yes, it’s incredibly easy.

As Base said target dates are something different. They are what fund managers have deemed "appropriate" levels of "risk" for an individual.

Unless you are within five years of retirement, I find holding bonds pointless. Target date funds have a sliding scale for bond allocation that changes depending on the year. The generic guidance from the finance profession is some calculation of your age to bond %.

Now, keep in mind when rates increase, bond prices decline. So during a period of perpetually falling interest rates, that thought process made sense. Retiree in the 80s? Full on 100% bonds was making money not only in their rates but also increasing prices because they held higher rate bonds when rates were falling.

How much sense does it make to own any bonds when rates are effectively at 0%-3% for years? People were setting themselves up for failure, and financial planners did nothing to help but put their clients in bonds...while getting paid to **** up. I mean anyone who was even mildly financially literate could see this coming.

Q3 Bond Market Meltdown: Why and What's Next? Charles Schwab

My reasoning for staying 100% equities until five years prior to retirement is if you go back in history, the market was almost if not more than recovered from a selloff in that time frame. So you're made whole, before retiring anyway. Which was the point of bonds...

As far as investment choice of S&P500 vs total market etc, that is personal preference. Personally, I prefer to stick with what has generally worked. If you go back to when Fidelity started their total market fund in 2011, and compare to S&P500, the Total market is +262% and S&P is +278%.

This is also just me, but I don't foresee another 2008 ever happening again as long as the USD is the world's currency. The US Government will not allow it (see Covid response). Now, if the USD tanks, hopefully you also own RE (and some guns/ammo to defend it!). But, everyone in the country will be in the same place and we'll all be ****ed. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.

whats about that guy who had that newsletter?

As mentioned the target date funds have a larger mix of assets which might be a positive but their fees are orders of magnitude higher than the index funds. For the younger pilots just starting who can expect to have $10M balances those fees will become absolutely egregious.

My personal preference is to use valuations to reduce stock exposure during bubbles but in any case the low cost index funds will outperform the target date funds.

Why are the target date funds the default option? Because they make more money for the administrator. Buy a yacht for yourself if you wish but don't buy one for finance folks.

Post of the decade for anyone under age 45. 👍👍👍

Thank you for the background. This is insightful.

Thank you. Mind if I DM you?

inside Netbenefits is the s&p500 index labeled something else? Not FXAIX? Only see 3 large cap index funds? Or is it in a total different spot in net benefits?

thanks for the info.

Yeah you have to buy/transfer to brokerage link (should be at bottom of list). You can do up to 95% IIRC. Then inside brokerage link you can buy FXAIX and setup for auto purchse. Careful with brokerage link it allows the purchase of any stock, I highly recommend you don't FOMO and just stick to SP500 solely in retirement account.

The other 5% in AA 401k base account I think I did target date or something or maybe small cap but it really doesn't matter.

If you run into problems call Fidelity they are really good.

Feel free anytime