to the be along the efficient frontier just for more money, I would go to Paul Merriman's research because he's on the efficient frontier. I would choose one of those portfolios. But let me tell you what that ignores that for me is the heart of this matter. Once our audience is receptive to the idea of doing something different than J.L. Collins talks about. I've gone on record of saying that I don't like Target Day funds.

I've also gone on record saying that when you're first starting out, you don't need a robo advisor. What I truly like is when you have designed a portfolio yourself, the portfolio immediately becomes stickier. And I saw this in my own practice, Paula. And let me tell you what happened during my 16 years of financial planning. Early on, I would make financial plans for people. And I came in this huge binder that I would put together.

it was so mindful and I would go to you and you're my client and I'm sitting across the desk from you and we'd have this great chat and then you would go, I like that one. I disagree with that one. I like that one. I'm not going to do that one like it was some kind of freaking buffet. And the frustration I had was even on the parts that you agreed with me, six months later, a year later, two years later, those parts of the plan would break down because it wasn't your plan. it was mine.

And I knew the interlinking of these pieces of the plan and you didn't. And because you didn't, you were just choosing the parts that sounded good, rejecting the others. Well, the reason I put that plan together was because it all dovetailed. You would put more money in the emergency fund so that you could raise the deductibles on your homeowner's insurance, on your car insurance. I would have people go, I don't want money sitting idly, so I'm not going to increase my emergency fund, but I am going to raise the deductible on my car insurance because I love paying less. Those two things are meant to go together. Right.

Yeah. So what I did at about the midway point of my career was I quit making financial plans for you. And I started making financial plans with you. And what I found was when we got to the fourth meeting in my sequence of meetings, and we were laying out the to-do list, you were implementing 100% of the to-do list, three years, four years, five years later, you were still on the plan because it was your plan. So for me, the usefulness of the efficient frontier work, Jason, that you did was not having more money. it was the fact that you spent a little time being mindful of the funds that you were choosing

and seeing how they look together so that when they start moving, like you deploy this money and now the funds start acting and some are going to do well out of the gate and some aren't just because of this piece of the economy that we're in, right? This particular moment in time that we're in. you're going to start seeing how your funds react and then you're going to start asking the next set of questions, which is, how am I going to rebalance these? When should I rebalance? Should they be on a band like when something goes down five or 10 percent that I rebalance or do I do it once a year? And that leads to a great thing pros do, which is an investment policy statement. Yeah.

And you're going to be a little in some ways more emotional because you picked these plans. And by emotional, what I mean is you're not just going to give up. People will try a diet regime and they'll give up and they'll go, that guru sucks. Or they will try a course of medicine. My spouse, Cheryl, works in the field of medicine. You know, people will get three days into the antibiotic that you're supposed to take for 10 days and they will drop it because, hey, I solved the problem. Well, anybody in medicine knows if you don't do it for the full 10 days, you're creating inside your body a bigger problem because you have to follow it through to the very end. end, but people drop things because we don't fully understand how it's built.

In this case, you built it yourself. So in that way, you're emotional, but you're also becoming more tactical and less emotional, which means that because you know these are designed to work together, and that's how the efficient frontiers meant to work, these are not all meant to go together. When you see one go up and one go down, you go, oh, it isn't that this fund sucks. It's that in this economy, of course, this one's, this lever goes down, this lever goes up. And you know what? There's going to be a reversion to the mean later.

So this little bit of mindfulness that you're spending, I think pays huge, huge, huge dividends. When I use the efficient frontier, I actually don't begin with what's going to give me the most money. I begin with what is my goal? What's it going to take to reach that goal? And then what are the funds specifically that are going to get? me there. In your case, Jason, I love fewer bonds because you've got that great pension. I think, frankly, for me, if you're looking at having more money, I think bonds are just weighing you down. If you don't have any time horizon on this money and you're happy would be more aggressive,

I think you could safely cut all of your bonds because of the pension that you have available. Also, you can get rid of my max waiting. The max waiting, the max waiting, that I have in the portfolio, if you're going to use the efficient frontier for people that are new to this argument, the reason why I've said, I will not go over 30% in a certain asset class is two reasons. Number one, this free version of the efficient frontier will only give you closer data to today, which means it's going to say put everything in large gap growth, which any financial planner will tell you is ridiculous. You don't want to do that. You want to keep diversification. But also number two, if your time horizon changes, the chance of you

taking the money and needing it today, there's more likely to be an asset class that you can grab at that point. But I think that if you're just interested in more money, you can get rid of those. But frankly, I get rid of all the work that you did completely and just jump on the Merriman train. So I'm going to ask a couple of follow-up questions because what Jason did, He took what chat GPT told him and he plugged it into portfolio visualizer, but he kept the 30% maximum weight guideline. And also, he kept a 10% bond allocation. So do you believe that if he got rid of the bond allocation and got rid of the 30% max weight guideline, he could design a more efficient? The direct answer is yes, 100%.

It'd be more efficient. There's actually a longer answer, though, like everything, Paula? You know, there's the yes, but then there's all the other aspects of this. Like my financial planner brain says, yes, it's more efficient, but it then denies the fact that we do have a time horizon on this goal. So if you have a time horizon that is closer, then while, yeah, it's going to more efficiently get there, it is still going to be a much bumpier ride if you're on the wrong piece of the efficient frontier. What the Efficient Frontier doesn't do, and we'll talk later on in reference to another question that we answer today, some of the areas that I think we don't realize efficient frontier doesn't do. It doesn't do the initial planning. So if you're working from a goal, you have to pick a spot where you feel comfortable being on the efficient frontier. It was funny when Jason was talking. Remember he's talking about his portfolio at a standard deviation of over 14. Right. That means it can go 14 north and 14 south of where it is right now. And it's 66% of the time. That means in a normal day's activity, you could see this huge fluctuation, 28% fluctuation either way when you look at that number. So if my goal is next year, am I comfortable with that fluctuation? Right. So the answer is yes, but it can also be less of, efficient if our goals are shorter term. Right. Let's assume, though, that he is investing for

retirement. Sure. Then the answer is yes. Yeah. 100% yes. And do you think part of his issue, because there are two ways to use portfolio visualizer, you can either plug in asset classes or you can plug in ticker symbols. Now, he talked about how he is using funds out of his 401A. if he's using funds available, ticker symbols available as his inputs into portfolio visualizer, is he coming up with stuff that's less efficient because he just has too poor of a fund selection? Maybe slightly, but the big thing around asset classes is the asset class is going to get you, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's got to be in the 95, 97% of the way there.

Yeah, it'll get you most of the way. And this idea of active versus passive, I'm not going to rail on that again. But the difference over a long period of time can be huge. But on a daily, monthly, quarterly market swing, we're not going to find that big of a difference there. So the quick answer is no, I don't think so. Okay. So it is not a fund selection issue. Basically, if he gets rid of the 10% bonds and the 30% max, it'll be good.

Assuming that he's investing for the long term. I would not do that. I would just embrace the Paul Merriman portfolio, realizing that the downside is everything you and I talked about earlier. Well, we didn't talk. I guess I did. Which is the fact that I believe it's the planning and the stickiness and the time horizon that make you doing this yourself valuable. But Jason, if you don't find any of that valuable and you just want to find a portfolio that's going to give you, quote, more money than just go to Paul Merriman. So, Joe, I'm a bit confused, though, because Mr. Efficient Frontier is telling people

not to use the efficient frontier and to go to the Paul Merriman portfolios. I'm not telling people that. I'm saying that if all you got out of what I said, that's your only use for it, why reinvent the wheel? Why spend the time reinventing the wheel? If it's not going to help you be stickier, I heard this a lot when I was a financial, planer, right? Oh, I think I'm going to be fine. And then shock of shock six months later, you weren't fine. I remember it was always my clients that said, no, I've got a huge risk tolerance.

I think we should put the pedal of metal of metal. So I'm like, okay. So we move further up the efficient frontier. Guess are the first person calling me when the market goes down, who's on the bottom of my list of people to call to go, are you okay? First people calling me were always those people that assured me, I want to take more risk than anybody else because it doesn't bother me. Guess what? Risk bothers all of us, I think, more than we often realize. But if he knows that he's not worried about risk, if he knows that he has long-term time frame, if he doesn't want to work from a goal-based plan, he just wants more money over 30 years, dump all this time and this mindfulness that I'm talking about, and just go do the Paul Merriman thing.

Would it be accurate to say that Paul Merriman's very very important? portfolios, his four fund, his six fund, his eight fund, his ten fund are portfolios that are designed along the efficient frontier. Along the efficient frontier. Basically, he has a series of plug and play efficient frontier portfolios. That is the difference between Merriman and Jail Collins. And that's why often you'll find people, not just me, I'm just the guy making it entertaining and palatable, but you'll find a lot of people going, you graduate from Jail Collins to Paul Merriman once you reach $100,000.

Because really, 99% of the time, and you've talked to both of these wonderful human beings, Paula, they're singing off the same song sheet. By and large, there's just this one part where I believe they both know their audience. And Paul's the, as I said earlier, is the person that to me. Jail Collins knows his audience. Paul Merriman knows his audience is nerdier and can handle a four. fund portfolio or if you want to get really crazy, six or eight fun portfolio. Okay. So Paul Merriman has designed a bunch of plug and play efficient frontier portfolios.

Or alternately, Joe, if we were to follow what you've laid out and go to portfolio visualizer and create something for ourselves, we would have a customized version of something that is pretty akin to what Paul Merriman would create. Except. The answer is yes, but the exceptions are the reason why you would do it yourself. You put the 30% max weight on it because you have a time horizon and because you want diversification and because we're using this free tool that doesn't look at the lifespan of the fund, just looks at more short-term returns that last 10 years. You also have it enveloped in a personalized financial plan and you're starting with the end in mind. So there is more to it.

And you know, some of the pushback that I've gotten, Paula, from people is, Joe, you said this would be 15 minutes. And the answer is the official frontier part, as people have seen when they use the efficient frontier can be and should be 15 minutes. Yeah. It is 50 minutes. I don't think you should spend 15 minutes. The reason it's 15 minutes is because of the fact that you've done this pre-planning on your goal and what it's going to take and that equation that sounds easy, but you and I know, Paula, is not as easy as it sounds. And the equation that you have when you go to the efficient frontier is this. I need X amount of money for my goal times Y return equals the goal. If I know how much I need to save and I know what return I need,

that equals the goal. And that then gives me three levers to pull. But the lever that this helps with is then when I know what return I need, I then go to the efficient frontier and it spends 15 minutes. I've had people go, Joe, this is way longer than 15 minutes. Well, it's the planning piece beforehand that's longer than 15 minutes. Yeah. Going to portfolio visualizer, that step itself is very quick. Very quick. Yeah. And the struggle I found people have with this is I don't already have that equation. I'm not working from a goal-based, plan. Sadly, and maybe it's because I'm so indoctrinated goal-based planning that I thought this is where everybody starts, Paula, that that is one of the hangups I see a lot of people have. It's like,

wow, this is more time. Well, it's more time because you're thinking through where on the efficient frontier should I be. And that is a lot longer than 15 minutes. So when I look at Jason's question, right now he's got a two-fund portfolio. He's got a 90-10 stock bond allocation. He's got a to fund portfolio, he has asked ChatGPT to design a portfolio that's also 9010, but along the efficient frontier. Of course, as we talked about earlier, he probably doesn't need the 10% bonds. Of course, as we talked about earlier, he probably should get rid of that 30% max weight guideline. But what else is he doing wrong in the design of trying to create a portfolio around the efficient frontier? I think his use of AI in this instance is,

is really, Jason, this is holding you up. The reason is, as you've seen, the Efficient Frontier is a continuum. What we don't know is where ChatGPT is putting you along the efficient frontier. Remember where we started. We started with what is your goal? And then you place yourself on the efficient frontier. So if you just say, hey, Chad, GPD, put me along the efficient frontier. Where along the efficient frontier?

I think that a better prompt is give me a 12% rate of return on the efficient frontier. Give me the 13% rate of return on the efficient frontier. And I think you're going to come up with then the point. ChatGPT has put you in a spot along the efficient frontier that it's decided where it wants you. And I don't know where that is and you don't know where that is. Robert Farrington at the college investor, a mutual friend Paula, of yours and mine, does a lot of the research that I appreciate so much. he's looked at the use of AI in a lot of these applications.

And AI will often give you the wrong answer incredibly confidently. Now, is that getting better over time? It is. And we expect it to continue getting better. But in the current state of AI, and I spoke with Robert last about this in April. So I believe even between April and now it's gotten better, I would believe, because it's maturing quickly, but I still think it's going to give you the wrong answer. And let me tell you why. If you look at the efficient frontier over time, it moves. The efficient frontier moves.

And the way that AI works is that AI looks at all the data that's out there in the universe to compile for you what it thinks is most efficient. So you could have somebody from 2016, 2018, who's a huge figure on the internet, who talks about what was efficient in 2018, which will be directionally toward the efficient frontier, but might not be exactly on the efficient frontier today. And the way the algorithm will look at this is this is a huge name. This is an expert. This tells me this is efficient. So I'm going to weight this more heavily. than other stuff that's on the internet. We see this with tax advice on the internet, right?

If there's a new tax law, aka OBBBB, oh, you know me, right? All of this new tax stuff, if you feed it into chat GPT, chat GPT, and I haven't done this yet, but based on past tax laws that we've seen this happen, tax changes, AI gives you the wrong answer, again, confidently because 99.9% of the stuff on the internet does not include the big beautiful bill stuff. It says, this is the number. No, that's not the number. The number is going to be this. And so over time, it will catch up. But with something that moves like the efficient frontier, I think the way that AI works now, it's not going to give you exactly where you want to be. But I think you can prompt it to be closer by giving it a specific point on the efficient frontier where you want to be.

A specific desired return percentage. Yeah. Yeah. Or the other side, Paula, which is a specific standard deviation. Yeah. Like if you feed it one of those two points, then it's going to get you much closer. Yeah. I do think it's important to note that chat ch p.T, being a large language model, its strength is language, its weakness is math. In fact, there's a famous screenshot of a conversation somebody had with chat GPT where they said, hey, 9.9 versus 9.11, which of those two numbers is bigger? And chat GPT was like, oh, 9.11 is bigger than 9.9. Because that's three digits. Right. Yeah. And they were like, subtract it. You know, and chat GPT was like, the answer is 0.2.

And then the person's next prompt was use Python. And then chat GPT was like, oh, oh, I apologize. I was wrong in my previous answer, you know, yeah, and it went from there. But as a language program, rather than a math program, it looks at point one one, point 11 versus point nine and says, well, 11's bigger than nine, right? It's the type of mistake that a fourth grader might make for the same reasons, for all of the same reasons. I recently spoke with a guy who's an advocate for changing math curriculums, he and Sir Ken Robinson, who had the biggest TED talk in history on the problem with schools, Ted and Sir Ken advocates about changing curriculum. And Ted is an economist, Paula. Ted has talked about, though, how quickly AI has developed over the last several years, that when he

first used AI a few years ago, it couldn't do any simple math. He said, now I ask it much more complex math questions and it's starting to fire. Yeah. Is it going to get better over time? Yeah. To your point. Yeah, it's going to get better. But narrowing down what you ask it and efficiency when it comes to the efficient frontier is going to be in the eyes of the beholder, a common misconception people have.

And this is part of maybe an FAQ I need to develop frequently asked question is, well, isn't they're just a most efficient? well, it's these two variables put together to create a point. So it's a frontier which denotes continuum. And in a continuum, you have to tell it where on the continuum you want to be. Okay. So part of the answer is getting rid of the max waiting and part of the answer is refining the AI prompt. And I think that if your goal is just more money, dump the exercise.

If you are going to not worry about all the behavioral aspects of the mindfulness and the time of spending with the tool that will, in my opinion, make you a better investor. So, Jason, I hope that helps. I hope it sheds some light and some nuance into your question and your approach and gives you a couple of next steps and a direction to go in. And by the way, Jason, hang on because we're talking all a fish and frontier today. And it's all going to be nuance and next step. So if you're interested in continuing, there's going to be more. In continuing to talk about the continuum?

Yes. Yes. I'm also going to share you know later in this episode. So I decided to take a taste of my own medicine and went down the rabbit hole with my own asset allocation. Sweet. So I'm going to share that. And that's going to be coming up after this. Fifth Third Bank's commercial payments are fast and efficient. But they're not just fast and efficient.

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I mean, they have not released an album in years, and yet they created two singles in like an hour. Two singles that went viral. Oh, man, a celebrity joke, I actually understood, Joe. Sadly, we all understood that one. Well, with that said, our next question comes from Minerva. Hey, Paula and Joe, long-time listener, second-time caller.

My anonymous name is Minerva from episode 547. We have a net worth of $2 million at $40, and now what? Well, as a follow-up to my initial call, I first want to highlight how fitting the name selection was. At the time of airing, we were just packing up to enjoy some weeks abroad. taking our young family over to Italy. It was a perfect way to cap off the end of a year-long mini-retirement. In that episode, you started all of us listeners down a deeper dive of the efficient frontier, which I feel you have since covered in great form. So thank you. I took action

and rebalanced our accounts to a four-fund model that I felt was best for our currents and long-term goals. I also never want to hide my mistakes, and I think we're all better for sharing and opening dialogue to help each other learn and grow. My mistake in this process was not thinking fully through how some of that rebalancing was going to trigger capital gains in my taxable brokerage account. I know, I know, duh, but I guess I was just flying high in the moment after learning about a efficient frontier. Anyway, for us, it actually ended up working really well because of my new retirement. We had a lower income that year than years prior, so I was able to inadvertently do some tax game harvesting. That's going to set us up better down the road.

It all ended well for us, but in the moment of learning, I won't forget that outcome. Anyhow, taking this teachable moment and building on it, I'm back for another question slash request. Could you share some more wisdom on what account types are better fitting to hold what types of funds from a tax perspective? For example, what types of funds are better held in an IRA or a 401K because they don't have a need to pay that tax gain along the way to retirement? Or what funds might be better off in a brokerage because they may throw off little to no tax burden in those earning years? That's far for us. That part about the brokerage has been pretty minimal. We have been very focused on building our retirement accounts, but now we're at the point of wanting to focus on building out that brokerage account and filling out our tax triangle as we wind down into the years of retirement here soon. I know I've heard nuggets of this wisdom in passing chatter, but I would sincerely appreciate a deeper dive on the topic. Thank you. Minerva, thank you for the question. First of all, I'm glad to hear that the anonymous name that we gave you was such a great fit.

And that you've kept it. You've kept your anonymous name. I'm honored. Congratulations on being on the efficient frontier. I am so sorry to hear about the lesson from the School of Hard Knocks when it came to the tax consequences of rebalancing in a taxable account. I'll talk more about that in just a second. But I love the question. Let's get straight to the question that you asked.

your question is essentially a question about asset location. What assets should you put in what location? For the sake of everybody listening, let's draw a mental map right now of the three different types of tax treatments that you get. There are taxable accounts. There are pre-tax accounts. And Roth accounts, I think many of our listeners know this, but if you're new to the show, anything that's in a Roth account, you pay the taxes on the income.

today, but the benefit to the Roth account is that everything that's in there will be tax exempt. All of that growth is going to be tax exempt. So all dividends, all capital gains, all of that is tax exempt. It's the beauty of the Roth account. Now, I could wax poetic about the Roth account and my deep, deep love for it. We can widen that corner, though, Paula, because it's not just Roth. Roth is one type of tax free income. It's clearly the, or already has been taxed income, I should say, where it goes in after tax and then it's going to be tax free from then on. But there are other accounts that are in that piece too, far less utilized and with good reason, but you can put municipal bonds in many cases in that subsection.

Municipal bond income will affect your social security. So if you're receiving social security, that will not be directly taxed, but it could trigger more taxation of your social security. So you have to watch out for that. And then, of course, permanent life insurance also is there. And because that's so damn complicated, we often don't talk about those. But the Roth is not alone in that tax-free bucket. Right. Exactly.

Well, we'll create that as a mental map. And now that we've got this map, the question is, which assets do you put where? To keep it very simple, the short answer is, your most tax-efficient assets would be places. into taxable accounts, the assets that you expect are going to have the highest growth would go into the Roth accounts and everything else should go into a pre-tax account. There's a little bit of guesswork here, right? There's a little bit of what do you think the future is going to hold. Let's say that you expect that small cap funds are going to have the highest growth. If that is your working hypothesis, then you would want to concentrate your small

cap funds into your Roth account. Essentially, whatever you expect to grow the most, put in your Roth account. Now, outside of that guesswork and outside of that predicting what's going to happen in the future, if you want to stick with what is true in the present rather than what you expect for the future, any high turnover funds that you have, so for example, if you decide to hold any actively manage mutual funds, those should also go into a Roth account. That being said, and Joe and I can disagree about this. This will be a different debate for a different day. I'm not a fan of holding actively managed mutual funds, but if you do choose to have those, a Roth account is a good place for them. Well, we're not going to disagree about that. I'm generally not

either. I just think it gets more media than the hierarchy of things we should be getting angry about. Yeah. The only caveat, Paula, that I have is much like the efficient frontier is a tool that I go to after I've done my financial plan. I also want to look at the tax efficiency of investments after I've thought through what investment I'm going to go to first, second, third, or I know that's not going to happen for a long, long time. If my investment horizon is way far away, then 100% what Paula said, Minerva. The issue that I always have with this is, again, order of operations. the first thing I want to respect is having money in the place that I need it when I need it. So if my time horizon is short, then I want to have money in a spot where it's easy to get to.

If my time horizon is long, then I feel very comfortable packing things away. And so when I look at time horizons, what strikes me is my time horizon hierarchy of where to place investments is almost exactly, inverse to the taxification that you just went through. So if I want an investment that is reliably going to be harvestable at the time that I need it, that's going to start off with cash, which cash is always going to throw off interest, which is taxable. It's then going to go into degrees of bond funds, which are all going to be taxable interest. And if I'm looking at taxed advantaged investments, I want to keep those out of the brokerage account. Yet if I put it in my 401k or in my Roth IRA, I'm going to be reticent to take that money. So I want to look first at when am I going to

need the money? And then second, I worry about taxes. You know, whenever we did financial plans, my clients and I, there's this happy middle ground that we reach where we're going to be as a as we can in terms of taxation, but we're going to first make sure that the money is in a spot that I can grab it because, you know, the goal trumps everything. Right. You know, bond funds in a taxable account, if you were purely looking at this from a tax planning perspective without regard to timeline, you would want to avoid putting bond funds into a taxable account, with the exception of tax-free municipal bonds because those bond funds are going to throw off a tax liability. So you don't want to put that tax liability into a taxable account.

But when you take time horizon into account, let's say that the bond funds are also the thing you're most likely to harvest first, an assumption which may or may not be true. Let's say that those bond funds are maybe on a shorter investment time horizon. Okay. Yeah. then that time horizon would trump the tax treatment. Yeah. Time horizon for me,

an order of operations is second behind having the money in a spot where I need it, which also brings up something else, Minerva. I wouldn't beat up yourself too badly about the fact that you made your portfolio more efficient and more usable and you paid a tax. Certainly it's something that you're not the first person to overlook. You're not the last person that will overlook that. But this was a question that we've received in the past and that even as a financial planner that I struggle with, what is the right thing?

Is the right thing getting the assets into the place that matches the goal? Or is it tax efficiency that is the first thing? Now, the part of your discussion that I love is, okay, I believe that getting the asset where it needs to be. So it's the piece of the machinery that I need is definitely thing one, but I also want a taxation into account. So if it's October, November, December, and I'm making this move, maybe I do part of it now and maybe I delay part of it until January so that I spread that over a two-year period instead of doing it all at once. Or maybe I have these assets that have lost money and I'm going to do some tax planning around this. So I definitely like that, but I have seen far too many people who do the wrong thing with their money because it's going to be better tax treatment. And we don't want to do that.

So did you maybe pay some tax that you weren't expecting? Yes. But are your assets now in a better place that more effectively meets your long-term goal? 100%. So often I just see people go, ooh, if I would have known the tax was that, I wouldn't have done it. Wait a minute, you wouldn't have put your money in the right place because of taxation? Never do that. Yeah.

I will give this recommendation for anyone who's listening. If you're rebalancing your portfolio and you're trying to figure out what to do about the assets that are in the taxable portion of your portfolio, my first question to you is how out of whack are the assets in the taxable portion? And what I mean by that is, do you need to sell them in order to rebalance or can you rebalance by buying more of the losing asset class? And that's very much going to depend on what kind of raw numbers are we talking about. you know, if you've got a balance of a million dollars in your portfolio and you have the ability to contribute 10,000 a year from this point forward, no amount of buying more is going to really dramatically change your portfolio balance. but if we're talking about, you know, portfolio where you've got a balance of 200,000,

and you have the ability to contribute 10,000 a year, and that 200,000 is spread between taxable, tax exempt, and tax deferred accounts, well, yeah, you, depending on the balance in your taxable account, you might very well be able to rebalance that just by buying more. And maybe it'll take a little bit longer, but there's at least, for some people, the ability to rebalance the taxable portion of your portfolio slowly over time, not by selling anything, but just by buying more. And if you have the ability to do that and it doesn't throw your asset allocation completely out of whack for too long, then I think there's an argument to be made for doing that. I had another consideration as well, Paula. Exchange traded funds because it's more

modern architecture than a mutual fund. Exchange traded funds also can efficiently replace assets. So if you're using VTI versus VTSAX to go back to Jason's VTSAX and chill, VTI is the exchange traded fund version, VTSAX is the mutual fund version, VTSAX potentially could throw off a tax that VTII will not. So exchange traded funds are better in your brokerage account. If you have mutual funds that for whatever reason you're using a mutual fund architecture over an exchange traded fund, because maybe there is not an exchange traded fund version, mutual funds are better inside of the Roth or in the 401K exchange traded fund whenever possible inside of the brokerage account. And I can explain briefly what this taxation is, which is, let's say that Paul, Paula, you buy a fund, a mutual fund right now, and it has invidia in it.

Let's just say I buy VTSAX. Yeah, and it is invidia. And for whatever reason, Nvidia starts declining, so they have to sell off their shares of Nvidia inside the fund to accurately represent the total stock market because, let's say, that Nvidia now is a smaller percentage overall. So we're not talking about active management. We're talking about just in order to passively track the index, the fund has to shed some Nvidia. It's a large percentage and now it's a smaller percentage. They're going to have to sell it to

replicate the index. When they do that, if they bought Nvidia shares back in 2010 that they'd purchased, this is a ridiculous capital gain, just a 100% ridiculous capital gain. Because of mutual fund architecture, they sell those funds. There is no great way for them to pass on this capital gain, you didn't sell. They have a capital gain in the fund. And they have to give that to fund holders because of the architecture. There's no way for them to accurately track that. So what they do is they create a point in time. And they say, as of today, we're just going to give you the capital gain. So let's say, Paula, you bought two weeks before this. They sell their invidia. You get a capital gains tax, even though you didn't have the capital gain. It's just old.

or architecture, an exchange trade of fund. Right. And I just want to point out, Joe, when you talk about this is the architecture of a mutual fund, you're also referring to passively managed index funds because index funds are indexed mutual funds. Index funds are mutual funds. 100%. This is not active or passive. This is a mutual fund versus an exchange trade of fund. So still diversified index, but just two different architectures. One from the early 1900s and the other one from much, much. later. The exchange traded fund, and I don't know what magical means they're doing this by

Paul, this is beyond my pay grade, they're able to just swap out the Nvidia shares. Nobody pays the capital gains tax in that move. I don't know how. I don't know why. It's just because of modern architecture, they're able to do that. So an exchange trade of fund will not give you tax surprises beyond you overlooking the fact that it is a dividend. The exchange trade of fund will still pay a dividend, the same dividend generally that a mutual fund will. But when it comes to the buying and selling that goes on internally to track the index, you're not going to see it in an ETF. How do you know which one you have? If the fund very generally, 99.9% of the time, if you look at what's called the ticker symbol on your account and it is five letters,

it's a mutual fund. If it is three letters, again, 99% of the time, it's an exchange trade of fun. The easy way to remember that ETF is three letters and the ticker symbol three letters. The word index, five letters. Ticker symbol, five letters. Or the word mutual. That's six letters, Joe. It's more than three letters.

Three times two. in any event, Minerva, going back to your question about asset location, not taking timeline into account, broadly speaking, don't put bond funds inside of your taxable account, don't put actively managed funds in your taxable account, don't put reeds in your taxable account, those are the things that are going to generate the biggest tax drag. But if you've got really tax efficient funds like VTI, VTI, BTI absolutely goes in the taxable account. And the exception to all of that, as Joe said, is if you've got funds that are invested on a shorter time horizon, anything that you're investing for a shorter time horizon goes into the taxable account because then you're not optimizing for tax treatment.

You're optimizing for time horizon. Which is why I take everything Paula just said and I just turn it around. I start off with time horizon. If it's beyond 20 years, do everything Paula said. if it's earlier than 20 years, then evaluate for the horizon. Yeah. And Roth account, put whatever you think is going to grow the most. You know, I'll actually share.

So I've put a big small cap concentration into my Roth account. I love it. I decided to drink my own, what is it called? Take your own medicine. Yes. Drink your own poison. Drink your own Kool-Aid. Yeah, drink your own Kool-Aid.

That's the phrase. But that also, like the entomology of drink your own Kool-Aid makes it sound like it's bad for you. and it's going to be horrible. But in this case, I think maybe take your own medicine to prove that it works is probably a better analogy. The difference between medicine and poison is just the dosage. Even so, I like to take your own medicine better because we know what happened after they drunk the Kool-Aid. And if you don't, just trust me, you don't want to go there.

Yeah, yeah. Don't drink the Kooli. Yeah. So what happened? Oh, okay. So first of all, the assets in my taxable account, I have a taxable account. I have a taxable account at Schwab. It has five funds in it.

Well, functionally, it has four funds in it, and then I have like $1,800 worth of emerging markets somehow. For all intents and purposes, it's got four funds in it. It's got a large-cat blend. It's got a large-cat value. It's got international developed X-US, and it's got a small-cat blend. I'm happy with the funds that are the four, functionally four funds that are inside of the taxable. I'm not going to move any of them. They are out of balance as to where I would want

them to be, but I can live with them being out of balance for now. And over time, my plan is to make additional contributions into the taxable account to bring those into balance. I've got my backdoor Roth at Schwab, and I've got my 401k at Vanguard. And what I decided to do mentally was to bucket them separately because as I was trying to map all of this out on a spreadsheet, it got a little confusing for me to try to draw everything in together. And I know there's software that does that, blah, blah, blah. Just as a starting point, I was like, you know what, let me just deal with each account in isolation. So. Can I talk about the upside of that versus the downside? Yeah, yeah. Just from my former financial planning perspective, if you have,

a 401k where you have limited choices and you don't have access to a particular asset class that you think you need, like international developed countries, then mixing it all in one bucket makes a lot of sense because then I will overdo international in one bucket and not do it in the other. If the main thing that I want is efficacy, is usability, and I want to make sure that I understand my plan for you, Paula, because of the fact that you created your 401K because you're self-employed. So you do have the ability to have good choices in each of the different asset classes. The ability to open up any account and see your asset allocation in that account is fantastic. So the reason why I wouldn't do that in the past is I'd look at somebody's 401K and I'm like,

oh my God, you have this high expense active fund. And that's your only thing you can do for large cap. Okay, well, here's what we're going to do. We're going to bucket around it. We're going to do all your large cap and you're, you know, in this other account that you have this old 401k or whatever it might be. And here, we're going to load up on something that is a really good choice that you have in the 401k.

So I don't mind the fact that each individual account has the full spectrum of everything. if you have the ability to do that because it makes it easier for you to grasp what's going on, which I think is a large part of winning. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Joe. Gold star to Paula. Oh, man.

Look at that. I know you're going to be bragging about that all day now. I don't know if you know, but my friend Joe. Like a stranger at lunch. So what I decided to do with Schwab, Schwab is the Roth IRA. I set it up as an eight-fund portfolio. It's inspired by Paul Merriman, but it's slightly modified from his portfolio. So basically I took a look at Paul Merriman's, the whole variety of four-fund,

eight-fund, ten funds, and created a little bit of a Frankenstein monster of my own based on that. The eight-fund portfolio that I have totals out to 50% small-cap, 25% large-cap, and 25% international. I'm going to put an asteris here. Just in the Roth, this is going to be offset by 401K assets, right? 401K is going to have 50% large cap. I've got a much heavier small cap allocation in the Roth portion of my portfolio because over the long term, I'm guessing that small cap is going to grow more. I might be wrong about that.

There's a little bit of predicting the future in that. But if I assume that over the long term, small cap is going to do a bit better, then I want that growth to be in the Roth. So the Roth portfolio has three different small cap value funds, DFSV, A-V-U-U-V, S-L-Y-V. It's got those three, various small-cap value funds. It's also got a small-cap blend. And then it's got a large-cap blend. It's got a large-cap value.

It's got international developed X-U-S, and it's got international small-cap. Why three small-cap value funds? So I went down the rabbit hole on that. and White Coat investor actually has an amazing blog post breaking apart and analyzing the composition of a bunch of these different small cat value funds. DFSV and AVUV, they are comprised in different ways. DFSV is dimensional fund advisors. That's the one I use. Yeah, that one has a sterling reputation. AVUV is basically a copycat of that. That's Adventist. And, S-L-Y-V tracks the S&P small-cap 600 value index.

So I decided, just hedge my bets and buy equal portions of all of those. And that puts me in three different small-cat value funds. See, my thought process is, and I like the playfulness of that, by the way. I always have an appreciation for I'm going to do some research and buy each of the three and see how they perform. for me down that rabbit hole dimensional funds at its heart does track the index. Just the way that they do it is designed to take a little less risk and provide a little higher return than the index. So we talk about directly track the index. No, they don't.

Right. But when you talk about the intent of the fund is to track that index and to find a way to beat it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So DFSV and AVUV are trying to beat the index. SLYV is not. It is purely tracking the S&P small cap 600 value index. So yeah, I figured let's get all three. So those are my three small cat values. I've got one small cap blet. And everything else is Schwab funds from that point forward. So SCHB, SCHB, SCHV, SCEHV, SCEF, and SCEHC. By the way, since I'm rattling off all these ticker symbols, I should give the disclaimer here. None of this is investing advice. They should not be construed as investing advice. This is purely me talking about how I'm managing my own portfolio. It is not intended to be advice, do your own research, come to your own conclusions, talk to a real professional, don't just listen to the media. So how does this compare to your efficient frontier, though? You're overweight versus the efficient frontier in small cap. Yes. Again, this is just the Roth

portion of my portfolio. So we haven't gotten to the 401K. In the Roth portion, of my portfolio, I'm definitely overweight and small cap as compared to if I wanted to be kind of just to the left of the curve on the efficient frontier. Yeah. That would put me in a higher proportion of large cap stocks, which is what we get to when we get to the 401k at Vanguard. And so the 401k at Vanguard is four funds, and it's equal proportions of large cap blend, large cat value, small cat blend, small cat value.

I should note that Vanguard did this whole thing where for the solo 401Ks, they switched providers, and now it's being run by a census, and there's kind of this whole administrative login difficulty with that. So I have not actually rebalanced Vanguard yet, but that was a plan that I've made. I have rebalanced Schwab. What I get most excited about, I am so excited that what you, done and what Minerva did, you have created your own target date fund. And because it's a mindful target date fund and because it is specific to you, but because it also takes advantage of the

science of asset allocation and proven modern portfolio theory and in some cases breaks the mold on Modern Portfolio Theory in a way that you have decided yourself. Right. You've done a Target Day fund. And it's so much more mindful and it's so much more specific. And you're going to keep it. Yeah. Versus all of this advice that goes, go buy a Target Day fund.

And what ended up for me as a financial planner was that these people that buy Target Day funds end up in my office going, I don't know how any of this stuff works. And don't get me wrong, you don't have to know how everything works. But looking at Minerva, hearing the confidence in her voice going, you know what, I have this four fund approach that works for me and my family. Kick at. Because you know what's going to happen? You're going to pay a fee to a mutual fund family.

And while people point at the Vanguard fund go, well, the fees aren't that high and the Target Day Fund through Vanguard, 90% of these funds are filled with garbage and you're going to pay somebody else to do what you did on your own. And it didn't take that long. The financial plan takes a long time to get to the point that you're going to create this Target Day fund. But if you've done that legwork, why not create your own Target Day fund? Right. It's so kick ass. But Joe, can I tell you what I did? So I did a couple of things in order to increase the simplicity because so much of the conversations that we've been having are simplicity versus optimization. And that was part of why I was like,

you know what, let me drink my own medicine. I guess take your own medicine. Yeah. As the expression. If you have it, you might as well drink it. All right, let me chug my own medicine. It's because I'm like, I want to go through this myself

to see what the sticking points are. And sticking point number one was if I tried to pull the assets from all of these different accounts together into one big bucket. I know there's software that does it, but I was trying to do it on a spreadsheet on my own, and I just ended up getting confused.

And so my conclusion was either, A, get a financial planner to do it, B, get software, robust software that you pay for to do it, or C, if for me, if I'm going to do it on my own using a spreadsheet, I'm just going to asset allocate inside each account and not worry about how they all concert together. Right, the global total. The second thing I did, and this, you know, I've talked about my 401K, I've talked about my Roth IRA, I've talked about my taxable brokerage account.

The thing that I haven't talked about are those super random little accounts that over time you end up getting, like, for example, Acorns. Acorns is an app, it's a service in which you hook your credit card up to it. And every time you make a purchase, that purchase rounds up. So if I spend $4.80 buying a cup of coffee, Acorns rounds that purchase up by 20 cents. So my $4.80 cup of coffee, they will automatically round it up. The charge to me will be $5. And that additional $20 goes into an investment account.

And then with Acorns, you can play with the settings. So I've set roundups on it. So if I buy a $4.80 cup of coffee, I've rounded the 20 cent differential times two. So now every time I buy that cup of coffee, they're pulling 40 cents out and they're sending it to an investment account. And then on top of that, I've got an automatic withdrawal of $5 a week. What? The whole point of a service like Acorns is that it takes these teeny, teeny, tiny, invisible little amounts of money, either five bucks a week or just rounding up to the nearest whole dollar on every purchase,

these tiny amounts of money that you would never otherwise see. And it just siphons that off and puts it into an investment account for you. I've been using them for a long time. And I have, I'm looking at the app right now, exactly $14,9606 in my Acorns account. That you wouldn't have had, had you not picked up these little tiny things. Exactly. Now, do I want to count that in my asset allocation? No. Exactly. Because I'm tired. So what that means, and I'm looking at my Acorns app right now, that money is invested in a portfolio

that Acorns put together and it's four ETSs. The biggest sliver is large cap. The second biggest sliver is international. And then there's a smaller sliver of mid-case. cap and a very small sliver of small cap. Do I want to count any of that in my asset application? Absolutely not. Not counting it. Nope. It's just a random 15,000 that sits over in this other random account that I'm not even taking into consideration. Why? Because no one's got the time for that. And because if I were to try to optimize my portfolio by taking my acorns, this random account, pulling that into the global picture, I think it would become overly complex and the whole thing would break down. So if I was your financial planner and we were looking at your accounts,

we would go through all your accounts and I would ask, are you using that account or not? If you're not using the account, then we place it into a global account so that we can get the benefit of being more efficient. In this case, it's a smaller account that you are using. I would ask you then next, what are you using that money for? Like, what is the purpose of that? So if I ask you, what's the purpose of the $14,000, Paul? What would you say? Step one, forget that you have it.

Step two, once every few years, open up your phone and be like, whoa, I got 15 grand. Cool. But the timeline on this is just long term. Who cares? Yeah, exactly. So then what I do with that, then I increase the standard deviation on that account as far as I can, as far as I feel comfortable. Yeah.

And the reason is if over the short run it goes down, I'm buying these acorns at a deep discount. If it goes up, I'm maximizing. So standard deviation works really well if you're continually putting money in. Like it really works in your favor. So a small cap value fund can make you great amounts of money, even if it doesn't make money, right? Just because during the up-down,

down, up down, you're going to do some buying during that downtime. Yeah. And so I would say take that acorns allocation and just pedal to the metal. Yeah. Just ramp up the volatility in a responsible way. When I say ramp up the volatility, I don't mean go by one pink sheet company. I mean choose an index so you're still diversified, but one that has a lot of volatility. Yeah.

When I first had my solo 401K, I just invested it in Vanguard small cap value until it reached $100,000. It was all just Vanguard small cap value. I'm like, you know what? If I'm just shoveling money in, I'm going to use the most volatile thing I can possibly stomach, which would be either that or developing markets. And the difference between the two of those is that even though I love developing markets, emerging markets, emerging economies, the trend. record on small cap value is so, so, so much better.

Yeah. Even though I love the storyline of emerging economies, I just picked that for that specific reason. Nice. So yeah, don't count it. Yeah, exactly. I can imagine spreadsheet hell. Right.

And this, by the way, is the nature of some of the questions that I've gotten. You know, what do you do about these things? And Joe, you say it's 15 minutes and, oh, my goodness, my Acords account. Right. And if you've been in the personal finance space for a while, you've probably accumulated a handful of these, right? There's acorns. There's capital with a letter Q. Anybody, though.

I mean, the average person works for how many different companies. Right. Yeah. And so you've got these little accounts littered all over the place. So if you're not using it anymore, that's why my first question is, you know, what are you using is for? Nothing. Let's move it. Move it to a global account so that it's not as messy.

Yeah. I've gotten an account that I did way back in like 2000. Were you part of this? This is like 2012. They took a bunch of bloggers and had us compete against each other. Oh, yes. Yes. It was, what was it?

It began with the letter L. It's a company that I don't think even exists anymore. So they gave us, they gave us money. They gave us the money. They gave us like, what was it? Like a thousand? Yeah.

They gave us money. And so that little account for me sat out there, literally Paula for almost a decade. And then I went, what the hell am I doing with this? Like, I'm doing nothing with it. So I sold everything, moved it over. Yeah. Yeah.

I think I have a public account. I've got, yeah, I've got a bunch of random ones. I've got these tiny, these probably a dozen accounts that I've racked up over the years with a few grand each in each of them, just kind of littered all over the place. Move them. Either do it's called an AK. cat transfer, which is... Feel bad for anyone who has to deal with my estate.

Either do an ACAT transfer, which is just an account transfer where you move the assets in kind over to a global account. So you don't have to sell them. And Minerva, to your point, if you do that, then you don't have to pay the capital gains tax if it fits, but you just want it in one place where you can monitor it easier or do what I did and go, you know what I'm selling it. I don't even want these funds anymore because I was picking ridiculous stuff just to win the short-term competition.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that competition that we did back in 2012, they picked a handful of bloggers and we were competing with each other to see whose accounts would get the highest returns, but over a very, it was like very short term. Very short term. So I did exactly the opposite of what I would do long term instead of. And this is if you want to get rich quick, right? Increase the standard deviation and decrease the diversification, aka bet. Bet, make a bet.

Yeah. I remember I blindfolded myself. I threw darts at a list of stocks and then I just bought whatever the darts landed on. I love that making yourself the Labrat. Yeah. And your experiment of Labrat. My Labrat experiment was the thing that people always told me when I was a financial planner. I'm like, I feel good about these stocks. So let's see how I feel good about these stocks does versus just buying the index. So you threw it. dart, I used my intuition. My intuition got a kicked. Which was predictable. Yeah, that happened. I predicted that at the beginning.

Yep, that happens. But I went into it with no. I really, really like these stocks. Nice. So, Minerva, that's our answer to your question on asset location. We also created a free guide called Asset Location Made Simple. It's an easy to understand synopsis of, of everything that we just talked about,

what to put in your taxable, tax exempt, and tax-deferred accounts. So if you want a quick and handy guide that you can reference, it's easy to understand, it's at a glance, it's right there on your desktop, afford-anything.com slash asset location. It's free.

Affordanthing.com slash asset location. Our final question today comes from Scott. Hi, Paul and Joe. I really appreciated Joe's thoughtful take on VTSAX and Chill versus the efficient frontier. It's been a refreshing perspective. I'm interested in taking the 15 minutes Joe recommends to shift towards an efficient frontier portfolio, but I'm not quite sure where to begin.

Part of the appeal of VTSAX is how clearly J.L. Collins lays out the steps. Do you have any resources, videos, articles, or guides that explain the efficient frontier and offer some straightforward steps to get started? Thanks so much for the great content. God, thank you so much for the kind words. And I'm glad that you've enjoyed this journey as much as we have. Hopefully, today, the answer to the first two questions also helped you. We will link to my initial video training in the show notes where I walk through the steps on video.

If you miss that, I think that's probably the most comprehensive guide. I know, frankly, anywhere, not just because I did it. But I haven't seen anybody go that comprehensively into it. You're referring to the Afford Anything episode where we on video walk through it. On video. So it's on the YouTube channel and you can watch me go through the screens. And you will see all of the different step one do this, step two, do this, step three, do this. Just to clarify, that video that we're referring to is a very robust tutorial with a step-by-step walk-through.

And we're linking to that in the show notes. You can read it. If you're listening to this on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, you can look at the episode description and the link will be there. You can also go to our website, afford anything.com slash episode 631. And all of the links for everything that we've talked about today will be there. As I mentioned earlier, there are some things that that video didn't include because either they were assumptions that I've made that I've gotten feedback from people about. since that recording or things that I wish that I'd included. So let's include a quick FAQ here, Paula.

Oh, okay. The three common mistakes that I see people make when they address this tool of the efficient frontier is they're not beginning with a goal. If you show up at the efficient frontier and you think that the efficient frontier is going to magically provide you with the diversified. portfolio funds, it will not. You have to come to the efficient frontier with a starting point. So what I wish I'd been more clear about when I mentioned that it would take 15 minutes, and we said this earlier in the show, but that assumes that you've already know what your

timeline is. You know how much money you're going to save toward the goal. That will not be included the efficient frontier. You're doing that separately. That's a whole separate thing. But then the piece that it's going to help with is what return you need. The crucial thing that you're going to need for the efficient frontier is, what return do I need to reach my goal effectively? And by the way, that's going to move, right? As the goal is a long-term goal, you're going to be further up the efficient frontier because you can accept the volatility of being further up the efficient frontier. But as the goal gets closer, you're going to manually move. move it, which I'll get to in a second, but that's another assumption people make.

Well, and I want to take a moment here to clarify what you mean when you say, what return do you need? Because, Joe, what you're talking about, and I think this is a concept that I want to establish is the idea that you don't want to necessarily take on more risk than you have to. A lot of times when people are first starting to invest, they're like, well, isn't the goal just to make the most money possible? No, it's not. not. The goal is to chase the rewards that are aligned with the level of a risk that you want to take on. You don't want to take on more risk than you have to. So I want to establish that, Joe, because when you talk about what return do I need, it can confuse people because people are

like, well, I want my returns to be as high as possible. Huge. Huge. Yeah, exactly. And maybe it's almost like people bringing products to market where it's minimum viable product. Right. It's minimum viable return. Yeah, exactly. To reach my goal. So if you don't begin with your goal, the efficient frontier is going to confuse you.

Like a hammer. If I have a hammer and I have no idea what I'm using it for, why the hell do I have a hammer in my hand? Fish and Marliter is a hammer. It's a hammer to tell you that, hey, if I need a 9% rate of return and I have 20 years to reach it and I'm okay with this level of volatility, here's your point. this is historically what got you there. So I think the confusion here is we have to eliminate this idea that there is a best. I want the best. And clients would often come to me with,

just give me the best. If we eliminate the idea of best and we replace it with, will most optimally meet my goal. Doesn't roll off the tongue the same ball. Doesn't have that ring to it. Goal optimized. But it's far much more. honest, I think you're going to avoid mistakes. And the key with the efficient frontier, and we address this earlier too, which is a confusion. And I think this is where Jason was hung up when he said, you know, I'm using this to make more money. For me, the efficient frontiers to avoid making mistakes. It's to avoid some of these frequent mistakes I see people make where they are not diversified enough or they're too diversified or they're in these funds that don't address the goal

specifically. If you get more intentional and specific around your goal, you're going to avoid these common mistakes that we see. So I think that's number one. Not beginning with your goal is the first problem people have when they use the efficient frontier. If you begin with your goal and then come to the efficient frontier, then I think you know why you're using the hammer. Second, not analyzing your time horizon first before you get to the efficient frontier. And instead just believing I'm going to optimize. If you begin with the time horizon, then the efficient frontier is going to adequately help you diversify assets. But the efficient frontier won't say, whoa, buddy, it's time to lower the risk because the goal's getting close. It will never say that.

It just is a tool that will tell you, oh, based on the fact that you need 8%, here's where you are. Well, what you have to bring to the table is a little bit of honesty about what's possible during that time frame. And for a pro, that's what standard deviation does. Because standard deviation goes, are you kidding me? 14%, which is the number Jason referenced earlier. Do I want a standard deviation of 14, which is a 28% swing on an average market? Do I want 28% swing when the goal is two years away? No, no, no, no, no, no. I can't stomach that swing.

20 years away? Heck yeah. Easy. Yeah, that's fine. This is where risk tolerance helps. You can look at the efficient frontier and go, I'm at this point. Can I stomach that risk? But also, with the time that I have available, is that swing going to work for me? You have to do the swing manually. So you do have to bring that either expertise or honesty, maybe a combination of both, to the efficient frontier. It's not going to tell you it's time to move. You have to tell it that it's time to move. The third piece is, and I've said this twice already, just because this is the biggest piece of feedback I've gotten, Joe, this takes longer than 15 minutes. the planning ahead of time when you're doing step one beginning with your goal, that takes hours. The second, evaluating your time horizon and plotting your time horizon along the timeline,

that also takes more time. The tax efficiency around your investments, that takes more time. The efficient frontier itself should not take longer than 15 minutes. but the planning and the pushback I got is that people don't understand that. The planning around getting to this point that I know where to hit the hammer on the nail. Hitting the hammer on the nail head is very, very quick, right? I love these construction analogies. All this construction going on in my house with all the water pouring into my house.

Like construction works for me. But knowing where to put the nail takes a long, long, long time. So if you're spending more than 15 minutes on the efficient frontier, I think it's a mistake. Even if you have multiple accounts, if you have lots of accounts, I don't think it takes that long. If your pushback to me is, oh my goodness, Joe, it takes a lot of time. The answer is yes. But I do think that's still time well spent, whether you use VTSAX or anything else. The mindfulness that you're creating for yourself by listening to the Afford Anything podcast,

by just diving into these episodes a few hours a week, that mindfulness you're giving to your money, it pays dividends. And I'll tell you that when I sat down with people, as I mentioned earlier in the show, Paula, these four meanings we had just to set up the financial plan. And then you built your own financial plan with my help. That mindfulness of four hours that we took.

And then I took even more time than that to do some of the legwork for you, because that was my job, the pro, that mindfulness around your plan meant that five years from now, you're not blowing it up. And it's awesome. So could we go get a Target Day fund? Could we just go to Paul Merriman? Yeah. Can we VTSAX? Yeah. But the efficacy is in the mindfulness. That's my FAQ. And again, around the mechanics of specifically how to use portfolio. portfolio visualizer and how to test different asset classes along the efficient frontier. We're going to put a link in the episode description slash show notes that'll get you to that

video. If Scott, your specific question was, yeah, I watched that video, but I don't know how to approach it. I think the FAQ helps a little, but let me address that very directly. There are lots of websites out there. Fidelity has one, Vanguard has one, that will help you calculate what rate of return is your minimal rate of return that you need because you're going to need that before you get there. So you can go to any of those free websites that will give you kind of a gross.

And by gross, I mean directionally right and kind of gross because it's not as specific as I'd like you to be. But it will give you directionally, okay, here's the return you're going to need. If you want to get granular, which I appreciate, A for the mindfulness, but B, because it's going to help you zero in better on where along the efficient frontier you're going to be a calculator like the Bolden calculator or some of the paid calculators that are out there. Boler B-O-L-D-I-N. Yeah, and they're going to have, by the way, they're going to have a little learning curve, right? Because the more granular of the calculator, like I've seen people go, oh, Bolden calculator is going to get me closer.

Then they go there and they're like, what the? Because that calculator, while it's very well designed, there's a lot going on under the hood. Because as you can imagine, as it gets more granular, it's going to ask you a lot of questions that you're like, I, I, how do I use that? So there's going to be some tutorial time, but regardless, if you're looking for step by step, step one is figure out what rate of return you need to reach the goal that you have in mind that these assets are for using either the free calculator to get in the ballpark or a paid calculator to get much more specific. that's going to take some time and then go to the training video that we did on Afford Anything. And then you're going to use the calculator well. And then the third step that we don't cover in that training is then do what Paula talked about earlier on this episode, which is either spreadsheet out your assets and go, okay, I'm going to globalize this and I'm going to look at all these different funds and I'm going to put them into one global asset allocation or bucket them where they're all going to be,

individually their own asset allocation. You make that decision, how optimized you want to be. And then to Minerva's point, look at the taxes you're going to pay to move them. It isn't going to make you not move them. I would still move them. But you're going to design a strategy around how you get there to possibly minimize taxes and then move the asset. And then once the assets are on the efficient frontier, they're going to, of course, then begin moving because these are living, breathing markets that we're buying into. And as the markets breathe, some are going to do better than expected. Some are going to do worse than expected because every day presents new challenges. And as that happens, you're going to then, according to an investment policy statement,

which means I have these written set of criteria about how I'm going to manage these investments. according to that policy, I'm going to then rebalance to stay on the efficient frontier. Then the efficient frontier is going to drift over time because as we get new data, the efficient frontier is proven to be more efficient in one direction than another. Efficient frontier just tells you what it's done historically. It never moves quickly, but it does move. So you have to decide how often you're going to then go back into portfolio visualizer or whatever the tool is that you're going to use and go back and just start from the beginning

and go, okay. And there's two reasons to do that. The market drifts. And the second reason that we referenced earlier, Paula, is my goals got close enough that I need to find a new point on the efficient frontier anyway. So I should probably look at not my. old numbers for the efficient frontier, but where's the efficient frontier at today? If I'm moving from an 8% expected return to a 6% expected return because the goal's gotten closer, what does that

look like right now? So if that was your question, Scott, that's the full step by step. I would do this first, second, third, fourth. And what I like about what you've just outlined, Joe, is that it brings together a lot of the concepts that we've talked about on the show in disparate conversations. Yeah, piecemeal. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So on previous episodes, we've talked in more detail about the investor policy statement. We've talked about timelining your goals. We've talked about all of that. And so what you've just outlined brings all of these piecemeal concepts together into a step-by-step plan. You mean there's a plan? Of course there's a plan. But often people do wonder that like, what are we working from? And in my head, as you can see, Paul, in yours too, it's a simple. riding of the bike, right? It's, I'm working from, in my mind, this machinery that all dovetails

together. So, thank you, Scott, for the question. Joe, we've done it again. Unbelievable. This was a great one. And Joe, you are Mr. Efficient Frontier. Bill Bengen is to the 4% rule as Joe Sal Cahai is to the efficient frontier. Of course, Bill Bengen is now telling people that 5% is okay. And Joe Saul-Sehi is now telling people, you know what? Just go to a Paul Merriman portfolio is okay. But in fairness, Bill Bangin thought up the 4% rule. I did not think up the efficient frontier. That's true. But you did popularize it within this community. I did. I will take credit for that. So between Harry and I, we got a lot done. Mr. Markowitz. One of us was recognized with the Nobel Prize. The other one got to be on afford anything. So I think I won.

Aw. Well, Joe, where can people find you when you're not on afford anything? Holy moly. You know what? Everybody pump the breaks because tomorrow, tomorrow you want to tune into the Stackin' Benjamin show because this amazing woman, Paula Pant, is front and center. Normally you'll find her on Friday opining on our most relaxed day of the week, Friday, to start your weekend where we chat about a concept and financial planner, some concepts. But on Monday, Wednesday, we have mentors on the show who do deeper dives. And Paula is going to go into some key concepts about your next raise. Yes. I know you're going to hear some of that here. But you know what? Paul and I, when we get together and have a discussion about it,

I'm going to grill her. I'm going to make her sweat. It's going to be just, Yeah, watch out, Paula. Watch out. But anyway, that's tomorrow on stacking Benjamins. Yes. And I will say we are in the middle right now of launching your next raise, our course on how to negotiate. If you enroll through Joe's link, you get a bunch of additional freebies. And we will detail all that tomorrow too.

Yes, absolutely. So if you have any interest in asking your boss for more money, or if you're thinking about changing jobs and you want to be prepared to ask for more during that that job offer conversation. Tune into the episode with Joe on stacking Benjamins or check out more information on our website at afford anything.com slash your next raise. That's afford anything.com slash your next raise. Every time I say that in my speech to text software, it thinks I'm saying trays, your next trays.

Really? Yeah, it really does. So I'm constantly voice messaging the team or using speech to text to message to the team. And every message is like, your next tray. Which is funny because on my little passion project, stacking adventures, my little travel thing, stacking adventures.com slash my story for people to call in and tell their story. Yeah. But it looks like we just spelled mystery wrong.

I've been people tell me. Like, I tried to find a link, but why is it mystery? And you spelled it wrong. I'm like, no, it's my story. Oh, man. So now whenever we do the URL on our show notes, I got to have a capital S. Oh. You spelled mystery in a mysterious way.

Story. And as a guy who has seen behind the scenes what you all are about to experience, Paula works hard on a lot of stuff, but Paula's whole team. has worked their on helping you get your next race. So I can't wait to grill you about it tomorrow, Paula. Oh, I'm very excited. Very excited.

We've been through two rounds of beta now. We've worked out where the prime value is. And truly, the value is in the peer-to-peer practice. Initially, we were asking our students to self-organize into teams, and we realized, you know what, we need to be hosting live practice sessions. Cool. So we, ourselves, I'm there. We're hosting these live practice sessions every week where people can come together and pair off and actually practice with one another.

And we have different circumstances and different setups. And we give people different scenarios. Everyone gets asymmetric information. But those live practice sessions are really the heartbeat of what we offer. Because you can passively consume it. information about by watching YouTube videos or reading substack newsletters, like you can passively consume this stuff. But when you're actually live in real time practicing with somebody else, that's where

theory turns into action. So much better. You can read a book about how to throw a baseball, but until you actually pick up a baseball and throw it, you're never going to get any better. Well, think about the confidence you gain. Right. You're in a discussion. You're like, oh, I've already said this. I've already said this. I already know. I know these possible ways they might come back. I know how this discussion might go. And not from I looked at it on paper, like some type of diagram, but I've actually had somebody reply these different things. Right. That's awesome. So you heard it here, everybody. Paula spent a lot of time with the betas. Tomorrow she meets the alpha on stacking Benjamins. It's funnier if I make myself laugh. Where's Omega?

I'm looking for Omega. Just to get you out of this. Please, God, make it end. Make it end. You know, I really don't see a delta between the betas and the alpha. Oh, hey. Wait a second. There's not much of a delta there.

Oh, man. Oh, Greek letter joke. So good. And always timely. Yeah, never gets obsolete. Well, if you enjoyed today's episode, share this with your favorite algebra teacher who taught you all of those Greek letters. Share it with your fellow public safety officers. Yes, like Jason.

Absolutely. Share this with the people that you meet when you take your family on vacation to. To Italy. Italy. Italy, yeah, share this with the people on your vacation in Italy. And Scott, now that we've given you the entire diagram, diagram it out for everybody. How to Find the Afford Anything show.

Yes, absolutely. Share this with your favorite diagram drawers. Share this with the people at HR. Share this with the people in the Bogleheads Forum who are talking about VTSAX and Chill and share it with the people in the day trading forum who are talking about whatever it is that they talk about. Share it with Nobel Prize winners.

Oh, share it with Nobel Prize losers. You're on fire today. Oh, my God. Share this with the people who sell you the Kool-Aid. People want you to drink the Kool-Aid. Anyone who's Kool-Aid adjacent. Share this with anyone who gives you medicine. Give them this medicine.

Share it with all the people in your life, because that is the best way to spread the message of F-W-I-R-E. If you enjoyed today's episode, and I hope you have, then please open your favorite podcast player or your least favorite podcast player, every podcast player in order of preference or in reverse order of preference. And hit the follow button on every single one. And while you're there, please leave us up to a five-star review. Write a few words. Talk about why you enjoy the show. That is so critical in helping us bring on awesome guests.

Go to our YouTube page at YouTube.com slash afford anything. Hit the subscribe button there because the more subscribers we have, the bigger of guests we can bring on. Check out some of our videos. Watch the efficient frontier tutorial. And if you're interested in learning

how to make more money at work, head to afford anything.com slash your next raise. Thanks again for tuning in. I'm Paula Pan. I'm Chosol-Chi. And we'll meet you in the next episode. maybe take your own medicine to prove that it works is probably a better analogy. The difference between medicine and poison is just the dosage.

Hold on a second. Are you texting Cheryl? No, no, I just have to write that down because. I was like, that's so good he's got to share it right now. I'm sharing that in our Facebook group today. Paul Lepant. That just caught me. Well, as you saw.

I'm like, wait, what? Oh, that was funny. I'm sorry. Okay. All right. I'm back on it. Let's go.