quote:

Originally posted by Schmelby:
I personally would worry about Roth IRA'S. You paid your tax before you put it in, but their are a lot of politicians drooling over how much are in those Roths.
Fifteen years from now they will want to tax it again when you withdraw funds. You know, you need to pay your "fair share". You don't deserve it!
This country is headed for economic collapse, everything will be fair game.
My two cents. Flame away!

That may be true, but the same can be said for pretty much any retirement account. Social security could go bankrupt and disappear, pensions could dry up and stop paying out, the market could crash and destroy your private accounts. There's nothing guaranteed. My philosophy is put in what I can afford to contribute now to responsibly plan for retirement, but I'm also not going to put so high a priority on it that I can't afford to live my life now. I hope it's all there and I can take advantage of it when I'm in my 60s and 70s, but if it's not due to circumstances beyond my control I'll just have to keep doing what I'm doing till I die.

In this phase of the stock market which is late bull market and where I am in my life which is early retirement, I’m not chasing returns. I’m managing my risks/rewards by the time horizon for each bucket.

0-3 months: high yield accounts
4 - 12 months: 6 month treasuries
1-2 years: corporate ladder bonds
3-10 years: fixed income/broad market ETFs like dividend yield, low volatility, etc. designed to avoid 20% to 30% drops that may occur within the next 6 months.
11-20 years: capital growth oriented portfolio based on stock market sector and sub sector ETFs and fixed income, concentrating on sectors that should do well in the current phase and avoiding those that won’t do well in the current stock market phase. I rebalance yearly or at +/- 5% allocation.

My goal is capital protection for money I need inside of 10 years and capital growth for money allocated for beyond 10 years as that should be enough time to recover from a sudden bear market.

quote:

Originally posted by Schmelby:
I personally would worry about Roth IRA'S. You paid your tax before you put it in, but their are a lot of politicians drooling over how much are in those Roths.
Fifteen years from now they will want to tax it again when you withdraw funds. You know, you need to pay your "fair share". You don't deserve it!
This country is headed for economic collapse, everything will be fair game.
My two cents. Flame away!

Friendly flames only ....

I have minor worries about all the retirement accounts, plus Social Security and Medicare. I don't separate out ROTH for being raided by the government.

I do think that first there will be efforts to confiscate 401k and IRA accounts to put them under Social Security. It has been floated several times before by DC. After a major market drop they will claim it would protect us if they managed it for us. They may try to take ROTHs as well, but for sure they want the traditional IRA/401k money.

Tax rules in retirement greatly favor ROTH accounts. The way that taxes stack is different than when you have a paycheck. e.g. the bottom tax bracket is 10% normally while working. For me this year my bottom bracket is 18.5%. Long term capital gains normally would be 0% tax, but because of the way SS gets taxed my rate will be at least 8.5% on those gains. Again, for someone not on Social Security with the same numbers they would pay 10% where I pay 18.5%, and pay 0% where I pay 8.5%.

But anything I take out of a ROTH will be 0%.

My combined YTD return is: 19.12%
One year return: 22.91%

This is a total of four accounts; one taxable brokerage, one Roth IRA and two rollover IRA's, one being managed by Fidelity in an equity income strategy account. The managed account holds about 9% of my overall investments.

I keep a pretty active handle on the three accounts I manage.

quote:

My combined YTD return is: 19.12%

That's a very good number. I'm at around 16-17% across several accounts. The weak spot has been Small cap growth funds which have not kept pace this year.

Mines doing great. I’m almost back even from the losses I took when Biden got elected.

How different asset classes performed in 2025:



Source: Bloomberg and Goldman Sachs Asset Management. As of December 31, 2025. Chart shows the year-to-date performance of different asset classes. “Gold” refers to the gold spot price quoted in US dollars per troy oz, “Intl Small Cap” refers to the S&P Developed Ex-US Small Cap Index,” EM Equity” refers to the MSCI EM Index, “DM Equity” refers to the MSCI EAFE Index, “US Large Cap” refers to the S&P 500 Index, “US Small Cap” refers to the Russell 2000 Index, “Global HY” refers to the Barclays Global High Yield Index, “Global IG” refers to the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index, “US HY” refers to the Bloomberg US Corporate High Yield Bond Index, “US IG” refers to the Bloomberg US Aggregate Index, “Cash” refers to the J.P. Morgan 1 Month Cash Index, “US Muni” refers to the Bloomberg Barclays Muni Index, “Bitcoin” refers to the spot price of Bitcoin quoted in US dollars, “Oil” refers to the 1st Brent Crude contract. For illustrative purposes only. 'We' refers to Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Please see additional disclosures at the end of this presentation.

I’m satisfied with mine, ended up with $12K more than I started the year with even though I withdrew considerably more than that amount over the course of the year.

Gain at year end ended up being about 10.3%

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
25 months to 37 months from retirement (i.e. depends on market and whether or not work is fun)

My 401k is at 10.59% year to date. It's a 60/40, but employer's stock is under-performing broad market until the last 30 days.

My portfolio managed by my financial advisor is at 21.04% year to date. Best one sentence summary is more sophisticated and more diversified version of Marc Faber Portfolio . Prior to hiring him, I did 20 year backwards comparison and ran some Monte Carlo analysis models comparing traditional Marc Faber Portfolio versus what big firms were proposing. Long story short is achieving similar returns with lower risks by having both smaller peaks and smaller valleys. For example, I'd lose a lot less if I happen to retire and the next year is like 2008.

YE2025 update with same asset allocation as above 11/15 post:

401k 12.31%

Broker 27.98%. The gold and silver closed-end trusts in portfolio helped.

---

Ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity

DISCLAIMER: These are the author's own personal views and do not represent the views of the author's employer.

Finished out 2025 up 22.7% for the year in my portfolio, across Roth IRA, 401k, and brokerage account.

(Not counting my modest stock of physical precious metals. I haven't done the math on that. But gold had a 64.33% return for 2025, and silver had a 145.88% return.)

quote:

Finished out 2025 up 22.7% for the year in my portfolio, across Roth IRA, 401k, and brokerage account.

That's very good... how much was indexing, mutual funds, or your own trading?

No individual stocks. All indexes.

Including market index ETFs (VT, VTI, VXUS) along with a bond index ETF (BND) and a couple target date funds (VFIAX and some proprietary 2050 TDF from my crappy 401k options).

Roughly 91/9 equity/bond split. And roughly 65/35 US/International stock.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:

quote:

Finished out 2025 up 22.7% for the year in my portfolio, across Roth IRA, 401k, and brokerage account.

That's very good... how much was indexing, mutual funds, or your own trading?

This is my past year in all equity account. 20% dividend stocks. 5% bond ETFs. The rest is defense, growth, value, and maybe 40ish% tech to round out. I use a barbell type strategy.

Pretty good, in retirement, we haven’t looked closely at the most recent statements but across the board everything is very positive. The majority of my 401k is in a guaranteed income feature. While I have made withdrawals from it the last three years, the balance in that portion of 401k has grown to slightly exceed the original balance when I began withdrawals. The other remaining funds have improved, just haven’t looked at actual per cent gains.

With those funds and my IRA accounts, I am on the threshold of becoming 72 and will start planning for required minimum distributions. My IRA accounts have done well also, but we’re heavy on the equity side and will be looking at some rebalancing or at potentially doing so in the near future.

I'm very happy with how my 401K is doing now. I'm even more happy with the fact that President Trump is ensuring my continued financial retirement happiness. As a thank you, I purchased one of his Trump 45-47 custom watches.

Off the charts for us. I couldn't tell you a precise %, considering a shit ton of travel spending, charitable giving, supporting the arts locally, plus passing on large amounts to the adult kids. Somewhere around 45% gain in 2025. We feel very blessed in retirement.

Silver and to lesser extent gold have made us more than comfortable, and the traditional investments did quite well, too.

The worst performer was the bond ladder at about 4%.

When the metals seem to be peaking we'll rebalance to a saner portfolio mix. I am staying aware that in retirement my job is to not lose what we have! For now I'm bullish on US stocks in general, despite the left's constant attempts to drag down public sentiment.

Both my Roth IRA and my simple IRA had one year gains of around 140%, all stocks and one gold fund. I'm heavily invested in gold, gold mining/exploration, US rare earth mineral miners and AI related tech, with a bit of biotech. It was an incredible year and I expect 2026 will be a great year too.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: P220forever,

^^^ I'm with these guys. 61%, all metals ETF's and mining stocks with some cash on the side.

I guess it's doing okay, just letting it ride. But it's nothing compared to my physical silver though (number one asset in 2025 at 140%). Anything other than a closed-end trust like PSLV is at risk of force majuere in the coming days. I considered rolling over the Roth portion of my 401k into a self-directed PM IRA but that will probably occur once I retire to save on storage fees. If stocks crash, at least I have hedge with physical gold/silver.

This thread made me check my 401K. I made 3% Nov and Dec for 30,000 each month. I could live off that even with taxes taken out. I’d like to retire in 5-7 years.