Also, watching all your videos you seem like the S&P and Target Date fund are very close, as if it’s a toss up. I have seen a few people who choose the Total Market or S&P over the Target Date because I have seen that there are MANY fees with a Target Date Fund due to the constant allocation of funds over time. Just was curious on your opinion. I plan on putting 80% of my money into these 3 accounts soon and have never done anything like this before so you can understand why I am very nervous hahaha
Yeah… you’re kinda making it a little more complicated than it needs to be. Let’s break down some of the things you mentioned:
- S&P 500 index fund: This is (basically) the 500 biggest companies in the US.
- Total market index fund: This is about 4,000 US companies that make up the total US stock market. This behaves very similarly to an S&P 500 index fund because the biggest 500 companies make up about 80% of the total US stock market (as measured by market capitalization, which is how index funds are weighted)
- Target date index fund: This is a basket of a few index funds, namely the total market index fund from above, PLUS an international index fund, plus a bond index fund.
So when choosing from the above… the TDIF has the other two INSIDE of it. So you don’t really need to choose one or the other. You can just choose the TDIF and get everything you need in one convenient package.
Here’s a video on S&P 500 vs TDIF:
And here’s the reasons why I like investing 100% of a portfolio in a TDIF:
Awesome! Great stuff! Thank you! Sold me on the Target Date Index Fund.
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