Personal Finance After 50 For Dummies. Eric Tyson

Total International Stock Index Admiral Shares (VTIAX): This index mutual fund tracks the FTSE Global All-Cap ex-US Index. The ETF version (VXUS) has a slightly lower expense ratio.

       iShares MSCI EAFE Index (EFA): An ETF that invests to replicate the performance of the MSCI EAFE Index.

      Assessing and changing your portfolio

Although we advocate doing your homework so you can buy and hold solid investments for the long haul, we do at times support selling when it’s appropriate. If you have investments that seem to be doing poorly over an extended period of time, try determining why they haven’t done well and look at making changes to your portfolio.

      However, when assessing your current holdings be careful that you don’t dump a particular investment just because it’s in a temporary slump. Even the best investment managers have periods as long as a year or two during which they underperform. Sometimes this happens when the manager’s style of investing is temporarily out of favor. But remember, our definition of “temporary” isn’t measured in days or months; instead, we mean one to two years.

      

A useful way to evaluate your portfolio once a year or once every few years is to imagine that everything that you currently own is sold. Ask yourself whether you’d choose to go out and buy the same investments today that you were holding. This is an especially good question to ask yourself if you own lots of stock in the company you work for. Determine whether your reasons still are valid for holding your investments.

      

When you find something inherently wrong with an investment, such as high fees or sub-par management, take the loss and make doing so more palatable by remembering the following:

       Losses can help reduce your income taxes. You can see immediate tax relief/reduction for nonretirement losses.

       Consider opportunity cost. Consider what kind of future return that money could be providing you with if you switched into a better investment.

      As you manage your portfolio:

       Don’t become attached to your investments. Over the years, Eric has worked with many clients who have difficulty being objective with and letting go of investments. Just as we get attached to people, places, and things, some investors’ judgments may be clouded due to attachment to an investment. Even if an investor makes the decision to sell an investment based on a sound and practical assessment, his attachment to it can derail the process, causing him to refuse to part with it at the current fair market value. Attachment can be especially problematic and paralyzing with inherited assets.

       Don’t let inertia become a problem for you. It wasn’t unusual for Eric to work with clients who have accumulated tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in checking accounts. Folks who amassed their savings from work income were often fearful of selecting an investment that may fall in value. These people knew how long and hard they had to work for their money, and they didn’t want to lose any of it.