Welcome to the VWRA and chill club

If can get 3 person confirmed maybe can start a list of people who hold 80% VWRA or above or some other arbitrary percentage that can qualify as VWRA and chill

It's still good, VT even carry more stocks, but of course, there's the the withholding tax issues. My friend buys VT now too because the transaction cost is way cheaper for him to DCA, and his portfolio size isn't large enough to worry about WHT tax drag yet. Once VT yearly dividend tax drag is bigger than maximum possible transaction cost of VWRA, then it's better to switch over.

Welcome to the club!

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 4 2022, 09:07 PM

Yeap, hence the eternal SP500 vs VT vs VXUS+VTI vs SWRD/IWDA+EIMI/WSML vs VWRA portfolio discussions and disagreements.

At this level of diversification and generally low costs, the choices among these start to become a way smaller concern, and the biggest impact is going to be the ability to ignore everything, deposit regularly, diligently until retirement.

Thanks for the value added replies!

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 4 2022, 09:11 PM

Cant wait But your VWRA holding is gonna be sub 50% for a quite a while first

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 4 2022, 09:23 PM

Are you on Fixed Pricing? You need to swap over to Tiered Pricing to access USD 1.70 commission for Ireland/UK stocks & ETF traded in USD.



This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 6 2022, 09:43 PM

Can be changed anytime at account settings, try going to setting > bottom left, its just a click.



This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 6 2022, 11:46 PM

Out of curiosity, what would be your ideal portfolio?
How many stocks is too concentrated, how many stocks is considered diversified?
How much China sector do you allocate in your portfolio?
I assume you fully manage your portfolio, where do you buy and hold your holdings?

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 7 2022, 04:07 PM

Yeap, that's what I thought too. So I am curious what his portfolio would look like. For individual stock investors, their satisfied level of diversification can be anywhere between 5 to 50 or more, so I am curious of his definition and platform of investment.

Great discussion points like yours are always appreciated and welcomed. Part of the problem with Bogleheads community is that there really isn't much to talk about, doubly so when we don't even need to discuss tax-advantage/exempt/disadvantage accounts.

Plus, any constructive discussion of non-Bogleheads is also healthy, either it'll point out faults of Bogleheads or reaffirms other Bogleheads to stay the course. Always welcomed to have more activity here.

That's the spirit. Buy and hold the entire haystack, earn average return, don't take uncompensated risks, be productive in life instead. Check account upon retirement

Hmm, I am a little on the younger side, so I'm not sure how valid my opinion is, or perhaps people would think less of me for being on the paranoid side, but I'll share it anyway.

First of all, I invest primarily in VWRA, an Irish-domiciled ETF. I will never have an holding of more than 60k in US stocks/ETF/cash in my IBKR account so I shouldn't be liable for any US estate tax concerns.
I've told my close family that I have foreign investment, and that in the event of my demise, they are free to help themselves to it, at least I would have paid for my own funeral.

As a backup plan, I've also prepared a document detailing my access info, screenshots of how to liquidate my portfolio, my withdrawal routes, as well as instructions on how to contact IBKR for assistance should they are unable to or unwilling to pretend to be me and access my funds. Of course, there's always an option to proceed with my will and death certificate to access it legally - if it does come to this, and they find it worth the trouble.

The document is then stored in an encrypted volume requiring PASSWORD_A, attached to my gmail on scheduled send in 6 months, and also stored in a physical thumbdrive, mentions that password will be emailed in 1 month.
Then in another gmail account, PASSWORD_A is also on scheduled send in 7 months.
Then, I set an reminder to myself to renew the send date every 5 or so months to keep it from sending out until I die, acting like a dead man's switch.

This should keep my access detail safe even if I made a mistake now and then (e.g. forget to renew encrypted volume send date), stolen, or my relationship with my family deteriorates in the future.

If it sounds mega paranoid, it is. I am a selfish person and my benefits should always comes first above all else. I wouldn't trust a second soul to access any of my finances as long I am still alive. I've seen enough bad story regarding family and money as it is.

TL;DR: Family is aware of where I am invested, will have access to my investment as soon as my death certificate is issued, or in 7 months as a backup.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 10 2022, 06:08 AM

It's just a one time setup, I believe it took me a day to get everything in order - maintenance is about 5min every 5 or so months. It's alright I guess? I tried to minimize the effort needed to maintain it so I would maintain it, haha.

Well, if I am incapacitated enough that I couldn't reset my dead man's switch, they would get access to my account in 6 months. If I am incapacitated to that point I would be at their mercy regardless, which I do hope I will have a good enough relationship to be in their care without being taken advantage of.

My will is only applicable at my death, and I believe estate tax will not be applicable to my fund in any scenario. Unless you have something in mind that I may have missed? I would very much appreciate the advice.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 10 2022, 12:19 PM

Pretty much, yeah. I'll be looking for a great roommate more than a classic wife, so to say. We will appreciate financial independence, we will be okay that we have both shared and personal finances, we will not have kids.
I've talking to my parents, and my dad's pretty modern and have 0 Chinese "the family-line have to go on" mentality, my mom slowly warmed up over the years as she saw more and more marriage and family fail around us. Didn't take much to convince them nor there were much objections, thankfully.

Plus, it only sounds complicated when you type it out like that


Completely opposite of me, my parents have full trust and confidence in each other. I am pretty sure my dad just tosses everything he makes to my mom let her manage everything finance related, hahaha. This does mean he does occasionally need to ask for money (that he made) for cigarettes at times.

For those who are concerned:

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 12 2022, 02:08 AM

Just to balance out the discussion, my two cents as a staunch supporter of the Bogleheads philosophy will always be VWRA and chill, spend the time maximizing your income and enjoy life.

With my full respects and as Ramjade may have mentioned that it's not for everyone - while selling options is a solid income sources, do not mistake it as effortless free lunch. Going in without proper homework and an already large enough capital may not be the best of ideas. Plus, there is also a small chance that the premiums you've earned might be lower than just simply holding it when market is in bull season.

I have my eyes set on that income sources too, but personally, I wouldn't treat the underlying securities as the backbone of my portfolio, and I would only do it when I can easily afford multiple contracts with just 20% of my portfolio, probably in my latter years when I have retired from my day job.

Criticism, corrections and discussion very much welcomed! I am happy to learn more and even happier to be corrected.

Just a reminder that big, safe blue chips can pop too.

Buy the haystack, don't take uncompensated risks 👍

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 22 2022, 07:06 AM

The Boglehead's take: It's all just noise, barely a blip in 10 years much less 30, stay the course.

15% of my portfolio is small cap value-tilt (about twice the size of normal small cap allocation) implemented via factor filtered small cap ETFs provided by Avantis in a 60% US 40% ex-US ratio. (AVUV 9%, AVDV 6%)

Personally I don't believe it's a move a true purist Boglehead's would do, so I wouldn't recommend that actively to anyone here. But my reasoning for this allocation is that:

1. VWRA do not contain any small caps.

2. Large-medium caps and small-caps rotates in performance much like International and US performance rotates.

3. Unfiltered small caps Unfiltered small caps often have too much bad stocks dragging it's performance down.

So I'm only taking slightly more compensated risk to complement my portfolio and every so slightly increased the long term (~20y) expected rewards (~0.5% or so).

However my strong recommendation is still to avoid complexity as much as possible, and go with a life-long 2-fund portfolio of VWRA+(VAGU/AGGU).

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 24 2022, 03:48 PM

Ah, I'm only implementing it on the small caps part of my portfolio (VWRA+AVUV+AVDV), while a proper RR factor tilted portfolio would apply it to large and medium caps too.

Emerging markets are generally one hell of a mixed bag leaning towards mostly negative anyway, so I am only interested in the large caps of EMs which are already included in VWRA - and I don't need factor tilting for that.

And yeah, I don't really see a reason to buy generic small cap or small cap blends - even among factor filtered ones, Avantis (basically Dimensional really) seems to be the only ones implementing the Fama French asset pricing model properly.

Still, kinda happy to meet folks who knows about Rational Reminder on this forum too.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 24 2022, 10:58 PM

With major indices going on a discount recently, I'd imagine there are a few investors thinking whether to act on the price changes or not, so here's my 2 cents:

It doesn't matter if you are a Boglehead. Stay the course.

Invest early, invest often, stay invested, time in the market beats timing the market.

That is to say, set up an amount you are comfortable to DCA in fixed interval, amend that amount when your financials changes. If you receive a windfall/a sudden sum of extra money that can be invested, invest all of them as early as you can.

If you insist on "buying on a discount"...

Best case scenario, you save a few bucks per share buying at the absolute dip, but the chances that you buying at the "right time" every time for the rest of your portfolio's life span is basically 0 so it's all gonna even out.

Worst case scenario... you miss the best days of the market that almost single handedly defines your total returns. miss the best days of the market.




What if you just bought in at the worst possible time? The world's worst market timer

Should I hold onto my cash and wait for it to drop more? Buy the dip! (For lower returns?)

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 27 2022, 10:16 AM